What I’m Reading: “Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition” by Owen Beattie and John Geiger

While I was walking to the car this morning, I experienced breath-taking cold.  The air was so cold that every time I inhaled, my noise-hairs froze, my lungs stung – the cold took my breath.  It dawned on me that I was – in South Dakota mind you – experiencing the same temperatures that Captain John Franklin’s “lost” expedition experienced on their deadly 1845 voyage to discover the Northwest Passage.

I’ve just finished reading Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie and John Geiger.  (I picked it up because recently I finished The Terror by Dan Simmons.)  In their work, Beattie and Geiger provide detailed historical accounts of both Franklin’s expedition as well as the various voyages of rescue, and then once all chance of rescue of lost, voyages of fact-finding.  Beattie and Geiger also describe the anthropological field-work they completed on some of the graves left behind by the Franklin expedition.

The book is obviously written by scientists, and I think this is why much of the reading is quite dry; whole passages are merely a relation of fact after fact.  I found myself wishing for some historical context for the information I was reading (this need for context is why I’ve picked up The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909).  However, the authors’ focus on mere facts shouldn’t deter one from reading the book; you will learn quite a bit from these men.  Their modern quest out onto the Arctic ice is quite compelling as well as their discussion of the ethical dilemmas in disturbing the graves of the Franklin expedition.

I found myself ruminating on that last concept quite a bit as I finished the book.  On the one hand, we want to know what happened to these men.  We don’t like silences in history, and the cells, organs, and bodies of these men can speak volumes.  On the other hand, though, these are indeed men who lovingly were buried by their crew-mates.  Their bodies were embalmed, their possessions wrapped, and their hand-made coffins inscribed with biblical passages; it just seems unseemly to disturb a grave.  After reading about the work that Owen and Geiger did, I would like to read more about the study of anthropology, and I would like to know the arguments that scientists make when they go about rummaging through graves for important historical data.

Finally, after reading Owen and Geiger’s work, I have a new appreciation for Dan Simmons The Terror.  His novel is painstakingly historically accurate, and that accuracy really adds something to his terrifying descriptions of the crippling Arctic cold and desolation.

Frozen in Time

John Franklin

Possible voyages of the lost ship