The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  What was astonishing was what had been done at the conclusion of the autopsy. The organs had simply been put back in the body in “one mixed mass”.9 This was why they hadn’t shown up on the X-rays. Even more bizarre, the front part of the ribcage, which had been removed to allow access to the lungs and heart, had then been put back upside down.

  WHO DID IT?

  It is difficult to imagine a ship’s doctor, even under trying circumstances, treating a shipmate in such an oddly uncaring manner. The doctor aboard the Erebus was Dr. Harry Goodsir. Would Dr. Goodsir really have so callously dumped the organs back into Hartnell’s body in a mixed mass? More importantly, would any doctor have put the ribs back in upside down? And yet, if not Dr. Goodsir, then who?

  Perhaps there is another clue. When first exhuming Hartnell’s body, the ice that had frozen over his chest area was found to be brownish in colour. It became evident to Beattie that the brown staining the ice was caused by blood and body fluids that had seeped out of the incision between the time Hartnell was buried and the point at which the water froze in his coffin. And yet, is there not another explanation? Is it possible the autopsy was performed while Hartnell was already in his grave? Could someone have dug up Hartnell and performed an autopsy on the spot at some time long after Franklin and his crew had already left Beechey Island?

  Obviously, Dr. Sutherland seems the most apparent suspect, since we already know he and Captain Inglefield did exhume Hartnell in 1852. We have already found reason to question Inglefield’s account of what took place under that crisp Arctic moon, but why should he lie about performing an autopsy? Why autopsy Hartnelland then pretend he had been unable to even see the body, relying instead on touch alone? Of course, perhaps more to the point, why would Dr. Sutherland be any more likely to replace the ribcage upside down than Dr. Goodsir would have been? And, if this isn’t reason enough to remove Sutherland and Inglefield as suspects, there is also a question of time. In order to autopsy the body, Sutherland would have found it necessary to thaw out each organ before it could be removed, as Beattie did. It is doubtful there would have been time enough for the entire procedure before the Isabel sailed at midnight.

  Unfortunately the list of suspects ends with Dr. Sutherland, leaving us with a truly unnerving question still unanswered. But, if someone really did exhume and autopsy Hartnell’s body sometime after he was already buried, a further question to be asked is this: had the autopsy already been done by the time Inglefield exhumed Hartnell in 1852? For that matter, is it not a strange coincidence that, of the three bodies, Inglefield just happened to choose the one which had been autopsied? Is it possible Inglefield had some reason to think something odd might be found in Hartnell’s grave before he even arrived at Beechey Island? Could he have exhumed Hartnell’s body because of information gleaned from a message left by Franklin in the Beechey Island cairn?

  There is a curious comment made by Inglefield in his unpublished letter to Rear-Admiral Beaufort. He begins by describing the process of digging through the frozen earth. “The pale moon looking down upon us as we silently worked with pickaxe and shovel at the hard-frozen tomb, each blow sending a spur of red sparks from the grave where rested the messmate of our lost countrymen. No trace but a piece of fearnought half down the coffin lid could we find.”10 [my italics] No trace? No trace of what? (Fearnought is a coarse fabric.) Clearly Inglefield had expected to find something, but what? Was he merely hoping a message might have been left with the body? It seems unlikely; Franklin would hardly have buried a message deep under the perpetually frozen ground sealed in a coffin.

  Whatever Inglefield was searching for, if his letter is to be believed, he never found it. But he may have found something else, something totally unexpected and, because Inglefield harboured suspicions regarding its true significance, something which could not be revealed to the public. So, he omitted mention of the entire episode when it came time to publish his journal. That something would have been the strange autopsy conducted on Hartnell. In pursuing this line of reasoning, it is not too hard to imagine Inglefield, on finding the upside down Y incision, grimly ordering Dr. Sutherland to reopen the body. After silently noting the curiously uncaring manner in which the organs had been placed in the body, and seeing the astonishing way in which the ribcage had been replaced upside down, Inglefield would have instructed Sutherland to suture closed the incision, after swearing all present not to speak of what they had seen.

  WILLIAM BRAINE, TOO?

  As strange as the discoveries made in Hartnell’s grave were, there was yet more to come when the team exhumed the body of Royal Marine William Braine. Braine died in the very early spring, almost three months to the day after the death of Hartnell. Braine’s facial features seemed less grotesque than those of his crewmates. His lips had been held down by a red cloth over his face, so that they did not curl outward in the same weird way, but seemed drawn tight across his teeth, almost as if laughing. His features seemed smoother and more alive, and even his eyes seemed less zombie-like, perhaps because they were squinted, making it more difficult to notice the damaged eyeballs within.

  Even before the body had been removed from the coffin, it was clear that something was wrong. One arm, which at first seemed to be missing, was found to be twisted awkwardly beneath the corpse, while the head and body were both poorly positioned. As well, one of the undershirts had been put on the corpse backwards. All of this led Beattie to conclude Braine had been placed in the coffin in a hurry, without time being taken to properly dress or arrange his body. But, again, perhaps another possibility presents itself.

  Is it possible that Braine’s body, like Hartnell’s, had been exhumed by someone prior to Beattie’s visit? Beattie had found obvious signs of Hartnell’s exhumation; the coffin had been damaged and fabric had been pulled out. But this damage was almost certainly caused by Inglefield’s party. If someone else exhumed and autopsied Hartnell prior to Inglefield’s visit, perhaps they exhumed Braine at the same time, but took greater care to leave no trace of their work behind. (As an added note: Hartnell was found to be dressed only from the waist up. Beattie had been puzzled by this and supposed there had been a public viewing aboard the ship with the lower body covered by a shroud. But, as with Braine’s backward undershirt, this could be further evidence that Hartnell had been exhumed, stripped, autopsied, then half-dressed in the same strangely careless way as his organs and ribs had been replaced.)

  More evidence in support of this theory would turn up during the autopsy. First though, Braine’s body was X-rayed just as Hartnell’s had been, but this time with better results, because he had not been previously autopsied.

  Before beginning the autopsy, something curious transpired. As the team prepared for the task, abruptly the entire party began to experience severe headaches. They grew dizzy and some even felt physically ill. They concluded the problem could only have been caused by breathing carbon monoxide produced by the two stoves they had used to warm water during Braine’s exhumation, the gas presumably filling the tent covering the grave pit. It was a poor omen before beginning their job on the final body, in some ways reminiscent of the weird and sudden storm which had sprung up so vengefully to wreck the tent over Torrington’s grave on the first day of digging two years before. Stranger still was the fact that the gas had somehow gathered in the tent even though the tent flap had been open, with a breeze blowing in all the time they worked.

  On removing Braine’s clothing, it was discovered that, in contrast to the previous two bodies, green discolouration was to be found, indicating that the body had begun decomposing some time before burial. This suggested that the body had been kept in a warm location, a considerable feat of ineptitude while in the high Arctic in April. Beattie commented that “the body could easily have been placed in a cool or even freezing part of the ship where the amount of observed decomposition would have been far less likely to occur.”11 Indeed, the improbability of such a mistake suggests another possibility. If someone exhume
d Braine’s body (along with Hartnell) sometime before Inglefield arrived, might they have done so during one of the six short Arctic summers between 1846 and 1852? In which case, the warmer temperatures to be found in August might have caused the decomposition during the time that the body was under study.

  Almost as a final dash of spice to add flavour to the mystery, strange lesions were found on Braine’s body. They occurred on his shoulders, around the groin area, and on his chest, and involved damage not only to the skin, but even to the muscles beneath. On closer examination, it was found that the lesions were teeth marks. Beattie concluded the marks had been made by rats, which often stowed away aboard ships. It is, of course, the most likely explanation.

  A CHANGE IN THE MYSTERY

  Still, when all this is taken together it is all tantalizingly suggestive. When we consider all the evidence, we may find ourselves dimly sensing a change in the mystery before us, as if suddenly discovering the blue pieces of a puzzle are not parts of the sea but of the sky. When we think about the curious unexpected evidence of an autopsy, possibly conducted long after Hartnell had been buried, the oddly callous way his organs were returned to his body, his ribcage astonishingly replaced upside down; when we consider the possibility that Braine too may have been exhumed, examined, then returned to his grave, hastily positioned, one arm twisted beneath him, his undershirt on backward; when we reflect on the strange teeth marks, the evidence of decomposition, Captain Inglefield’s journal omission; finally, when we append the additional discovery, commented on by Beattie but not elaborated upon, that in John Hartnell’s veins there was no blood, only clear ice — we may find ourselves tempted to change the nature of our search and the form of the question asked. We may be excused for wondering not who autopsied John Hartnell, but what.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Cashmere Gloves

  They are all gone into the world of light,

  And I alone sit lingering here.

  Henry Vaughan,

  They Are All Gone

  THE CAIRN OF CANS

  As those first searchers congregated solemnly around the three lonely graves in 1850 — John Ross, William Penny and Elisha Kent Kane — they could not have known the strange contents of those graves. They knew only that evidence at last had been discovered of Franklin’s expedition, evidence of his first winter in the Arctic. If any of them had been well versed in Biblical passages, they might have wondered at the curious quotations marking the headstones of Hartnell and Braine (the two who, in our scenario, were exhumed by persons unknown) and recalled the passage from which the latter’s was taken. The gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell.

  But there were other discoveries to consider, and their attention soon shifted from the graves to the surrounding terrain set in the shadow of brooding, broken cliffs. As Penny’s sailor had rightly surmised, there could be no doubt that they had happened on Franklin’s winter camp. All around them was scattered evidence of a prolonged stay on this barren heap of wave-washed rubble. There were the foundations of some sort of storehouse, in one part of which was discovered coal sacks, while in another part wood shavings indicated where carpentry work had been performed. Near the beach, cinders and scrap iron showed where a forge had stood, and tubs for the men to wash in had been constructed out of salt-meat casks. In one area, tents had been erected and a shooting range had been set up in a nearby gully, with stones marking the distances and a “Soup and Bouilli” can as the target, found riddled with holes. Captain Sherard Osborn, with the Royal Navy flotilla, was particularly impressed by the remains of a garden: “its neatly shaped oval outline, the border carefully formed of moss, lichen, poppies and anemones, transplanted from some more genial part of this dreary region, contrived still to show symptoms of vitality.”1

  While wandering amongst this abundant proof of Franklin’s winter sojourn, the searchers happened upon a weird and disturbing find. A strange cairn was discovered built of 600 to 700 meat tins, each one carefully filled with gravel. As with the earlier cairn, this too was taken apart; each tin was emptied and searched, but again, suspiciously, there was no sign of a message.

  What did it mean? Had the gravel-filled tins been used as ballast, as some speculated? Or was there a darker significance? It was suggested that there might have been a problem with the meat carried on Franklin’s expedition; perhaps some of it had spoiled and been thrown out. The navy had previously had complaints about the packager, Goldner. It was argued that there were far too many tins to be accounted for by a single winter. Had Franklin constructed this curious monument just to let later searchers know the meat had spoiled? Surely a simple note would have sufficed.

  THE GLOVES

  But perhaps the most eerie find of all was reserved for Captain Osborn’s searching eyes — eerie for precisely the reason that it at first seemed so mundane. He discovered a pair of cashmere gloves neatly set out to dry on a rock, small pebbles placed in each palm to keep them from being blown away by the unrelenting wind. So much had been left behind by Franklin’s expedition, there could be no doubt their departure had been hasty. But this discovery must surely have aroused a slight thrill of unease even in Osborn’s unflappably British breast. Four years before, one of Franklin’s officers had laid out those gloves, precisely as Osborn saw them now. On a sunny day, he had set them there, left them to dry and then, inexplicably, never returned.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Penny Versus Austin

  And then it started like a guilty thing

  Upon a fearful summons.

  William Shakespeare,

  Hamlet

  FROZEN IN WELLINGTON CHANNEL

  If John Ross had hoped to set off for Prince Regent Inlet before the naval ships returned, it was not to be. Since his departure had been postponed by the discovery of the graves and Franklin’s winter encampment, he was still at Beechey when Captain Austin came back the next day after being prevented from reaching Cape Walker by heavy ice. Then Ross found himself called upon to unload provisions from the British tender Pioneer, which, having run aground, needed to be floated free. In the end, the Arctic winter closed its chill, dark fingers, hardening the waters and trapping every one of the expeditions in the Beechey Island area.

  With Jane Franklin’s ship Prince Albert retreating back to England, this left the four British ships under Captain Austin, the two ships under Penny, the two American vessels, and John Ross’ schooner, Felix, with its tiny tender, Mary. What should have been an all-out search encompassing every corner of the Arctic had become an overcrowded gathering in the mouth of Wellington Channel.

  In April, sledge parties set out across the hummocky ice in no less than eight directions, but, of course, the main areas of interest were Melville Island in the west, and areas further north up Wellington Channel. Leopold McClintock was placed in charge of the Melville Island search. He had previously assisted James Clark Ross on the very first search for the lost expedition. There was reason enough at that time to believe McClintock was innocent of any “unworthy motives” and now, again, his actions are understandable enough. He was under orders from Captain Austin to carry out a search of Melville Island. All the experts were in agreement that this was a likely place to find the lost seamen, even though Franklin had been advised in his sailing orders to keep away from the heavy ice off Melville Island. Who was McClintock to question such lofty authorities?

  Just as James Clark Ross had so inexplicably insisted on using the slower man-hauled sledges despite having previously employed dogs with such success, again the navy expeditions spurned the use of dog sledges, greatly limiting the size of the areas any one party could hope to cover. Only Captain Penny, the whaling captain championed by Jane Franklin, employed dogs for the sledge that he used to search Wellington Channel. At the very least, the navy’s efforts were conveniently flawed.

  Having failed to reach Cape Walker the previous year, the navy now tried again, this time sending a sledge party over the ice-covered surface of Barro
w Strait.

  CAPE WALKER, AT LAST

  The history of Cape Walker reflects the poor understanding of the area’s geography that resulted from the hindering effects of the implacable ice. Its initial importance lay in its being the westernmost point of land yet sighted along the south side of the entrance to the Arctic. It was initially thought to be the southwest corner of Somerset Island, rather than the northern tip of an entirely different island, soon to be named Prince of Wales (or more properly, the tip of a small islet now named Russell Island, just north of the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island). The waterway between Prince of Wales Island and Somerset Island, eventually to be named Peel Sound, had formerly been identified as a bay; although James Clark Ross had concluded it might be a sound, no one could yet be certain. For these reasons, it had seemed reasonable to conclude that if there was a waterway connecting the northern part of the Northwest Passage to the more southern route, it was to be found somewhere beyond Cape Walker.

  Of course, the same reasoning would hold if someone wished to reach Victory Point on King William Island. James Clark Ross had stood on Victory Point and gazed out over an ice-choked waterway to the west which he called Victoria Strait, a waterway located directly south and slightly west of Cape Walker. No matter what Franklin’s real plans were, Cape Walker had beckoned like the Pillars of Hercules.

  Because of its prominence in Franklin’s orders, everyone had believed a message would be found there. To quote one of the searchers (Ommanney): “Cape Walker was the spot on which it was almost universally believed that Sir John Franklin would have left a cairn, if proceeding in that direction.”1 Of course, this had not stopped James Clark Ross from steering away from Cape Walker at the very last moment in 1849; nor had it been reason enough to convince Captain Forsyth to land boats the previous winter. But now, at long last, with Franklin having been lost for six years, an expedition was sent to Cape Walker to find a sign.