Sketch of the life of John Irving

In researching for this blog the manner in which the bones believed to be Irving's were returned, I was delighted to find that the little memoir of his life, published in Edinburgh after his funeral, had been scanned and made available here by Harvard University Libraries. While there is no portrait -- I am unsure as to whether Irving was ever photographed -- there is a frontispiece featuring a lovely reproduction of Irving's maths medal. It's been cleaned up, and the engraved name is quite clear -- certainly, given its size and significance, it's not unreasonable to assume that it was laid within the tomb as a memorial. If you click on the image above, you can see it in much better detail.

I would encourage everyone unfamiliar with this delightful little book to take advantage of the online version. It gives a good many of Irving's letters home in full, and reproduces a sketch he made of the "Erebus" and "Terror" at their final port of call in Greenland. The final letter, enclosed with this sketch, concludes with this poignant reflection:

We are going to have a school for the men, and our Captain reads prayers in Sundays. We are exempt from many of the temptations of the world, and I hope we shall have grace to find that it has been good for us to have been separated from the world, and that God has been with us in all our wanderings. May we submit ourselves to His pleasure in all things.

Irving's Grave, Part III

Let's recalibrate our discussion here, and assume for the moment that it was John Irving in that grave. If so, I would say it's most likely that he died not long after being mentioned in the Victory Point Record -- the evidence for this being simply that a tomb of such size and form would have been well beyond the powers of any group of stragglers returning to the ships. Some have hypothesized that he either led a return party to this ships (Greely), or else that he deliberately remained behind with the sick, and perished among them (Markham). But no matter whose remains were in this grave, there is still one witness from whom we yet have to hear: William H. Gilder, Schwatka's second-in-command. Gilder's account was also published, and is readily available via Project Gutenberg; here are the relevant passages.

He begins by recalling the events of the 27th:

The next day we stayed at Cape Jane Franklin to make a preliminary search of the vicinity. Lieutenant Schwatka and I went up Collinson Inlet, but saw no traces of white men. Henry and Frank, who had been sent up the coast, were more fortunate. About a mile and a half above camp they came upon the camp made by Captain Crozier, with his entire command from the two ships, after abandoning the vessels. There were several cooking stoves, with their accompanying copper kettles, besides clothing, blankets, canvas, iron and brass implements, and an open grave, wherein was found a quantity of blue cloth, part of which seemed to have been a heavy overcoat, and a part probably wrapped around the body. There was also a large quantity of canvas in and around the grave, with coarse stitching through it and the cloth, as though the body had been incased as if for burial at sea. Several gilt buttons were found among the rotting cloth and mould in the bottom of the grave, and a lens, apparently the object-glass of a marine telescope. Upon one of the stones at the foot of the grave Henry found a medal, which was thickly covered with grime, and was so much the color of the clay stone on which it rested as to nearly escape detection. It proved to be a silver medal, two and a half inches in diameter, with a bass-relief portrait of George IV.

So far, so good -- his account corroborates those of Schwatka and Klutschak. But then Gilder adds a detail unique to his account; apparently, some time after the visit by Supunger and his uncle, another Inuk and his son had visited the site:

An old Netchillik, named Ockarnawole, stated that five years ago he and his son, who was also present in the igloo, made an excursion along the north-western coast of King William Land. Between Victory Point and Cape Felix they found some things in a small cask near the salt water. In a monument that he did not take down, he found between the stones five jack-knives and a pair of scissors, also a small flat piece of tin, now lost; saw no graves at this place, but found what, from his description of the way the handle was put on, was either an adze or a pickaxe. A little north of this place found a tent place and three tin cups. About Victory Point found a grave, with a skeleton, clothes, and a jack-knife with one blade broken. Saw no books. In a little bay on the north side of Collinson Inlet saw a quantity of clothes. There was plenty of snow on the ground at the time they were there. Viewing this statement in the light of our subsequent search upon this ground, I am inclined to believe that the grave they found was not at Victory Point, but was Irving's grave, about three miles below there. We saw no evidence of any grave at Victory Point, though we made a particularly extended search around that entire section of the country. The little bay spoken of is also probably the little bay where Lieutenant Irving's grave was discovered. There is a little bay on the north side of Collinson Inlet, but Lieutenant Schwatka and I visited it several times without finding any traces of clothing or any other evidences of white men having been there; and from what we saw at other places it seems almost impossible that there could have been much there as late as five years ago without some indications remaining. The vicinity of places where boats had been destroyed, or camps where clothing was found, were invariably indicated by pieces of cloth among the rocks, at greater or less intervals, for a long distance--sometimes as far as one or two miles on either side, and it would be almost impossible to escape seeing the principal point when led to it by such gradually cumulative evidence.

Here is much interesting new detail: the grave thought to be Irving's was visited a second time. Ockarnawole did not take down the "monument" -- but this appears to be another cairn, perhaps that in which Schwatka found Hobson's note copying out the Victory Point record. He did, however, visit a grave -- correctly surmised by Gilder to be Irving's -- and picked up a jack-knife, quite possibly the same old rusty "clasp knife" found and discarded by Supunger. Most significantly, Gilder places the grave more precisely -- "three miles below Victory Point" at a "little bay." Consulting a modern map (see above), this would seem to place it squarely in the midst of Cape Jane Franklin, which is exactly where Gould puts it (those consulting his map should note that Gould calls the entire inlet "Back Bay," whereas the modern map places the name on the coast and names the inlet "Cllinson Inlet").

Whoever was buried in it, then, I think we can say several things about this grave three miles south of Victory Point:

1) It is adjacent to an expedition camp, which apparently was occupied by some portion of the crew of the "Terror," as well as a considerable amount of material abandoned soon after the crews left the ships. The sledge-harnesses present pose a question -- were they left behind early on, or are they a sign that a group from that ship did in fact return to the vicinity at some later point?

2) It was visited twice by Inuit at some point long after there were living survivors -- first by Supunger and his uncle in the 1860's, who got most of the good stuff (wooden oars, and the wooden pole fastened into the ground), and who opened up the tomb in search of plunder. Secondly, much later, in the early 1870's, by Ockarnawole and his son, who cleaned up some additional material, missing some things due to snow cover.

3) The person buried in the grave was very likely an officer; a great deal of effort would have been required to construct it. He was buried in a dress uniform, and sewn inside canvas as if for burial at sea. Irving's maths medal was -- apparently with purpose -- left there, but was missed by the Inuit. The medal had been there for a long time, as it had left a mark on the rock where it had lain.

So what can we make of this evidence? Does it suggest a return to the vicinity of the ships? If this group was able to reach one of the ships, and resupply, could its members have been well enough to undertake the making of this substantial tomb? Or does the evidence point to an earlier memorial, around the time of abandonment? I'd note also that Schwatka and his men found a similar, though much less ambitiously-scaled burial, a few miles further south, the skull in which was also identified as that of a "white man." Schwatka did not, for whatever reason, bring those bones back with him, and no other human remains beyond that point received anything resembling this kind of formal, labor-intensive burial.

Irving's Grave, Part II

The descriptions of the site and nature of the grave supposed by Schwatka to be that of Lieutenant John Irving, and the stone vault found by the Inuk hunter Hall called "Supunger" show some remarkable similarities. Both were located near the site of a collapsed tent; near both were found a number of portable stoves and other equipment; in both graves parts of the skeleton were scattered about, and the skull was not at the "head" of the tomb. Yet is has generally been assumed that Supunger's find -- often described as a "vault" -- was an excavation below ground level, whereas Irving's was above ground. The difficulty of digging to any depth in the unyielding frozen scree of King William Island, however, suggests an above-ground construction. What, then, of the large flat stones so vividly described by Supunger?

They are there -- in the form of a sketch (shown above) as well as a description by Heinrich Klutshak, who worked as the surveyor/artist on Schwatka's expedition. His sketch, much more so than the relatively primitive one in Schwatka's account, shows these very slabs, and this is corroborated by his description:

"On the 27th, Franz Melms and I were walking along the coast toward Victory Point, where Sir James Ross had erected a stone cairn. Near the waterline Melms found a strip of canvas (such as is used for hauling a sledge) with the marking T.II. While he was making a more through inspection of the area, I spotted a cairn and near it a human skull. It was a grave made of flat slabs of sandstone, like a grave-vault built above ground. It had once been covered but had obviously been subjected to a search. The skull (indisputably that of a white man) lay outside, with other human bones. Inside the grave a luxuriant growth of moss was flourishing on some remnants of blue cloth which, judging by the buttons and the fine texture, had once belonged to an English officer's uniform. A silk handkerchief in a remarkably good state of preservation lay at the head end, and above it on a rock a silver medal measuring 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 inches in diameter lay exposed. The fact that this medal had escaped the eyes of the Inuit I can only ascribe to the fact that it had either been hidden by snow, or that the natives' loot was already quite considerable."

"Flat slabs" -- "like a grave-vault built above ground" -- "it had once been covered" -- all these correspond perfectly with Supunger's description. His conjecture about the reason the medal was missed is also remarkably acute; when asked by Hall why Supunger had not taken more of the stoves or kettles (Oot-koo-seeks) near the site, the reply was that "he & uncle had as much of other things as they could carry & these Oot-koo- seeks were very heavy."

The precise location of this grave is perhaps the final question. Unfortunately, Klutschak does not give a precise spot, though clearly it was near the water-line not far south of Victory Point. Supunger placed his finds "by the coast above Back's Bay, not far from Victory Point," which is entirely consistent. Gould's map shows it at the far western tip of Cape Jane Franklin, just north of Back's Bay and south of Victory Point; Barr's note in his edition of Klutshak's narrative places it "two miles north of Cape Jane Franklin."

The other features of the spot are also, perhaps, worth noting. Supunger and his uncle found a large wooden pole in the ground just beside this vault or grave. It had been chewed off a few feet above ground by a polar bear, but as wood was so enormously valuable they took a great deal of time and effort to dig it out of its foundation. Supunger described it in great detail:

"The part in the ground was square. Next to the ground was a big ball & above this to within a foot or so of the top the stick was round. The top part was about 3 or 4 inches square. No part of it was painted - all natural wood color."

To many who have read this account, it sounds as though it must have been a flag-pole, perhaps crafted on board ship by one of the expedition's carpenters. And whose grave would be most likely to have a flag-pole erected beside it?

The Grave of Lieutenant Irving?

Without a doubt, one of the most poignant discoveries of the American Franklin Searching Expedition led by Frederick Schwatka was that of the grave of Lieutenant John Irving. Unlike other burials made farther down the coast of King William Island, Irving's grave had been constructed with considerable care and labor, with a ring of stones which, at one point, may have been covered over to make a complete sepulcher of stone. The remains were identified on account of a medallion, awarded to Irving for his achievement in maths, which was found lying nearby. Schwatka, moved by this memorial, did something only done once before -- he decided to collect the remains and send them back to England for burial. This was in fact done, and apparently the identification of the body was fully accepted; the remains were buried at Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh, in an elaborate ceremony presided over by Irving's brother, who by then had risen to the rank of Major General.

And yet supposing this was this Irving's skeleton, one wonders: how could this be his grave? Its site, quite close to that of Ross's cairn at Victory Point, poses a difficult puzzle; since Irving is mentioned in the Victory Point note as having found Ross's cairn, we can safely presume he was fit enough to be sent on such a mission. And yet here, a stone's throw distant, lies his grave? Did Irving meet with some sudden end, so soon after the Victory Point record that the main body of the expedition had not yet moved on? It's often surmised that Irving must have for some reason been sent back later to the ships, and that this explains the gap in time. Yet a grave such as his, with its heavy stones, would almost certainly have been beyond the means of a small party of men some time after the abandonment to construct; with scurvy and exhaustion rampant, the graves the later survivors managed -- when they managed them at all -- consisted of laying out the body and covering it with a few shovels of gravel. The men who built this monument must have been fit, and the time ample, for such a substantial undertaking.

And even then, the scale of the burial seems significant. Irving, as an officer, would certainly have received a formal burial of some kind, but the heavy construction of this tomb suggests that the body was that of a very senior commander. Elsewhere in this blog, I've passed along the "Supunger" tale, in which an Inuk hunter, quite near Victory Point, discovered a stone tomb, partially filled with water. The tomb was covered with heavy slabs of stone, but Supunger and his uncle managed -- with considerable effort -- to pry one off. Inside they found part of a skeleton, along with a few rusted relics, among them a clasp knife. Other parts of the body were strewn outside, and by this, along with claw-marks at the grave's edge, Supunger deduced that a polar bear must have broken into the grave. Might not this same grave, its roof removed and its edges eroded by a decade of frost, ice, and water, be the same one later found by Schwatka and assumed to be Iriving's?

The identification by the medallion is certainly a weak one. In the case of Le Vesconte, an examination of the skull showed a tooth with a gold plug that evidently corresponded with dental work that officer was known to have had. There's no indication that Irving's bones received any such examination; they were simply delivered to his family. And indeed the math medal, according to the accounts of Schwatka and his men, was lying on the edge of the grave. It might have been left there by anyone; indeed, if we assume that this is the grave of a more senior officer, it might have been left there by Irving as a tribute to a dead friend.

I'm providing links to the complete texts of the Supunger story, as well as to that of Schwatka -- perhaps a fresh look at the evidence is in order. Many who have read Supunger's tale have come to believe that the grave could only have been that of Sir John Franklin himself -- if indeed this tomb was the same as that found by Schwatka, it could well be that Franklin's bones have, in fact, already been returned to Britain -- but simply buried in the wrong grave!

Franklin-era tin tests positive for lead

It's only been about a week and a half since a discussion here on this blog, where I suggested that someone ought to locate, open, and study a tin of Franklin's provisions. I'm sure it's just a coincidence (either that or I have unknown cosmic powers), but researchers at McMaster University have just done this exact experiment, and the results are clear: lead levels on the tin's lid are "off the map." The contents -- the notorious "Ox Cheek Soup" itself -- have already tested high for lead content. All of this is very strong circumstantial evidence that it is quite possible that lead from tinned food was a significant contributor to elevated lead levels found in bones and tissue tested from both the Beechey Island graves and the site identified as "Ng-Lj2" on King William Island.

It should be stressed, though, that the case remains circumstantial. The contents of the tin were enclosed for more than a century, which is a lot more time -- by at least a factor of 50 -- than any food actually eaten on the expedition. Furthermore, this tin was not one of the Goldner tins supplied to Franklin, so its method of manufacture and preservation may be significantly different, although closely contemporary. To really establish that this tin would have caused significant elevated lead levels if the soup had been consumed when intended, a totally different sort of experiment would have to be undertaken: you'd need to prepare a fresh batch of soup with the same basic qualities -- salinity, acidity, and so forth -- and then can it using identical materials and methods to those observed in this tin. Then, of course, you'd have to wait!

Amazingly, this is exactly what the researchers at McMaster plan to do. Having an actual tin in their possession is a plus -- the materials and qualities of the soup can be very closely replicated -- and they're planning to open and test their replica tin in one year. According to the McMaster website's article:

"With the lead levels confirmed, McMaster's Department of Anthropology will next make a batch of the ox cheek soup and can it using methods from the 1840s. Over the course of a year the cans will be opened and analyzed. Researchers will then be able to gauge how quickly lead leaches into soup rendering it lethal. Lead poisoning has long been considered a cause of death for the ill-fated explorers."

This is welcome news. I hope to be able to report in more detail on this current experiment, and will certainly pass along any results from the tests as they are announced.

None of this, of course, will completely resolve the issue of lead poisoning and the Franklin expedition. However, it should give us a far clearer picture both of the likely source of the lead, and the strength and extent of the contamination. William Battersby has argued that lead from the tins was insufficient to cause the very high levels found in bone samples, and used this argument to support his case that lead pipes in the ships' fresh-water distilling apparatus are a more likely culprit. A low level of lead leeching over one year would support his argument; a high level would make his claim less certain, but would not of course rule it out. Finally, whatever the source, the role of lead poisoning in the expedition's sad conclusion is itself a matter of some debate. The levels of lead in the bones from Ng-Lj-2 varied widely, with one or two individuals likely suffering from acute lead toxicity, while others had only moderately elevated levels. Did officers, because they were issued a larger ration of tinned food, end up with more lead? Whose bones were whose? And, aside from its physical effects, would the diminution of mental alacrity associated with lead poisoning be so great that it can be blamed as the sole, or primary cause of what, in hindsight, appear to be poor decisions? The debate will surely go on.

(photo courtesy of McMaster University Daily News)

The "Canadian" Northwest Passage?

So here we go again! The Canadian House of Commons has come out with a motion to rename the "Northwest Passage" the "Canadian Northwest Passage." It's a strange and surreal claim, although its context -- the concern over Canada's sovereignty to its Arctic territories -- is at least somewhat sensible. Down here, it would be like renaming the Mississippi River the "American Mississippi River," except of course that no one is claiming rights of free passage from New Orleans to St. Louis. What's more, though, is that this renaming has got caught up with Inuit concerns over their right to reassert indigenous place names, along with the whole history of the Passage as an Icon of British Naval quests generally, meaning Sir John Franklin and all who searched for him can't be far behind.

Everyone should take a break here and consider the facts. As my good friend Kenn Harper observes, the "Northwest Passage" was an idea long before it was a reality; in fact, its essence is that of a quest, or a desire, rather than a fulfillment. Of course, other imaginary names have ended up on maps before (see for instance the Straits of Juan de Fuca, which were named after the man who sought the fabled Strait of Anián, a nonexistant route across the Americas, in 1592), but in point of fact there is no such waterway with this name. It was imagined as a singularity, but is in fact a multiplicity; there are any number of potential routes through the inland Arctic waters of Canada, including that taken by Sir Robert McClure, that taken by Roald Amundsen, that taken by the SS Manhattan, and many others since. A Government can, of course, name any physical feature what it wants, but the "Northwest Passage" is not a physical feature at all.

It is, in fact, a very Romantic idea, and ought to be celebrated in just that spirit, rather than pinned down to a map. And the finest emobodiment of this spirit, I am sure many readers of this blog will agree, is Stan Rogers' song of 1981, "Northwest Passage." It embodies the idea, and the passion of the Passage, connecting the exploits of Sir John Franklin, Alexander Mackenzie, David Thompson, and Henry Kelsey with Rogers' own symbolic passage, which was undertaken via the Trans-Canada highway as "this tardiest explorer." It's an extraordinary song, one which -- by Rogers' own account -- came to him as he lay in a darkened recording studio, with the thrumming of the amplifier tubes as his drones. It has been called Canada's unofficial national anthem, and with good reason: the significance of the Passage, and Franklin's death, and Rogers', are all bound up in it. In the efforts to assert Canadian sovereignty over its inland waters, it has been caught up as a sort of talisman, but that's not a purpose it should serve. Instead, I hope it reminds everyone -- in Canada and elsewhere -- of the power of a story wrought with sacrifice, fringed with fear, and concluding with the unity of a diverse Nation, brought together not with declarations of some body of legislators, but with dreams.

Sad state of Arctic Graves

The day after the Franklin memorial service in Greenwich this past October, a number of us met at Kensal Green Cemetery in London for a walking tour of Polar graves. Among our party were Dr Huw Lewis-Jones, Kari Herbert, and Kenn Harper, and on our list of graves to visit were Lady Jane Franklin, Sir John Ross, Admiral Inglefield, and Admiral McClure. None of us had visited the site before, and as the sun was slowly sinking in the west, we hurried against time to locate them using a map of the cemetery and directions from a guidebook. We weren't quite sure what to expect, the more so given the somewhat wild look of Kensal Green itself. Although home to many a famous skellington, the grounds were only barely maintained -- some attempt had been made to trim the grass, with the cuttings blown about this way and that -- and the uneven settling of the ground made many of the monuments lean this way and that. "DANGER: Loose Stonework and Collapsing Graves -- Keep to the Roads and Pathways" warned a sign we passed on our way in, and it was a warning well heeded.

The first of the graves we found was that of Sir John Ross; it was in fairly sound condition, though listing notably to starboard. The carved anchor with chain was largely intact, and the applied metal letters -- a standard of the era, apparently -- were all still in place. We next turned our search toward Lady Franklin, whose marker was of a simpler construction, a stone cross on a tiered pedestal -- precisely, it soon appeared, the same as hundreds of memorials in the vicinity. It was some time before we stumbled upon it, and it was a sad sight; many of the metal letters had come loose, leaving little holes in the limestone base. "ADY FRANKLIV" the stone read, "DIED 18 ULY 9," and underneath "SOPHIA CRACRO" followed by a nearly illegible inscription. The words "Arctic,""search," and "brave companions" could be made out, but not much more. To capture the mood, I sang a stanza of the ballad "Lady Franklin's Lament"

'Twas homeward bound one night on the deep,

Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep

I dreamed a dream, and I thought it true

Concerning Franklin, and his gallant crew ...

A man passing by asked for directions, breaking the mood and leaving us all to our own thoughts. Kenn has written about the sad state of this memorial in his Taissumani column in the Nunatsiaq News, and I heartily agree with his comments there: "I was frankly shocked. So this was the fate of the mortal remains of the second most-famous woman in mid-19th century England."

Next, we tracked down Admiral Inglefield, whose career was connected with the Greenwich memorial we had just attended; he was the very one who had brought back the bones supposed to be Le Vesconte's from Washington D.C. to London. His memorial was half-covered over with grass and dirt; after running back to the car for some work gloves, Huw managed to clear off much of the debris, and we found the inscription intact. His epitaph singled out his Polar experience, reading "Commanded three Arctic expeditions 1852.3.4 and discovered 800 miles of new coasts."

Lastly, we located the monument of Robert McClure, which turned out to be very difficult to locate; its low, pink marble stone gave it the look of a far more recent grave. And yet, obscure though it was, the epitaph was, in many way, the most satisfying of the three:

"In Memory of Vice Admiral Sir Robert John le M. McClure C.B. Born 28 January 1807 died 17 October 1873. As Captain of HMS 'Investigator' AD 1850-54 he discovered and accomplished the Northwest Passage "Thus we launch into this formidable frozen sea"', 'SPES MEA IN DEO'"

Afterwards, we also managed to locate the grave of Wilkie Collins, which was quite near McClure's; it too was in a rather shabby condition, despite a small placard informing us that the Wilkie Collins Society was responsible for its maintenance. All in all, it was a strange and somewhat melancholy visit, with our distress felt most deeply over Lady Franklin's marker. Surely the woman that the Times of London once called "Our English Penelope" deserved a better marker, or at least a better maintained one, than this!

Franklin curiosities: Songs of the North

Among the slimmest, and most delightful items in my collection is this Australian chapbook, printed entirely in letterpress, and reproducing some of the ship-board printing from Arctic vessels of the Franklin era. It's a rare hand-set example, printed on much the same technology that the sailors in Belcher's squadron used themselves, made possible thanks to the Ancora Press at the Centre for the Book at Monash University in Melbourne. Founded in 1976, it is operated jointly by the University's English department, Library, and Communications department.

Much of their printing is done on a cast-iron press made in 1857 by Hopkinson and Cope of London, on indefinite loan from the State Library of Victoria. There is also an 1890's era Wade of Halifax press (used for this volume), as well as a modern steel press made in California in 1982. The predominant type used is Monotype Bembo, an old-style Serif typeface which is the ancestor of the Garamond font family familiar to modern users of word-processing and design software. As to the subject matter, they themselves say simply that it is "generally bookish or literary," but clearly a connection with Australia, or with early or significant printing, is among their criteria.

For this volume, poems printed on board ships in Arctic service were the inspiration, and the selection is small but judicious. First among equals is the "ARCTIC ANTHEM," once sung aboard HMS "Resolute," to the tune of "God Save the Queen":

God bless the Resolute


(A ship of good repute,)


And all her Crew!


Make her victorious


Over old Boreas


Whene'er he's uproarious


Our Consorts too.

Having heard my friend Dr Huw Lewis-Jones sing these lines on more than one occasion, it is his voice that instantly comes to mind as I read them, but I also at times try to imagine the sound of the Resolute's officers and men, under the dedicated and distinguished Captain Kellett, singing this in chorus as their voices echo out through the vast and desolate wilderness of ice, amidst which, though they could not know it, they would later be ordered to abandon their hardy vessel. Also included are "The Arctic Voyagers' Song" (to the tune of "Ivy Green"), the "Traveller's Evening Song," "The Arctic Mariner," and the infamous "Song of the Sledge," to which many a sailor once man-hauled a heavily-laden sledge over the frozen wastes:

Hark! Save, or we perish -- is borne on the gale;

When such is their need, is there one that would fail?

No! Shoulder to shoulder we'll search the dark West

And smile at all toil, & ask not for rest.

The collection concludes with "Appeal to the Seamen & Marines of the Expedition," followed by "THE EPILOGUE at the close of the season, at THE ROYAL ARCTIC THEATRE, 28th February, 1851."

The Ancora Press is mainly conceived as a training ground for students who have an interest in careers related to the publishing trade; it gives them the very best sort of "hands-on" experience -- that with ink and platen, font and fond. They were kind enough to send this copy to me several years ago in hopes that my publicizing it would have good effect in keeping the program alive, which I very heartily hope that it has!

Digitized Arctic Charts at Library & Archives Canada

A major new digital initiative of the Library and Archives of Canada has recently been completed: the digital scanning of all the British Admiralty Charts of Canadian waters. It's an impressive feat, the more so in an era when the Library has had severe cutbacks in staff and funding; perhaps the present Government's interest in the Northwest Passage and issues of Canadian sovereignty helped ensure that the project would be funded. Whatever the reason, it's cause for celebration among Arctic researchers. Among the digitized, zoomable charts is the original full-colour version of Rupert Thomas Gould's map of King William Island, officially known as Admiralty Chart No. 5101. To help users of the map weigh the evidence from different sources, map indications based on Naval observers were given in red ink, while Inuit testimony was shown in blue. You can now zoom in on any detail, and drag the zoomed image to show adjacent areas; it's almost as good as having the chart in your hands.

The only drawback of the project is that, vaster (or at least as vast as) Empires, it moves more slow -- much more slow. Even on a high-speed internet connection, searches seem to take a minute or more to run, and the full map image can take up to five minutes to finish loading. The search indicators and limiters are few, and are also slow to run, making it difficult to navigate that especially treacherous strait between too many and too few (or no) hits. Searching by name provides a potential shortcut, but this search option looks through all digitized materials, not just the maps; for places where there is a lot of other material, such as photographs, this can mean searching for the same needle in an even bigger haystack. Nevertheless, the results, when one does locate the chart wanted, are spectacular indeed, and will certainly reward the patient searcher.

Franklin curiosities: Toy replica of Goldner's tin

In my last posting, I mentioned another remarkable item in my collections, a small toy replica of one of Goldner's infamous red tins. It's about an inch tall, and is made from a wooden spool and painted with (non-toxic) red paint; wrapped in tissue, it fits snugly inside a box decorated with woodcuts of Arctic explorers, with the label "Franklin Expedition Arctic Discovery Play Set." A small leaflet within outlines the essential history, and explains the possible role of Goldner's tins in Franklin's demise. This remarkable item is the work of Ron Toelke, a graphic designer with many years of experience in the book trade, who has taken up the sideline of making extraordinary toys and gifts using old engravings and woodcuts of Polar voyages. In addition to the Franklin play-set, he's worked on a set of Franklin expedition playing cards, with Franklin and his officers as "Kings" and the ships as "Queens." (Interestingly, there was a set of such cards made back in the 1850's for Dr. Kane's Second Grinnell Expedition; these are on display at the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia).

Goldner's tins, of course, excite a sort of morbid curiosity -- and here Toelke has chosen the infamous "Ox Cheek" soup, which one imagines, even if wholesome and properly tinned, might cause some (understandable) queasiness. I've had some experience with these tins -- there's an original one in a glass case at the airport in Resolute, Nunavut -- and for the Franklin documentary I was in, the producer had made a number of cans spray-painted red. When I was in Los Angeles as the Velaslavasay Panorama, they made lovely full-size tins (Ox Cheek Soup being again featured), which were placed around the tables from which period Arctic fare was served. The actual degree to which these cans -- either from the lead in their solder, possible contamination with botulism, or simple putridity -- contributed to the demise of Franklin and his men remains a subject of fierce debate. I would only observe this: the much higher death rate among Franklin's officers, as opposed to ordinary seamen, must correlate with something -- and officers were regularly issued several times the tinned rations of sailors. Sounds like a fun game to me -- say, kids, who wants to go first?

Franklin curiosities: Erebo y Terror

Over the years, I've come to acquire all sorts of oddities and ephemera relating to the Franklin expedition, including chapbooks, newspaper articles, trading cards, and even toys (in the form of a lovely replica miniature can of poisoned beef, complete with box and informative notes -- it will be the subject of my next posting). But by far the rarest and most curious printed item is this tiny book, Erebo y Terror, published as part of a "Library of Micronesia" by Juan Miguel Muñoz, who at the time (2004) worked at the Spanish branch of Random House publishers. The book, bound in red, is accompanied by a small leaflet and a copy of Beard's daguerreotype of James Fitzjames, which themselves are contained in a CD jewel box, on which a tiny miniature compass is mounted (see photo). Both are enclosed in a slipcase featuring the logo of the Library, a tooth with the motto "De la pulcra Ceniza," which as far as I can make out with my limited Spanish, means "a little bit of ash."

I do wish I had better Spanish, as the book itself is entirely written in that language. Happily, the accompanying materials, including a little sheet of glassine which is folded inside the cover, have both English and Spanish texts. The publisher informed me that the book's first three sections -- Introducción, Prólogo, and Los pergamos del cabo Félix -- are fiction, and intoduce a fabulous manuscript said to be found among Franklin's relics, written by Paco Alarcón. The latter parts -- Mallory y Hatteras and El Paso del Noroeste -- are nonfictional accounts of the search for the Passage from Frobisher to Amundsen. According to the publisher, Franklin was never a major figure of interest in Spain, which was why this limited edition of 250 had, as of the time of his writing, not sold a single copy; 50 were sent as gifts, of which mine is numbered (paradoxically) A63. It seems like the sort of little book that might have been imagined by Jorge Luis Borges, and lain on a shelf between a Wycliffe bible and the Book of Sand -- and yet here it is, in my hand.

If anyone knows more about this curious volume, I'd be very happy to hear from them! I'll be featuring a different item from my collections every week or so, so if Arctic cabinets of curiosity stir your interest, do 'stay tuned'!