Who's in that Grave?

To riff on an old American joke, it turns out that it may not be Grant in that tomb. According to a forensic facial reconstruction, the skeletal remains reburied with great ceremony in 2009 in Greenwich may not have been those of Henry Dundas Le Vesconte, but rather those of Harry Goodsir, surgeon-naturalist of the Franklin expedition. On one level, it matters not; any honors bestowed upon the remains by sonorous ceremony, with the blessings of the Bishop of Woolwich and the speech of the Canadian Chargé d'affaires would be no less deserved if performed over the bones of any of Franklin's officers or men as had they been made for Le Vesconte. Nevertheless, the identity of this curious skeleton -- brought back to England's shores by way of the eccentric explorer Charles Francis Hall -- remains a bone of contention.

There are questions, of course. How accurate is a facial reconstruction, when it comes to making a positive identification? The technique was originated in the 1890's, but was not widely known outside forensic circles until Wilton W. Krogman popularized it in the 1960's. A particularly well-publicized case was that of German forensic scientist R.P. Helmer's identification of the skull of Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele in 1985. Helmer looked at photographs of a cross-section of the skull and compared them with known photos of Mengele while alive; by "merging" these two images and looking at specific points and proportions, Helmer felt he could make an identification with a fairly high degree of certainty. Another technique, building up the muscles and skin tissue on a skull or a cast of a skull, came somewhat later; originally used to reconstruct the probable appearance of primitive humans, it was later extended to modern remains. This technique depends upon the reconstructor's knowing something of the age, race, and gender of the subject, and involves a certain degree of interpretation.

The photo distributed with the news of this fresh view of the remains brought back by Hall suggests a blend of both techniques: a facial reconstruction model photographed and then superimposed on a photograph of the candidate. There are questions: given that we only have photographs of perhaps half of Franklin's officers, and none of his men, there might be matches that could be missed; given the limits of this procedure, results would be far stronger if corroborated by other sorts of evidence.

Happily, having had the opportunity, with thanks to one of its co-authors, to see the actual study, "New light on the personal identification of a skeleton of a member of Sir John Franklin’s last expedition to the Arctic, 1845" (Journal of Archaeological Science) I can say that there is substantially more to this identification than facial reconstruction. The jury may still be out, but we have some remarkable additional clues: The skeleton is definitively male, and was of a man between 23 and 59 years of age; he was probably tall and slender, and an isotope analysis of his tooth enamel shows that this individual almost certainly did not grow up in Devon, as did Le Vesconte. Moreover, whatever the precise accuracy of the facial reconstruction, the proportions of the skull and jaw are inconsistent with those of Le Vesconte. Lastly, there is the gold tooth filling -- a very gracefully inserted bit of metal, hardly the "plug" described by its first witnesses, in a tooth showing signs of careful filing -- which suggests someone who had very advanced dental care, in nineteenth-century terms.

And as it happens, Goodsir answers excellently to all these features: he grew up in Scotland, and had never served on a naval vessel prior to his service with Franklin; his face shows the basic features present in the skull, and his eldest brother -- John Goodsir, a scientific pioneer renowned for his medical teachings -- had commenced his career with a careful study of dentistry, with an eye to reforming and refining a hitherto rather brutal practice imposed upon its poor sufferers by ill-trained barber-surgeons. Indeed, John Goodsir's portrait in the Dictionary of National Biography reveals a nose that looks almost the exact match of the facial reconstruction, a helpful additional clue given that the nose of the younger Goodsir, his face turned three-quarters from the camera's eye, is less easily measurable than it would be in a head-on shot.

But there is one remaining issue. If DNA was collected from these bones, then it should be possible to find a match in Goodsir's collateral descendants. As one of several successful brothers, it would seem likely that there would be many candidates, but research so far has not located any. A DNA test would make the identification definitive, or (possibly) rule it out completely, but this would depend on finding a suitable candidate -- preferably someone descended via the female line, where mitochondrial DNA would be passed on unaltered.

But does it matter? Not for the memorial, certainly, which would stand as proudly whichever Franklin officer it honored (and indeed, it honors all of them). But possibly, for the understanding of the last months of the Franklin expedition, it does. Was Goodsir sent along with an advance party of some kind? As a surgeon-naturalist, would the presence of his remains indicate that science was still taking the lead, or rather that circumstances were dire enough that he was sent to perform ordinary medical duties with some party of last survivors? More needs to be done, but if the identification of this body is in error, perhaps the remains supposed to be those of Lieutenant John Irving -- the only other skeleton brought back to England -- should be examined as well.

Franklin Projections in Hobart

The statue of Sir John Franklin in Hobart, Tasmania, has doubtless seen its share of strange things, but those who visit in the next few weeks will see something stranger still. As part of a series projecting art all over Hobart, the pedestal of Sir John's statue, as well as several of the surrounding trees, have become the canvas for an art installation inspired by the story of Mathinna, the young Tasmanian girl adopted for a time by Lady Jane Franklin, and then left behind at an orphanage on her departure.

According to a recent article by Carol Raabus which appeared on the ABC Hobart news site, these installations, by Craig Walsh, are but the first of many planned for the "Ten Days on the Island" festival, which opens officially on March 25th. Those at Franklin square are the first, and bound to be among the most compelling, as they transform an area which -- by day at least -- has a staid and solid feeling into one which evokes a story that has crept out from between the bloodied floorboards of the "standard" histories, and which many feel redounds poorly on Sir John and Lady Franklin's character.

Mathinna's story has been told several times in recent years -- most powerfully in a radio play by Carmen Bird, "In Her Father's House," which was broadcast on ABC Australia in 2003, and again by Richard Flanagan in his 2009 novel, Wanting. Lady Franklin apparently thought she could "improve" the child, and by so doing demonstrate the capability of the Aboriginal population of being educated. She was given a place at Government House, and educated at Lady Franklin's expense -- and yet, when she experienced difficulties, there was always the threat, implicit or explicit, of her being turned out. When Sir John was recalled to England, Lady Jane sent Mathinna back to the orphanage whence she had plucked her; not surprisingly the young girl did poorly after this, being found dead in the street some years later, apparently of acute alcohol intoxication. Perhaps most poignantly, there survives a lovely portrait of Mathinna, made in 1842 by the painter Thomas Bock, whose pathos depends on our awareness of a fateful truth unknown to the artist.

As conceived here by Craig Walsh, Lady Jane has become a tree, overlooking with strange, sad passivity both the statue of her late husband, and the ghostly image of Mathinna projected upon its pedestal. It's a haunting image to see online, and must surely be more so when seen in person.

Japanese Writer Searching for Franklin

Until today, I had not heard the name Yusuke Kakuhata mentioned in the context of the Franklin expedition. His plan sounds almost absurd in its ambition -- to travel overland from Resolute to the Baker Lake area on foot, without either a satellite phone or a GPS transponder.

Mr. Kakuhata, a former newspaper reporter who has received the Takeshi Kaiko award for his nonfiction writing, says he is seeking the answer to the question "What does it mean to travel through an unexplored land?"

I would caution him that, first off, the area he'll be traveling through is not unexplored -- but it is extremely remote, and temperatures in February can be harsh -- at the moment of this posting, it's 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with a predicted low of -29, and blowing snow. He plans to travel in the company of Yasunaga Ogita, who has visited the Magnetic North Pole in 2010, and the Geographic North Pole in 2011, so at least he will have an experienced companion, although it remains unclear what kind of support crew, caches, or other provisions for the unexpected have been made. According to the Daily Yomiuri Online, Mr. Kakuhata says that he "wants to experience the extreme situations the lost team faced and will solve any problems through trial and error." It seems a curious determination -- I only hope that his trek does not place other people -- rescuers -- at risk. It is one thing to seek the mystery at the heart of a lost expedition, and quite another to seek to lose one's self.

Franklin's Arctic Voyageurs

Although best known for his final, fatal voyage of 1845, Sir John Franklin's initial fame rested upon the near-disaster of his expedition to the Polar Sea in 1819-1822. It was this journey, which ended in starvation, cannibalism, and murder, which earned Franklin the lasting sobriquet "the man who ate his boots," proving once again that, when it comes to Arctic exploration, risk is everything.

Not that the Royal Navy was opposed to outsourcing some of that risk -- indeed, they did so quite readily -- and, since they were sticklers for paperwork, we have the contracts to show it. My thanks to Laurent Veilleux for sending along links to these contracts, which have been preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec. They are part of the documentation for Franklin's third Polar expedition, not his disastrous second -- I had to do a double-take at first, since one of the more notable names here is that of Solomon Bélanger, a man who, considering that he saved Franklin's life on one occasion, and suffered being berated by his employer on another, might understandably have been reluctant to sign up for another tour. The pay was good, though -- and why not? -- and this time, Franklin guided his men through their voyage without major loss of life.

As it happens, Bélanger was to survive Franklin by nearly 16 years; he died in the parish of St. Jacques de l'Archigan, Québec, in April of 1863, having traversed the route to the Polar Sea twice, though without any memorials having been erected to his name.

New Canadiana Portal

Looking for information relating to Arctic history in Canada has always been a bit of a task; aside from Library & Archives Canada, many of the other notable institutions -- the Hudson's Bay Archives, the Glenbow Museum, the Canadian Museum of Civilization -- each had their own online archives, all with different search systems. That's all about to change now, though, thanks to the new Canadiana Discovery Portal, where dozens of institutions have begun to share their online materials, making them available at a single click. You can also limit your search by collection, if desired, as well as other parameters. Right now, the system is still in its beta version, and most of the contributing collections have placed only some portion of their digital material in the new system. Nevertheless, just this morning, I made use of the portal and came upon the following:

• A hitherto unknown 1861 poem about Sir John Franklin.
• A rare photo of a "Sundial Erected by Sir John Franklin at Fort Simpson"
• A beautifully-reproduced copy of Karl Hagenbeck's memoir, Von Tieren und Menschen.
• A photo of L.T. Burwash with a group of Netsilingmiut near Gjoa Haven in 1929.
• The White World, a scarce book published in 1902 with illustrations by Albert Operti.

From my initial experience, I would say that, in its present form, the value added is largely that of convenience, although further searches in individual archives would still be needed. And yet as the project progresses, I'm certain it will soon have the breadth and flexibility to be a truly world-class archival search, and the go-to site for anyone interested in the history of the Canadian Arctic.

P.S. -- my thanks to the Bioscope blog for first alerting me to this service!

Beechey in Fractals

What are the odds that this tiny rock, which I picked up at random from the gravel at Beechey Island, would happen to be shaped almost exactly like Beechey Island? Common sense would seem to suggest that it's incredibly unlikely, but -- as a friend to whom I showed this rock remarked, seen in terms of fractal geometry, the odds of such a thing are actually far closer to one than to zero. Fractal geometry often exhibits this property of "self-similarity," and there is even a mathematical formula for it. Like a glass hologram shattered into bits, each shard of a fractal form contains within it the same patterning forces and tendencies that shaped its parent. Of course, my Beechey rock has not been subject to erosion, ice-scour, tides, or other larger-scale forces; it's a bit more angular and rough. It appears to be a sort of igneous rock, and is pocked with little round holes that look like the craters on some irregularly-shaped moon. Nevertheless, the signature of nature lies within it; what I had picked up as a casual souvenir turns out to have a connection with its source that is anything but accidental.

These patterns were first noted by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, after whom the 'Mandelbrot set' is named. His 1983 book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, shows the prevalence of such forms in all manner of realms, ranging in scale from microscopic particles of dust to entire galaxies in space. His ideas were at first received with considerable skepticism, but have since been widely accepted and better understood; their combination of widespread applicability and mathematical elegance sets them as a remarkable leap in the understanding of the world around us.

In passing, I'd like to note that this is the 100th post on this blog since I began it in February of 2009 -- I'm still finding new things to write about, and I look forward to many more posts and responses to come. Since the start, we've had 34,833 pageviews, from all around the world -- over 4,000 from Canada, 3,000 from Australia, 1,800 from Poland, 1,500 from Germany, more than 1,000 from Ireland, the Netherlands, Itay, and Hungary, and even 409 from India!

My thanks to everyone who has read and posted on the site.

Polar Follies

Longtime readers of this blog know that I rarely editorialize -- I know that those with an interest in the history of polar exploration come from a wide variety of social and political backgrounds, and are of all ages and persuasions. I would hesitate to say anything here which might limit the appeal of this seemingly inexhaustible subject, but this article in today's New York Times about planned excursions to the South Pole on the upcoming anniversary of the Amundsen and Scott expeditions of 1911-12 has got my dander up. The idea of dropping off tourists -- many with no polar experience, no prior training, and (in some cases) even novices to skiing, at a cost of $30-$40,000 a pop -- is wasteful, irresponsible, and quite likely to lead to some serious injuries or deaths.

I can, to a degree, speak to this issue from experience. When I was in Resolute, Nunavut in April of 2004 for the filming of the Channel 4 documentary Search for the Northwest Passage, there was another group in town -- they consisted of the participants and organizers of the 2004 Fujitsu Polar Challenge, as well as a BBC film crew sent to cover the event. In teams of three, these Arctic novices were to "race to the magnetic pole" --- sort of. The problem was that the Pole had moved out into the polar icecap, which led the event's planners to shift the goal to an abandoned mine site located where the Pole had been in 1996. The members of these teams were young people, many between 18 and 25 years of age, who had raised money through their schools and various fundraising events back home to pay for their journey. Their "training" -- much like that of one of the persons preparing for the 2011 Antarctic events -- often consisted simply of dragging tyres around by a rope. Many of them had never been north of 60 in their lives, and had little cross-country skiing experience.

The events of that year were sobering. At the Resolute airport, I talked with some of the backup and rescue staff assigned to protect the teams during the race. Two racers had had to be brought out by rescue teams when they collapsed from exhaustion. A third young man was the least fortunate of all; because he had not vented moisture properly from his wind coveralls, water had condensed inside his crotch area. He lost sensation, and later that day became incontinent; his urine also froze. By the time rescue teams reached him, profound frostbite and necrosis had set in; he had to be flown out in a helicopter and the word "amputation" was muttered by the medics who'd treated him.

The "winning" team was a British one, and among their other privileges was to plant the Union Jack out on the ice of Resolute Bay, between two Fujitsu company banners. The fact that their victory was an artificial one, possible only through enormous and expensive logistical support from experienced persons, and came at the expense of injuries which were 100% attributable to lack of experience, was ignored as they posed for photos and chatted with the BBC crew.

On the fight back from Resolute to Iqaluit, I chatted with the BBC's cameraman, who recounted how he'd just read a book on R.F. Scott which attributed his death and that of his comrades to unusually bad weather conditions. And surely this may have been a factor -- but Scott and his men, at least, had undergone considerable training and preparation. How might a party of novices have fared under such conditions? Who would have had to pay for the cost of rescuing them?

Such exploits as these tourist "races" to the South Pole are only possible at enormous expense and risk, and offer no new discoveries, perform no scientific work of any value, and confer only the most artificial sense of achievement. Like the paid tourist guides to the top of Mount Everest documented by Jon Krakauer, these kinds of "expeditions" have no business being in business. They are profit-making sham operations, and it would do much more to honor the memory of Scott and Amundsen to have them banned by the international authorities who administer the Antarctic continent.

Tom's a-Cold

To the annals of dramas inspired by the plight of Sir John Franklin's men in the last stages of their fatal Arctic expedition -- a noble list that begins with Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens's "The Frozen Deep" of 1857 -- one can now add another play: Canadian playwright David Egan's "Tom's a Cold." The play, which takes its title from the storm scene in King Lear, embodies the psychological drama of two men in a boat -- a boat which any follower of Arctic history will recognize as that found by Sir Leopold McClintock with two skeletons aboard -- in their final extremities of cold and despair. It might seem a grim subject -- but here in the twenty-first century, with Samuel Beckett known to us, it gives the word "endgame" a curious new twist. The play opened in London this summer, where the reviewer for TimeOut London, while he thought the play a bit overlong, praised the last portion of the performance, declaring that "Egan conjures a devastating end stretch, poetic and stomach churning."

The play now comes back to its literal and metaphorical home turf -- Canada -- where it is now appearing as part of the Factory Theatre's Next Stage Festival. But if you want to see it, you'd better hurry -- the last performance will be just a few days from now, on Sunday, January 16th.

Trafalgar Chronicle 2010

Following our notice of NIMROD, there's one other annual publication that's often a treasure trove for Franklinites and other Arctic aficionados -- the Trafalgar Chronicle, Year Book of the 1805 club. Although its main focus is on all matters involving the British Naval campaign against Napoleon, along with Naval memorials and Nelsoniana in general, the "TrafChron," as it's known around here, has often included material on Franklin, since he was present at the battle of Trafalgar and is thus considered a campaigner, albeit one who was far better known for his later career. Under the able editorship of Dr Huw Lewis-Jones, there have been a number of recent articles of interest, most prominent among them that on Lieutenant Henry Le Vescomte, which appeared in the 2009 number.

This year's issue sees a number of scholars whose names will be familiar to Arctic history buffs, among them Dr Lewis-Jones himself, along with Glyn Williams, Andrew Lambert, E.C. Coleman, and myself. And, although my article is the only one that deals specifically with Franklin, these other contributions will surely be of value to anyone with an interest in Naval affairs of this period. Lewis-Jones offers a remarkably vivid and engaging account of the career of Lord Nelson's star of the Order of the Bath and the role of such relics in the cult of naval history; Williams has an account of Patrick O'Brian's early novels, set prior to the Napoleonic era; Coleman contributes an account of the career of George Vancouver; and Lambert an essay on the Royal Navy's White Sea Campaign of 1854. My own contribution, "Some Unresolved Aspects of the Franklin Expedition," is based on the talk I gave on that subject at last year's Shackleton Autumn School in Athy, Ireland. In it, I give an overview of a variety of still-unresolved questions about the final fate of Franklin's last expedition, with notes on recent discoveries, including that of Robert McClure's HMS Investigator just this past summer.

The astute reader will also discover two other articles with Arctic connections: James Davey's piece on the career of Sir James Saumarez, who was a key mentor to and supporter of Sir John Ross, and Barry Smith's "Gone Aloft: Some Maritime Memorials at Kensal Green Cemetery," a delightful guide that would have been of great use when, last October, I visited the cemetery with Dr Lewis-Jones, Kari Herbert, and Kenn Harper; it clears up the issue of the legal care of each plot, the shape and extent of the catacombs, as well as the actual location of each of the deceased, including that of Lady Jane Franklin in Catacomb B, 12059, Vault 61, Compartment 1. Even the "Notes on Contributors" provides matter of interest, not the least by mentioning E.C. Coleman's recent book, The Grail Chronicles, in which he claims to have discovered the Holy Grail in Lincoln Cathedral. As with every number of the TrafChron, it's an annual that no historian worth his or her salt will want to be without.

New issue of NIMROD

Although I wasn't able to attend the Shackleton Autumn School in Athy, this past October, I'm delighted to report that the latest issue of NIMROD, the school's journal, is now available. Editor Seamus Taaffe has brought together a fine and representative array of papers, most of which are drawn from talks given at last year's meeting.

In addition to an excellent overview of the school's many highlights over the past 10 years by my good friend Joe O'Farrell, this issue offers some impressive examples of the kinds of high-quality, wide-ranging papers presented at last year's meeting. It would be false modesty not to mention an essay on which well-known Arctic author Kenn Harper and I collaborated; it details the remarkable history of very early Arctic films -- all made in or before 1920 -- featuring Arctic scenes and Inuit people, particularly Nancy Columbia. Kenn was able to present a few clips from these rare films at last year's meeting, while others were shown in a programme arranged by Dr Huw Lewis-Jones and myself; this article gives the remarkable backstory to how these films -- including 1911's "Way of the Eskimo," the first Inuit-written, Inuit-cast dramatic film in history -- were produced. The essay is richly illustrated with stills, adverts, and on-set snapshots, many of them never before published, from Kenn's extensive collection.

Another highlight for me is Michael H. Rosove's "The Great Books of Shackletonia"; as was his talk last year, it too is richly illustrated with covers and title pages of the books he describes, many of them extraordinarily rare. Bob Headland also contributes a fine piece on "Historic Huts of the Antarctic from the Heroic Age," and Jim McAdam gives his account of Shackleton and Fur Sealing on the Falkland Islands. Three informative book reviews by Paul Davies, Kevin Kenny, and Robert Stephenson round out the volume, which is well-printed on good, heavy-weight stock and stoutly bound. At just €12 each, it's an extraordinary value; copies may be ordered online here.

Next up: the new issue of the Trafalgar Chronicle, also just published, offers a trove of articles, many of them looking to the Franklin expedition. Watch this space for a full account.

Talk on James Fitzjames at Durning LIbrary

On Monday, 17th January, the Victorian-era splendor of the Durning Library will host a talk by William Battersby on the life and career of James Fitzjames, based on his research for his recent book James Fitzjames: Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition. For those who may not be familiar with this remarkable venue, it's in the borough of Lambeth and readily accessible from central London; the address, for Google and GPS users is 167, Kennington Lane, London, SE11 4HF, a brief walk from the Kennington tube station on the Northern line.

Mr Battersby's talk is hosted by the Friends of the Durning Library; it begins at 7:15 p.m.; according to the description on his blog page, "The Friends will provide light refreshments and there is no admission charge, although a £2.00 donation is suggested." Among the many other aspects of this fascinating subject, Mr Battersby promises to touch on "the intriguing links between Kennington and James Fitzjames himself." It's certainly an event which I would very much want to attend, were I to be anywhere in the greater London area on that evening; for those who are unfamiliar with Mr Battersby's book on Fitzjames, I recommend it highly -- there's much within that has never been guessed at by earlier Franklin researchers.

[Photo of the Durning Library by Derek Harper]