Frozen in Time (13 page)

Beattie recalled the vivid description of Schwatka's group when they had stood on the same spot 103 years before: at that time the river was considered impassable down near its mouth, and the group had to hike inland a number of miles to where the river narrowed and they could cross in icy-cold, waist-deep water. Beattie wondered how he and his crew, far less rugged and experienced than Schwatka's men, would fare in gaining the far bank. Carlson and Tungilik had hip waders, which they untied from their backpacks and put on. Kowal donned pack boots that reached to mid-calf and began slowly wading out into the shallow edge of the river, searching carefully for submerged banks of gravel that would allow him to keep the water from rising above the boot tops. Tungilik struck out along the same route. Carlson and Beattie unpacked and began inflating a two-man rubber boat that they had carried (along with a set of oars) since their survey began. They planned to use it to float their supplies across the river, but Beattie also hoped to find a way to keep his feet dry. As he had only pack boots himself, it seemed reasonable to have Carlson, in his hip waders, pull him across the river in the boat. Kowal was too far away for the others to see if he was having success in keeping dry, and the wind and distance were too great to shout to him.

Carlson and Beattie had problems inflating the boat with the rubber foot pump, and when the craft was half-inflated, the pump ceased working altogether. Despite having a rather floppy, unmanageable water craft at his disposal, Beattie loaded his pack and climbed in. He quickly found himself floundering—before finally tumbling over on his back with his legs sticking up in the air. After a good laugh, he righted himself and, soaked, climbed out of the boat. He and Carlson started wading slowly across after the others, the empty and limp boat bobbing and swivelling downstream from a rope attached to Carlson's pack. The water turned out to be very shallow almost the whole distance across, though within 160 feet (50 metres) of the other side it increased to knee depth.

Resting by a rock near the river bank the four looked off to the west across a forbidding 6 miles (10 km) of mud flats. Their next stop would be the food cache that had been dropped from the plane on the first day of the season. They needed to replenish their supplies: over the past two days they had virtually run out of food and fuel, and they were looking forward to the supplies they had packed in the distant cache. So, thinking as much about their empty stomachs as the obviously difficult walk before them, they struck out onto the grey-brown featureless mud flats.

The clay-like mud had melted down 4 inches (10 cm) or more and was soft and pasty. Each footstep squeezed the mud out like toothpaste, and the friction and suction made extracting their feet a struggle. At first they sank in only up to their boot tops, but as they pushed a few more miles out onto the flats, there was more water in the mud. Now their feet sank down to the permafrost. The grip of the mud, sometimes ankle-deep but at other times more than knee-deep, was so strong that they often pulled their feet right out of their boots.

At times they would encounter an island of vegetation where the footing was good, and at each of these spots they would take a short rest before plunging into the mud again. In one of these “islands,” the intact skeleton of a bearded seal was found. Virtually undisturbed by animals, it looked almost surreal against the backdrop of the mudflats.

Halfway across they began to see the slightly raised beach ridge that marked the location where they had dropped their cache, and two hours later, when they finally started up the nearly imperceptible slope of the western extent of the flats, they were within only a few miles of their next camp. When at last they reached firm ground, they threw their packs down and sat to rest their legs.

It had taken more than four hours to cross the flats. Although the cold wind blew persistently off the ice at Erebus Bay, the day was sunny and warm, nearly 50˚F (10˚C), and before long all were lying on their backs, soaking in the sun, thankful that they did not have to return by the same route. Twenty minutes passed with hardly a word said before one of them, Carlson, finally sat up and busied himself with his pack. Their bodies now rested, stomachs began to growl; the next goal was the cache.

Walking to the west they dropped quickly down into another flat area, but this one was only two-thirds of a mile across and had good footing. Several pairs of whistling swans, which had constructed their large nests here, could be seen nearby, and the four men paused to observe the large and majestic birds before continuing on their long walk. Then, in the middle of the flats, Tungilik stopped dead and, pointing at the ground, asked Kowal, “What's this bone?” Kowal was shocked to see a right human tibia lying on the surface of the flats. He called to Beattie and Carlson, who had been following. As the others hurried towards them, Kowal decided to have some fun. He quickly covered the bone with a piece of driftwood. When Beattie and Carlson finally arrived, both panting under the weight of their packs, Kowal said, “Look at this!” Beattie looked down at the wood and said, “You made me hurry up for this?” Then, turning the wood over with his foot, a broad smile crossed his face. All thoughts of reaching the food cache quickly vanished as the team searched the location for other bones. Five more were found nearby, as were two weathered pieces of wood planking, one of which had remnants of green paint, a brass screw and badly rusted iron nail shafts. Because the six bones were from different parts of a skeleton, it seemed likely that they were from one person. However, since none of the bones was from the skull, it was not possible to tell whether the person was a European or Inuk, though the bones were close enough to the location of the lifeboat first found by M'Clintock that they were most likely those of one of Franklin's men. The wood planking supported this interpretation.

The bones were photographed, described, then collected, and the location marked on the team's maps. Elated with their discovery and feeling renewed confidence that this area of the boat would yield new and important information, they continued on at an increased pace. When they saw the bright pink bundles of supplies in the distance, they broke into a jog and, if the packs had allowed, would probably have raced to their cache. Reaching the bundles almost simultaneously, they unslung their packs, rummaged quickly to locate their knives and within seconds were all slashing away at a claimed bundle. Each man searched for his favourite food: Kowal was looking for boxes of chocolate-covered macaroon candy bars; Tungilik, cans of roast beef; Beattie, tins of herring; and Carlson, canned tuna. With hardly a word to each other they dug into their food, sitting on the sandy beach ridge among the debris of their haphazard and comically frenzied search. The sounds of chewing, the crackle of plastic wrappers and the scraping of cans were interrupted by Kowal: “Can you believe us?” he said, looking up from a near-empty package, a chocolate macaroon poised in his right hand. “And we're not even starving. Those poor guys must have really suffered.”

On 12 July the surveyors headed out from their newly established base camp. They found nothing more in the area where they had discovered the six bones, just two-thirds of a mile from their camp, but 2 miles (3 km) to the west of the camp they discovered a 100- by 130-foot (30- by 40-metre) area littered with wood fragments. As they closely searched the site, larger pieces of wood were also found. Schwatka's description of the coastline and the small islands a few hundred feet out in Erebus Bay left the men with little doubt that they had reached the boat place where the large lifeboat from the Franklin expedition, filled with relics, was first discovered by M'Clintock and Hobson in 1859 and later visited by Schwatka in 1879. But the sight that had filled M'Clintock and the others with awe so many years before had vanished: the skeletons that once stood guard over their final resting place were nowhere to be seen. An exhaustive search of the site was conducted, and slowly, out of the gravel, came bits and pieces that graphically demonstrated to them the heavy toll of lives once claimed by the desolation of King William Island.

In the immediate vicinity, they eventually located many artefacts, including a barrel stave, a wood paddle handle, boot parts and a cherrywood pipe bowl and stem similar to those found by M'Clintock at the same site. More important, however, was the discovery of human skeletal remains. From the boat place and scattered along the coast to the north, they found bones from the shoulder (scapulas) and leg (femurs, tibias). Several of the bones showed scarring due to scurvy—similar to the markings discovered on the bones found a year earlier near Booth Point. (In total, evidence of scurvy would be found in the bones of three individuals collected in 1982.) The team worked long and hard, each of the four men combing the ground for any relic or human bone. Dusk soon surrounded them, but no nightfall follows dusk during the summer at such high latitudes. It was under the midnight sun that Tungilik made the survey's most important find.

While systematically searching the boat place, Tungilik caught sight of a small ivory-white object projecting slightly from a mat of vegetation. Picking at the object with his finger, out popped a human talus (ankle bone). With his trowel, Carlson scraped the delicate, dark green vegetation aside, revealing a series of bones immediately recognizable as a virtually complete human foot. Continuing his excavation, which lasted into the early morning hours of 13 July, Carlson found that most of the thirteen bones from the left foot were articulated, or still in place, meaning that the foot had come to rest at this spot and had not been disturbed since 1848. The remaining skeletal remains varied from a calcaneus, or heel bone (measuring 3 inches/8 cm in length), to a tiny sesamoid bone (no bigger than .12 inches/3 mm across). Also found was part of the right foot from the same person, which supported the interpretation that a whole body once rested on the surface at this spot.

M'Clintock had argued that, as the lifeboat was found pointing directly at the next northerly point of land, it was being pulled back towards the deserted ships, possibly for more supplies:

I was astonished to find that the sledge (on which the boat was mounted) was directed to the N.E…. A little reflection led me to satisfy my own mind at least that this boat was
returning to the ships.
In no other way can I account for two men having been left in her, than by supposing the party were unable to drag the boat further, and that these two men, not being able to keep pace with their shipmates, were therefore left by them supplied with such provisions as could be spared, to last them until the return of the others with fresh stock.

The 1982 discoveries at the boat place supported this interpretation: the human skeletal remains were found scattered in the immediate vicinity of the lifeboat, and in the direction of the ships for a distance of two-thirds of a mile. It appears that those pulling the lifeboat could go no further and had abandoned their burden and the two sickest men. They continued on, but some had nevertheless died soon after.

In all, the remains of between six and fourteen individuals were located in the area of the boat place. In determining the minimum number of individuals from the collection of bones, Beattie first looked to see how many of the bones were duplicated. Then he examined their anatomy, such as size and muscle attachment markings, comparing bones from the left and right sides of the body to see if they were from one or more individuals.

Beattie was sure that the bones had been missed by Schwatka. From his journal, it is obvious that Schwatka was reasonably thorough in his collection of bones. He had discovered the skull and long bones of at least four individuals and buried these at the site. As in the previous searches along the coast that summer, Beattie and his crew were not able to find this grave. Of the bones discovered by the scientists in 1982, no skull bones were found.

Strangely, the most touching discovery made at the boat place was not a bone but an artefact, found by Kowal. Surveying a beach ridge further inland on 13 July, he saw, lying among a cluster of lemming holes, a dark brown object that, on closer inspection, turned out to be the complete sole of a boot. Picking it up he could see that three large screws had been driven through the sole from the inside out, and that the screw ends on the sole bottom had been sheared off. Kowal carried the artefact back to camp, where the others, who had been cataloguing the collection, examined it. It was obvious that the screws were makeshift cleats that would have given the wearer a grip on ice and snow—a grip absolutely necessary when hauling a sledge over ice.