Greetings everyone!
Welcome to a very special edition of our North Star blog.
We tendered ashore on Beechey Island, after David Reid, our expedition leader, scouted for polar bears.
From our tender, Beechey Island looked like an empty sweep of gravel and fog. A short walk later, we stood before four wooden grave markers.
Three belonged to men from Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition. The fourth was Thomas Morgan, who died here in 1854 aboard a search expedition’s supply ship: HMS North Star. We had arrived aboard our own North Star. That coincidence made this remote island feel suddenly close. We’d come to see a famous piece of Northwest Passage history; now we were standing among the people who had lived—and died—trying to find it.
There are three graves here from Franklin’s expedition. They died while Franklin spent a winter camped on the island. Their shallow graves were discovered during one of the search expeditions.
A fourth grave is from Thomas Morgan who died aboard a search party ship. Interestingly, his ship name was also North Star.
David Reid (our Expedition Leader) went ashore first to verify no bears were present and then we joined him via the tender
Thomas Morgan
THOMAS MORGAN, A.B.
H.M.S. INVESTIGATOR
DIED ABOARD THE H.M.S. NORTH STAR, BEECHEY ISLAND
22nd MAY, 1854
John Torrington
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TORRINGTON
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE JANUARY 1ST, A.D. 1846
ON BOARD OF H.M. SHIP TERROR
AGED 20 YEARS
John Hartnell
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN HARTNELL, A.B. OF H.M.S. EREBUS
DIED JANUARY 4th, 1846 — AGED 25 YEARS
“THUS SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS, CONSIDER YOUR WAYS” — HAGGAI 1:7
William Braine
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM BRAINE, R.M., H.M.S. EREBUS
DIED APRIL 3rd, 1846 — AGED 32 YEARS
“CHOOSE YE THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE” — JOSHUA, CH. XXIV, 15
Before I dig in on our visit, I’ll start with a bit of Beechey Island and the Franklin Expedition’s history:
In the mid 1800s the Northwest Passage had been explored from the west, and from the east, but no one had found an actual navigable pass across the top of the earth.
Britain was interested in finding a a path across the top of the earth, both for military and trade reasons.
Britain sent two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, to try to find the route. The ships were smaller than they appear. Only 100′ (32 meters) each, and yet they packed in 129 men between the two ships.
Erebus and Terror were tough ships, built with unusually strong hulls. Terror had fought in the War of 1812, and both ships had sailed through Antarctic ice. Before Franklin’s voyage, the Navy strengthened them again and added steam engines to back up their sails.
Interestingly, their skipper refused the Northwest Passage trip, creating an opening that Sir John Franklin fought to have. He had already led a couple of expeditions exploring Canada’s coastline and had some health issues, but seemed up to the task.
All crew and boats would be lost
When nothing had been heard from the Franklin expedition after three years, the government offered a reward for anyone who could find them. Franklin’s wife also financed an expedition to search for her lost husband and crew.
This is the Victory Point Note, one of the most revealing documents from Franklin’s expedition. It was found on King William Island, not Beechey Island, by Lieutenant William Hobson during Francis McClintock’s search in 1859. The sheet had been left inside a metal container in a stone cairn.
Its drama lies in the two messages on the same page. The first, dated 28 May 1847, reports the ships’ progress, mentions their winter at Beechey, and ends “All well.” Less than a month later, Franklin died. A second message, squeezed around the margins on 25 April 1848, says Erebus and Terror had been abandoned after being trapped in ice, 24 men had died, and the 105 survivors were setting out toward Back’s Fish River. The note turns from a routine progress report into the expedition’s last known account of its own fate.
In July 1845, Sir John Franklin and his crew of 129 men sailed into Lancaster Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. It was the largest, best-equipped expedition the British Admiralty had ever sent into the Arctic — and none of them were ever seen alive again by Europeans. The search for the missing expedition began two years later and continued for decades, eventually tracing their route from this first wintering camp on Beechey Island to Starvation Cove on the mainland, where the last survivors died.
After exploring Wellington Channel as far as 77°N, Franklin’s crew spent their first winter here. The following summer he likely sailed along Peel Sound, and his ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror became trapped in ice north of King William Island in September 1846 — they were finally abandoned in April 1848. Franklin himself died on June 11, 1847. Under Captain Francis Crozier, the 105 remaining crew members tried to walk south along King William Island toward the mainland; most died of starvation along the way, and a small band of about thirty made it to the mainland before perishing at Starvation Cove.
Roberta, myself and Pixie, viewing the graves.
The bodies were exhumed and autopsied in the 80s, then re-buried.
This is a memorial to Joseph-René Bellot, a French naval officer who joined the search for Franklin. The particular stone cairn and copper plaque in your photo were placed on Beechey Island in 2012 by Nadine and Jean-Claude Forestier-Blazart.
Bellot set out from Beechey in 1853 to carry messages to another search party. While travelling across Wellington Channel, the ice broke up; he disappeared on 18 August 1853, aged 27. This is not his grave—his body was never recovered
North Star Crew members
[l to r: Chef Dani DiBattista, Captain Garrett Davis, Engineer Hudson Ducharme, Mate Kim Kirsch]
There are some metal tubes with notes inside at a small memorial. We thought about opening one and reading the note but decided the right thing to do was to just leave it as it was
We thought about doing a fly-over with the drone, but it didn’t seem respectful to those buried here
To our surprise, a cruise ship appeared. They were probably as shocked to see us as we were them. That said, we should not have been surprised. Beechey Island is an important historical stop for anyone transiting the Northwest Passage and the season is very short. August and September being the two relatively ice-free months in the entire year. Only a few ships each year find their way here. I checked the itinerary for the cruise ship. It doesn’t really transit the entire passage. They make two trips a year; one traveling westward from Greenland, ending in Kugluktuk, Nunavut entering the passage from the east, and then embarking upon the return journey from Kugluktuk eastward finishing in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
Parks Canada Guided Tour Inside HMS Terror
The Erebus and Terror were not found until 2014 and 2016 respectively. This video, from the Park Service of Canada shows the shipwrecks.
As a side note, David Reid spoke with some local Inuits who said that the location of the ships had long been known but that the locals were in no hurry to spread the word. The comment to him was, “We knew that once the word spread, they [outsiders] would come.”
BEHIND THE SCENES
In about 12 hours (from when I am typing this) we will reach Halifax, Canada. Roberta and I will depart the boat and head home. I only started tracking on this map from Nome, but the boat left Seattle on May 15th. We have come over 9,000 miles since Seattle! Interestingly, as you can see in this map, we are actually farther south than Seattle!
Although this is a blog about Beechey Island, in reality I am typing it from Nova Scotia. We have been VERY busy on the boat and I’ve dropped the ball on keeping my blog up to date. Over the coming weeks I will try to get caught up.
Some of the very best and most exciting memories of our journey are still in my camera, waiting to to be turned into blog entries.
Anyway, the good news is that we have done it! Soon, our Northwest Passage trip will be over. It was a greater challenge than expected, but incredibly rewarding. I don’t know how we’ll ever top it, but I’m sure we’ll try.
MECHANICAL UPDATE
Over the coming months, North Star will head to a shipyard. It has performed admirably and exceeded all expectations. We have a reasonably long list of things to be done, most of which are just “ordinary annual maintenance.”
We’re still working out where the boat will spend the next few months. No firm decision has been made, although momentum is toward finding a shipyard somewhere in Florida. Somewhere warm sounds good.
Currently, nothing on the boat is “broken”. Both generators are running, the main engines are running, the stabilizers are running, both tenders are fine, the windlasses are fine, etc.
We do have a lot of “checking on things” to do. The main engines will get a full checkup, as will the gensets. The stabilizers need new firmware. They dropped offline a few times, and the at-rest stabilization needs work. We had a water pump fail on one of the main engines and we need to replace it with a new one we just purchased.
The goal will be to have the boat 100% ready for our next adventure. I’m still not sure what that will be. We do have an absolutely firm plan, but we also had one last week and this week’s firm plan is different than last week’s, and by next week it may change again. My best guess is that we’ll be back on the boat in January or February somewhere in the Caribbean, but who knows? Not me.
AS A LAST THOUGHT
Roberta’s and my closet here on the boat is stuffed full of bulky clothes we used in the arctic. Roberta asked me yesterday what we should do with them. My suggestion was to pitch them overboard (I was joking, but not about getting rid of them!).
Roberta pointed out that we do have places like northern europe on our bucket list, and I pointed out that it will be several years before we get there, and that I’d rather buy new gear when we get there than to lug around big heavy boots and jackets. My guess is that most will be donated. Neither of us is in a hurry for a return to freezing temperatures.
That’s it for this edition of the blog! And that said, stay tuned. The best is yet to come…
Thank you! Ken and Roberta Williams — and Pixie and Keeley
MV North Star
PS I asked David Reid, our expedition leader for this trip, to provide a video update on the Northwest Passage. You’ll enjoy his presentation!
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