December 11th, 2024 (1st installment: January 21st, 2024).
▽ Photographs by Logan Zachary. Braine, Hartnell, & Torrington’s gravemarkers. 1846. Franklin Expedition. Iluvilik/ᐃᓗᕕᓕᒃ (Beechey Island). From the Government of Nunavut, Heritage Collections. Accession Nos: 979.7.99, -.47, -.101a.
Summary: This article demonstrates that the most accurate Beechey gravemarkers transcriber, not previously recognized, was Peter Cormac Sutherland. Anyone understandably dubious of new gravemarker transcriptions coming in 2024 should in future be quoting from and citing Sutherland. However, additional analysis of the Derbyshire graves photograph and the surviving wooden gravemarkers in Canada suggests further refinement of Sutherland’s work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Transcriptions.Introduction.Sutherland.Hartnell.Torrington.Braine.Select Conclusions.Acknowledgements.Appendices.Bibliography.
The 1st installment of this article (Sutherland and Hartnell) was published on January 21st, 2024. The 2nd and final installment of this article (Torrington and Braine) was published on December 11th, 2024.
TRANSCRIPTIONS.
Note on punctuation: The transcriptions below only present punctuation that we saw some evidence for (with one exception, noted for Braine). The early transcribers of the 1850s all added their own novel punctuation for publishing clarity; likewise, no modern writer should feel prohibited from doing so here.
John Torrington’s gravemarker inscription:
SACRED
TO
THE MEMORY OF
JOHN TORRINGTON,
WHO DEPARTED
THIS
LIFE JANUARY 1st
AD.1846,
ON BOARD of
H·M·SHIP TERROR,
AGED 20 YEARS
Without line breaks: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TORRINGTON, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE JANUARY 1st AD.1846, ON BOARD of H·M·SHIP TERROR, AGED 20 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the gravemarker inscription), the ordinal suffix of “1st” should be written in superscript, underlined and with two dots beneath.
John Torrington’s coffin plate inscription:
JOHN
TORRINGTON
DIED
JANUARY 1ST
1846
AGED
20 YEARS
Without line breaks: JOHN TORRINGTON DIED JANUARY 1ST 1846 AGED 20 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the coffin plate inscription):
1. The ordinal suffix of “1st” should be written in superscript, underlined and possibly with a dot or two beneath.
2. The first letter of each word in “JOHN TORRINGTON” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
John Hartnell’s gravemarker inscription:
SACRED
to the
MEMORY OF
JOHN HARTNELL
AB OF H.M.S *
EREBUS
died January 4th 1846 *
Aged 25 years *
Haggai C1. V7.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts
Consider your ways. *
Without line breaks: SACRED to the MEMORY OF JOHN HARTNELL AB OF H.M.S. * EREBUS died January 4th 1846 * Aged 25 years * Haggai C1. V7. Thus saith the Lord of hosts Consider your ways. *
Four asterisks have been added to mark the unidentified symbols in the inscription, and may be removed according to taste.
If supported in publishing:
1. The ordinal suffix of “4th” should likely be written in superscript.
2. The first letter of each word in “JOHN HARTNELL” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
John Hartnell’s coffin plate inscription:
Unknown — missing. Taken by Edward Augustus Inglefield in 1852. It is hoped that the coffin plate may still survive with one of his descendants today.
William Braine’s gravemarker inscription:
SACRED
to the
MEMORY
of
W. BRAINE : R.M.
H.M.S. EREBUS,
Died April 3rd 1846
Aged 32 Years
Choose you this day whom ye will serve
Joshua C24 Part of the 15V
Without line breaks: SACRED to the MEMORY of W. BRAINE : R.M. H.M.S. EREBUS, Died April 3rd 1846 Aged 32 Years Choose you this day whom ye will serve. Joshua C24 Part of the 15V
If supported in publishing (the gravemarker inscription):
1. The ordinal suffix of “3rd” should be written in superscript.
2. The first letters of the words “SACRED”, “MEMORY”, and “W. BRAINE” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
For publishing clarity, in the version without line breaks, we have placed a period after “serve,” to avoid the misleading appearance that “Joshua” is being addressed. Sutherland (and most other transcribers) placed punctuation there as well.
William Braine’s coffin plate inscription:
W. BRAINE
R.M. 8 CO. W.D
H.M.S. EREBUS
DIED APRIL 3RD 1846
AGED
33
YEARS
Without line breaks: W. BRAINE R.M. 8 CO. W.D H.M.S. EREBUS DIED APRIL 3RD 1846 AGED 33 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the coffin plate inscription), the ordinal suffix of “3rd” should be written in superscript. If additional accuracy is desired, the letter “d” of that ordinal suffix should be in lowercase, with the letter “R” as a small capital. If maximum accuracy is desired, the figure “4” in “1846” should be horizontally reversed.
INTRODUCTION.
“...the still, quiet desolation of all around me was unbroken, save by... the loud beating of my heart and quick-drawn breathing, ere I could gather courage to advance and read the inscriptions...”— Robert A. Goodsir, at the discovery of the Beechey graves.
{ ▽ “HM SHIP.” Torrington’s gravemarker. }
“Sacred to the memory of John Torrington.” “Consider your ways.” “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” The inscriptions from the Beechey Island gravemarkers are some of the most oft-repeated and instantly recognizable phrases in the history of the Franklin Expedition. And little wonder: with so little paper ever recovered from the lost expedition, these gravemarker inscriptions represent a significant proportion of what writing has survived — lengthier than the first entry on the Victory Point Record.
For example, they happen to tell us where leading stoker John Torrington died: “on board HMS Terror”.
Or, was it written as “on board of HMS Terror”? Or was it written “on board of HM Ship Terror”?
In fact, depending on who you consult, all of the above phrasings are correct. Because despite the prominence and continued repetition of these gravemarker inscriptions, there has never been any consensus on their exact wording. The substance of the inscriptions isn’t in question, but the spellings and even minor word choices become debatable as one looks closer. For Braine’s Bible verse alone, there are four wording variations to choose from.
You may return to primary sources, the first accounts of the 1850–51 searchers who discovered Franklin’s winter camp and its graveyard. But there you are confronted with the problem of deciding which one of those early gravemarker transcribers to trust.
{ ▽ Some early gravemarker transcribers: Kane, Markham, Osborn. }
Cyriax used Osborn’s transcriptions. The modern replacement gravemarkers use Kane. The most recent scholarship recommends McDougall. And this study will advance another: Sutherland.
The issue is further confused by nearly all historians not citing which transcription they are presenting — and further, by mixing in their own custom alterations. Beattie & Geiger’s landmark Frozen In Time appears to have utilized Kane leavened with Osborn, but does not comment on the decision. Even the great Cyriax altered his usage of Osborn’s transcriptions, with modifications as frivolous as writing out “25” as “twenty-five” (Hartnell’s age).
It was only after three bodies had been raised, autopsied, and reburied on Beechey Island that researchers began to articulate a much simpler question: What, precisely, was the nature and history of the above-ground memorials on the island? This seemingly straightforward query has engendered a half dozen research articles since 1993 (Hobson), with the most recent coming in 2017 (Hansen).
Even then, the spotlight did not swing towards the Franklin inscriptions themselves until 2010. In that year, researcher Todd Hansen had published an article analyzing the Beechey Island memorials in Polar Record. Then, later that October, Hansen did something novel: he wrote back to Polar Record and changed his mind. Hansen switched his evaluation of the most authoritative gravemarker transcriber from Kane to McDougall:
“...comparison of the inscriptions with both Kane and the photo of the Torrington headboard in Powell now lead me to conclude that McDougall’s rather than Kane’s version of the Franklin headboards inscriptions are probably the most accurate of the contemporary accounts.”[Hansen 2012.]
To the present authors’ knowledge, this was the first example of published comparative analysis of the Beechey gravemarker transcriptions. Nor did Hansen stop there. For his following article, Hansen travelled to a Government of Nunavut archive in Yellowknife for the next logical step: to attempt to bring the original gravemarkers into his analysis.
{ ▽ Photograph from Allen Young’s 1875 Pandora expedition. }
One would initially think that these wooden tablets might be ‘the last word’ on the subject. But though removed from Beechey Island for preservation in the 1970s, the original wooden gravemarkers are today significantly weathered and worn. They endured over a century exposed to the Arctic climate and Arctic fauna (a searcher in 1852 reported a huge polar bear “continually sitting on one of the graves”), with questionable re-paintings and possibly re-carvings of their vanishing inscriptions by later visitors.
Nonetheless, wielding “a flashlight at a shallow angle,” in 2016 Hansen was able to discern enough to correct two words in McDougall’s transcriptions, and to demonstrate a flaw in Kane’s transcriptions. Hansen’s new findings were published in 2017. But rather than the first of such attempts, in a way Hansen’s would be the lone example of its kind, completed just before a significant shift in the landscape. Just two years later, a paramount new source would come to light, found on the other side of the planet from Beechey Island.
In the English Midlands, in the county of Derbyshire, sits the county town of Matlock. Here at the county’s record office resides a collection of Franklin family possessions, bequeathed by the descendants of Franklin’s daughter Eleanor. In 2019, Assistant Conservator Clare Mosley at the Derbyshire Record Office recognized something of significance in one of the Franklin scrapbooks: a very early photograph of the Beechey Island gravemarkers — with their inscriptions visible.
{ ▽ Derbyshire Record Office, D8760/F/LIB/10/1/1. }
Mosley had the photograph published online through the Derbyshire Record Office, and it immediately became the subject of a Russell Potter article at Visions of the North (Potter 2019b). Potter dwelt in particular on the photograph’s upending of modern visualizations of the gravemarkers, as being either white-painted or bare wood. In the Derbyshire photograph, the gravemarkers appear black against the lighter rocks of the island’s shore — just as sources close to the discovery had reported they were.
The door was thus open for a new evaluation of the Beechey gravemarker inscriptions, repeating Hansen’s attempt to decipher the original gravemarkers in person, but now with the Derbyshire photograph as a map to the missing words. For this study, the present authors have travelled to Canada and Britain, interviewed Claire Mosley in Matlock about her discovery, and watched as Flora Davidson removed the protective travel packaging from the original gravemarkers currently held outside Ottawa — unstudied since Hansen’s initial effort over half a decade earlier. Like Hansen, our analysis has been observational only: as practiced whilst searching for Northwest Passage graves in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery, we employed nothing more technical than “a flashlight at a shallow angle.”
SUTHERLAND.
{ Markham’s private journal, making several errors. }
At first glance, the Derbyshire photograph is so revealing, one wonders if this exercise might most resemble the correcting of written exams. The Derbyshire schoolmaster calls each of the early gravemarker transcribers forward, holding their works aloft before the class, every mistake in turn rapped crisply with the pointing rod.
Some of what follows resembles just that. But the exam results need to be addressed here, before proceeding. They do not show that sometimes we must listen to Kane, and other times to Osborn; that Markham’s version of Hartnell is best, but that McDougall should be consulted for Torrington, etc. The results reveal something different: a star pupil.
{ Peter Cormac Sutherland (1822-1900). }
For each gravemarker, we assembled the best transcriptions we could find. In each contest, it came down to a single word, a photo finish. And yet each time, the laurel wreath went to the same person, a name we hadn’t ever seen preferred before: Peter Cormac Sutherland.
Looking at his biographical details, such a conclusion might have been guessed at sooner. Sutherland wasn’t Royal Navy. He was a physician, a geologist, a naturalist, a surveyor — in short, someone trained to observe the world just as it is. His book alone presents his Beechey graves transcriptions in situ: written onto their respective gravemarkers, the graves in the correct left-to-right order, mounds of rock circling their bases. His “transcript” even records that two posts held up Braine’s gravemarker — a detail missed in the scene sketch by Sutherland’s closest transcriptions rival, the artist McDougall.
{ Sutherland’s gravemarker transcriptions, from his 1852 book. }
{ ▽ McDougall’s scene sketch, Illustrated London News, 4 Oct 1851. }
{ Note no posts beneath Braine’s gravemarker. }
Sutherland was surgeon on the Sophia during the big 1850–51 Franklin search, meaning that he was present on the morning that the Beechey graves were discovered. He was then 28 years old. He came back for another Franklin search the following year, as surgeon on the Isabel. Though not a familiar name, most eyes reading these words will have seen Sutherland walk across the stage of this story before. In Beattie & Geiger’s classic Frozen In Time, the authors highlight that one surgeon had wished to conduct an exhumation of the Beechey graves immediately, on the same 1850–51 search that had discovered them. That surgeon was Peter Cormac Sutherland.
And when Hartnell’s grave was exhumed in the 1980s, Owen Beattie and his team discovered that Hartnell had in fact already been exhumed, by someone in the past. Their research later revealed that Captain Inglefield of the Isabel had ordered a quiet midnight exhumation of Hartnell in 1852. The man at Inglefield’s side for that exhumation, his ship’s surgeon, was Peter Cormac Sutherland — fulfilling his wish from his previous search.
Thus we already know Peter Sutherland, as the early advocate of exhuming the graves on Beechey Island, as well as the surgeon at the actual exhumation of Hartnell in 1852. To this, we can now add that Peter Sutherland was also the most authoritative transcriber of the Beechey gravemarker inscriptions.
But how much authority is he due? What happens in a situation where Sutherland, the Derbyshire photograph, and the surviving gravemarkers are in disagreement with one another?
Conversely, how much weight can we place on those other two sources? Despite stretches of legibility, neither the Derbyshire photograph nor the surviving wooden gravemarkers present an unobstructed read through the inscriptions. Consider also that we do not know if the surviving gravemarkers are showing us the letters as originally carved, or if later visitors found it necessary to re-carve them at some point. The black-painted letters on them today are certainly later work, commonly attributed to Bernier’s visit in 1906. Similarly, we do not know precisely when the Derbyshire photograph was taken. Does it show us the gravemarkers as they were originally found in 1850? Or does it show them after T.C. Pullen’s repainting of the gravemarkers (SPRI GB15) in 1853? Or later? And did any alterations creep in to Pullen’s repainting? The photograph in Derbyshire was found pasted in amidst newspaper articles from 1851, which is certainly suggestive, though not enough for a conclusive dating. In that photograph, are we seeing paintwork that looks crisp and fresh? Or does it look like it just survived half a decade (1846–50) exposed to Arctic weather? The former seems more plausible, and we do know that Beechey Island photography without snow on the ground was taken during the Belcher search (Wamsley & Barr 1996).
{ ▽ Elisha Kent Kane at the graves (Wellcome Collection, 1858). }
This study cannot address these questions at the outset. It will proceed attempting to balance the weight of all three sources: the surviving gravemarkers currently held outside Ottawa, the photograph in Derbyshire, and the works of the early gravemarker transcribers, led by Peter Sutherland.
As a forecast for the sections that follow: Hartnell will prove complex but manageable, Torrington will be brief to deal with, and then Braine is where significant issues arise.
HARTNELL.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker, the Derbyshire photograph. Edited for clarity. }
The biggest visual shock of the Derbyshire photograph arguably wasn’t the jet-black coats of paint, which in fact had been recorded in multiple early sources. What was completely unexpected, left unremarked in every known description and illustration of the graves, was sitting atop Hartnell’s inscription.
A decorative element. A tree.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker, decoration detail. }
Or is it a tree? The “trunk” appears split at the base — as if it is in fact two branches, crossed above the letter “R” in “SACRED”.
John Hartnell was not alone on the expedition: his brother Thomas Hartnell was with him on board HMS Erebus, both as Able Seamen. If this symbol is two branches crossed, they most likely symbolize the two brothers.
It is also notable that the gravemarker’s bright border line seems to widen significantly – on both sides – just above where the branches approach it (see arrows on image below). This intimation of moving beyond the gravemarker’s edge raises another possibility: that this is a portrayal of the bottom curve of a wreath. The laurel wreath as a symbol commonly shows two branches crossed at its base.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker, widened border line marked by arrows. }
The wreath is classically a symbol of victory. While we are unaware of any episode in John Hartnell’s life to warrant such a symbol, it is also notable that we know nothing about the final six months of his life as an individual. Nor would his be the only Franklin Expedition gravemarker with a laurel wreath. The gravemarker later built for HMS Terror’s John Irving in Edinburgh features a laurel wreath with crossed branches — symbolizing 2nd place in a summer mathematics competition in Greenwich (see Zachary 2020 for photography).
Of perhaps particular relevance is the gravemarker of HMS Resolute’s George Malcolm on nearby Griffith Island, which features a small crossed-branches wreath near the top. Malcolm died on the same 1850-51 search that had discovered the graves, and thus the Resolute’s men created this design after having recently seen Hartnell’s gravemarker.
[Note the shallow groove along the edge in these photos, presumably where the bright border line was painted.]
They may have been intended to balance the centering of the lines. But if so, then it is unusual that the 6th line of the inscription (“EREBUS”) did not receive one, as it is centered too far to the left. [Unless, of course, we are seeing later paintwork which missed it. We looked for a trace in the wood, but saw nothing conclusive. Nor would we necessarily, if it had been lost so early on.]
TORRINGTON.
And here is the word photographed with a raking light:
By casting a raking light from one side, we can illuminate a previously hidden ridge on the gravemarker, matching the long swooping letter “f” from the Derbyshire photograph. And it indeed reaches down and touches the word “TERROR” beneath it.
Regarding punctuation, the environment that we started with from Hartnell is reversed: Torrington’s punctuation is almost impossible to see in the Derbyshire photograph, yet is starkly visible on the surviving wooden gravemarker. Whether a comma or a dot or a period, a similar punched or drilled hole seems to have marked each, and is readily apparent in the wood today: no continuous grain lines run through their centers, and they feature a slight reddish discoloration around their edges.
In line 8, “AD 1846,” all early transcribers put a period between “A” and “D”. But the gravemarker shows not a hint of a mark in that location, nor any space to have ever included one. Meanwhile the two other punctuation marks in the line are unambiguous.
At “H.M. SHIP”, the two punctuation marks accompanying “HM” are seen to be distinctly centered dots raised above the baseline, as in a Latin inscription, and not mere abbreviation periods. No transcriber, early or modern, previously recorded this detail.
Working backwards, it is possible to assign the final cluster of letters to “will serve” (see below), with the taller ascender strokes of the double lowercase letters “LL” hazily suggested. This allows previous shapes in the line to be discerned as “whom ye”, with the taller ascender stroke of the letter “h” suggested — and a fairly distinct “ye”, not “you”, identifiable.
However, across that line, there are clusters of very small horizontal cuts – not half the width of your fingernail – with nothing apparent connecting them.
From that same highlighted section above, consider the following discrete area.
The position of “day” is clear, and the position of the letters “hi” in “this”. But here we reach the most bizarre observation contained in this study. Earlier in this section, when examining the Derbyshire photograph, we had commented that: “...the position for “this” rather looks like a word beginning with a capital letter “C”.” Such a letter was so out of place, we dropped the photograph and turned to the surviving gravemarker to try to explain it. Now the serif marks have carried us to that same position on the gravemarker. And there, in the wood itself, we can observe... a prominent knot, also resembling a capital letter “C” (see above for clarity, see below for position and comparison).
This potential letter “u” lines up well with the Derbyshire photograph. In the image below, the arrow marking the potential letter “u” is in precisely the same position over the wood as in the image above. From that position, it does indeed mark where the first pronoun had ended in Derbyshire’s photograph.
Focusing our attention on the date of death, we see precisely what the Derbyshire photograph had indicated: a half-height numeral “3” with a superscript notation above it.
The image below isolates the superscript figures at high resolution. [Inside the cracks of the wood are light blue elements, presumably artifacts from when casts of the Franklin gravemarkers were made in the 1970s.]
Like Torrington, Braine’s coffin plate inscription is noticeably a reduced version of his gravemarker inscription (see comparison below). Unlike Torrington, there is one significant addition of information. After “R.M.”, for “Royal Marine”, the 2nd line of Braine’s coffin plate adds “8CO.W.D”, for “8th Company, Woolwich Division” (Lloyd-Jones 2004).
How did Braine’s coffin plate render the date of death? It is written “3rd” — but with an odd twist.
BRAINE 3 of 3: The Bible verse citation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
{ ▽ Malcolm’s gravemarker, wreath detail. }
Malcolm’s gravemarker. 1851. Franklin search expedition, 1850–51. Qikiqtaaluk/ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ (Griffith Island). From the Government of Nunavut, Heritage Collections. Accession No: 979.95.1.
{ ▽ Malcolm’s gravemarker, inscription detail. }
What is most unusual about Hartnell’s branches is that, while the left branch stretches out and upward, part of the right branch seems to slump back down into the word “SACRED”. Why is it not symmetrical? Or, are the branches indeed symmetrical, and we are in fact seeing additional figures above the “ED” in “SACRED”? Could they be letters? If so, they have escaped every transcription of Hartnell’s gravemarker, and this would seem unlikely.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker, the Derbyshire photograph. }
Given these questions, a search for traces of this decorative element was a priority for our inspection of the original gravemarker. However we found no significant remnants of the “crossed branches” decoration. There is a faint line that matches well with the position of the upward curve of the right branch; this was the only trace we felt confident in identifying as likely having been a part of the lost decoration.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker. Photograph by Alison Freebairn. }
[Note the shallow groove along the edge in these photos, presumably where the bright border line was painted.]
{ GIF of Hartnell’s gravemarker, Derbyshire juxtaposed with today. }
{ ▽ Hartnell’s gravemarker, tree/branches area. }
It is possible that the crossed branches decoration was never carved quite as deeply as the lettering, or perhaps never re-carved back into the wood by later visitors to the island. Or, perhaps it was only painted on, never carved in — however, other lettering on the gravemarker has been equally worn to this degree. For now, the Derbyshire photograph remains the most effective way of studying this decoration, despite the questions it leaves unanswered.
As a decorative element, the crossed branches are not alone on Hartnell’s gravemarker. They join an unusual number of decorations that Hartnell alone received, whilst Torrington and Braine did not.
Two survive prominently. A line (with curves at each end) is still depicted on the gravemarker, the lower remnant of what Derbyshire’s photograph shows us was once a full border line closing in the inscription. As well, though all three Franklin gravemarkers feature a similar sloped top, Hartnell’s alone has additional pointed peaks near the base of the slope, resembling horns or ears on the gravemarker. Hansen’s physical descriptions of the gravemarkers (2017) leaves this detail unremarked; nor did we notice them in person, only spotting the unique feature in our photography after having left Canada. However, Hartnell’s “ears” have not been forgotten. They were faithfully maintained for the 1993 replacement gravemarkers on Beechey Island. Despite the almost uniform modern design employed, they make Hartnell’s instantly recognizable: once you see them, you never fail to notice them again.
{ ▽ Hartnell’s gravemarker: “ears” shown by arrows. }
{ Russell Potter’s photograph of Hartnell’s replacement gravemarker, 2004. }
{ Russell Potter’s photograph of Hartnell’s replacement gravemarker, 2004. }
The final decorative element of Hartnell’s gravemarker is only discoverable when one works through the inscription in the Derbyshire photograph. Four of the lines seem to close with unknown extra characters, unrelated to the wording. We do not know what they are or what their function is.
One characteristic that some and perhaps all of them have in common: they slant to the right.
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker: four extra characters marked. }
They may have been intended to balance the centering of the lines. But if so, then it is unusual that the 6th line of the inscription (“EREBUS”) did not receive one, as it is centered too far to the left. [Unless, of course, we are seeing later paintwork which missed it. We looked for a trace in the wood, but saw nothing conclusive. Nor would we necessarily, if it had been lost so early on.]
{ ▽ “...C1 V7”; “...Lord of hosts”; “...ways.*” }
{ One unidentified mark is just after “ways.” }
{ ▽ Detail of unknown mark, end of line 11. }
Unfortunately, like the crossed branches, our study of the original gravemarker only found traces of these marks — not enough for us to determine what they are. The best preserved seemed to be the mark in the final line, closing the inscription (image above).
The most compelling proposal was made later in 2019, when researcher Natalie Martz created a physical mock-up of the gravemarkers. In this work, Martz was the first to suggest that what looked like a tree may instead be crossed branches — and, that the extra characters in the inscription may be decorative leaves, matching the theme from the branches at the top. Building off Martz’s thematic idea, a similar possibility is acorns; the plinth of Franklin’s memorial statue in Waterloo Place, London, for example, is ringed by acorns and oak leaves in bronze.
Perhaps their greatest significance today is to suggest that, where they survive, we are seeing original 1846 inscription carving. For if someone in the past had decided that the inscription was so faint as to need to be re-carved into the wood, there would be a natural tendency to neglect fading figures with no apparent connection to the wording of the inscription.
Whatever these four symbols in the inscription are, they were apparently never remarked upon or recorded in contemporary descriptions. Their positions will be represented in our transcription by asterisks.
Distinguishing these marks is necessary to working through Hartnell’s inscription. However, having listed the new decorative elements revealed by the Derbyshire photograph, it is worth a short digression to analyze their significance.
From what we knew before, it was Hartnell and Braine’s graves that received a greater level of attention, whilst Torrington’s was more spartan. The obvious explanation is that Torrington was from Terror, whilst the other two were from Erebus, and this must simply have been how their respective carpenters and crew went about memorializing a shipmate. Frozen In Time makes this distinction in regard to the design of the larger rocks placed on the graves (chapter: “The Face of Death”; cf. McCormick 1884), but it equally applies to the gravemarkers. Furthermore, Torrington died first, and therefore the novelties we see with Hartnell and Braine – custom Bible verses and three-piece gravemarker constructions – might also be viewed as a natural inflation of design elements.
But now the further decorations we see in the Derbyshire photograph, lavished on Hartnell alone, have muddled these rationales. Hartnell had died second, not last. Yet when Braine dies four months after Hartnell, the Erebus carpenters only give him a simplified, reduced version of Hartnell’s gravemarker. Gone are the crossed branches, the decorative marks inside the inscription, the bright border line around it all, the extra pointed peaks atop the gravemarker. Though he did receive a Bible verse, Braine’s lone painted decoration is a short line at the bottom of his inscription, resembling a moustache in shape. This is more reminiscent of Torrington, not Hartnell, with his simple flat diamond shape closing his inscription.
{ ▽ Derbyshire Record Office, D8760/F/LIB/10/1/1. }
What was the reason for this? Why was more effort put into Hartnell’s gravemarker, a matter of mere days after Torrington’s? And why then did these same Erebus ship carpenters put significantly less effort into Braine’s gravemarker?
The obvious reason would be that John Hartnell’s brother Thomas was present.
However, was Thomas Hartnell himself even still alive when John Hartnell died? An almost universal assumption has been that: because only three graves were found on Beechey Island, therefore only three men died in the first year of the Franklin Expedition (Cyriax 1939). But Beechey Island is hundreds of miles past where whalers last encountered Franklin’s ships. Someone could have died and been buried anywhere on the shores of Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, their gravemarker erased by ice or animals long before ever being found (as has potentially happened with any Franklin Expedition graveyard on King William Island). Or perhaps men were lost into the water, as the searcher Bellot would later be in Wellington Channel. Curiously, John Hartnell was buried wearing a shirt that bore two red embroidered figures resembling his brother’s initials: “TH”. One possible explanation is that: John had Thomas’ shirt on because Thomas was no longer alive.
But reversing the question here is illustrative: Would this much extra effort be put into John Hartnell’s gravemarker, if his brother Thomas wasn’t alive and present for the burial? This would seem to be the significance of what the photograph is showing us. While it is circumstantial evidence, we suggest that the higher level of decoration revealed by the Derbyshire photograph may be read as an indication that Thomas Hartnell had indeed survived the first year of the Franklin Expedition.
Returning to the gravemarker then, with all decorative elements identified, and the four unknown marks within the text put aside, we can begin to work through the inscription itself.
In Derbyshire’s photograph, the third line from the bottom has a fairly distinct “C1 V7”, after a word starting with “H”. This would be the citation for Hartnell’s Bible verse: the Book of Haggai, chapter 1 verse 7, written as “Haggai C1. V7.”
{ Hartnell’s gravemarker, last lines of inscription. }
We can use this line to sort out which transcribers failed to record the Bible citation correctly: Kane and Osborn, who both moved it down to the final line and removed the letters “C” and “V” (see graphic below).
As well, Kane’s attempt at showing the proper line breaks for Hartnell was more misleading than helpful. Osborn, meanwhile, does not even attempt to record the original line breaks. But Osborn accurately transcribes Hartnell’s death date, “died January 4th, 1846” — a line which Kane misses entirely.
{ The Hartnell transcriptions compared. }
McDougall and Markham do not make these mistakes. They correctly put the Bible citation ahead of the Bible verse, and do a far better job at delineating where the line breaks are. Still, on this last point, they do make some deviations — and they both write “Jan. 4” for the death date, when it is discernible in the Derbyshire photograph that “January 4th” was written out, unabbreviated and with the two-letter ordinal suffix.
The Illustrated Arctic News’ transcription is more accurate than all of these. A shipboard newspaper published on board HMS Resolute during the 1850–51 search (with Osborn and McDougall as its editors), its superior gravemarker transcriptions appeared in the first issue, October 31st, 1850. Every line break is in the correct position, at which point its only competitor is Sutherland. But it abbreviates “January” to “Jan.y”, its lone deviation — and thus Sutherland’s transcription, by one word, appears as the most accurate for Hartnell’s gravemarker. He has every word, every letter, and every line break just as we see them in the Derbyshire photograph.
Not that Sutherland doesn’t have deviations. However he only does so – as we will see repeatedly with him – regarding letter case and punctuation, not wording and spelling. For the Hartnell inscription, in six of eleven lines Sutherland deviates on letter case. Admittedly, this still puts him closer to the Derbyshire photograph’s letter case scheme than any other transcriber. He even does a fairly faithful replication of the changing glyph sizes from one line to the next — something no other transcriber attempted to record.
But which source should we prioritize? What if the Derbyshire photograph is showing us a later repainted inscription, after alterations had crept in? If so, then Sutherland should have priority.
And here the argument might have deadlocked. Yet there is one more source to consult.
{ The Derbyshire photograph vs. today. }
At just a glance, one can understand why this task was neglected for so long. The aging wooden gravemarker appears to have reduced John Hartnell’s complex inscription to just eight words: SACRED – MEMORY OF – JOHN HARTNEL – OF HMS – EREBUS.
But when one looks closer, it gets worse. Initially we can discern a rough similarity of the letter positions. But in the line “AB OF H.M.S”, the letters “HMS” noticeably occupy different positions today than they did in the Derbyshire photograph (see below). Where once they covered the space beneath the letters “ARTNE” in “HARTNELL”, they now fit entirely beneath “ART”.
{ “HMS” comparison, Derbyshire vs. today. }
Thus we have an example of today’s black-painted letters not merely being absent, but marking novel positions.
However, unlike all modern attempts to read these gravemarkers, we now have the Derbyshire photograph to guide us as a map. In 2017, Hansen had noted that “AB” was missing on the surviving gravemarker. He speculated that perhaps “OF” had originally been “AB”. But he also noted that space was available for “AB” to have been located off to the left. The Derbyshire photograph shows us that the latter was indeed the case — and that now, knowing where to look, the faint impressions of a nearly vanished “AB” can still be discerned.
{ ▽ Remnants of “AB” location. }
Thus, with the Derbyshire photograph as a guide, the remains of otherwise vanished letters can still be found — whilst the black painted letters are shown, in the “HMS” example, to at times be significantly unfaithful to the past inscription.
Another example is right in the line above: “JOHN HARTNELL”. In Hansen’s 2016 in-person study of the gravemarkers, he commented that there simply wasn’t space available for a second “L” after HARTNEL-. In the Derbyshire photograph, we can see that a second “L” was indeed present — but that Hansen’s observation wasn’t inaccurate, as that 2nd “L” was squeezed very tightly against the border line.
Using a light source from the left on the original gravemarker, in March 2023 we were able to make the faint depression of the 2nd “L” reappear, despite some significantly ridged grain lines.
{ The missing 2nd “L” of HARTNELL. }
This 2nd “L” noticeably lacks any black paint. And here it is interesting to consider a much later transcription. In 1904, A. P. Low visited Beechey Island in the Neptune. In a cairn note he left on the island (Bernier 1909), he included a transcription of impressive accuracy, ignoring line breaks but otherwise matching Sutherland and the Derbyshire photograph word-for-word on Hartnell’s inscription. With one exception: Bernier records Low spelling Hartnell with only one “L”.
We believe all of these observations fit together. They demonstrate the possibility that the faint depression of a missing letter on the wooden gravemarker may still be found, even when it was otherwise considered invisible – and apparently ceased to be painted in – more than a century in the past.
And here – after these same letters “LL” which we see pressed tightly against the edge – Sutherland’s transcription would tell us that a comma then closed the line. Yet we see a carving of the letters that contradicts Sutherland and corroborates the Derbyshire photograph: there is no room left for closing punctuation between “LL” and where the border line would have lain. Indeed, it is so tight that Low/Bernier and Hansen would drop the 2nd “L”.
In general, Sutherland appears to have been profligate with punctuation, as were the other transcribers. For example, in the Derbyshire photograph, we see only two periods in “H.M.S”, whilst not a single transcriber resisted adding a third period to properly close the abbreviation. However, other than this one unusual circumstance after “JOHN HARTNELL”, the deterioration of the wood makes it too subjective to try to identify punctuation – or a lack thereof – on the surviving wooden gravemarker.
If punctuation were the only dispute to be measured, this would leave us with just one instance on which to judge Sutherland vs. the Derbyshire photograph. But turning to letter case, several more comparisons can be drawn.
{ ▽ Detail showing “SACRED” in uppercase. }
Two letter case disputes are readily visible. Sutherland wrote “Sacred” for the inscription’s first line, but the surviving gravemarker confirms the Derbyshire photograph’s rendition as “SACRED”, all uppercase. Then at the Bible verse, where Sutherland wrote “Hosts”, the surviving letter carving confirms the Derbyshire photograph’s version as “hosts”, all lowercase.
At which point, all remaining letter case disputes are in lines that are missing: that Hansen in 2017 reported as unreadable.
Again the Derbyshire photograph can be followed as a map. At the otherwise lost Bible citation line, we can identify the edges of the word “Haggai,” followed by a capitalized “C1. V7.” — contradicting Sutherland’s lowercase rendering. As well, though most of line 8 (“Aged 25 years”) is indeed gone, we can find the distinct remains of the word “years” at its end — and it is lowercase, again contradicting Sutherland.
{ ▽ Hartnell, remnants of lines highlighted. }
{ The Derbyshire photograph. }
{ ▽ Hartnell, remnants of lines highlighted. }
In sum, Sutherland deviates six times from the Derbyshire photograph regarding letter case. In four of those six, we are still able to read the surviving wooden gravemarker. Each time, the surviving gravemarker agrees with the Derbyshire photograph, contradicting Sutherland. Furthermore: on this question of letter case, all surviving letters on the gravemarker are a match for the Derbyshire photograph. There are no deviations between the two.
With that perfect agreement on letter case, as well as Sutherland appearing to be overruled in the one instance where we can check his punctuation against the wooden gravemarker (line 4: “JOHN HARTNELL,”), we believe that such agreement between the Derbyshire photograph and the surviving gravemarker should have priority over Sutherland.
This suggests a new transcription for John Hartnell’s gravemarker: to follow the perfect agreement of the Derbyshire photograph, the surviving gravemarker, and Peter Sutherland regarding words, spellings, and line breaks, but then to prioritize the first two sources regarding letter case and punctuation. That formula results in the following alterations to Sutherland’s 1852 transcription.
Letter case changes from Sutherland:
Line 1, from “Sacred” to “SACRED”.
Line 2, from “TO THE” to “to the”.
Line 7, from “Died” to “died”.
Line 8, from “AGED 25 YEARS” to “Aged 25 years”.
Line 9, from “c. I. v. 7.” to “C1. V7.”
Line 10, from “Hosts” to “hosts”.
Sutherland’s punctuation where confirmed by the Derbyshire photograph:
Line 5, two abbreviation periods in “H.M.S”.
Line 9, two periods in “C1. V7.”
Line 11, period following “Consider your ways.”
New Hartnell gravemarker transcription:
SACRED
to the
MEMORY OF
JOHN HARTNELL
AB OF H.M.S *
EREBUS
died January 4th 1846 *
Aged 25 years *
Haggai C1. V7.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts
Consider your ways. *
{ New Hartnell transcription, 2024. }
Without line breaks: SACRED to the MEMORY OF JOHN HARTNELL AB OF H.M.S. * EREBUS died January 4th 1846 * Aged 25 years * Haggai C1. V7. Thus saith the Lord of hosts Consider your ways. *
Asterisks have been added to mark the unidentified symbols in the inscription.
If supported in publishing:
1. The ordinal suffix of “4th” should likely be written in superscript.
2. The first letter of each word in “JOHN HARTNELL” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
End of 1st installment, January 21st, 2024.
Start of 2nd installment, December 11th, 2024.
TORRINGTON.
{ Torrington’s gravemarker. }
In the Derbyshire photograph, Torrington’s inscription is less legible than Braine’s or Hartnell’s, as his gravemarker was situated furthest from the camera’s lens.
But by a fortunate coincidence, Torrington’s surviving gravemarker is today the most legible of the three, and by a wide margin.
{ ▽ Torrington’s surviving gravemarker; Ottawa, 2024. }
This legibility has meant that, prior to the discovery of the Derbyshire photograph, Torrington’s surviving gravemarker was the only yardstick by which to measure the early transcribers.
Kane benefited unfairly from this. For despite his significant errors with Braine and Hartnell, Kane got every word of Torrington’s inscription correct — a feat unequalled here by Osborn, Markham, M’Dougall, and even The Illustrated Arctic News (all of whom stumbled at minimum on “HM SHIP”). This likely led to the preference for Kane, e.g. in Beattie & Geiger’s Frozen In Time (1987), in Powell’s 2006 paper on Beechey Island memorials, and on the current replacement gravemarkers standing on Beechey Island today.
{ Russell Potter’s photography of Torrington’s replacement gravemarker, 2004. }
{ The Torrington transcriptions compared. }
But one transcriber bettered Kane. While they match each other word for word, Kane makes several line break errors, while Sutherland continues to pitch a perfect game in this regard.
From this example alone, Sutherland might have been recognized decades ago as the preeminent Beechey gravemarkers transcriber. Kane – now that we can hold the rest of his work up against the Derbyshire photograph – turns out not to have been even in the top three of the early transcribers.
{ ▽ Torrington inscriptions triptych. }
Turning to letter case, we find the same situation that we saw with Hartnell: where Sutherland deviates, the surviving gravemarker and the Derbyshire photograph appear to be in agreement with each other, contradicting him. Sutherland writes “Life January” in line 7, while the surviving gravemarker shows “LIFE JANUARY”. Consulting the Derbyshire photograph – otherwise nearly unreadable here – indicates a match for the wooden gravemarker’s uppercase rendition, not Sutherland’s title case.
Indeed, Torrington’s inscription is almost entirely in uppercase. Sutherland himself doesn’t suggest lowercase letters outside of lines 1 & 7. What about the surviving gravemarker and the Derbyshire photograph? Do they suggest lowercase letters anywhere at all?
The answer to this minor point – Where are the lowercase letters? – turns out to have a bearing on larger questions regarding the gravemarkers.
In a 2006 paper for Polar Record, researcher Brian Powell raised the question of whether the surviving wooden gravemarkers held in Canada are the authentic originals, i.e., the gravemarkers created by the Franklin Expedition itself. He thus cautiously referred to today’s surviving gravemarkers throughout his paper as “the presumed originals.” It is an unsettling question to have posed, for three blocks of wood that went largely unobserved in the Arctic for more than a century.
Even a decade later, Hansen’s 2017 paper would devote most of its “General Discussion” section to answering Powell’s question of authenticity. Today, after 2019, just a glance at the Derbyshire photograph is enough to have reasonable confidence that Braine and Hartnell, with their more complex gravemarker constructions, are a match for what survives in the Government of Nunavut’s storage. Torrington’s, however, is different. It consists of only a single upright board, whose shape could have been conceivably replicated with little more effort than mimicking the slope along its top.
{ Torrington’s raised lettering. }
Examining the inscription magnifies the problem. In a striking difference from Hartnell and Braine, the lettering on the Torrington gravemarker is today consistently protruding up from the wood, not carved down into it. And while this could simply be different weathering characteristics due to the type of wood used (interacting with paint in the grooves to better protect the letters from wear), it is not the most concerning issue.
That most concerning issue is simply that Torrington’s inscription has by far the least complex typography of the three. It therefore would have been the easiest Franklin gravemarker for someone in the past to have made a convincing replica of, and thus taken the original away as a souvenir. [And this, then, would be a ready explanation for Torrington’s unusual raised lettering and overall excellent condition.]
In sum, when we consider Powell’s question of authenticity, suspicion falls heaviest on Torrington’s gravemarker. It has the least complex gravemarker design, the least complex typography, the least deteriorated inscription — and the most unusual weathering characteristics for that inscription. [Not incidentally, it also exhibits the most unusual paintwork changes in historical Beechey photography, leading us years ago to refer to it as “the David Bowie of Beechey gravemarkers.”]
With all of these issues, how can we be certain that we are not looking at a well-crafted replica?
The Derbyshire photograph has revealed one unusual twist in the typography of the inscription, which may answer Powell’s question of authenticity for Torrington’s gravemarker.
{ Lines 8, 9 & 10. }
Torrington’s inscription tells us that he died “on board of HM Ship Terror,” with the words “on board of” set into a single line.
But that word “of” on the gravemarker does not resemble the word “of.”
{ Apostrophe “pe”...? }
We only know this word as “of” from the early transcribers. The final letter looks like an “e”. And indeed, a recent on-camera reading of the gravemarker’s inscription mistook this word as “the.” Interestingly, that is how A.P. Low had recorded the word as long ago as 1904: “ON BOARD THE HMS TERROR.”
However, nearly all the gravemarker transcribers of the 1850s recorded this little word as “of” (it is also the more grammatically correct reading, given the meaning of “H.M.S.”).
With the Derbyshire photograph, we can now observe how this word was originally written.
{ Derbyshire photograph vs. 2024. }
It is revealed to have been fairly unusual: it appears as the only lowercase word in the entire inscription — and with a long swooping stroke for the letter “f”. Indeed, the swoop of the stroke seems to reach down to touch the word “TERROR” in the next line.
Finally, taking this bit of knowledge back to the surviving gravemarker, we can look past the daub of black paint for the remains of the original letter.
Here is the word photographed in direct light:
{ ▽ Direct light. }
And here is the word photographed with a raking light:
{ ▽ Raking light. }
By casting a raking light from one side, we can illuminate a previously hidden ridge on the gravemarker, matching the long swooping letter “f” from the Derbyshire photograph. And it indeed reaches down and touches the word “TERROR” beneath it.
{ The Derbyshire photograph. }
{ Left: Derbyshire photograph superimposed over the gravemarker. }
{ Right: raking light illumination of the lost letter. }
This is a critical survival. It could only have been identified now, with the Derbyshire photograph as a map pointing us to it. When would this letter have last been seen? The fact that the letter was apparently missed as early as 1904 (when Low recorded this word as “the”) would cordon off the 20th century, as well as some amount of time prior to 1904 as the letter began to fade.
We suggest that this is now the best answer to Powell’s question of authenticity regarding Torrington’s gravemarker: with the remains of that ridge still present – while also being hidden for at least 50 years, possibly more than 120 years – Torrington’s surviving wooden gravemarker has a claim to being as old as the Derbyshire photograph itself.
Returning to the analysis of the transcriptions: Which, then, of the early transcribers faithfully preserved the style of this word “of”? None. Sutherland, otherwise the most accurate transcriber, published this word “of” in uppercase letters.
Thus, regarding Torrington’s letter case, the situation that we saw with Hartnell has been repeated. In all four disputed instances that we can compare – “SACRED”, “LIFE”, “JANUARY”, and “of” – the surviving gravemarker and the Derbyshire photograph are in agreement with each other, contradicting Sutherland.
{ Torrington punctuation examples. }
Regarding punctuation, the environment that we started with from Hartnell is reversed: Torrington’s punctuation is almost impossible to see in the Derbyshire photograph, yet is starkly visible on the surviving wooden gravemarker. Whether a comma or a dot or a period, a similar punched or drilled hole seems to have marked each, and is readily apparent in the wood today: no continuous grain lines run through their centers, and they feature a slight reddish discoloration around their edges.
{ “AD.1846.” punctuation. }
In line 8, “AD 1846,” all early transcribers put a period between “A” and “D”. But the gravemarker shows not a hint of a mark in that location, nor any space to have ever included one. Meanwhile the two other punctuation marks in the line are unambiguous.
{ ▽ Overview of Torrington’s closing lines. }
{ ▽ H·M·SHIP. }
At “H.M. SHIP”, the two punctuation marks accompanying “HM” are seen to be distinctly centered dots raised above the baseline, as in a Latin inscription, and not mere abbreviation periods. No transcriber, early or modern, previously recorded this detail.
Further in this same line is something else unusual: there appears to be punctuation after the word “SHIP”.
A comparison to other Torrington punctuation reveals this mark to be unusually superficial: it is the only mark shallow enough to fully observe the grain lines running through it.
The inverse of the previous situation is found at the very end of the inscription, closing line 11. All of the early transcribers placed a period here. However the characteristic circular mark seen elsewhere on the gravemarker is nowhere evident. [A nearby example of one is just above, at the close of line 10, a mark which Sutherland and others agreed was a comma.]
We looked for a trace of the diamond shape on the surviving wooden gravemarker, but found no indication of carving. [This lends weight to the possibility that Hartnell’s “crossed branches” were only painted on, never carved in.]
{ ▽ Faint mark after “SHIP” in line 10. }
A comparison to other Torrington punctuation reveals this mark to be unusually superficial: it is the only mark shallow enough to fully observe the grain lines running through it.
{ Punctuation marks in Line 10; one more superficial than the others. }
How is this mark to be assessed? Recovering overlooked details such as this was precisely the point of this study. And yet to include this mark as punctuation requires then overlooking its unusually shallow and superficial nature — as well as the fact that none of the reliable early transcribers recorded punctuation here. Nor would a period or comma existing here serve any grammatical purpose.
Our assessment is that, while a mark was certainly made into the wood here, it was presumably made in error. No such mark is discernible in the Derbyshire photograph, and perhaps it was never painted in. We suggest that while a wooden replica of the gravemarker ought to retain this mark, a typed transcription ought to omit it.
{ ▽ Ends of lines 10 & 11. }
The inverse of the previous situation is found at the very end of the inscription, closing line 11. All of the early transcribers placed a period here. However the characteristic circular mark seen elsewhere on the gravemarker is nowhere evident. [A nearby example of one is just above, at the close of line 10, a mark which Sutherland and others agreed was a comma.]
{ ▽ Detail of the end of line 11. }
But there does appear to have been some kind of mark at the end of line 11 — perhaps one that was only ever painted on. This is, also, one of only two places in the Derbyshire photograph where Torrington’s punctuation appears to be visible; however, it could just as easily be mere photographic noise.
Like the previous example after “H·M·SHIP”, our transcription will omit recording punctuation here, while flagging the ambiguity of the evidence left in both of these locations.
Having reached this point, only one substantial question remains unresolved from Torrington’s inscription: the date of death. Specifically, how the date of death was written.
John Torrington died on New Year’s Day, 1846. Almost all the early gravemarker transcribers recorded that date as January “1st”, including Sutherland. However, Hansen in 2017 noted that the death date on the gravemarker appears as if it is written as January “18”. He suggested that the strange “8” symbol could be accidental blackening from Bernier’s repainting, or less likely a weathered “st”.
In 2019, working from Hansen’s verbal description and a low resolution photograph, we suggested two other possibilities (RtFE 2019). The “8” figure may be only the first letter of an “ST” suffix (with the following letter “T” lost to wear), or even a superscript ring (as “1º”), signifying an ordinal number in countries such as Italy.
The following new photography shows what survives today, in 2024, at much higher resolution than has been available before.
{ ▽ The general area of the date of death. }
{ ▽ Torrington’s date of death. }
What is this strange symbol? It is certainly more than accidental blackening. Nor is it a letter “S”.
There is a discernible horizontal line drawn through the middle. This would suggest superscript writing above. Was that superscript notation an “ST”, or an ordinal ring? It is disconcerting how much it resembles a bit of both.
There is something else present here: beneath the horizontal line, there are two circular marks. They resemble the marks made for punctuation throughout Torrington’s inscription.
{ ▽ Two marks below the line. }
These particular marks are distinctly raised above the baseline.
A dot is sometimes placed beneath a superscript notation, as seen in examples on the Victory Point Record. Sometimes two dots are used. The American searcher Edwin De Haven (captain of Kane’s ship the Advance) twice recorded the death date from Torrington’s gravemarker in this manner: a superscript “st”, underlined, with two dots beneath [TNA ADM 7/192; USNA MS 211].
{ Underlines and double dots: one of De Haven’s handwritten graves transcriptions. }
{ Photograph by Alison Freebairn. TNA ADM 7/192. }
Considering the presence of the horizontal line and two dots, we believe there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Torrington’s death date was written with a superscript notation. Such a notation would most likely have been an “st” suffix, even if the carving is effectively unreadable on the gravemarker today.
However before closing this point, there is one final source to consult. These gravemarkers were not the only written memorials left on Beechey Island by the Franklin Expedition: hidden beneath the ground, each sailor was buried with a coffin plate inscription.
We could not consult this source for Hartnell. His coffin plate was taken away and lost in the 19th century (Beattie & Geiger 1987). But Torrington’s coffin plate had survived beneath the ground on Beechey Island. It was photographed in 1984 by Owen Beattie.
{ ▽ Torrington’s coffin plate, 1984. Photograph courtesy of Owen Beattie. }
The first observation to make is that there are a number of decorative elements here, in particular around the word “DIED”, but also at line 5 and after line 7.
This is surprising, as the Derbyshire photograph revealed that only a flat diamond shape had decorated Torrington’s gravemarker (and as the coffin plate would likely never be seen again). It raises the question as to how Hartnell’s missing coffin plate may have been decorated, as his above-ground grave and gravemarker received so much more attention than Torrington’s. [William Braine’s coffin plate is decorated only by a border line.]
{ ▽ Decorations comparison, gravemarker and coffin plate. }
We looked for a trace of the diamond shape on the surviving wooden gravemarker, but found no indication of carving. [This lends weight to the possibility that Hartnell’s “crossed branches” were only painted on, never carved in.]
{ ▽ Derbyshire photograph superimposed (left) to indicate the diamond’s position. }
The wording of the inscription on Torrington’s coffin plate is essentially a reduced version of what we saw on his gravemarker. The only novelty is that the phrase “departed this life” is simplified to “died”.
It is entirely possible and even likely that whoever composed the gravemarker inscription also composed the coffin plate inscription — and, that the same carpenter and crewmen from HMS Terror created both. Therefore, it is relevant to observe how the death date of New Year’s Day was written on the coffin plate.
{ The date of death line. }
{ The date of death. }
While most of Torrington’s coffin plate inscription is in excellent condition, there is significant corrosion on the right half. However, enough survives at the date of death to discern a horizontal line, again suggesting a superscript notation. A small mark, perhaps a dot, is visible just beneath the line. Above the line, there appear to be two characters. In particular, the lower half of a letter “s” seems to be visible on the left.
And so while the death date here has significantly deteriorated, the remains corroborate what we saw on the wooden gravemarker: the suggestion of a superscript notation, and that most likely being “st”.
That suffix is what nearly all the early gravemarker transcribers recorded, including Sutherland. Whether the letters were carved as uppercase or lowercase letters is beyond our reach. However, all early transcribers who recorded “st” did so in lowercase.
This final issue, the writing of Torrington’s date of death, had the potential to catch Sutherland making his first spelling error. But with the weight of evidence pointing towards “st”, Sutherland appears to have again faithfully recorded all words, spellings, and line breaks. And yet as we saw with Hartnell, Sutherland again has deviations regarding letter case and punctuation. In all four instances where Sutherland deviates on letter case (SACRED, LIFE, JANUARY, of), the Derbyshire photograph corroborates the surviving gravemarker, contradicting Sutherland. Regarding punctuation, the Derbyshire photograph is fuzzy, but the surviving gravemarker is surprisingly clear on where punctuation was and was not used: three times Sutherland is contradicted (lines 7, 8, & 11), and once his work is modified (line 10, “H.M.” to “H·M·”).
These observations suggest the identical conclusion that we reached with Hartnell: to follow the perfect agreement of the Derbyshire photograph, the surviving gravemarker, and Peter Sutherland regarding words, spellings, and line breaks, but then to prioritize the first two sources regarding letter case and punctuation. That formula results in the following alterations to Sutherland's 1852 transcription for Torrington.
Letter case changes from Sutherland:
Line 1, from “Sacred” to “SACRED”.
Line 7, from “Life January” to “LIFE JANUARY”.
Line 9, from “OF” to “of”.
Sutherland’s punctuation where confirmed by the surviving gravemarker:
Line 4, comma after “JOHN TORRINGTON”.
Line 8, period after “AD”, comma after “1846”.
Line 10, comma after “TERROR”, periods at “H.M.” raised to centered dots.
New Torrington gravemarker transcription:
SACRED
TO
THE MEMORY OF
JOHN TORRINGTON,
WHO DEPARTED
THIS
LIFE JANUARY 1st
AD.1846,
ON BOARD of
H·M·SHIP TERROR,
AGED 20 YEARS
Without line breaks: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TORRINGTON, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE JANUARY 1st AD.1846, ON BOARD of H·M·SHIP TERROR, AGED 20 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the gravemarker inscription), the ordinal suffix of “1st” should be written in superscript, underlined and with two dots beneath.
Torrington’s coffin plate inscription:
JOHN
TORRINGTON
DIED
JANUARY 1ST
1846
AGED
20 YEARS
Without line breaks: JOHN TORRINGTON DIED JANUARY 1ST 1846 AGED 20 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the coffin plate inscription):
1. The ordinal suffix of “1st” should be written in superscript, underlined and possibly with a dot or two beneath.
2. The first letter of each word in “JOHN TORRINGTON” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
BRAINE.
“3D”. A curious detail from the replacement gravemarkers on Beechey Island today is that William Braine did not die on “April 3rd,” but on “April 3D.”
Answering these and other questions regarding Braine’s inscription is daunting. Even compared to Hartnell, Braine’s wooden gravemarker is today in the worst condition of the three. While Hartnell’s has merely worn down (and Torrington’s is still largely readable), Braine’s gravemarker has significantly split along the wood grains. Looking up close for Braine’s vanishing inscription today resembles searching for patterns across a mountain range, a range regularly broken by black chasms to the center of the planet.
Making matters worse, when we turn to Derbyshire, about a fifth of Braine’s inscription disappears off the left edge of the photograph. And yet: all of the contentious issues regarding the inscription do appear on the portion that is still visible to us.
Due to that missing edge, we cannot see how William Braine’s first name was rendered. But everyone except Osborn tells us that it was simply “W.” The surviving gravemarker bears this out. [The abbreviation period is no longer entirely clear, however we do assume one was there given the significant character sizes, as well as the Derbyshire photograph showing other prominent punctuation marks in this same line.]
The early transcribers disagreed with each other the most at the last two lines of Braine’s inscription: the Bible verse and its unusual citation. Given this disagreement, it is therefore the best place to begin evaluating their transcriptions.
{ Russell Potter’s photograph of Braine’s replacement gravemarker, 2004. }
Many a modern visitor to Beechey Island has probably consulted their copy of Frozen In Time, and discovered that this “3D” is not a typo, but rather a delightfully strict adherence to the original inscription.
Or is it? Is “3D” correct? Some early transcribers of Braine’s inscription wrote “3rd”, not “3D”. Which did the original inscription use?
{ ▽ Braine’s surviving gravemarker; Ottawa, 2024. }
Answering these and other questions regarding Braine’s inscription is daunting. Even compared to Hartnell, Braine’s wooden gravemarker is today in the worst condition of the three. While Hartnell’s has merely worn down (and Torrington’s is still largely readable), Braine’s gravemarker has significantly split along the wood grains. Looking up close for Braine’s vanishing inscription today resembles searching for patterns across a mountain range, a range regularly broken by black chasms to the center of the planet.
{ ▽ The letters “-u th-” are technically present here (line 9). }
Making matters worse, when we turn to Derbyshire, about a fifth of Braine’s inscription disappears off the left edge of the photograph. And yet: all of the contentious issues regarding the inscription do appear on the portion that is still visible to us.
{ Braine’s gravemarker in the Derbyshire photograph. }
Due to that missing edge, we cannot see how William Braine’s first name was rendered. But everyone except Osborn tells us that it was simply “W.” The surviving gravemarker bears this out. [The abbreviation period is no longer entirely clear, however we do assume one was there given the significant character sizes, as well as the Derbyshire photograph showing other prominent punctuation marks in this same line.]
{ “W. Braine” (line 5). }
{ The Braine transcriptions compared. }
The early transcribers disagreed with each other the most at the last two lines of Braine’s inscription: the Bible verse and its unusual citation. Given this disagreement, it is therefore the best place to begin evaluating their transcriptions.
BRAINE 1 of 3: The Bible verse pronouns.
“Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” The Bible verse from Braine’s gravemarker is familiar from any short history of the Franklin Expedition.
But how was it written? Was it, “Choose YE this day whom YE will serve”? Or was it rather, “Choose YOU this day whom YOU will serve”? Were these two pronouns “you,” or “ye” — or a combination of both?
Remarkably, the early transcribers collectively offer us every possible combination.
ye/ye – Sutherland.ye/ye – Kane.ye/ye – Osborn.you/you – Austin.you/you – Markham’s book.you/ye – McDougall.you/ye – The Illustrated Arctic News.ye/you – De Haven.
The Sutherland transcription tells us that the Bible verse was squeezed entirely into a single line of Braine’s inscription (on this point, Kane concurs). Unfortunately, that line of Braine’s inscription isn’t readily legible in the Derbyshire photograph.
{ Line 9 highlighted. }
Working backwards, it is possible to assign the final cluster of letters to “will serve” (see below), with the taller ascender strokes of the double lowercase letters “LL” hazily suggested. This allows previous shapes in the line to be discerned as “whom ye”, with the taller ascender stroke of the letter “h” suggested — and a fairly distinct “ye”, not “you”, identifiable.
{ Line 9 word proposals. }
However, continuing to work backwards, “day” is less distinct. Worse, the position for “this” rather looks like a word beginning with a capital letter “C” — at which point, one is left wondering if any of these tentative word assignments are correct.
Here, we would hope to be able to turn to the original wooden gravemarker for a third opinion.
But in 2017, while Hansen identified the remains of this line, he concluded that “no letters are readable.” Attempting to use the Derbyshire photograph as a map, in 2023 we were only able to improve on that assessment with a single word: from the closing “...whom ye will serve”, the word “will” is still just discernible when a raking light is cast across it.
{ ▽ The remains of “will” (line 9). }
The letters are faint, but they are in the correct position indicated by the Derbyshire photograph (just down diagonally from the last letter of the word “Years” in the line above).
Having exhausted what a flashlight at a shallow angle could do, even with the aid of the Derbyshire photograph, we believed the search was over. However, months after having left Canada, in the summer of 2023 we found in our photographs a new method for reading the Beechey gravemarkers.
{ Letters written with (black) and without (red) serifs. }
{ Serifs marked in red. }
A serif is an extra flourish to a letter, a small extra mark at the end of a primary stroke. Not all typefaces have serifs, but it is evident from the Derbyshire photograph that the Beechey gravemarkers used serifs extensively. They may well have been useful in establishing a boundary from which a letter could be carved out — thus making them the deepest cuts of all into the wood.
The photograph below spotlights where line 9 (Braine’s Bible verse) should be. The word “will” is on the far right. Here a search for other readable words and letters – even with a flashlight at a shallow angle – was defeated by the irregular deterioration of the wood.
{ ▽ Line 9 spotlighted. }
However, across that line, there are clusters of very small horizontal cuts – not half the width of your fingernail – with nothing apparent connecting them.
{ Three small horizontal cuts. }
For some reason, they all exhibit a slight orange hue. That bit of color was what first caused us to notice them.
Individually, they appear unconnected and random. And so we initially ignored them, amidst the many other various marks on the aging gravemarker.
But when these particular little orange cuts are separated out as their own group, their distribution does not seem random.
{ ▽ Line 9 horizontal cuts circled. }
From that same highlighted section above, consider the following discrete area.
{ ▽ Section of line 9. }
Here the irregular contours of the wood defeat the ability to recognize where the primary strokes of the letters once were, even with the use of a flashlight.
But with an eye towards focusing on potential serifs, this picture changes.
{ ▽ Potential serifs circled. }
When considered as serifs, one can convincingly draw in the missing letters. This is now a game of “connect the dots.” Most readers will have already guessed the solution to this word: this is “whom” from “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” Knowing this, some diagonal cuts from the letter “w” are still discernible.
Meanwhile the letter “o” is today invisible, as that letter would naturally lack serif marks.
{ ▽ “whom” serifs. }
Thus a lost word from Braine’s Bible verse, unrecognized by Hansen in 2016 and ourselves in early 2023 — even with the Derbyshire photograph in hand — can be recovered by finding and connecting the remains of these tiny cuts.
Having identified “whom” and the word “will” earlier above, we can now look between these words to identify one of the two contested pronouns from Braine’s Bible verse.
{ ▽ Identifying the 2nd pronoun. }
This is distinctly “ye”, not “you” — just as the Derbyshire photograph had hazily suggested. Indeed, now that we know where to look, it is possible to still faintly discern the ridges of the entire letter “e”.
Thus the last part of the Bible verse was written, not “whom you will serve,” but “...whom ye will serve.” Sutherland had been right.
With this question answered, we can continue moving left through the serifs, to try to reach the 1st pronoun. Immediately preceding “whom ye” should be “this day”.
{ ▽ “this day”. }
The position of “day” is clear, and the position of the letters “hi” in “this”. But here we reach the most bizarre observation contained in this study. Earlier in this section, when examining the Derbyshire photograph, we had commented that: “...the position for “this” rather looks like a word beginning with a capital letter “C”.” Such a letter was so out of place, we dropped the photograph and turned to the surviving gravemarker to try to explain it. Now the serif marks have carried us to that same position on the gravemarker. And there, in the wood itself, we can observe... a prominent knot, also resembling a capital letter “C” (see above for clarity, see below for position and comparison).
{ The knot and the apparent letter “C”. }
Perhaps an illiterate or semiliterate painter, told to fill in the carved letters with white paint, mistook this knot for a carved letter. Such an idea could suggest that the photograph is showing us the post-1853 repainted graves, as less care attends maintenance than a debut.
This knot can also be read as a solution to Powell’s question of authenticity for Braine’s gravemarker. Without the Derbyshire photograph, there would be no reason to take notice of this knot in the wood — and, without the surviving gravemarker, there would be no explanation for the strange apparent letter “C” in the Derbyshire photograph. These two together seem to be the matching halves of a locket, their relationship suggesting that the block of wood in Nunavut’s storage is indeed the one seen in Derbyshire’s historical photograph.
Continuing further along the line, just ahead of “this day” we should find the answer to the question of the first pronoun: either “Choose ye” or “Choose you”.
However, here the trail of serifs begins to vanish. All that remain are two.
{ ▽ Two serifs remaining. }
These two serif marks must belong to the letter “y” from the pronoun, as the next word “Choose” would have not had serif marks at this (mean line) height. The word “Choose” seems to have been entirely obliterated.
And if that pair of serif marks must be a letter “y”, then the missing pronoun must have been “you”, not “ye”. The serif marks are simply too far away from the next word in the inscription (“this”). The word “ye”, consisting of just two letters, is not enough to have filled the space between.
It is also possible that part of the carving of a letter “u” has survived over a nearby knot (see arrow below).
{ ▽ Potential carving marked by arrow. }
This potential letter “u” lines up well with the Derbyshire photograph. In the image below, the arrow marking the potential letter “u” is in precisely the same position over the wood as in the image above. From that position, it does indeed mark where the first pronoun had ended in Derbyshire’s photograph.
{ Transparent Derbyshire photograph over the surviving gravemarker. }
Additionally corroborating this reading, the tail of the letter “y” may be just discernible at the very edge of Derbyshire’s photograph. [For those looking closely at this, note that there is a distinctly darker trough along the edge where letters across Braine’s inscription fade out before the photograph ends. It has been left opaque in the image above in order for its remains of letters to still be discernible, such as that which appears to be the tail of the pronoun’s letter “y”. This same “fading letters” effect occurs at lines 5 and 7.]
While these remains are scant, we believe in particular that the distance of the twin serifs from the next word are sufficient to conclude that the first pronoun must have been “you”, not “ye”. It is also, incidentally, the correct pronoun set from the verse in the King James Bible: “Choose YOU this day whom YE will serve.”
To admit this is to suggest that Sutherland – who otherwise had not placed a single letter wrong until now – has made his first mistake. This would, and did, give us pause. However, in the final two sections below, each will suggest further deviations by Sutherland on Braine’s gravemarker.
BRAINE 2 of 3: The date of death.
Armed with this strategy of looking for the surviving serifs, we can attempt to answer the question of Braine’s death date: Did Braine die on April “3rd”, or April “3d”?
The early transcribers are thoroughly divided on this question.
3rd – Illustrated Arctic News.3rd – Austin.3rd – McDougall.3rd – De Haven, in Osborn’s book.3rd – Osborn, UK 1852 edition.3d – Sutherland.3d – Osborn, US 1852 edition.3d – De Haven, in Kane’s book.3d – Kane.3d – Markham’s journal.3 – Markham’s book.3 – Osborn, UK 1865 edition.
Markham’s private journal disagrees with his later book. And Osborn manages to have three different versions published under his name alone.
Sutherland, the best transcriber, wrote “3d.” But the next best transcriber, The Illustrated Arctic News, wrote “3rd”.
{ “-d April 3rd 1846”? Line 7 highlighted. }
The Derbyshire photograph is not entirely conclusive — but it certainly leans towards “3rd”. A distinct half-height numeral “3” is visible, matching the height of other digits later in the line (“1846”). Then above that “3” is a superscript suffix. It appears to be comprised of two figures, not one. In particular, the second figure in the superscript appears to reach up and touch the word “EREBUS” above — as though we are seeing the ascender stroke of a lowercase letter “d”.
For a third opinion, we can turn to the surviving gravemarker.
We begin by recognizing the word “Died” at the start of this line (“Died April 3rd 1846”). Most of this word had been lost off the edge of the Derbyshire photograph (see above). But on the wooden gravemarker, the survival of several serif marks – and the faint outline of the first letter “D” – reveals its location.
{ ▽ Start of line 7. }
These remains are enough to answer the question of whether “Died” was capitalized (Osborn and The Illustrated Arctic News had written that it wasn’t). [Also, after having found the central serif mark here, the outline of the entire letter “e” can now be discerned, albeit only very faintly.]
Hansen had reported that no letters were clear in this line. However, this is one area where more work might have been accomplished had someone attempted to follow-up on Hansen’s initial effort. Because in fact, even without using the Derbyshire photograph or the serifs method, the position of all remaining figures in this line – “April 3rd 1846” – can be found using the naked eye.
{ ▽ “April 3rd 1846”, gravemarker vs. Derbyshire. }
Focusing our attention on the date of death, we see precisely what the Derbyshire photograph had indicated: a half-height numeral “3” with a superscript notation above it.
{ ▽ “3rd”. }
The image below isolates the superscript figures at high resolution. [Inside the cracks of the wood are light blue elements, presumably artifacts from when casts of the Franklin gravemarkers were made in the 1970s.]
{ ▽ The superscript notation. }
Just by the serif marks, it is clear that this superscript notation cannot have been a single letter. But even setting the serif marks aside, these figures outright appear to be the remains of the letters “rd”. Furthermore, that apparent ascender stroke on the right does just what the Derbyshire photograph had suggested: it reaches up to nearly touch the line above.
We the authors admit that we were predisposed to the more unusual “3D” spelling, that apparent typo on the modern gravemarker that seemed to have a historical basis. And indeed, we expected to find what we were looking for: Peter Sutherland himself recorded “3d” here.
But these remains in the wood are fairly unambiguous — and what they indicate is corroborated by the Derbyshire photograph. Braine’s death date was on the “3rd”. Sutherland made a spelling error here, while The Illustrated Arctic News got this right. That “3D” on today’s modern replacement gravemarker is merely an artifact from Elisha Kent Kane’s faulty transcriptions.
Why would Sutherland get this wrong? We do have evidence to address such a question. In the same expedition book which presents his gravemarker transcriptions (1852), Sutherland uses the third ordinal spellings “3d” and “3rd” interchangeably. In more than a dozen examples, he favors the spelling “3rd”, but about a quarter of the time he writes “3d”: the 3rd of May, May 23d, June 3d, the 73d parallel, August 3rd, etc. [This, incidentally, is a promising suggestion that his publisher didn’t alter his original gravemarker transcriptions very much if at all, as that publisher was apparently willing to follow Sutherland’s constantly shifting spelling of the third ordinal.]
As with Torrington, there is another source to bring to bear on this topic: Braine’s coffin plate has also survived.
{ ▽ Braine’s coffin plate, 1986. Photograph courtesy of Owen Beattie. }
Like Torrington, Braine’s coffin plate inscription is noticeably a reduced version of his gravemarker inscription (see comparison below). Unlike Torrington, there is one significant addition of information. After “R.M.”, for “Royal Marine”, the 2nd line of Braine’s coffin plate adds “8CO.W.D”, for “8th Company, Woolwich Division” (Lloyd-Jones 2004).
{ Text comparison, gravemarker vs. coffin plate. }
How did Braine’s coffin plate render the date of death? It is written “3rd” — but with an odd twist.
{ Braine’s date of death on the coffin plate. }
{ Braine’s date of death. }
The twist is that the coffin plate’s superscript ordinal notation features a capital (or small caps) letter “R”. Meanwhile the letter “d” is still in lowercase.
Given the potential that the same carpenter or crew created both, is it possible that the gravemarker also utilized a small caps letter “R”?
{ The superscript on the gravemarker. }
There is a stray mark between the serifs at the baseline that conceivably could have been part of a small caps letter “R”: it may have terminated the downward diagonal stroke. This apparent mark is not lying horizontally, but at an angle, which would be incorrect for many typed fonts — but is accurate to how the coffin plate ended the downward diagonal stroke of its letter “R” (see previous image).
Our assessment, however, is that it is simply too close to the lower serif of the letter “d”. Nor does this middle mark exhibit quite the same orange coloring of its nearby neighbor serifs. We think this mark’s location, seemingly matching with an odd typographical choice on Braine’s coffin plate, is likely to be a mere coincidence.
Rather than force a conclusion on this point, we suggest two options. For a typed transcript, a lowercase letter “r” should be used — not only for reader clarity, but because small caps and superscript writing can be difficult to publish reliably. But then, for a carved or drawn replica of Braine’s gravemarker, a small caps letter “R” could be considered, to match the coffin plate. [The coffin plate elsewhere contains an excellent example of this same dichotomy: no typed transcript would maintain the backwards digit “4” in Braine’s death year of “1846”, while a replica of the coffin plate certainly would.]
There is, nonetheless, a very good reason to believe that the same carpenter and crewmen did not create both Braine’s gravemarker and his coffin plate. They disagreed on his age. The gravemarker says that William’s age was 32, but the coffin plate says 33.
{ “Aged 32 Years”. }
{ ▽ “32”. }
We were unaware of anyone previously flagging this discrepancy, in the nearly forty years since the coffin plate was unearthed (cf. Beattie & Geiger 1987, Anonymous “Darling,” Lloyd-Jones 2004, Forst & Brown 2017). However, an essay by Torrington researcher Lauren Triola spotted the issue in 2019.
And this may not be a mere typo: Ralph Lloyd-Jones, in his 2004 paper on Franklin’s Royal Marines, wrote that William Braine “was either mistaken or he lied” regarding his age at enlistment. William had then given his age as 20 years old (at Christmas Eve 1833), but Lloyd-Jones believes he was born in March 1814, and was therefore only 19 — a difference of one year.
And so, for some reason, this strange discrepancy was echoed in death. In William’s two inscriptions on Beechey Island, the one above ground said he was 32, but the one below ground said he was 33.
{ “33”. }
BRAINE 3 of 3: The Bible verse citation.
We have now seen Sutherland make a spelling error and a wording error on Braine’s gravemarker. In this third and final examination, Sutherland will outright miss recording a word from the inscription.
The closing line of Braine’s inscription is the Bible verse citation. The verse is known to be from the Book of Joshua, chapter 24, verse 15.
Chapter 24. Verse 15.
And yet the first thing we can see in this line from the Derbyshire photograph appears to be “C 2”. Chapter 2? It ought to be “C 24”, for Chapter 24.
And then, that apparent “C 2” is followed by four more words — too complex to simply read “verse 15”.
The complexity of this Bible citation is explained only by Sutherland and a handful of other transcribers. Rather than merely writing “verse 15” or “V15”, these transcribers specified Braine’s Bible quotation as only being “Part of” the 15th verse.
{ Line 10 highlighted. }
Knowing this, the latter half of the line can be roughly discerned: “Part of the 15V” — Part of the 15th verse.
But that word “Part” seems to have an extra figure as a prefix. Also, as mentioned above, the “C 2” for Chapter 2 designation is incorrect: it ought to read “C 24” for Chapter 24.
Can it simply be that the character “4” from “24” has drifted over and attached itself to the word “Part”?
We do not have to guess at this. An oddity in the contemporary transcriptions actually bears this out: Austin, and Austin alone, disagrees with his colleagues on this chapter citation.
One can spot the disagreement just by glancing vertically through the following list. The “C” (chapter cited) changes at Austin.
“C. 24 part of 15th verse” – Illustrated Arctic News.“C. 24 part of 15 V.” – Markham’s journal.“c. 24. Part of 15 v.” – Sutherland.“c. 24. part of 15 ver.” – McDougall.“c. 24, part of 15 v.” – Low/Bernier.“C2, 4 Part of the 15.V.” – Austin.
{ Austin’s report, 16 July 1851. TNA ADM 7/190. }
{ Photo by Alison Freebairn. Highlighting added. }
Something on the gravemarker made Austin believe that the number “4” was not related to the chapter, but instead related to the next word, “Part”.
This oddity from Austin couldn’t have been explained prior to 2019. But today, Austin’s error can be used to give us confidence regarding what we are seeing in Derbyshire’s photograph. The number “4” must indeed have drifted into the word “Part”: it drifted so much, Captain Austin’s transcription inaccurately conflated the two.
{ Line 10. }
The implications of this minor stray error may be the most consequential observation contained in this study.
Captain Horatio T. Austin held overall command of the 1850–51 Franklin search. He never returned for another Franklin search, and never saw Beechey Island again. He had written this Bible chapter error into a letter to the Admiralty dated 16 July 1851 — while he was still in winter quarters in the Northwest Passage, during the same search that had discovered these graves. His letter was subsequently published by The Illustrated London News in October. For these reasons – unlike most of the other 1850s transcriptions – we have a defined and very early date for the recording of Austin’s transcriptions.
If you were a Franklin searcher ordered to repair and repaint the Beechey gravemarkers – to “set them to rights,” as Pullen did in 1853 – wouldn’t you consider fixing that chapter citation? In fact, if you were going to limit yourself to only making one single adjustment to the inscriptions, wouldn’t it be to slide that “4” away from the word “Part”? It is far and away the most potentially confusing bit of typography across all three gravemarkers. It literally threw off the leader of the entire expedition, and took him into print in a major newspaper back home making an error that anyone with a common Bible could catch him in.
And yet there it is, visible to us today in Derbyshire’s photograph.
This error by Austin is therefore a strong argument that the Derbyshire photograph is indeed showing us what the Beechey graves looked like when first discovered. Because no matter what date that photograph was actually taken, the first issue that someone would be inclined to “fix” is plainly still there for us to see, as confusing to us now as when it misled Horatio Austin in the winter of 1850–51.
Further, it follows that: if it is ever determined that the Derbyshire photograph was taken after Pullen’s 1853 repainting of the gravemarkers, then the preservation of Braine’s poorly-written chapter citation speaks to Pullen’s faithfulness to the original letter carving scheme — and, therefore, we needn’t worry that his “setting the graves to rights” in 1853 involved serious alterations.
{ ▽ Austin’s report, Illustrated London News, 4 Oct 1851. }
This unintended assistance from Captain Austin solves the last line in the Derbyshire photograph. And yet at the same time, this line creates a new problem, the thorniest problem encountered by this study.
“Part of 15 v.” – Sutherland.“part of 15V.” – Markham’s journal.“part of 15th verse” – Illustrated Arctic News.“part of 15 ver.” – McDougall.“Part of the 15.V.” – Austin.
Five transcribers told us that Braine’s Bible verse was only “part of” the 15th verse. Of those five, only Austin – far and away the least reliable – put the definite article “the” into the line. Yet in Derbyshire’s photograph, it is clearly there: “Part of the 15V”.
This is the most significant disagreement between Sutherland and the Derbyshire photograph. If Sutherland is wrong here, it’s the only word from the inscriptions that he misses, across all three gravemarkers.
And yet, of the three other reliable transcribers who recorded this phrase, all three agreed with Sutherland, not Derbyshire. How can this be explained?
To fully address this question, we start by examining the surviving wooden gravemarker. Hansen in 2017 reported that no letters were readable in this line. Utilizing the Derbyshire photograph in 2023, we were only able to improve on that assessment with a single letter: the letter “P”, from “Part” (which has survived surprisingly well).
{ ▽ “P” from “Part”. }
With only this letter surviving from the entire line, we were particularly disappointed that the gravemarker couldn’t be brought to bear on the disputed word “the”.
But returning with the serifs method in 2024, fragments of this line can now be identified.
{ ▽ Line 10, left half. }
The book title “Joshua” is nearly obliterated. We have found one baseline serif mark and possibly the traces of another above it that may correspond to the tall ascender stroke of the letter “h”. Following this, a faint “C” (from “C24”) may be visible. We would otherwise have avoided flagging a figure this faint, but this apparent “C” is in exactly the position indicated when overlaying the Derbyshire photograph. Just before the letter “P”, a serif mark above and an outwardly protruding notch below seem to outline where the figure “4” once was (see previous image above for closer views of these particular traces, and indeed the light revealing a faint curved line still connecting them).
The rest of the Bible citation is fortunately more straightforward: the remains of six letters from the final phrase “Part of the 15V” can be located, enough to position each word. The figure “5” from “15V” even shows up as still readable when light is cast across it.
{ ▽ Line 10, right half. }
This brings us to the fact that among these traces is indubitably that one word – with three of its serifs surviving – that somehow Sutherland, McDougall, Markham, and The Illustrated Arctic News told us wasn’t there: the word “the”.
Having identified those three serifs of the letter “h” (above), one can still see the rough outline of the entire word (detail below), despite the presence of a lot of misleading ridges.
{ “the”. }
Thus the gravemarker corroborates the wording that we saw in Derbyshire’s photograph: “Part of the 15V”. Why then did four reliable transcribers all miss this same word, when we can still see it in the wood today?
Could there have been an earlier carving of the inscription that didn’t use this word “the”? For that to have happened, it would mean that an earlier “15V” had once been carved here, but then had worn away so significantly that it was carved over — before the (very early) Derbyshire photograph was taken. Such an idea would seem to be contradicted by the remains of the word “the” having survived here this well across a further century of Arctic weathering. [And: only that early history of the gravemarkers had benefitted from full protective layers of paint.]
Compared to that line of reasoning, it is easier to imagine that the early transcribers simply missed this word.
But why would they all have missed the same word?
Such an oddity does in fact have a probable explanation, one that we have avoided raising throughout this article. It is entirely possible that some of the early transcribers, though physically present at Beechey Island that winter, were nonetheless copying their transcriptions from someone else — not taking them firsthand from the actual gravemarkers.
This bit of negligence has a perfectly reasonable motive: it was cold out — and, the graves were at least a mile from the ships (further still once winter quarters were settled). Why stand shivering in the wind recording three grave inscriptions directly, when Dr. Sutherland has perhaps invited you into a warm cabin on the Isabel to copy his (excellent) transcriptions, seated at table with chair and lamplight?
In preparing this article, we did not come across enough evidence to discuss this topic even broadly. A few limited points can be raised here, on the narrow question regarding Braine’s Bible verse citation.
For the Bible citation, there are four sources who recorded “Part of...” while missing the word “the”. However, two of these sources, McDougall and The Illustrated Arctic News, are likely the same source, and not simply because their transcriptions are suspiciously similar. George McDougall was in fact the co-editor and artist for The Illustrated Arctic News. Thus, when he came to write his 1857 book, it’s likely he merely copied his Beechey gravemarker transcriptions from the shipboard newspaper that he’d helped produce in the winter of 1850.
Therefore we likely have only three authors who missed that word “the”: Sutherland, McDougall, and Clements Markham.
And there’s something curious about Clements Markham’s transcriptions in his journal. He missed that unusual word “of” on Torrington’s gravemarker — the one discussed at length in this article, that we saw elaborately dip down and touch the word “TERROR” beneath it.
{ Markham’s journal, gravemarker transcriptions. ©RGS (with IBG). }
It is odd, with his flair for decoration and doodling, that Markham’s eye would gloss over the one and only decorative word on Torrington’s gravemarker. Indeed, Markham was adding just these sorts of unusual script variations to his own transcriptions (see image above). That one stray omitted word from Markham’s transcriptions, then, may be a clue that Markham was copying someone else’s transcriptions, and thus missed seeing Torrington’s functionally superfluous but visually eye-catching use of “of”. [Similarly, it is of note that Markham doesn’t make any visual nod towards the gravemarkers’ shapes here (nor Hartnell’s crossed branches), while filling in fanciful details such as tail-biting snakes twirling around fluted columns. His graves scene sketch (one page earlier) is merely a copy of McDougall’s sketch.]
Thus setting aside Markham, we can narrow down to McDougall and Sutherland. McDougall (and The Illustrated Arctic News) misses the word “Aged” from Braine’s gravemarker (and “HM SHIP” from Torrington’s). Therefore we know that Sutherland could not have copied his work from McDougall, as Sutherland correctly has “Aged” (and “HM SHIP” as well).
Could McDougall have copied Sutherland then? Such an idea would neatly explain why The Illustrated Arctic News is the 2nd best set of transcriptions after Sutherland: they may in fact be McDougall’s original copies of Sutherland.
One detail cuts against this possibility. Regarding Braine’s Bible verse pronouns, while Sutherland inaccurately writes “ye/ye”, McDougall and The Illustrated Arctic News have the correct “you/ye”. But this may have a simple explanation. In the King James Bible, the correct pronouns for this verse are indeed “you/ye”. And so McDougall may have copied Sutherland’s transcriptions, but then knew the Bible verse well enough that he corrected it — corrected it subconsciously even.
Thus in terms of the logic of variations from one inscription to another, it is indeed possible that several transcriptions missed the word “the” because they were copying from each other, specifically from Sutherland.
Lastly, we do know with certainty one action that George McDougall took while physically standing before the gravemarkers: as mentioned at the start of this article, he created a not-particularly-accurate sketch of the overall scene (link to image). He missed Braine’s gravemarker’s supporting posts, he assigned the wrong names to two of the graves (Braine and Torrington), and – while he had scope for much more, such as Hartnell’s branches – he chose to make only a single word legible on his gravemarkers (“SACRED”). Such a performance doesn’t mesh well with the idea that — after such a casual approach to accuracy in depicting the scene, an activity which was his bailiwick — he then wrote out one of the most letter-for-letter accurate transcriptions ever created, second only to Sutherland.
A more compelling comparison is Sutherland’s “search book” for 1850–51. Its full 70-word title presents itself as a book about the Franklin search with occasional asides on natural history, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Sutherland’s mania for recording every insect, flower, ice crystal and water droplet stretches his account of “the search” to two trying volumes. This, more than McDougall, has the ring of someone who would be the most letter-perfect Beechey gravemarkers transcriber.
Nonetheless, much is missing from this picture. For all we know, the “real” most accurate gravemarkers transcriber, who all others copied, was someone other than Sutherland. It is equally possible that the transcriptions in The Illustrated Arctic News, even if later copied by McDougall for his book, were taken from Sutherland by Osborn, or someone else. We present this picture only to try to explain this bizarre situation, where every transcriber who recorded the phrase “Part of” all missed the following word “the”.
Except Austin. Austin’s transcriptions recorded the word “the”. But as this section has shown, Austin’s transcriptions are so unfaithful that they can be more interesting for what he got wrong than what he got right.
And yet, at this one word in Braine’s Bible citation, Captain Austin managed to catch Dr. Sutherland napping.
BRAINE CONCLUDED.
Our examination of the Hartnell and Torrington inscriptions had suggested the identical conclusion: to follow the perfect agreement of the Derbyshire photograph, the surviving gravemarker, and Peter Sutherland regarding words, spellings, and line breaks, but then to prioritize the first two sources regarding letter case and punctuation.
That formula breaks with Braine. Three times we have seen Dr. Sutherland appear to deviate on spelling and even wording, while the Derbyshire photograph and the surviving wooden gravemarker match each other, contradicting him. Nonetheless, even with these apparent errors, Sutherland’s transcript is still more accurate than all other transcriptions of Braine’s gravemarker.
This suggests falling back to a broader rule for Braine’s inscription: to follow the general agreement of the Derbyshire photograph, the surviving wooden gravemarker, and Peter Sutherland, but then to prioritize the apparent perfect agreement of those first two sources. That formula results in the following alterations to Sutherland's 1852 transcription of Braine’s gravemarker.
Wording and spelling changes from Sutherland:
Line 7, from “3d” to “3rd”.
Line 9, from “Choose ye” to “Choose you”.
Line 10, from “Part of” to “Part of the”.
Letter case changes from Sutherland:
Line 1, from “Sacred” to “SACRED”.
Line 2, from “TO THE” to “to the”.
Line 3, from “OF” to “of”.
Line 8, from “AGED 32 YEARS” TO “Aged 32 Years”.
Line 10, from “c.24” to “C24”.
Line 10, from “15 v.” to “15V”.
Sutherland’s letter case scheme and punctuation were not discussed in this analysis of Braine’s inscription, as the results were identical to what was observed with Hartnell and Torrington: Sutherland regularly deviates on letter case and punctuation, while the photograph and the wooden gravemarker always appear to be in perfect agreement. [The proximity of Braine’s gravemarker in the Derbyshire photograph as well as the serifs method also make a dedicated walkthrough less necessary.]
Punctuation evident in the Derbyshire photograph:
Line 5: “BRAINE : R.M.”
Line 6: “M.S. EREBUS,”
It is not clear in the Derbyshire photograph whether a comma or period followed “EREBUS”. Sutherland and almost all other transcribers (including The Illustrated Arctic News) used a comma, therefore we have followed that convention.
Punctuation suppositions:
Line 5: “W.”
Line 6: “H.”
As stated at the outset, we believe that there would have been an abbreviation period after “W” in line 5, given the size of the characters in this line, as well as the presence of other prominent punctuation. We also believe “H.M.S.” received three abbreviation periods, although this point is less certain. Both of our suppositions here concur with Sutherland (and all other reliable transcribers), as well as Braine’s coffin plate.
New Braine gravemarker transcription:
SACRED
to the
MEMORY
of
W. BRAINE : R.M.
H.M.S. EREBUS,
Died April 3rd 1846
Aged 32 Years
Choose you this day whom ye will serve
Joshua C24 Part of the 15V
Without line breaks: SACRED to the MEMORY of W. BRAINE : R.M. H.M.S. EREBUS, Died April 3rd 1846 Aged 32 Years Choose you this day whom ye will serve. Joshua C24 Part of the 15V
If supported in publishing (the gravemarker inscription):
1. The ordinal suffix of “3rd” should be written in superscript.
2. The first letters of the words “SACRED”, “MEMORY”, and “W. BRAINE” should be larger in size, effectively using a small caps font.
For publishing clarity, in the version without line breaks we have placed a period after “serve”, to close the Bible verse. Sutherland (and most other transcribers) did so as well. A question this small is otherwise lost in the Derbyshire photograph and on the surviving gravemarker. Closing the Bible verse with punctuation will avoid the misleading phrase, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve Joshua,” as though Joshua is being addressed. [Hartnell’s inscription avoids a similar trap by positioning its Bible verse at the very end of his inscription, although closing punctuation is also in evidence.] Similarly, the Bible chapter “C 2 4” is condensed to “C24”, for clarity and to more resemble the later verse “15V”; it is also separated from its unusual attachment to the following word “Part”.
Braine’s coffin plate inscription:
W. BRAINE
R.M. 8 CO. W.D
H.M.S. EREBUS
DIED APRIL 3RD 1846
AGED
33
YEARS
Without line breaks: W. BRAINE R.M. 8 CO. W.D H.M.S. EREBUS DIED APRIL 3RD 1846 AGED 33 YEARS
If supported in publishing (the coffin plate inscription), the ordinal suffix of “3rd” should be written in superscript. If additional accuracy is desired, the letter “d” of that ordinal suffix should be in lowercase, with the letter “R” as a small capital. If maximum accuracy is desired, the figure “4” in “1846” should be horizontally reversed.
SELECT CONCLUSIONS: Punctuation, Alternate Cuts, and Powell’s Question.
At the conclusion of the above section on Braine, we recommended that in a version without line breaks, authors and publishers should add a period to close the Bible verse, purely for reader clarity. It is the only instance across all three gravemarkers that we have recommended adding presumed punctuation for this reason. To do so is to follow some historical precedent: as this study has shown, all the early transcribers of the 1850s, no matter how accurate, added their own custom punctuation for reader clarity. The goal of this project has been to present the most naked view of what the original inscriptions certainly were — not to police the future use of punctuation applied for clarity in general Franklin Expedition writing. Indeed, once we had established that Sutherland’s transcriptions were superior, an early summary of our own new transcriptions might have been: “Giving up a false sense of certainty about punctuation to gain real certainty in terms of letter case” (that is, until the serif marks proved that Sutherland had made spelling and even wording deviations on Braine’s gravemarker).
Also at the conclusion of the section on Braine, we examined why a single word (“the”) had been missed by all of the most reliable early transcribers, including Sutherland. In that analysis, we considered the unsettling possibility that we have raised throughout this article: that just as the gravemarkers have been repainted at various times throughout their history, it is also possible that their inscriptions have been re-carved.
Any re-carving of the inscriptions would have significantly hampered this project. Nonetheless we remained open to finding evidence of such work. Here at the conclusion we can state that: at no time throughout this project did we come across anything resembling an alternate set of cuts into the gravemarkers. And, as we noted in the section on Hartnell, there are preservations of the cuts from the unidentified symbols inside his inscription, further suggesting that we are seeing original carving.
This apparent lack of alternate letter carving is a relief in terms of analyzing the inscriptions — so long as these gravemarkers in Nunavut’s possession are the authentic original Franklin Expedition gravemarkers.
That question of authenticity, as discussed in the section on Torrington, was first raised by Brian Powell in 2006. In 2017, Todd Hansen addressed Powell’s question by observing that the surviving gravemarker’s sizes and shapes largely resemble what was photographed in 1875 by the Pandora expedition (see Hansen’s paper for his full argument).
{ ▽ Photograph from Allen Young’s 1875 Pandora expedition. }
The discovery of the Derbyshire photograph significantly enhances Hansen’s line of argument, particularly for Braine and Hartnell. Still, these blunt wooden shapes might have been replicated without too great a difficulty.
For our final topic in this article, then, we can suggest two new solutions to Powell’s question.
The first is an observation that we have alluded to throughout this article. More than the overall shapes of today’s wooden gravemarkers matching the Derbyshire photograph, and more than the content of their inscriptions seeming to be in perfect agreement: the spatial positioning of every character across the inscriptions seems to be in alignment.
This is most easily seen with Torrington. If we stretch the Derbyshire photograph over the surviving wooden gravemarker like a rubber mask, we see that today’s black letters cut through precisely in the positions of the photograph’s white letters.
{ Torrington’s inscriptions, Derbyshire over surviving gravemarker. }
This is an exact spatial match, letter by letter, across the entire inscription. Nothing is out of place: not one line, not one letter. This is effectively a matching “signature.”
Initially we had been measuring this line by line as a way to monitor for words having “drifted” into new positions, which even a fairly faithful re-carving would have effected (as evidenced by line 5 of Hartnell’s repainted letters today). But when viewed holistically, the perfect match of all the spatial positions across the gravemarker represents a new answer to Powell’s question of authenticity.
Such a test does not work so readily with Hartnell and Braine. By 2017, only about half of Braine’s and a bit more of Hartnell’s inscriptions had been identified on their surviving wooden gravemarkers. But with the Derbyshire photograph now acting as a map to reveal more traces of Hartnell’s missing inscription, and the serifs method revealing almost all of Braine’s, the same “signature” match can be tested across their inscriptions.
On the wooden gravemarkers below, both the serif marks and the edges of surviving letters have been marked out with green dots. The Derbyshire photograph “mask” is then stretched across the dots.
{ ▽ Hartnell’s inscription, Derbyshire over surviving gravemarker. }
{ ▽ Braine’s inscription, Derbyshire over surviving gravemarker. }
As with Torrington, the “signatures” match: the inscription from the Derbyshire photograph connects all the dots on the surviving wooden gravemarkers.
Consider that Derbyshire’s photograph, when rediscovered in 2019, might have shown us three gravemarkers that did not at all physically resemble what survives today. Perhaps just one of the gravemarkers might have looked foreign. Nothing ruled this possibility out, and Powell in 2006 was right to spotlight such a potential. Instead, a test has now been passed that could not have been foreseen: a very early photograph of the graves was rediscovered, and its inscriptions match the spatial layout of the inscriptions on today’s surviving wooden gravemarkers, right down to the placement of each individual letter.
These spatial letter relationships are a new answer to Powell’s question. Hundreds of Franklin searchers passed through Beechey Island, and yet we have struggled to find even a half dozen who got anywhere near to faithful transcriptions of the gravemarkers, nor a single one who was flawless. Yet what survives in the Government of Nunavut’s storage today is indeed a flawless match, in a way that would have been exceptionally painstaking to replicate.
Exceptionally painstaking. Yes — but though painstaking, it could have been done. Indeed: it has been done. And this will lead us to a second new answer to Powell’s question.
Below, we see Franklin searcher George Malcolm’s gravemarker, in storage and in situ in the Northwest Passage.
{ Northwest Passage photograph courtesy Jonathan Craig, 2020. }
The letter-by-letter layout of the inscription is an exact match. And yet this is not physically the same gravemarker. The one on the right is the original, the one on the left is a replica, created by Canada in the late 1970s and planted in the ground in 1993 (Fairbairn 1979). [Significant bite marks have even been applied to the top left corner of both, a remarkable attention to historical accuracy on the part of Nunavut’s polar bears.]
To spot any difference, one must find something more difficult to replicate than the inscription’s spatial layout. In this case: the cracks and grains in the wood. Like fingerprints, from top to bottom they confirm indubitably that these Malcolm gravemarkers are not the same pieces of wood.
As a final answer to Powell’s question, then, we have endeavored to find such telltale “fingerprints” on the Beechey gravemarkers: unusual details in the wood today that either match or contradict details from the Derbyshire photograph.
Two we have already discussed in this article. For Torrington, we found a lost letter “f”, devoid of paint and invisible in direct light. This is technically an inscription match, but this letter differs in style from the rest of the inscription: one cannot imitate what one can no longer see, and the novelty of this letter had arguably worn down to invisibility sometime prior to 1904. For Braine, we showed that an apparent capital letter “C” in the Derbyshire photograph, entirely out of place, was strangely mirrored on the gravemarker by a knot in the wood, as if the knot had been painted in as part of the inscription. In both of these cases, the Derbyshire photograph revealed a detail on the surviving gravemarker that had otherwise gone unnoticed, like a watermark certifying a genuine banknote.
For Hartnell, a larger matching mark is visible. Despite the extra attention to detail spent on his gravemarker, the block of wood chosen for the purpose is strangely irregular in shape. Among other oddities, there is a large chip missing from the lower right edge. And in Derbyshire’s photograph, the gravemarker is indeed shaded differently there, seeming to mirror the shape and position of the dent. Despite being an outer edge, something is casting a darker shadow along it.
{ ▽ Outer edge dent marked by arrows. }
This darker edge shows up in both the Derbyshire Record Office’s modern photography of their historical photograph, as well as our own photography from visiting Matlock in 2023.
In Ottawa, when viewing the surviving gravemarkers, we attempted to roughly replicate the angle of the Derbyshire photograph. In doing so, further details along that lower right edge were shown to match the historical photograph (see comparison below).
{ Hartnell’s outer edge comparison. }
This final image highlights minor physical details that are hard to imagine having been replicated in the past, prior to the gravemarker’s removal from the island in the 1970s. They constitute a new answer to Powell’s question of authenticity for Hartnell’s gravemarker.
This project did not set out to address Powell’s question. However, no other study since the discovery of the Derbyshire photograph had re-examined the question of authenticity. And, as it turned out, a close look at the inscriptions was a fruitful way to approach the topic.
The primary purpose of this project has been to bring the Derbyshire photograph into a new, dedicated study of the original inscriptions, as Hansen in 2017 had worked without the benefit of the photograph (and with the much wider aim of a general physical description of the surviving gravemarkers). Our inscriptions study’s principal findings have been that Peter Cormac Sutherland was the most accurate of the early transcribers, and also that his transcriptions could be improved by following the apparent perfect agreement of the Derbyshire photograph and the surviving wooden gravemarkers. One unintended byproduct of this work has been to suggest new answers to Powell’s question of authenticity.
For ideas about dating the Derbyshire photograph, see Appendix 1.
The End.
– L.Z. & A.F. December 11th, 2024.
Transcription of the inscription for Peter Cormac Sutherland, on the gravemarker he shares with his wife Rebecca, in South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, Commercial Road cemetery (link to image).
Erected to the Memory
OF
REBECCA URQUHART,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF
P.C. SUTHERLAND,
SURVEYOR-GENERAL,
Who Departed this Life
17TH JANUARY 1862,
Aged 31 Years.
ALSO OF
PETER CORMAC SUTHERLAND,
M.D. F.R.G.S
BORN 7TH APRIL 1822,
DIED 30TH NOVEMBER 1900.
[Indistinct memorial to daughter
Margaret Elizabeth Ellis, b.1861.]
But thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all
places whither thou goest. Jer 45v.5.
Our thanks to Phillip Innes, Joanna McMann, Flora Davidson, and Alexander Stubbing at the Government of Nunavut’s Heritage Collections at Gatineau, QC. Aside from the authors, no one put as many hours of their time this past year into realizing this project than these individuals, without whom this article could not have been written. We thank Phillip Innes for coordinating and assisting with both our visits, Flora Davidson for disassembling the travel packaging and hosting our first visit, Alexander Stubbing for retrieving a model from the collection for us to view, and Joanna McMann for hosting our second visit and fielding two years of questions from us about GN records and reports.
Our thanks to Clare Mosley, Becky Sheldon, and Sarah Chubb at the Derbyshire Record Office for access to study the Derbyshire graves photograph, the importance of which was first recognized by Clare Mosley herself.
Our thanks to Douglas Wamsley for his excellent suggestions and attention to detail, and whose thoughtful review spotted a large citation error that we’d glossed over.
Our thanks to Cormac Seekings and his father John Cormac Seekings for information regarding their ancestor Peter Cormac Sutherland.
Our thanks to Todd Hansen, who pioneered both Beechey gravemarker reading as well as comparative analysis of the early transcriptions, and whose careful review saved us from an error prior to publishing.
Our thanks to Douglas Stenton for early advice and guidance on approaching this project. Our thanks to Jonathan Moore for his invitation to Ottawa, the kickoff for this project. Our thanks to Owen Beattie for permission to use his coffin plate photography.
Our thanks to Russell Potter for his unique winter photography of the graves on Beechey Island, as well as years of writing and teaching on the history of Beechey Island that we have benefited from.
Our thanks to Sylvia Wright, great-granddaughter of Sir F. Leopold McClintock, and her husband Malcolm Wright, for their assistance with this project.
Our thanks to William Pullen for biographical information on his ancestor Thomas Charles Pullen.
Our thanks to Olga Kimmins for research assistance in Derbyshire and in London.
Our thanks to Frank Michael Schuster for his thoughtful review with commentary on wood carving and typesetting.
Our thanks to Andrés Paredes for historical fact-checking and his knowledge of modern Franklin community history.
Our thanks to Allegra Rosenberg for her expertise with Clements Markham and for research assistance regarding a London archive.
Our thanks to Seth Amadio for graciously loaning magnification optics for this project.
Our thanks to Elmar Vogt for spotting Cyriax’s pre-Beechey deaths theory and flagging it to the community.
Our thanks to Jonathan Craig for permission to publish his 2020 photograph of George Malcolm’s grave. Our thanks to David Monteith for bringing Jonathan’s photograph to the attention of the Franklin community.
Our thanks to the Mbalenhle Zulu at the Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for assistance in licensing their photograph of Peter Cormac Sutherland.
Our thanks to Joy Wheeler at the Royal Geographical Society for assistance in licensing imagery of Clements Markham’s gravemarker transcriptions.
Lastly we thank DJ Holzhueter, for years this community’s resource for all questions regarding Beechey.
APPENDIX 1: Dating the Derbyshire photograph.
What has this study uncovered regarding the date that the Derbyshire photograph was taken?
Austin’s error in Braine’s Bible citation suggests that the Derbyshire photograph is faithfully showing us the inscriptions as they originally appeared in the winter of 1850. Meanwhile the potential painted knot shaped like a letter “C” in Braine’s Bible verse suggests an error from a later, less careful repainting (presumably under Pullen in 1853). These conclusions aren’t mutually exclusive, but they certainly are two arrows pointing in opposite directions. We can delineate that the former could be an intentional choice from a repainting, and the latter an unintentional error that crept in. A combined conclusion would therefore be that the Derbyshire photograph was taken after T.C. Pullen’s 1853 repainting: that Pullen’s repainting had been done with the intention to not modify anything about the original inscription (“4Part”), but that as a later repainting it did produce one unintentional error (“Chis day”).
{ ▽ Left: Derbyshire. Middle/Right: McClintock, August 1854. }
{ McClintock’s photographs courtesy of Douglas Wamsley. }
Such an idea, combined with the Derbyshire photograph’s basic similarity in appearance to McClintock’s two known 1854 Beechey Island photographs (above; Wamsley & Barr 1996) — as well as the lack of snow on the island in those same photographs — suggests that the Derbyshire photograph was most likely taken during August of 1854 by Leopold McClintock.
This is a very thin chain of logic, but plausible. It is, for the moment, a stronger overall argument than the fact that the Derbyshire photograph was tipped in to a scrapbook amidst newspaper clippings from 1851 (which are themselves out of order; left to right: November, June, September).
Hopefully the future will bring more evidence to bear on this topic.
APPENDIX 2: Miscellaneous notes.
Nota bene: On Beechey Island, Braine and Hartnell’s gravemarkers traded positions when the modern replacements were installed in 1993. The error is yet to be corrected.
T.C. Pullen’s 1853 repainting of the graves occurred during construction work on Beechey Island’s Northumberland House. These events are probably related.
Most computer spellchecks will correct “gravemarker” to “grave marker.” According to Google Books’ Engram Viewer, the closed compound “gravemarker” came into usage in the 1890s. It grew until the year 1999, when it declined precipitously. We presume that that precipitous decline was the moment it ran afoul of spellcheck functions on modern computers. Having ourselves attempted to use the open compound “grave marker” for the first year of drafting this article, we found it all too easy to slip back to just “marker,” and so decided to close the compound. There is plenty of local precedent for this, not just “headboard” (which we rejected as slightly inaccurate for Braine and Hartnell) and “tombstone,” but also gravesite and gravestone. Most interestingly, when we searched for usage of the closed compound “gravemarker,” we found it predominantly in Canadian writing. We also ran across the closed compound in Canadian archival records relating specifically to the Beechey gravemarkers.
{ ▽ Greenwich Chapel memorial. }
There is a wreath on the gravemarker of HMS Terror’s John Irving in Edinburgh, a wreath at the top of Franklin searcher George Malcolm’s gravemarker, and possibly a wreath atop John Hartnell’s gravemarker. In addition to these, there happen to be wreaths above the grave of the Franklin Expedition sailor entombed in the chapel of Greenwich Hospital (currently presumed to be HMS Erebus’ Harry Goodsir). However, these wreaths were created for the overall expedition memorial, before it was known that it would function decades later as a monumental gravemarker.
John Torrington’s coffin had brass handles, while John Hartnell’s coffin had fake representations of handles, “made out of the same white linen tape that decorated the edges of the coffin” (Beattie & Geiger 1987). This is the strangest extra decoration Hartnell received, presumably done to match the funeral of Torrington a few days earlier.
If only the wooden gravemarkers had survived, we would know only Torrington’s inscription, with just fragments of Hartnell and Braine. If only the Derbyshire photograph had survived, we would know most of Hartnell and Braine, but just fragments of Torrington. The curiosity of this project is that the early gravemarker transcribers, led by Sutherland, allow us to decipher enough of those two sources that, in the end, we can then turn around and use them to critique Sutherland and the rest.
It is fascinating to imagine what would have happened if the serifs method had been found before the discovery of the Derbyshire photograph. Could the Bible verse from Braine’s inscription have been figured out? From the surviving “will”, to “whom”, all the way to “you”? Would the word “the” in the final line have been debated? The opportunity to work a great puzzle was missed. It is certain that, had someone repeated Hansen’s attempt to read the gravemarkers, much more would have been found (e.g. the identification of Sutherland as the best early transcriber). Admittedly, Yellowknife is a remote location to reach. We consider ourselves fortunate to have approached this project at the short period in history when the gravemarkers were held in Ottawa.
Todd Hansen had closed his 2017 paper by mentioning that the gravemarkers were about to be packed up and transferred south. Nothing surprised us more throughout this project than the very start, when we visited Ottawa and saw that that protective travel packaging still needed to be sliced off the wooden gravemarkers. We had expected, after the discovery of the Derbyshire photograph in 2019, that there would be not one person attempting this project, but many. The sight and sound of the bubble wrap coming off was our first indication that that hadn’t happened.
Finding Sutherland was also a surprise. We expected that solving the grave inscriptions would be accomplished by synthesizing a half dozen faulty transcriptions to produce a best hybrid, not by anointing a previously undiscovered “best early transcriber.” Sutherland’s descendant John Cormac Seekings publishes the following rare anecdote on Sutherland in his 2013 biography: “I remember Dr Sutherland as a small man, with iron-grey hair and beard, and a complete disregard of his personal appearance. His thoughts were far too high up in the clouds for him to think of what he looked like, and so he wore his same old suit until it nearly fell off him.”
Seeking’s son Cormac confirmed to us that Sutherland’s original journals are lost to the family (but that his grandmother remembered Dr. Sutherland keeping diaries, which have not yet been located). It would be immensely interesting to see Sutherland’s original “transcriptions sketch” of the gravemarkers, and compare them to what was published. As well, Sutherland’s later 1852 journal would almost certainly contain his medical notes on the exhumation of John Hartnell, as well as a transcription – possibly even a sketch – of Hartnell’s long-lost coffin plate. Perhaps one day those journals will turn up in an antiquarian’s collection in South Africa. Perhaps one day an Inglefield descendant will come forward with the missing Hartnell coffin plate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The following sources are cited by author’s last name, followed by newspapers sorted by publication date, then concluding with miscellaneous and photography sources.
Anonymous “Darling.”
Unknown date (post-1986). The Life Story of William Braine RM. PDF found online by DJ Holzhueter.
Only hint at author (at end of Acknowledgements): “Grateful thanks to my darling wife who helped and supported me in this venture.” Last page in PDF is a photocopy of the personnel list from Frozen In Time. Photocopy shows evidence of a staple in the top left corner — and also of having been photocopied previously.
Barr, William.
2007. A further note on the Beechey Island memorials. Polar Record, Volume 43, Issue 2, April 2007, pp. 167 - 168 (link).
Beattie, Owen and Geiger, John.
1987. Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition.
This book has changed substantially since the first edition in 1987. We consulted both the 1987 edition and the 2017 (most recent) edition for any reference. [Chapter numbering has changed as well, thus we refer to chapter titles.]Chapter “The Face of Death” remarks that, “Sir Edward Belcher was the first to dig into the graves in October 1852...” That month would put Belcher’s “first” as later, not earlier, than Inglefield’s September exhumation of Hartnell. Belcher’s 1855 book, The Last of the Arctic Voyages (Volume 1, Chapter 3), shows the correct month of Belcher’s dig to have been August (the 12th). Beattie has the correct month elsewhere, e.g., his 1990 paper with Roger Amy in Inter-Nord (“A Report On Present Investigations...”).Chapter “The Royal Marine” remarks that, “Two-thirds of the exposed surface had a black colouration which Savelle said had been applied to the grave by Penny in 1853-54.” The source for Savelle’s assertion is not given, and Savelle didn’t respond when contacted. William Penny was only on Beechey Island during the 1850–51 Franklin search, not during 1853–54. Our working assumption is that Savelle must have meant T.C. Pullen in 1853, however Pullen does not mention the color black (or any other color) for his paint.In the 2017 edition, the photo captioned with, “The ship’s wheel was found in its original location on the upper deck of HMS Erebus,” is in fact showing a view of HMS Terror. The Erebus wheel fragment was found on the seafloor some distance from the wreck.
Chapter “The Face of Death”: “A close inspection of the graves of John Hartnell and William Braine soon revealed that their construction by the crew of the Erebus had been very similar, if not identical. ... The large limestone slabs, once part of a grave structure like Braine’s, which has an almost crypt-like appearance, had been simply piled on top of the burial place, as if they had been lifted away and later hastily replaced.” This same observation, of limestone slabs only atop the two Erebus graves, was also helpfully made by McCormick in 1852, prior to even Belcher’s aborted exhumation (see McCormick 1884).
Bernier, Joseph-Elzéar.
1909. Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to Arctic Islands and the Hudson Strait on board the C.G.S. “Arctic” 1906–1907.
A.P. Low’s Beechey gravemarker transcriptions are recorded by Bernier on page 22. Bernier mistakenly records one of Low’s dates as “August 5th, 1904.” Consulting Low’s book (Cruise of the Neptune, 1906) shows that the proper and only date of Low’s visit to Beechey Island was “August 15th, 1904” (recorded correctly by Bernier elsewhere on this same page 22).
Bernier, Joseph-Elzéar.
1910. Report on the Dominion of Canada Government Expedition to the Arctic Islands and Hudson Strait on board the D.G.S. ‘Arctic’.
In researching this article, Alison Freebairn noted that this book contains an early photograph of the Beechey graves never previously cited or discussed: “Headstones of four of Sir John Franklin’s men, Erebus Bay.”
Cyriax, Richard J.
1939. Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition.
The first installment of our article had suggested that the absence of pre-Beechey deaths was “a perhaps universal assumption.” In this second installment, that has been changed to, “An almost universal assumption,” as Elmar Vogt flagged to the Franklin Expedition community (RtFE 3 Nov 2024) that the great Cyriax himself had raised the possibility that members of the expedition may have died pre-Beechey (in a section discussing victualling). Cyriax (Chapter VIII): “One hundred and twenty-nine officers and men sailed from the Whalefish Islands; 3 men died at Beechey Island, but to simplify the calculations they are disregarded. Other lives may have been lost at sea before Sir John Franklin’s arrival at Beechey Island, but these losses, if any, were negligible, as is shown later; hence the number adopted is 126 officers and men.” [Emphasis added.]
Fairbairn, Gordon.
1979. Letter dated 14 November 1979, titled “Grave Marker Reproduction, CCI: 2,000,734.”
A very brief letter by Fairbairn describing his creation of the Malcolm gravemarker replica at the Canadian Conservation Institute. “Every effort was made to keep the balance of the incised carving, even the discrepancies.” The photocopy of this letter that we viewed is held in the Government of Nunavut records for Malcolm’s gravemarker, accession number 979.95.1. Numerous entries under that accession number indicate an August 1993 date for installing Malcolm’s replica gravemarker (and others) under the direction of archaeologist Margaret Bertulli.
Forst, Jannine and Brown, Terence A.
2017. A Case Study: Was Private William Braine of the 1845 Franklin Expedition a Victim of Tuberculosis? Arctic, Volume 70 Number 4 (December 2017), p. 381-88 (link).
Freebairn, Alison.
2021. Robert Goodsir and the Franklin Graves on Beechey Island. Finger-Post.blog, 4 January 2021 (link).
The source of the Goodsir quotation that opens this article: “How well do I remember the pause I made, when the still, quiet desolation of all around me was unbroken, save by the quickly-advancing steps of Petersen crunching over the gravel, the loud beating of my heart and quick-drawn breathing, ere I could gather courage to advance and read the inscriptions that I rightly guessed would appear on the other side of the headboards.”
Hansen, Todd.
2010. Additional documents and survey on the Franklin sites of Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada. Polar Record, Volume 46, Issue 3, July 2010, pp. 193-199 (link).
Hansen, Todd.
2012. Additional documents and survey on the Franklin sites of Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada: addendum. Polar Record, Volume 48, Issue 2, April 2012, pp. 195-196 (link).
Hansen, Todd.
2017. Physical descriptions of the Beechey Island headboards. Polar Record, Volume 53, Issue 4, July 2017, pp. 403-412 (link).
From our own article: “...in 2016 Hansen was able to discern enough to correct two words in McDougall’s transcriptions, and to demonstrate a flaw in Kane’s transcriptions.” Specifically, Hansen’s article noted that McDougall incorrectly wrote “H.M.S.” rather than “HM SHIP” for Torrington. He was able to see the start of the word “Aged” on Braine’s gravemarker, which is missed by McDougall’s transcription. And regarding Kane, Hansen was able to read “Lord of hosts” on Hartnell’s gravemarker, noting that Kane’s transcription had omitted “of hosts”. [This last transcription had been incorrectly cited to Miertsching at the time, an issue Todd Hansen flagged for us in a private communication.]The typography of Bernier’s 1909 book is very poorly laid out, and this led to a handful of errors in Hansen’s paper: A.P. Low’s ship was the Neptune not the Northern Star, Bernier doesn’t suggest that Low painted the gravemarkers (“the ‘headstone’”), and the gravemarker transcriptions were originally written by Low not by Bernier.
Hobson, George.
1993. Letter to the Editor. Arctic, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 291-292 (link).
Hobson et al. (George D. Hobson, Maurice H. Haycock, Don K. Sebera, and J. Douglas Heyland).
1975. The 1975 Reconnaissance of the Franklin Encampment Area, Beechey Island.
Inglefield, Edward Augustus.
1853. A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin; with A Peep Into The Polar Basin.
The source for the story of the polar bear sitting on the graves (we naturally first encountered the anecdote in Frozen In Time). This is also the expedition during which Inglefield and Sutherland exhumed Hartnell, though it is discreetly not discussed in this book.
Just before the polar bear anecdote, Inglefield mentions “knee-deep snow” covering Beechey Island. Given Inglefield’s brief stay, this one detail almost certainly rules out this visit as being the source of the Derbyshire photograph (despite Inglefield’s photography otherwise making him a prime suspect).
Kane, Elisha Kent.
1854. The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Narrative.
In addition to his own Beechey gravemarker transcriptions, Kane publishes an appendix with Edwin J. De Haven’s gravemarker transcriptions (which differ slightly as published in an appendix by Osborn in Stray Leaves, 1852).
Lloyd-Jones, Ralph.
2004. The Royal Marines on Franklin’s last expedition. Polar Record, Volume 40, Issue 4 (October), pp. 319 - 326 (link).
The 1988 documentary Buried In Ice interpreted Braine’s “8CO.W.D” from his coffin plate as “8th Company, Western Division.” Lloyd-Jones’ 2004 paper amends “Western” to “Woolwich.”
Low, Albert Peter.
1906. ‘The Cruise of the Neptune’ / Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Islands on board the D.G.S. Neptune 1903–1904.
While this report covers Low’s visit to Beechey Island (15 August 1904), Low did not include his Beechey gravemarker transcriptions in this volume. They were deposited in a cairn note on the island, found by J.E. Bernier in 1906, and published by the latter in his 1909 book (cited elsewhere in this Bibliography).
Markham, Clements.
1853. Franklin’s Footsteps.
This book contains the published version of Markham’s Beechey gravemarker transcriptions. [They differ from the versions in his private journal held at the RGS (CRM/3).]
McCormick, Robert.
1884. Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas and Round the World.
August 9, 1852 (notably three days before Belcher’s aborted exhumation, and a month before Inglefield and Sutherland): “I next visited the three graves: the headstones were painted in white letters on a black ground, all faced the east, the Terror’s being nearest the bay, and only covered by shingle; the Erebus’s two had over this a few large slabs of limestone.” [Volume 2, Chapter V, page 48.] This is a particularly useful single sentence of observations, not only correcting the graves order from McDougall’s sketch, and specifying which graves had limestone slabs, and specifying the gravemarkers as being painted black: in addition to all these, this is also a rare confirmation that the inscription letters were painted specifically white (and not, e.g., a bright yellow).
McDougall, George Frederick.
1857. The Eventful Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ship “Resolute” to the Arctic Regions in Search of Sir John Franklin and the Missing Crews of H. M. Discovery Ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” 1852, 1853, 1854.
The published versions of McDougall’s Beechey gravemarker transcriptions.
A quotation of Miertsching’s original gravemarker transcriptions (4 May 1854), with his original German introduction mentioning black-painted graves, recorded by his biographer Mechtild Opel: “Auch sind hier drei Gräber, jede mit einer schwarz angestrichenen eichenen Pfoste, auf welchen folgende Schrift ausgeschnitten ist...”
Osborn, Sherard.
1852. Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal.
Osborn’s published gravemarker transcriptions in this book exhibit minor differences between the original 1852 edition, the 1865 edition (cited/quoted by Cyriax), and the United States 1852 edition.
Potter, Russell A.
2019a. Earliest photos of graves at Beechey. Visions of the North, 24 June 2019 (link).
Derbyshire’s Beechey graves photograph was first published as a reply on Twitter (five days later) to Russell Potter’s tweet promoting this article (see Miscellaneous section of this Bibliography).
Potter, Russell A.
2019b. Black Graves of Beechey Island. Visions of the North, 3 July 2019 (link).
Powell, Brian D.
2006. The memorials on Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada: an historical and pictorial survey. Polar Record, Volume 42, Issue 4, October 2006, pp. 325-333 (link).
Seekings, John Cormac.
2013. Natal’s Little Doctor, Colonial Officer par Excellence: PC Sutherland.
Sutherland, Peter Cormac.
1852. Journal of a Voyage in Baffin’s Bay and Barrow Straits, in the Years 1850–51, Performed by H.M. Ships “Lady Franklin” and “Sophia,” Under the Command of Mr. William Penny, in Search of the Missing Crews of H.M. Ships Erebus and Terror: with a Narrative of Sledge Excursions on the Ice of Wellington Channel; and Observations on the Natural History and Physical Features of the Countries and Frozen Seas Visited.
From The New Quarterly Review, 1852 (Vol. 1, page 377) on Sutherland’s book: “We will not say that the natural history, often the novel history also, of the lands and waters explored is tiresome from its repetition, but it is ever introduced in the midst of the narrative, which is thus checked or encumbered; perhaps a separate portion of the work had better have been devoted to this subject...”
Triola, Lauren.
2019. John Torrington: Made in Manchester. Lauren Triola Writes, 4 December 2019 (link).
Wamsley, Douglas & Barr, William.
1996. Early photographers of the Arctic. Polar Record, Volume 32, Issue 183, October 1996, pp. 295-316 (link).
Young, Allen.
1876. Cruise of the ‘Pandora.’
The original publication of the 1875 Beechey graves photograph shown in the Introduction and Conclusion of this article. The particular print (with caption incorrectly identifying the anvil amongst the graves, an error going back to Kane) that we have used comes from our copy of The Toll of the Arctic Seas (1910) by Deltus Malin Edwards, a much easier book to come by. For the photographer De Wilde, see Arthur G. Credland’s 2015 article in Polar Record, “George Rexworthy De Wilde (1832/3–1906): a forgotten pioneer of Arctic photography.”
Cited for photography of the unusual wreath decoration on Irving’s gravestone.
Newspaper articles, by publication date:
31 October 1850.
The Illustrated Arctic News. Page 3, column 2. [The source of this shipboard newspaper’s excellent Beechey gravemarker transcriptions.]
4 October 1851.
The Illustrated London News. Page 410, column 1. [The published versions of Austin’s Beechey gravemarker transcriptions. Page 409 reprints McDougall’s graves scene sketch.]
The Inuit place names for Iluvilik/ᐃᓗᕕᓕᒃ (Beechey Island) and Qikiqtaaluk/ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ (Griffith Island) used in this article are sourced from the Inuit Heritage Trust Place Names Program, referenced 9 January 2024 (link).
The two coffin plate photographs were provided by Owen Beattie, who gave permission to use the images in emails dated April 5th and 17th, 2024.
The two early Beechey Island photographs by F. Leopold McClintock were provided by Douglas Wamsley; more information can be found in his 1996 Polar Record paper with William Barr, “Early photographers of the Arctic.”
For the 1875 Pandora photograph of the Beechey graves, see Young 1876.
The photograph of Peter Cormac Sutherland (link) was licensed from the Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (ID: d43-045. Album D43/001-080 Eminent People. Album 1.BRN 350576).
The photograph of Elisha Kent Kane (link) comes from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NPG.2005.38) listed as Public Domain (CC0).
The printed photograph of Clements Markham is held by author L. Zachary. The print is undated, and is captioned: “SIR CLEMENTS MARKHAM, K.C.B. Who has Retired from the Presidency of the Royal Geographical Society. From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry, Baker Street.”
The portrait sketch of Sherard Osborn is held by author L. Zachary from The Illustrated London News, 1 May 1852, page 336. The sketch is of five men, and is captioned: “THE ARCTIC SEARCHING SQUADRON.—(FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEARD.)”
The Elisha Kent Kane (with gravemarkers) engraving comes from the Wellcome Collection (link) listed on their website as Public Domain. [Elisha Kent Kane. Engraving by D. G. Thompson, 1858, after J. B. Wandesforde. Wandesforde, Juan (James) Buckingham, 1817-1902. Date: 1858 Reference: 9934i.]
The map used as an example of serifs comes from the 1908 edition of McClintock’s The Voyage of the Fox. The following image (“HMS”) comes from the Netherclift facsimile of the Victory Point Record, issued with the 1859 (1st) edition of that same book. Both are held by author L. Zachary.
Clements Markham’s Private Journal from HMS Assistance: CRM/3 at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Our thanks to Joy Wheeler for assistance in purchasing a licence to display Markham’s gravemarker transcriptions. Our thanks to Allegra Rosenberg for assistance and expertise regarding Clements Markham. Markham’s Beechey gravemarker transcriptions are located in the journal at page 19.
Captain Horatio Austin’s gravemarker transcriptions can be found at The National Archives in Kew, in ADM 7/190, in a letter dated 16th July 1851, addressed to The Secretary of the Admiralty, London. The letter was reprinted by the Illustrated London News, 4 October 1851, pages 409–410 (here the letter was dated as 16th May 1851).
De Haven’s handwritten gravemarker transcriptions seen in this article (photographed by Alison Freebairn) can be found at The National Archives in Kew, in ADM 7/192, in a report to Baillie Hamilton dated 6th July 1851. Another handwritten transcriptions set by De Haven can be found at the United States Naval Academy, Nimitz Library, Edwin Jesse De Haven Papers, USNA MS 211 (link), “Box 1 Folder 02: Arctic Expedition Letters, 1851-1878 and undated,” page 18 of 82 (link). They also hold an excellent portrait photograph of De Haven, in Box 2 Folder 13 (link).
The journal of Thomas Charles Pullen (Master of HMS North Star) is in typed transcript form at (among other places) the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI GB15 MS 274;BJ). On 4 August 1853, Pullen mentions “putting the graves to rights”: “Commence painting the Head Boards of poor Sir J. Franklin’s men left here.” [My personal thanks to Alison Freebairn for finding this critical detail. It presumably solves Savelle’s “Penny”/paint comment from Frozen In Time, excepting the lack of a black color for Pullen’s paintwork. – L.Z.] Pullen descendant William Pullen has advised us that he believes the original journal is lost, and may have specifically been destroyed at the family home at #19 Woodlawn Terrace, Plymouth, during the Blitz in World War 2.
RtFE 2019: Public discussion of the Derbyshire photograph took place at the Remembering the Franklin Expedition group on Facebook under posts by Russell Potter on June 29th (link) and July 3rd (link). Our suggestions of a worn away “T” and an ordinal ring for Torrington’s death date were posted to RtFE on May 14 and July 6 respectively, under a May 13th post by Randall Osczevski (link). Natalie Martz’s Beechey gravemarkers mock-up was posted to RtFE on October 31st (link). [Elmar Vogt’s helpful flagging of Cyriax speculating on pre-Beechey deaths was posted 3 November 2024 (link).]
The Derbyshire Record Office first published their Beechey Island graves photograph on 29 June 2019 to their Twitter account (link), as a reply to Russell Potter’s tweet promoting his 24 June 2019 Visions of the North article “Earliest photos of graves at Beechey” (link).
The Derbyshire graves photograph is held by the Derbyshire Record Office in Matlock. It is in a Franklin family scrapbook accessioned as D8760/F/LIB/10/1/1 (link), tipped in between pages 51 and 52.
– L.Z. & A.F. December 11th, 2024.
Updates, December 11th, 2024: Updates to the 1st installment upon the publication of the 2nd installment.
- The phrase, “This study cannot conclusively answer these questions,” was changed to “This study cannot address these questions at the outset,” as some progress was made on this series of questions, e.g., the primacy of the surviving gravemarkers based on addressing Powell’s question, a lack of evidence of later/secondary letter carving, the potential faithfulness of Pullen’s repainting based on Austin’s original misread of Braine’s Bible verse citation, etc.
- The phrase, “A perhaps universal assumption has been that, because only three graves were found on Beechey Island, therefore only three men died in the first year of the Franklin Expedition,” was altered to “An almost universal assumption has been that:...”, as Elmar Vogt flagged to the Franklin Expedition community on 3 November 2024 that Cyriax had hypothesized such an idea in his 1939 book, in a section on victualling.
- The phrase, “That formula results in the following deviations from Sutherland’s 1852 transcription,” was changed to, “That formula results in the following alterations to Sutherland’s 1852 transcription,” reserving the word “deviations” as only referring to changes away from the original inscriptions themselves.
- For clarity, the words “Beechey Island” were added to the following phrase: “The former seems more plausible, and we do know that Beechey Island photography without snow on the ground was taken during the Belcher search (Wamsley & Barr 1996).”
- For clarity, the phrase, “Despite stretches of legibility, neither presents an unobstructed read through the inscriptions,” was expanded to, “Despite stretches of legibility, neither the Derbyshire photograph nor the surviving wooden gravemarkers present an unobstructed read through the inscriptions.”
- For extra clarity, the phrase, “In the photograph, are we seeing paintwork that looks crisp and fresh?” was changed to, “In that photograph...”
- The typo “spelling” was corrected to the plural “spellings.”
- For improved clarity, the sentence, “He returned for a second Franklin search immediately the next year, as surgeon on the Isabel.” was modified to, “He came back for another Franklin search the following year...”
- For improved clarity, the sentence, “In the Derbyshire photograph, the gravemarkers appear black against the lighter rocks of the island’s shore — just as early sources had reported they were.” was modified to, “...just as sources close to the discovery had reported they were.”
- For improved accuracy, the sentence, “Someone could have died and been buried anywhere on the shores of Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, their gravemarker erased by ice or animals long before ever being found (as has presumably happened with the principal Franklin Expedition graveyard on King William Island).” was modified to, “...(as has potentially happened with any Franklin Expedition graveyard on King William Island).”