THE LOST FROZEN IN TIME

The three men buried on Beechey Island are sadly and mainly known because they were virtually frozen in time, as wisely John Geiger and Owen Beattie titled them on their book, and also because they were part of the equally sadly known last Franklin expedition. Their macabre grin will smile to us forever in our dreams, at least till the moment we could smile grotesquely them back in return from our own graves. 

However, though it was their exceptional state of preservation and not their link with the Franklin expedition which have given them their fame, the fact is that there are other graves dispersed all over the arctic archipielago which could contain men as well preserved as the men buried in Beechey Island. Graves which belonged to other expeditions. For example, we have the case of the three men who were buried very close to the place where the HMS Investigator was found. No attempts to unbury them have been made yet and it seems they won´t be done in the short term.

Recently, I have found in the Manitoba museum web site the wooden leg which was worn by the Inuit Tulluahiu. This man, luckily for him, crossed his path with John Ross during his expedition in the ship Victory during the years 1829 to 1833. It has been his story which had led me to the sad story of Chimham Thomas, the carpenter of that expedition.The journalist Ken Harper told the story of this man and his leg in this article.

It is almost certain that Chimham saved the life of this man who was found being pulled in a sledge by his relatives and who ended walking and hunting as any other hunter of his tribe.

Tulluahiu and his wooden leg.
http://disstud.blogspot.com.es/2005_08_01_archive.html

Chimham not only did a wonderful job making that wooden leg which would last hundreds of years, he also mended it several times, did improvements and even produced spare parts for being used for the man when the expedition would leave.

Wooden leg
http://manitobamuseum.ca/main/an-act-of-kindness/

Unfortunately, the poor carpenter died the spring before the men of the expedition were rescued in 1833. It has been his death, in his turn, which has led me to discover that two other men had previously died during that. James Dixon and James Marslin. It  is the description of their burials which has made me think that perhaps those two men could be beautifully preserved. In the case of Dixon, John Ross describes how digging his grave took the men approximately a week. In the case of Marslin, it is only said it took too much time .

One could imagine, that as these two graves were dug while the things were still not too bad in the expedition, perhaps they could be in the same perfect shape than those of Beechey Island, therefore, their bodies could be at least as well preserved as the bodies of John Torrington, William Braine and John Hartnell.  The position of the Dixon´s grave is indicated in this article published in Northern News in 1957. It should not be far from the place where the Victory cache was deployed. It seems that a Patrol from the R.C.M.P discovered in the 1970 a skull which could have belonged Dixon. I doubt it, I can´t believe that after a week digging someone or something could have had access to his coffin, opened it and had taken apart his skull. However, there is another likely possibility, and that is the fact that the permafrost is melting.

There are more and more cases in the news of  graves which had been dug in the permafrost  which are now appearing in surface. Like in an horror movie, coffins and bones are emerging from the ground to salute the people walking around.

Pipsuk grave?According to Russell Potter who make the suggestion, this grave could have belonged to Pipsuk.
http://www.climatestorytellers.org/stories/subhankar-banerjee-sing-about-warmed-earth/exposed-coffin.jpg

Wolfgang Opel, the co-author of the book Eisbären, also called my attention about the case of the grave of the explorer Hermann Walter, Russian Polar expedition of 1900-1902, who, it seems, also decided to breath some fresh air.

This, in my opinion, could be the case of Dixon, whose grave would be located about four degrees south of the latitude where the graves of the men of the Franklin expedition are located in Beechey Island. In the article mentioned above is described and discussed the location of his grave and the location of the tunnel where John Ross put his cache of food and instrumental in Victoria Harbour before abandoning his ship. They built it during the first days of january of 1832 as if they were pirates hiding a treasure. To add more mistery and glamour to this scene, one day, as if it were a signal, an enormous meteor crossed the sky illuminating the whole valley (Chapter 48 of the narrative of the expedition). I haven´t found traces which could determine where James Marslin could have been buried, I only known that he died earlier and that he likely was buried during the winter of 1830-31.

Globalization,  if we want to call this way, with the pass of time is bringing us to our homes through internet more and more pictures of inaccessible places. There are some  photos of Fury Beach which could excite our imagination, These pictures show us places which we have seen countless times in paintings. They show us quiet beaches, narrow gorges, and steep cliffs. We could easily imagine that in one of those stony beaches could have been buried for example the good carpenter Chimham Thomas. 

To finish, I would like to make some reflection. I have read somewhere that more men died trying to find the Franklin expedition than in the Franklin expedition itself. I would bet that this assertion is false. If we don´t count those 129 men, I find dubious that such amount of men had died in all the expeditions which went towards the North west Passage before and after of the Franklin expedition of 1845. Here and there men died  in the arctic archipielago, some them are now only a handful of bones are scattered in the bottom of the sea as happened to René Bellot, others are well buried in unknow places, others were half buried and where disturbed by wild life and others simply dissappeared forever without leaving a trace. All of them are there, in some place. It would be interesting to make an inventary of the deceased men during all those years, if possible, marking the conditions of their burials and approximate location.

James Dixon and James Marslin were part of those who were well buried in Boothia peninsula. Presumably, they are with all their flesh on and opened eyes staring the back of the lid of his coffin patiently waiting for us to be rescued from the forgotten.