NORTH GIVES UP ITS DEAD

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 16 January 1926, Page 11

NORTH GIVES UP ITS DEAD

SOME OF FRANKLIN’S MEN

BODIES FOUND AFTER EIGHTY YEARS

N- EARLY eighty years after the mysterious disappearance of the ill-fated _ . Franklin expedition to discover the North-West Passage, the bones of two of its members have been found. The dramatic revelation was made in stirringly simple language to the Royal Geographical Society by the'banish explorer, Dr. Knud Rasmussen, who incidentally threw fresh light on that obscure, grim tragedy of the frozen north. While himself making the Passage in the course of a Si years’ expedition, principally to study the Eskimo, which he completed last year, Dr. Rasmussen encountered, at Pelly Bay, an old man named Iggiararsuk. Iggiararsuk’s father had actually met some of Franklin’s party, and had given the following account to his son:—

"We were out hunting seal. Suddenly we heard the shouting of strange men from the land (this was King William’s Island). We van up to them, and saw that they were white men. They were thin, with sunken checks, like starving men. Me took them to our Iciil. and gave them seal meat and blubber. They pointed towards the south, towards the Great Fish river, and made signs by which we understood that there had formerly been many comrades together, but only few were left. _ Afterwards, at another time, we found their ship. It was out in the ice between King William’s Island and Victoria Land. Many dead men were on the ship, and we could see that they had died of a sickness. Also there was found a boat, with six dead men; there was food enough, and it seemed that these also had died of a sickness.’

“fggararsuk then gave me the position of four different spots,” continued Dr. Rasmussen, “whore lay the bones-of Franklin’s men. I succeeded in locating two of these places, one in King William’s Island, the other on the

shore of Starvation Cove, in the Adelaide Peninsula.

<; We found the bodies.' With them were still some fragments of clothing, enough to show that they were actually white men. “A cairn was then built over the bodies as 1-hoy lay, and the two flags—their own and ours—were hoisted at half-mast.

“We were glad to feel, as they perhaps might have been glad to feel,” added the explorer, ‘that the work for which they gave their lives was still going on.”

Dr. Rasmussen further discovered that all the iron then in use among the tribe at Pelly Bay, in the form of knives, harpoon heads, arrow heads, and the like, came from the ship of a white.man that had wintered in Felix Harbour and Victoria Harbour 100 years before. “This, of course, was Ross.” he commented. With regard to the Franklin Expedition, it may be recalled that, having set out in the Erebus and the Terror with 104 officers and men, it was last 'seen in Baffin Bay hv a whaler in July, 1845. Fifteen rescue expeditions, several financed by Cady Franklin, were dispatched. Many relies were discovered, while skeletons along the coast told their talc of disaster. A record found-in a. cairn contained the history of the Expedition down to April, 1848. An 'addition in the. band writing of Captain Fit /.James'* recounted bow the Erebus and Terror, having become ice-bound, were abandoned, Franklin having died on board one of .the vessels in 1847. In 1880 an American expedition found additional relies and skeletons and the body of Lieutenant Irving was brought to Edinburgh and buried. An Eskimo woman was the last to see the survivors of the Franklin Expedition before they perished. There were forty of them, starving, hut staggering on. The* end was close at hand; for, said she, “they fell down and died as they walked. ’ ’