Discovering a famed19th century shipwreck within half an hour of searching, then finding the three gravesites of its crewmen is considerably lucky. Or at least that’s how Ed Eastaugh sees it.
Having recently returned from his venture to the Canadian north, Eastaugh is still reeling from the high of discovering remnants of the HMS Investigator and its crew this summer during a Parks Canada expedition on Banks Island, Northwest Territories.
“We met every single goal of the project,” Eastaugh says. “Against all odds … we were all very lucky.”
Eastaugh, lab manager in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario, was asked to join Parks Canada on the expedition to survey the area of Banks Island, near Mercy Bay, where the cache from the HMS Investigator was suspected to be located.
Led by Capt. Robert McClure, the HMS Investigator set sail in 1850 on a rescue mission to find the British men of the Franklin expedition who were lost at sea while attempting to find the Northwest Passage. While searching for the lost seamen, McClure made a surprising discovery – the western entrance to the passage.
Previous explorers entered the Arctic from the east. McClure and his 66-person crew became the first explorers to circumnavigate the Americas.
But like the ship he was sent to find, McClure and his crew became stranded in the Arctic. They found a safe haven on the northern shore of Banks Island in what he named the Bay of Mercy. When the pack ice didn’t clear during the summer of 1852, the situation became dire for the sailors. They were rescued by a Royal Navy sledge team in 1853 and evacuated on another ship.
Before abandoning the HMS Investigator, much of the cargo was removed and placed in a cache on Banks Island with the intention of being recovered at a later date. However, the cache was discovered by Inuit from Victoria Island travelling to the area to hunt and fish, and they salvaged metal and wood left at the site.
The HMS Investigator eventually sank into the bay.
Flying over the remote area where the sun never sets, the Parks Canada expedition looked like it might prove fruitless because of the amount of ice in the bay. But thanks to warm weather (temperatures measured in the teens – evidence of the effects of global warming, says Eastaugh) the ice broke up and allowed the underwater archeological team to start its search.
Before heading out, the crews on land and water waged a friendly bet about who would make the startling discovery first. In the end, the underwater archeological team won.
In less than an hour, the vessel was found and in great condition thanks to the preserving effects of the icy waters.
On land, Eastaugh made an exciting discovery of his own – the three gravesites of the ship’s crewmen who died of scurvy in 1853.
Wielding a magnetometer – which detects small differences in the Earth’s magnetic field – he covered hundreds of meters on foot collecting data about what lies beneath the Earth’s surface. After uploading the readings from the magnetometer, an image of three rectangular dark spots appeared. Immediately Eastaugh recognized them as the graves. They were oriented towards the east in the traditional burial pattern and had a single grave marker, which has since sunk into the ground.
Retracing his steps, guided by the mapping created by the magnetometer, he was able to find the gravesites – which on second glance stood out as obvious outlines on the surface. Unlike traditional gravesites that tend to settle and level out over time, these looked like they were freshly dug because the cold temperatures prevented the soil from settling, he says. Eastaugh suspects the bodies are similarly preserved.
“The potential for understanding the life and health of a mid-19th century sailor would be staggering,” he says.
The search could have been like “looking for a needle in a haystack” because the geology of the area is often filled with glacial tills (deposits leftover from the movement of glaciers), which can make it difficult to distinguish archeologically significant areas. Just as the ice on the bay opened up in the exact location the HMS Investigator was suspected to be located, “the conditions were perfect for identifying the graves,” says Eastaugh.
“There was a sense of relief that we had achieved it early on. Everything else was gravy after that.”
While most days in the Arctic felt like spring in Southwestern Ontario, Mother Nature took a turn for the worst during their visit and a big winter storm forced the crew to literally buckle down.
“It reminds you where you are and gave us an appreciation of what the crew must have gone through. It’s a remarkable story of survival,” he says.
Although the main goals had been achieved, Eastaugh spent the remainder of the trip surveying the entire area.
Adding to the treasures discovered on the island were pre-contact archeological finds of the Thule people of Alaska, who arrived in what is now known as the Canadian Arctic around AD 1000. New items discovered at the Thule site include several housing features, such as stone rings with annexes and whale bones used as roof supports, as well as caches, evidence of stone tool manufacture, and mammal bones.
Back in his office in the Social Sciences Centre – a far cry from the remote landscape of the Arctic – Eastaugh is still digesting the vast amounts of information accumulated during his two-week expedition. “I was thrilled to be asked,” Eastaugh says, noting making a historic discovery isn’t so bad either.
“Everyone was standing there with smiles on their faces,” he says.
What is a magnetometer?
A scientific, non-invasive instrument that detects small differences in the Earth’s magnetic field. Data collected by the magnetometer builds a black-and-white picture of subsurface objects, such as buildings, cooking sites, burial grounds and other items located in the surveyed area.