Frozen in Time The Fate of the Franklin Expedition

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and his men set out to “penetrate the icy fastness of the north, and to circumnavigate America.” And then they disappeared. The truth about what happened to Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition was shrouded in mystery for more than a century. Then, in 1984, Owen Beattie and his team exhumed two crew members from a burial site in the North for forensic evidence, to shocking results. But the most startling discovery didn’t come until 2014, when a team commissioned by the Canadian government uncovered one of the lost ships: Erebus.

Owen Beattie is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. He has contributed to many forensic investigations in Canada, as well as to human rights and humanitarian projects in Rwanda, Somalia, and Cyprus.

John Grigsby Geiger was born in Ithaca, New York, and graduated in history from the University of Alberta. His work has been translated into eight languages. He is currently the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.