Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition

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Frozen in time is one of those books that, having once entered our imaginations, refuse to go away. As I’ve been writing this introduction, I’ve described the project to several people. “Frozen in Time,” I say. They look blank. “The one with the picture of the Frozen Franklin on the front,” I say. “Oh yes. That one,” they say. “I read that!” And off we go on a discussion of forensic anthropology under extreme conditions. For Frozen in Time made a large impact, devoted as it was to the astonishing revelations made by Dr. Owen Beattie—including the high probability that lead poisoning had contributed to the annihilation of the 1845 Franklin expedition.

I read Frozen in Time when it first came out. I looked at the pictures in it. They gave me nightmares. I incorporated story and pictures as a subtext and extended metaphor in a short story called “The Age of Lead,” published in a 1991 collection called Wilderness Tips. Then, some nine years later, during a boat trip in the Arctic, I met John Geiger, one of the authors of Frozen in Time. Not only had I read his book, he had read mine, and it had caused him to give further thought to lead as a factor in northern exploration and in unlucky nineteenth-century sea voyages in general.

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