08-09-2025, 73°45N 082°33W, Lancaster Sound
And then, all of a sudden, there it was: Beechey Island — the holy grail of this voyage (for some… or perhaps for most). Time never stands still here. The Arctic seasons push relentlessly onward, and so must we.
Beechey Island is forever linked to the last stop of the Franklin Expedition. The island was named by Frederick William Beechey in honor of his father, William Beechey. The younger Beechey served as a lieutenant on Captain William Parry’s 1819 expedition, which first charted the island. In the winter of 1845/1846, Franklin’s ships Erebus and Terroroverwintered here, in what is now Erebus and Terror Bay.
For us, arriving here meant completing the last missing piece of the puzzle. With daylight running out, we decided not to land immediately but instead held our most northern “party” on board. Each of us wrote down a favorite memory of the voyage so far on a small slip of paper. Nobody managed to settle on just one — drifting among the ice in Amundsen Gulf during the early morning hours was a clear favorite.
After a good night’s sleep, we went ashore the next morning. At the foot of the slope lie four graves. Three belong to Franklin’s men; the fourth is that of Thomas Morgan, a sailor with a later search party. Owen Beattie’s book Frozen in Time describes in detail the excavation of two of the Franklin graves. The face of John Torrington, perfectly preserved in permafrost, made world news in the 1980s. Standing before the wooden replicas that mark the sites is unsettling. It feels as close to time travel as one can get.
Not just the graves, but also the cairn built by John Ross on a nearby headland, pull you instantly back two centuries. We continued our walk to the remains of Northumberland House, erected in 1852 using timbers from the wreck of the whaler McLellan. It served first as a supply depot for early rescue missions, later as a Hudson’s Bay Company post. Coal remnants are still scattered about — enough, it seems, to fire up the old locomotive engine from the Terror.
In silence, we made our way to the Franklin Cairn on top of Beechey Island. The morning was cold but clear. Fresh ice, dusted with snow, made the climb treacherous in places. The wooden marker that once stood ten feet tall now lies broken beside the cairn, its riveted barrels still confirming its age. From the summit, Parry Channel stretched out before us, basking in pale Arctic sunlight. Sheets of ice lay to the west and north in Melville Sound — ever-present, shielding this land from intruders and preserving its mysteries beneath a frozen shroud.
We came in search of answers but left only with more questions. That is the nature of mysteries, I suppose.
Setting off across Barrow Strait, we turned our bows toward Admiralty Inlet. Our next quest: the creature Barry Lopez calls “the fish that doubles as a fighting horse” in Arctic Dreams. The elusive narwhal — where do they go, how many are there, and what purpose does that spiraling tusk truly serve? We never expected to solve the riddle, only to glimpse the animal itself.
And we did. Hugging the coast, they slipped by quietly, wary of their greatest predator, the killer whale. We saw their mottled skin break the surface — and then, unmistakably, a tusk. Pure magic.
By the time of writing, we are back in Lancaster Sound, bound for Navy Board Inlet. It will be our last scenic passage past Bylot Island before we sail into Baffin Bay. The island of the same name will accompany us for days yet as we set course for Greenland.
Time to leave this world of mist and myth, and let the ice close over this cold case once again.
All is well,
Gijs
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