Further Light on the Source of the Lead in Human Remains from the 1845 Franklin Expedition

The Royal Navy’s 1845 Arctic expedition, commanded by Sir John Franklin, was a disaster from which none of the 129 men who sailed into the Canadian archipelago would return. Hypotheses concerning the source of the high lead levels detected in human remains from the Franklin expedition are re-examined in the light of evidence from cases of occupational exposure and of malicious poisoning. It is argued that there was a significant source of environmental lead exposure during the expedition which was unconnected with any part of the expedition’s provisions such as the soldered food cans. Support is given for the proposal that the ships’ apparatus for melting snow to produce fresh water, which was of a design hurriedly improvised a decade earlier, produced lead contaminated water when it was operated to a regime which the ship’s cooks had previously practised on HMS Erebus during the 1839–44 Antarctic expedition under James Clark Ross.