Editing Northwest Passage (section)

===Franklin expedition===
{{Main|Franklin's lost expedition}}
[[File:John Franklin 1845.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|[[John Franklin|Sir John Franklin]], the leader of the lost 1845 expedition]]
In 1845, a lavishly equipped two-ship expedition led by Sir [[John Franklin]] sailed to the Canadian Arctic to chart the last unknown swaths of the Northwest Passage. Confidence was high, as they estimated there was less than {{convert|500|km|abbr=on}} remaining of unexplored Arctic mainland coast. When the ships failed to return, relief expeditions and search parties explored the Canadian Arctic, which resulted in a thorough charting of the region, along with a possible passage. Many artifacts from the expedition were found over the next century and a half, including notes that the ships were ice-locked in 1846 near [[King William Island]], about halfway through the passage, and unable to break free. Records showed Franklin died in 1847 and Captain [[Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier]] took over command. In 1848 the expedition abandoned the two ships and its members tried to escape south across the [[tundra]] by [[sled]]ge. Although some of the crew may have survived into the early 1850s, no evidence has ever been found of any survivors. In 1853, explorer [[John Rae (explorer)|John Rae]] was told by local Inuit about the disastrous fate of Franklin's expedition, but his reports were not welcomed in Britain on account of his reports of [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]] amongst the surviving crews.

[[Starvation]], exposure and scurvy all contributed to the men's deaths. In 1981 [[Owen Beattie]], an anthropologist from the [[University of Alberta]], examined remains from sites associated with the expedition.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Notman |first1=Derek N.H. |last2=Anderson |first2=Lawrence |last3=Beattie |first3=Owen B. |last4=Amy |first4=Roger |title=Arctic paleoradiology: portable radiographic examination of two frozen sailors from the Franklin Expedition (1845–1845) |journal=[[American Journal of Roentgenology]] |date=August 1987 |volume=149|issue=2|pages=347–350|pmid=3300222 |doi=10.2214/ajr.149.2.347|s2cid=1380915 |doi-access= }}</ref> This led to further investigations and the examination of tissue and bone from the frozen bodies of three seamen, [[John Torrington]], [[William Braine]] and [[John Hartnell]], exhumed from the [[permafrost]] of [[Beechey Island]]. Laboratory tests revealed [[Lead poisoning|high concentrations of lead]] in all three (the expedition carried 8,000 tins of food sealed with a lead-based [[solder]]).<ref>{{cite journal |last=Bayliss |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Bayliss
|title=Sir John Franklin's last arctic expedition: a medical disaster  |journal=[[Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine]] |date=March 2002 |volume=95 |issue=3 |pages=151–153 |pmid=11872772|pmc=1279489 |doi=10.1177/014107680209500315 }}</ref> Another researcher has suggested [[botulism]] caused deaths among crew members.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Horowitz|first=B.Z. |title=Polar poisons: Did Botulism doom the Franklin expedition? |journal=[[Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology]] |date=2003|volume=41|issue=6|pages=841–847 |pmid=14677794|doi=10.1081/CLT-120025349 |s2cid=10473423 }}</ref> Evidence from 1996, that confirms reports first made by John Rae in 1854 based on Inuit accounts, suggests that the last of the crew may have resorted to [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]] of deceased members in an effort to survive.<ref>{{cite web |last=Keenleyside |first=Anne |title=The final days of the Franklin Expedition: new skeletal evidence |work=[[Arctic (journal)|Arctic]] |volume=50 |issue=1 |page=36 |date=1997 |url=http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic50-1-36.pdf |access-date=January 26, 2008 |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic50-1-36.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>