But of course, Ric. One more comparison: both the Franklin expedition and the AE journey had ready-made "conventional wisdom" solutions. In the Franklin case, a single line in that one page Admiralty report sheet was taken to mean that the the entire crew of both ice-locked ships -- over 100 men -- sought to reach civilization by marching together over the Canadian Arctic wastes to reach a river heading south, dragging heavy sleds with boats loaded with tons of supplies. This CW disregarded Innuit testimony and other evidence to the contrary, largely because this story-line fit the Victorian heroic ideal of stalwart Englishmen attempting the impossible together and dying in their tracks. It took painsaking research by hundreds of investigators over the decades to piece together a more accurate and far more gripping alternative narrative of what actually happened. The AE saga has its own CW narrative: AE got lost and crashed into the sea when she ran out of gas. Just as in the Franklin CW, evidence to the contrary on the AE mystery has been dismissed as not fitting the "accepted" storyline. But the intrepid researchers at TIGHAR have put together a mosaic of disparate facts that tell a different story.
Scott, #3292
Scott,
Your research into the comparisons between the 150-year history of the Franklin Expedition investigations and the now 77-year history of Earhart's disappearance was fascinating. I was motivated from reading you to take a look at some of the history to see if more comparative points might emerge. The book
Frozen in Time by Owen Beattie and John Geiger provided a few more items of interest, but your initial observations highlighted all the most notable ones. Here are a few more notes of comparison between the two searches that may be of some minor note:
Both investigations appear to have had:
1. Sites whose archaeological record contains multiple and interacting entries by disparate peoples: Original searchers for Franklin's Expedition in 1850 had moved many artifacts far from where they had originally been deposited. The Seven Site, by comparison, was visited by Coast Guardsmen and colonists who may have moved or even shot some of the artifacts.
2. Repurposing of artifacts for local uses, sometimes as playthings for children, sometimes as components of fishing rods: The Franklin Expedition log books may have encountered this type of fate. Reports of children ripping out the pages of 'books with markings' had circulated.
3. Lost focus on the search due to an intervening war: In the case of Earhart, World War II diverted attention away from the lost fliers and may have provided a geopolitical motive for not alerting American authorities of the discovery of the Nikumaroro bones. In the case of Franklin, the Crimean War diverted attention from new discoveries in the search by explorer John Rae.
4. Eerie similarities in the types of artifacts found with the passage of many decades: parts of shoes, canvas pieces, earthenware container fragments, a medicine bottle, a clear bottle with tantalizing markings.
5. More recent phases of the investigation turn toward scientific data rather than data combed from secondary and primary anecdotal sources: "...all the volumes written about the doomed expedition combined were not able to provide the scientific data Beattie had already gained from the scanty physical remains found on King William Island."
Some of these points may in fact be common to all investigations involving archaeological work. Others are, to me, quite startling in that they illustrate how, to paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Again, fascinating work on your part, Scott. I was absorbed by it!
Joe Cerniglia
TIGHAR #3078ER
