Trapped in Time

"They look more alive than dead." I So said Physical Anthropologist Owen Beattie last week of the three British sailors he and his colleagues at the University of Alberta had dug out from Arctic permafrost. Buried in 1846, the corpses are in flawless condition, down to the 19th century outfits and funeral head wrappings. The hands of one of the corpses, says Beattie, are long and delicate, like a pianist's. Petty Officer John Torrington, 20, left, Able Seaman John Hartnell, 25, and Royal Marine William Braine, 34, died after the two ships of Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition in search of the Northwest Passage were trapped by thick ice near Canada's remote Beechey Island. Over the next year, the 129 men on board struggled to survive, setting up a supply shop and smithy on the frozen tundra, but all eventually perished. Now that he has recovered three bodies, Beattie says, scientists can try to learn whether it was scurvy, toxins in the food or merely despair that killed the stranded crew.