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In this, Beattie and Geiger compare the Franklin Expedition’s fate to other instances in which people took technological advancements for granted, leading to systematic breakdowns. It was found in their food supply, most notably in their heavy reliance on tinned foods” (pg. The source of their defeat was not the ice-choked seas, the deep cold, the winters of absolute night, the labyrinthine geography or the soul-destroying isolation. This evidence, coupled with historical records of lead exposure from nineteenth century canning processes, helped to explain the underlying cause for the expedition’s mortality.Beattie and Geiger conclude, “The story of how the Royal Navy failed to achieve the Northwest Passage is really that of how the world’s greatest navy battled, and was ultimately humbled by, a simple yet gruesome disease – scurvy, allied to a menace of which they could not begin to conceive: lead poisoning. They further explore the leading theories of the day for Franklin’s loss, including scurvy and the nineteenth century ailment of “debility.” After examining the historical record, Beattie and Geiger summarize Beattie’s 1980s expeditions to to King William Island and Beechey Island, in which Beattie examined bones and the graves of three Franklin Expedition crew, discovering the presence of elevated lead levels. Beattie and Geiger place Franklin’s Expedition in the context of Arctic exploration following the Napoleonic Wars, with the search expeditions of the mid-nineteenth century deifying Franklin and cementing the expedition in the national, and international, consciousness. In Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, Owen Beattie and John Geiger trace the history of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to discover the Northwest Passage aboard the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1845.