National Post (National Edition)
Inuit fear curse of 1845 voyage reawakened
The doomed 1845 Arctic voyage of Sir John Franklin to the Northwest Passage was one of the greatest disasters of British polar history, ending in the deaths of 129 crewmen.
Now the Inuit community where the wreckage of the HMS Terror and its sister ship, the Erebus, were found say its curse has been reawakened — and is claiming lives in the tiny Indigenous settlement. Fear has gripped the remote settlement of Gjoa Haven, on King William Island in Nunavut, amid claims of “non-human” beings stalking the ice.
“People are superstitious. They feel there is a connection between the deaths and disturbing the wreck sites,” Jacob Keanik, whose brother and nephew drowned in a boating accident after the ships were found, told the CBC.
“My late mother told me, even before these wrecks were discovered … the whole King William Island has non-human people that we cannot see.”
“It’s a funny feeling when we get on the other side of the island. You sense that somebody’s around you, but there’s nobody around you.”
The wrecks of Franklin’s “lost expedition” were only discovered recently by Canadian divers near Gjoa Haven — Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016.
The ships left England on a mission led by the Victorian explorer to navigate a route through the Northwest Passage. They became frozen in Artic ice near King William Island and none of the men on board survived.
Divers have been removing artifacts from the wrecks, which are expected to go on show at a local museum by 2023. But six unexpected deaths in two weeks last August has led to a belief among the 1,000-strong Inuit community that the wrecks should not have been disturbed.
Along with Keanik’s relatives who died in the boating accident, two men died in an all-terrain vehicle accident, a staff member of the local school died of a heart attack and an elder passed away.
Tamara Tarasoff, with Parks Canada, the government agency protecting marine conservation areas, said the community “feel the wrecks are cursed and should not be disturbed.”
Fred Pedersen, of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, tried to reassure concerned residents of Gjoa Haven at a community meeting that “it is only artifacts that are being taken off wreck sites.
“There are plans in place that if any bodies are found, they will be left in place. We will not bring up or disturb human remains.”
The site of the Erebus wreck was blessed by Inuit “guardians” shortly after it was discovered but no quick blessing was carried out for Terror.
That blessing has now been performed in an attempt to stop the “curse.”
Dominique Tessier, a spokesman for Parks Canada, said that after the tragedies, elders blessed sand from Gjoa Haven and it was sprinkled over the wreck of HMS Terror.
The first blessing on the Erebus site was carried out by Louie Kamookak, an Inuit elder, but he died before being able to conduct the blessing on Terror.