Petty Officer John Shaw Torrington (1825 — 1 January 1846) was an explorer and Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 stoker. He was part of an expedition to find the Northwest Passage

Northwest Passage

The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways amidst the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...

, but along with the rest of the crew, including the leader, Sir John Franklin

John Franklin

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...

, mysteriously died early in the trip. His preserved body was exhumed in 1984, to try to determine the cause of death. It was the best preserved example of a corpse since the ancient Tollund Man

Tollund Man

The Tollund Man is the naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the time period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950 buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, which preserved his body. Such a find is...

 which was found in the 1950s.

The Northwest Passage expedition

Torrington was a part of Sir John Franklin's final expedition

Franklin's lost expedition

Franklin's lost expedition was a doomed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845. A Royal Navy officer and experienced explorer, Franklin had served on three previous Arctic expeditions, the latter two as commanding officer...

 to find the Northwest Passage, a sea route to Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, via the northern edge of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. They set off from Greenhithe

Greenhithe

Greenhithe is a town in Dartford District of Kent, England. It forms part of the civil parish of Swanscombe and Greenhithe.Greenhithe, as it is spelled today, is located where it was possible to build wharves for transshipping corn, wood and other commodities; its largest cargoes were of chalk and...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in two ships, the HMS Terror

HMS Terror (1813)

HMS Terror was a bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in the Davy shipyard in Topsham, Devon. The ship, variously listed as being of either 326 or 340 tons, carried two mortars, one and one .-War service:...

 and HMS Erebus

HMS Erebus (1826)

HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was named after the dark region in Hades of Greek mythology called Erebus...

, on 19 May 1845. The trip was expected to last about three years, so the ships were packed with provisions which included more than 136,000 pounds of flour, 3,684 gallons of high-proof alcohol and 33,000 pounds of tinned meat, soup and vegetables. However, after late July no one heard from or saw the crew again.

Search expeditions

Many search parties were sent to look for the missing crew, but nothing significant was discovered until 1850, when the ruins of a stone hut, some food cans, and three graves were found. The graves contained the remains of Torrington, William Braine, and John Hartnell. Torrington had apparently died about seven months into the expedition, which led to further questions as to why crew members had died so early in the expedition. In 1976, the graves were relocated on Beechey Island

Beechey Island

Beechey Island is an island located in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago of Nunavut, Canada, in Wellington Channel. It is separated from the southwest corner of Devon Island by Barrow Strait...

, Nunavut

Nunavut

Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, and the headboards (presumed to be the originals) were transferred to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. In 1980 anthropologist Owen Beattie decided to analyze the bodies and try to solve the mystery.

Autopsy

After ensuring that Torrington's descendants were aware of the plan, Beattie and his team began their work on 17 August 1984. Torrington's coffin was 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) deep in the permafrost

Permafrost

In geology, permafrost, cryotic soil or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of...

, which the team had to dig through. When the coffin was opened they saw how well preserved the outer parts of Torrington's body were, apparently not much different from the day he was buried. In order to thaw the body, the team decided to pour water on the ice, to slowly melt it away and therefore not cause any damage to the body. Once thawed, they undressed the body to examine it. They found that Torrington had been very sick at the time of his death—he was so thin all his ribs were visible, and he only weighed about 38.5 kilograms (84.9 lb). After conducting a thorough autopsy and taking some tissue samples, the team left to analyse what they had discovered.

Tissue samples revealed that Torrington's body had probably been stored on board ship while his grave was being dug; in almost all areas, significant cell autolysis

Autolysis (biology)

In biology, autolysis, more commonly known as self-digestion, refers to the destruction of a cell through the action of its own enzymes. It may also refer to the digestion of an enzyme by another molecule of the same enzyme....

 had occurred, and cell definition was very poor. His brain was almost completely gone, leaving only a "yellow granular liquid". The lungs showed scarring from earlier bouts with tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 as well as signs of more recent pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

. After toxicology analysis showed heightened levels of lead in Torrington's hair and fingernails, the team concluded Torrington had died from pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

, after suffering from various lung problems, which were aggravated by the lead poisoning. Beattie believed that the canned food was the most likely source of the lead. More tests revealed a high amount of lead in all three bodies, and some feel that this was chief cause of the expedition's failure. Photographs of Torrington, in a remarkable state of outward preservation, were published widely, including in People

People (magazine)

In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

magazine which named him one of the world's most interesting personalities in 1984, and the widely-reprinted photograph inspired James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

to write a song, "The Frozen Man".

Further reading