Beechey Papers rediscovered in The National Archives

A fragment of paper picked up at Beechey Island in 1850.
A Beechey Papers fragment with “Mr M’Donald” written on it in pencil. Image courtesy of Logan Zachary at Illuminator.blog. For full resolution photographs of the papers, please see: https://www.illuminator.blog/p/beechey-papers.html

At 10am on Thursday 15 August 2019, I walked into The National Archives in Kew, London, to look for some missing journals. I didn’t find them. What I did find was the Beechey Papers, a collection of Franklin relics that were assumed to be lost.

I was astonished to find scraps of journals, newspapers and other fragments of printed and hand-written materials that were clearly marked as having been picked up where the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror had spent the winter of 1845-1846.

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