“[Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka had] also found a piece of paper with a pointing finger. When we remember the ‘direction posts’ of Beechey Island, we can see that such a pointing finger is a trademark of sorts for the crews of the Erebus and Terror.” – David C. Woodman, Unravelling The Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony.
The paper is ragged, but there is a faint but clear outline of a hand, with the finger pointing at something that only dead men could see.
It is a relic of the Franklin Expedition that was found by United States Army Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka in 1879, long years after everyone on the Franklin Expedition had died.
It’s not painted on wood and perched at the top of a boarding pike, like the finger-posts of Beechey Island.
It was carefully drawn on paper, with a pencil, and it was placed between the stones of a cairn built between Cape Felix and Wall Bay, on King William Island.
FRANKLIN RELICS
There was speculation that it had never left the Arctic, or that it had disintegrated on the journey south. But Schwatka brought the Pointing Hand safely back with him to the United States. From there, he sent it to the Admiralty in London in March 1881 alongside more than a hundred other Franklin relics.
And it still survives, today, nearly 140 years later.
I’ve seen it.