Beechey Island

Beechey Island

Beechey Island is located in the Wellington Channel in the Arctic Archipelago of Nunavut, Canada. The Barrow Strait separates it from the south-west corner of Devon Island. The first visit to the island from Europe was in 1819 by Captain William Edward Parry. The island has been the site of many significant events in the history of Arctic exploration. British explorer Sir John Franklin, who led the ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1845, chose the sheltered harbor of Beechey Island as his first winter camp. The place was only rediscovered in 1851, when British and American explorers anchored nearby. Beechey Island is best known for being the site of three graves of members of the Franklin expedition, first discovered in 1850 by searchers after the lost Franklin expedition. On a later expedition, an explorer named Thomas Morgan died on board the ship North Star on 22 May 1854, and was buried with three of the original Franklin crew. Due to the deteriorating condition of the Beechey grave markers, they were all replaced with bronze plaques in the 1990s.