"The Royal Navy's preserved meats 'scandal': estimating the edible quantity and nutritional deficiencies of the Franklin expedition's canned provisions

In January 1852, as searches continued for Sir John Franklin and his missing Arctic expedition, The Times newspaper reported that large quantities of preserved (i.e. canned) meats supplied to the Royal Navy by the contractor Stefan Goldner had been found putrid and inedible. As Goldner had supplied the Franklin expedition, the newspaper proposed that the meats may have had fatal consequences. A Parliamentary enquiry quickly established that the defective cans had been manufactured five years after those supplied to Franklin, and it is now accepted that Goldner had supplied good quality meats which had no part in the eventual outcome. However, the conclusion neglects the fact that 5% of all contractors’ meats were condemned on ships, often due to rough handling and sea-water corrosion. As the cans supplied to Franklin would not have been an exception, the study applies evidence from the enquiry, and recently-published details of the expedition’s victualling schedules, to estimate the number of cans that would have been condemned by the time at Beechey Island when a decision would be made whether remaining stocks were adequate to sustain the mission. Although good quality meat may have been supplied, the high temperatures during manufacture and prior to serving, and the simple passage of time, would have rendered them deficient in vitamins B1 and C which were essential to maintaining health. The expedition’s unique circumstances of long entrapment without recourse to hunting to supplement those deficiencies, or to escape, would prove fatal regardless of the quality of the canned provisions.