The rehabilitation of Rae’s conclusions and the recognition of the accuracy of the Inuit accounts as sources of historical knowledge has been part of a broader reorientation of Arctic historical scholarship in recent decades. The Inuit oral knowledge about the Franklin expedition has been taken seriously by researchers in ways it was not in the nineteenth century, and that reorientation has shaped how the archaeological work at sites like NgLj-2 is understood and contextualized.
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## The Victory Point Note: Reading the Document Closely
The standard Admiralty form used by Gore in May 1847 and by Fitzjames in April 1848 is worth reading closely, because it is the only direct written evidence from any expedition member that has ever been recovered.
The form itself — printed, with blank spaces for specific information — was designed for exactly the purpose it was used for: a standard record left in a known location for search parties or subsequent expeditions to find. The Admiralty issued these forms to expeditions with the specific intention that they would be deposited at key geographical waypoints — capes, points, prominent landmarks where a cairn could be built and where a search party would logically look.
Gore’s first entry, dated May 28, 1847, is matter-of-fact and informative. It places the ships in a specific position, describes the previous winter at Beechey Island, notes the northward survey up Wellington Channel, and records that all was well. This was a routine expedition update, the kind that would have been deposited at multiple locations during an actively navigating voyage.