Subsequent research has qualified this theory. Lead contamination as a primary or significant cause of the expedition’s outcome has been questioned by researchers who note that the documented deaths and the timeline of the expedition’s disintegration are consistent with other causes — scurvy, starvation, cold exposure — that do not require lead poisoning as an explanation. The lead contamination remains part of the documented record of what happened to the men at Beechey Island; its significance for the expedition’s overall outcome is a matter of ongoing scholarly discussion rather than established consensus.
The second winter, 1846–47, was spent locked in the ice off the northwest coast of King William Island. The ships were held fast by pack ice that did not release them in the spring of 1847 as a typical Arctic vessel trapped in seasonal ice might hope. The ice in Victoria Strait was multi-year pack ice — older, thicker, and far more resistant to summer melting than the seasonal ice that an expedition might expect to work through. The expedition was not simply delayed; it was permanently stopped.
By the spring of 1847, men were dying in numbers that made it clear the situation was not recoverable. Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847. The circumstances of his death — whether from illness, exposure, or some other cause — are not established by any surviving record.
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## The Note in the Cairn
One document survives from the expedition’s time in the Arctic. It is a standard Royal Navy printed form, designed to be filled out by an expedition and left in a cairn at a known location, to be found by search parties or later expeditions. It is now known as the Victory Point note, after the specific location on the northwestern coast of King William Island where it was deposited.