13. The grave at Crozier’s Landing.

Heinrich Klutschak, of the Schwatka expedition, described this very fine stone slab cyst grave, as well as publishing a drawing of the grave with the skull alongside it (Klutschak (1987, p. 83):
‘….on the 27th, Franz Melms and I were walking along the coast towards Victory Point, where Sir James Ross had erected a stone cairn on one of his journeys. Near the waterline Melms found a strip of canvas (such as used for hauling a sledge), with the marking T.11. While he was making a more thorough inspection of the area I spotted a cairn and near it a human skull. It was a grave made of flat slabs of sandstone, with a grave-vault but built above ground. It had once been covered but had obviously been subjected to a search. The skull (indisputably that of a white man) lay outside, along with other human bones. Inside the grave a luxuriant growth of moss was flourishing on some remnants of blue cloth which, judging by the buttons and the fine texture, had once belonged to an English officer’s uniform. A silk handkerchief in a remarkably good state of preservation lay at the head end and above it on a rock a silver medal measuring 2.5 – 2.75 inches in diameter lay openly exposed. The fact that this medal had escaped the eyes of the Inuit I can only ascribe to the fact that it had either been hidden away by snow, or that the natives’ loot was already quite considerable and that they overlooked this piece of silver in their joy. Even I did not notice it at first glance since it was the same colour as the rock. The solid silver medal bore on one side a bas-relief of the British King with the inscription ‘Georgius IIII D.G.Britain. Rex 1820’. On the other side was a laurel wreath and around the outside of it was engraved the inscription ‘Second Mathematical Prize, Royal Naval College’, and inside it ‘Awarded to John Irving, Midsummer 1830‘. The medal had been placed in the grave along with the dead man (lieutenant on board Terror) about thirty years earlier. During this long period it had even left a mark on the rock, and it provided definite proof as to the identity of the person buried here.
Less than a hundred paces from the shore lay the remains of an artificial heap of rocks which had been thrown together, a pile of old clothes, and a large number of objects which clearly belonged to the equipment of an arctic expedition. They included four stoves with pots and other accessories. Along a short stretch of coast lay items of clothing, stockings, and mittens sewed from woollen blankets, razors, etc. as well as a surgeon’s tourniquet. An earthenware jug bore the imprint ‘R. Wheatley, Wine and Spirit Merchant, Greenhithe, Kent’, while a brush carried the name ‘H. Wilks’ carved into the wood.’
The camp at Crozier’s Landing, built on a 20 foot terrace, would have been visible from the deck of a ship about 6 km away.
The Schwatka expedition believed that this was the grave of Lieutenant John Irving of HMS Terror because of the silver medal found there. However Lieutenant Irving was alive and well on 25th April 1848 – the day before the retreat started – because he is mentioned in the 1848 record:
‘This paper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, 4 miles to the Northward – where it was deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847.’
Elaborate graves are not likely to have been constructed after the failure of the 1848 retreat and the loss of about a half of the men. An alternative explanation has been suggested by Roobol (2019). It may be the grave of the popular Commander Graham Gore. If Gore died in the hold of HMS Terror when she was overthrown in summer 1847, his fellow officers may have buried him at what was thought to be Ross’s Pillar or the beginning of the unknown last section of the North-West Passage (Ross’s pillar to Cape Herschel) that Gore and his team had mapped in early 1847. The grave site could have been seen as ‘The Gates of the North-West Passage’.
QUESTION. Is the grave at Crozier’s Landing that of Lieutenant Irving or Commander Gore?