John Torrington

John Shaw Torrington
Biographical information
Marital status	Unmarried
Date of birth	1825
Place of birth	Manchester
Date of death	January 1, 1846
Place of death	Beechey Island
Physical description
Gender	Male
Height	5' 4"
Eye color	Blue

John Torrington was the leading stoker aboard HMS Terror during the Franklin expedition. He would be the first fatality of the Expedition.

Early Life

John Shaw Torrington was born in Manchester in 1825. He was the son of William Torrington, a coachman, and Sarah (née Shaw) Torrington. He had a younger sister, Esther Shaw Torrington, born in 1826. John and Esther were baptized on the same day, December 10, 1826.

John's mother, Sarah, died in 1833, at age 27. In 1836, William Torrington married a widow named Mary Hoyle (née Warren), who became John and Esther's step-mother. Mary had two sons from her previous marriage, William (baptized January 2, 1825) and James Warren (baptized February 11, 1827).

Franklin Expedition

In the spring of 1845, at age 19, Torrington signed up for the Franklin expedition as the leading stoker aboard HMS Terror, a position that carried the rank of petty officer. He joined the crew a week before the ship set sail, on May 12, having signed up at the Woolwich Dockyard. Torrington was a first entry, meaning that this was his first time working on a Royal Navy ship. He allotted his pay to his step-mother, Mary, although she is listed as his mother rather than step-mother.

As a stoker, Torrington would have attended to the ship's engine, working under Terror's engineer, James Thompson, and alongside his fellow stokers, Luke Smith and William Johnson. The engines, however, were meant for limited use, as the expedition was equipped with only enough fuel for twelve days, and the engines could not be used in winter when the boats were frozen in (stokers received reduced pay during winter months because of this), so Torrington may have done little to no actual stoking during his time on the expedition.

Death and Exhumation

John Torrington died on January 1, 1846, at age 20. He was the first known member of the Franklin expedition to die. He was buried on Beechey Island. He would soon be joined by two more crew members, both of whom were from Erebus, John Hartnell and William Braine. His tombstone was the only one of the three that lacked a biblical quote, displaying only a simple description:

SACRED TO

THE MEMORY OF

JOHN TORRINGTON

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE

JANUARY 1ST A.D. 1846

ON BOARD OF

H M SHIP TERROR

AGED 20 YEARS

In 1984, 138 years after Torrington's death, forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie exhumed Torrington's body in an attempt to discover what led to the demise of the Franklin expedition. Torrington's body had been preserved by the permafrost on Beechey, giving him the appearance of someone who had only recently died. Beattie and his team thawed Torrington's body and performed an autopsy, gathering samples from the body, clothing, and coffin materials for later analysis.

Torrington had been buried in a well-worn, white cotton shirt with thin blue stripes, as well as grayish-white linen pants that showed little to no wear. A white kerchief with blue polka dots was wrapped around his head, and he was barefoot. Cotton strips were also wrapped around his body at the level of his elbows, hands, ankles, and toes, to bind his limbs. His body was cushioned on a bed of wood shavings. Unfortunately, when his body was being lifted from his coffin, the back of his shirt was still frozen to the bottom of the coffin, resulting in a large portion of the back of his shirt tearing off. This was taken as a sample for study, along with the cotton strip binding his elbows and a small sample from the cuff of his pants. The kerchief around his head was not sampled.

The autopsy revealed that Torrington's lungs were blackened, indicating anthracosis (a milder form of coal workers' pneumoconiosis, aka black lung), which is typically caused by inhaling coal smoke and dust as well as by smoking tobacco. Torrington, being both a stoker and from the highly industrialized city of Manchester, would have been exposed to coal dust frequently, and he most likely smoked. He also had signs of emphysema (COPD), which is a common symptom of black lung. Most notably, Torrington's lungs showed that he'd suffered from tuberculosis too, which may have led to the pneumonia that is believed to have struck the fatal blow, resulting in his death. His body was severely emaciated, which is a symptom of tuberculosis, although post-mortem desiccation would be at least partially responsible for this. Tissue and hair samples also indicated high levels of lead in his body, although the extent to which this had an effect on his health and ultimate death is still under debate.

Appearance

Torrington was 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm) tall, making him slightly shorter than the average height at the time, which was closer to 5 and a half feet (170 cm), although working class men like Torrington tended to be shorter than middle and upper class men. According to his autopsy report, he had long brown hair. Four-inch long samples taken from the nape of his neck suggests that his hair may have reached to his shoulders. The official autopsy report does not mention his eye color, but John Geiger, who was not present at the exhumation but who did work with Beattie and co-wrote the book Frozen in Time with him, described Torrington's eyes as blue. Torrington had long, slender fingers that showed little signs of recent manual labor, which suggests he may have been ill for some time prior to his death, preventing him from performing work on board the ship. However, the lack of use of the engine may also have contributed to this by limiting the amount of work he had to do on board.