Arctic Tomb(Franklin expedition documentary)

of the Arctic their voyage of discovery was to become one of the most enduring mysteries in the annals of exploration men had long dreamt of discovering a Northwest Passage a fast sea route across the top of the world that would link Europe with Asia for 300 years ships have been selling out ship to the Royal Navy or ships of private merchants have been setting out from England intent on battering their way through to get to the Pacific and on the map it looks so simple because you have this giant archipelago north of Canada with nice little waterways but because the reality is that those waterways are fixed often never ice free until Royal Navy captain's got that they didn't really have any idea how distressingly difficult it was to find their way through this labyrinth of ice-choked passages in that quest you have the makings of a search for the Holy Grail because you just can't quite put your hand on it you know it's there but it's just beyond your grasp and it's so close that that's what keeps the quest going in 1845 the man behind the quest for a Northwest Passage was Sir John Barrow he held the influential position of second secretary to the British Admiralty and had at his command the most powerful military force in the world barrow's influence is to be felt everywhere you see that every ship that went tried to get through the Northwest Passage will try to get to the pole Barrow is involved with that summer as a man very much with his finger on the pulse of exploration the Northwest Passage remained his number-one obsession he had sponsored no fewer than eight expeditions in the previous 20 years to find it in 1845 he was 82 years old this was going to be his last chance pocket the passage for the Empire he saw it as a means of capping his career at they are not a with thee the passage would have been nailed out and finally under barrows tenancy on his watch so to speak Burroughs first choice to lead the expedition was James Clark Ross the Navy's most experienced polar explorer but he'd recently married and declined the offer a less favored candidate was waiting in the wings Sir John Franklin a seasoned Explorer had mapped 2,000 miles of Arctic coastline early in his career a close encounter with starvation had earned in public Fame as the man who ate his boots [Music] the one thing that everybody agrees on with Sir John Franklin is he was eminently likable because he was a that rarity he was a genuinely good man he's resolutely British in the stereotypical way but beneath that veneer is a very humane warm man who would not put others in harm's way if he could help it the immensely popular man people liked him they knew where they stood with him he was again solid and reliable and wherever people went they always comment on Franklin the man they could trust and follow John Franklin was from spills be in Lincolnshire where his father was a successful shopkeeper one of three brothers he was born in this tiny bedroom above his father's shop in 1786 him later baptized in the local parish church he grew up a devout Christian and throughout his career his actions were governed by strong evangelical principles [Music] the young Franklin went to school a few miles away in Laos where he received a solid education it was in his boarding room at the top of the Headmaster's house that he dreamed of a life at sea at the age of 15 he entered the Royal Navy and quietly carved a name for himself as a young officer seeing active service at the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of New Orleans his reputation was firmly established with two epic Overland expeditions to the Arctic on behalf of the Admiralty when he mapped a great part of the North American coastline they brought in public acclaim and a knighthood he'd been a most successful not just a UH naval commander but a successful Explorer on behalf of the Admiralty so of course when the chance came to lead what's thought of as of the final expedition to discover a Northwest Passage John Franklin put himself forward and was quite sure that nobody else would have a chance his career however had been in the doldrums an appointment to Tasmania as governor for seven years had not been a success and Franklin longed to reestablish the glory of his polar years when asked by the Admiralty for his views on a final attempt to find a Northwest Passage he naturally gave the idea a ringing endorsement your Lordships most obedient servant John Franklin captain in his ambition to lead the expedition Franklin was strongly supported by his second wife Jane a woman of character and determination with a passion for world travel she lobbied fiercely on her husband's behalf and knew that despite his recent career setbacks he was still one of Britain's leading Arctic explorers Sir John Barrow needed a name with marquee values and force area as we say in Franklin certainly had that he was a United he was famous he was a household word he hadn't been to the Arctic in 20 years and Sir John Barrow pointedly had not given him an important assignment in almost 20 years but he had the name value and so at the age of 59 Captain Sir John Franklin is given command of HMS Erebus and terror to find and sail through the Northwest Passage paribus and Terra were identical vessels which had recently seen service in the Antarctic both were sailing ships with strengths and howls and for the journey to the Arctic were specially fitted with locomotive engines to help power them through the ice HMS Erebus and HMS terror were literally the space shuttles of their day built and equipped to go where no ships have gone before two ships carefully outfitted not just with bluff boughs and sturdy hulls but armored as well and equipped with steam engines the epitome of technology to force their way through the ice they were driven by screw propellers instead of side paddle wheels which was the norm at the time and an even more advance these propellers were retractable they pack everything possible that they can think of books costumes for theatrical plays a monkey and a dog to help amuse them musical instruments canned in tin foods the best that modern technology can offer to help keep them from spoiling the tools that they might need to saw and chip their way out of the ice the ships were provisioned for at least three years and with a hundred and thirty-four men on board nothing was left to chance as Erebus and terror were prepared for departure Franklin receives his final orders from the Admiralty the object of the voyage Sir John is the discovery of a Northwest Passage the supreme command of the expedition is vested in you and you will proceed in the Erebus as soon as the preparations are complete my mid May 1845 the two ships were fully provisioned and ready for departure at home lady Franklin was putting the finishing touches to a silk flag she had made it was to be placed at the point where her husband would successfully breach the Northwest Passage Oh My dear I beg of you never do that that's how they treated corpse in Her Majesty's Navy [Music] despite this unfortunate incident Franklin and his men left England on May the 1915 45 in high spirits they sailed up the coast of Britain and after a brief stop in the Orkneys headed for their first Arctic port of call on the west coast of Greenland Erebus and terror could boast some of the finest officers in Her Majesty's Navy second-in-command to Franklin and captain of the terror was Frances Crozier he'd recently returned from a four-year period in the Antarctic with James Clark Ross captain of the Erebus and third in command of the expedition was the dashing James Fitch James one of the most popular men in the Navy the journal he kept on their voyage to Greenland provides a unique insight into the atmosphere onboard Erebus and the characters of some of his fellow officers I have just had a game of chess with the purser Ozma who is delightful full of quaint dry sayings always good humoured always laughing never a bore and he is a gentleman the most original character of all ruff intelligent unpolished with a broad North Country accent but not vulgar good-humoured and honest hearted is read a greenland whaler native of Aladin gram gore the first left Tennant is a man of great stability of character a very good officer and the sweetest of tempers and everybody is in a good humour either with himself or his neighbors on board terror a different spirit prevailed captain Crozier had the most Arctic experience of all the officers on the expedition in a letter to his closest friend the Explorer James Clark Ross he revealed his misgivings James I wish she were here I would then have no doubt about pursuing a proper course how I do miss you I cannot bear going on board the Erebus Sir John is very kind and would have me there every day if I would go all things are going on well and quietly but we are I fear sadly late what I fear is that from our being so late we shall have no time to look around and judge for ourselves but blunder into the eye since makin 1824 of it all goes smoothly but I am sadly alone the cruise of Erebus and terror had no such misgivings most of them had not been to the Arctic before and for them it was a great adventure the generous discovery pay was also a strong incentive for facing the challenges that lay ahead their faith in Franklin their commander and spiritual leader son but delivered him up for all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things Franklin conducted his own religious services and that was very much part of the town of the expedition this feeling of faith which bound people together as it is written for thy sake we are all killed there was this concentration on the Christian moment if you like every moment of the day would have been considered in terms of how Sir John was looking after his own soul and by extension the souls of the officers and men who went with him it's gonna see my [Music] to the throws on our showers in the [Music] to see my passenger [Music] we're in once a [Music] it took them almost a month to reach the west coast of Greenland with its spectacular ice formations it gave them their first taste of the Arctic the men was spellbound and found their first safe Anchorage at Disko Bay there they replenish their supplies and sent journals and letters back to England along with five crewmen invalided home morale and the two ships remain good captain Fitzjames made a final entry in his journal before the expedition left Greenland for the heart of the Arctic surge on is full of life and energy with good judgment and a capital memory one of the best I knows his conversation is delightful and most instructive and of all men he is the most fitted for the command on an enterprise requiring sound sense and great perseverance gentlemen as we embark upon this noble venture may I propose a toast to your dear wife lady Franklin and daughter miss Eleanor baby Frank there northwest journey from disco Bay to the heart of the Arctic lay across Baffin Bay and then west down Lancaster Sound [Music] on July the 12th 1845 they left [Music] it took them just less than a month to sail across the ice dotted waters of Baffin Bay the ships were last seen by two Arctic whalers at the end of July and they reported that Franklin and his men were all well and in remarkable spirits their progress was phenomenal as was later determined the temperatures are nice that summer were among the mildest ever recorded in the Arctic they raced 900 miles west down like us to sound propelled by favorable winds and their revolutionary steam engines [Music] however this remarkable progress was too good to last the two vessels were eventually prevented from sailing further west or north by the heavy ice [Music] after circumnavigating Cornwallis island the ships found a safe haven for the winter in the Lee of beachy Island just as a sea began to freeze over Franklin's men came ashore on this beach more than a hundred and fifty years later it still bears the evidence of their presence these mounds mark the site of their winter headquarters where they could escape from the confines of the two ships there were cooking and washing areas a shooting range a forge and even a kitchen garden they were fully prepared for the Arctic winter the British had the system of winter quarters down to a science by 1845 the top masts were struck down snow was shoveled up against the sides of the ship to insulate it from the cold temperatures of 50 below zero sometimes blizzards and total whiteout conditions of those so it was a very lonely and dark place and for most of all this was their first experience of an Arctic winter it was to say the least so green psychologically trying experience everything inside the ship frosted a boat coming through the side of the ship would have a a knot of frost on the end of it because the cold was coming through and then the frost would melt if you've got the the interior ship warming up the hoarfrost would melt and drip down on the occupants you had to keep the men busy and exercised and interested in life and so they had plays they had classes they thought to Bluejackets how to read many of them couldn't the senior officers would have spent much of the winter committing their detailed scientific observations and magnetic readings to paper when the weather permitted they would have led small sledge parties to map and explore the surrounding area any opportunity to hunt fresh meat would have been seized upon as soon as spring appeared and the ships were freed from the ice the men left the expedition left beachy Island in a real rush and contrary to usual practice in the Royal Navy didn't leave any written documents about how their winter had been passed didn't leave the logs and journals that they normally would have perhaps left at a place like that it's very strange that there was there wasn't a record left at beachy Island and in fact there may have been one there it just wasn't found because he certainly did leave an enormous Charon they also left these three headstones not all the crew could withstand the rigors of that first winter Torrington partner and brain were all buried here [Music] the expedition carried on sailing down a mysterious Seaway that had opened to the south they had an over winter on Beechey Island and suddenly almost unexpectedly the passageway was open to the south down peal sound no one ever seen its open before none of the other expeditions never seen it so they took the opportunity and dashed down pure sound franklin's men must have been jubilant they were in uncharted waters but seem to have discovered a Seaway that would bridge the remaining gap in the Northwest Passage [Music] daddy as you go [Music] it's going directly in the direction he was ordered to take and not unnaturally he he plunges down it and he makes tremendous progress what he didn't realize was the feel sound was sort of like a pitcher plant admits an insect and then closes behind me unprecedented progress done peal sound helped by their revolutionary steam engines with the ships boilers stoked to capacity and a full head of sail they rapidly covered 200 miles the expedition's ice masters successfully piloted the ships through the unknown waters and the broken ice Franklin was at last living his dream it seemed nothing could stop their headlong progress South and the completion of a Northwest Passage as they were coming down peal sound there's a sort of entry into that final unknown link of the Northwest Passage they came to King William land and there was a fork in the road and they could either go right or they could go left and they chose to go right because it was a broader entry what they didn't realize is they're getting into the worst possible position for ice coming out of Victoria Strait subsequently they could have found other explorers found you could go around and King William Island and it wasn't the land they turned right which seemed the right way to go the first indications of the dangers that lay ahead would have come from the lookouts huh murky flows were chunks of old sea ice with brown tide marks on their sides [Music] to the experienced eyes of Crozier and the ship's ice masters it would have meant only one thing heavy ice lay ahead you the point they had reached in Victoria Strait was little more than a hundred miles from the North American mainland and completing the link with the rest of the passage suddenly just off the northwest coast of King William Island they could go no further they were 25 miles off the coast out of sight of land actually and there was nothing around them but a pack ice just a wilderness of white empty pack ice there was no going forward there was no going back all they could did was go into winter quarters and hope the following year would would release them unlike their previous winter quarters at beachy this was no safe haven both ships were in a perilous situation trapped in the heaving pack ice which threatened to crush them at any moment life below deck was grim explorers have gone to great lengths describing the noise the ice makes the whimpering of puppies Express trains Thunder yelling screaming I mean they say the range of noises is extraordinary and you can imagine that men who are new to it would be terrified multiply that by the gale force winds that at times actually shook the ship and you got a very eerie alien world 12 inches from your head which is always reminding you that death is lurking very very close remarkably both ships and all the men survived the terrible winter of 1846 with the coming of spring the ships remained imprisoned in the ice Franklin hoped that in the brief weeks of the coming summer the ice around his ships would melt and they would be free to continue their triumphal journey south in May 1847 Franklin ordered a sledge party ashore from the beset ships to explore King William Island and leave a message sledge party going ashore a prayer O Lord of life and death have mercy upon those that are appointed to die led by left-handed Graham Gore one of the senior officers the eight-man sledge party was sent out across the ice to the northwest coast of King William Island 23 miles away it was no easy task and took them five days [Music] the Inuit called the northwest coast particularly the back of beyond which seems to be very descriptive it's a broken limestone very low-lying very desolate you get sea ice fog rolling off it's very windy almost continually windy cold and the vistas go on forever it psychologically difficult as well as being physically difficult you really feel that you're isolated Gor and his sledge party made their way to victory point on the northwest coast of the island a place visited some years before by a fellow Explorer James Clark Ross in a stone can they believed he had built they placed this metal canister containing a message dated May the 28th 1847 it told of the expedition's progress to date and concluded with the words all well with everybody's alive and the expectation is that the spring thaw will free the ships they'll complete the last portion of the passage and be on their way to Bering Strait in the Pacific meanwhile back at London at the Admiralty the expedition's instigator Sir John Barrow had finally retired but amongst his successors there was no undue concern for the expedition's welfare it was not unusual for Arctic explorers to be out of touch for a long time you have to remember that especially on exploratory expeditions of the 18th and 19th century being out of contact for four years was not really that dramatic six years was probably even not that dramatic especially when you're going through areas where there are no British consuls and there are no towns to check in and send your mail back so actually I don't think that they were being unnecessarily blase but one person who had a premonition about the expedition safety was Franklin's wife Jane from her father's home in London she embarked upon a letter-writing campaign urging that a search be made for her husband's expedition she lobbied the Admiralty mercilessly she was really bothering everybody she could so that they would send expeditions of course we know that she was friends with most of the polar people in the Admiralty there were friends of her family friends of Sir John Franklin and they could in fact have a very strong effect the Admiralty bowing to this pressure and amidst their own mounting concerns called upon the Arctic Council a group of senior polar experts to organize a search for Franklin James Clark Ross Britain's most experienced arctic explorer and crusiers closest friend was a council member and was the first to set out to look for John Franklin [Music] but it would be to no avail Franklin was already dead within two weeks of the all well message being left in the can at victory points on May the 28th 1847 Franklin had died and Crozier had become the expedition's leader Franklin's ships were to remain locked in the ice of King William Island for another winter and in that time a further 20 men were to die 12 crew and eight officers by the spring of 1848 the men had been away for three years it was unlikely that they would have had the resources to survive yet another year locked in the pack ice and yet there was still no sign of the ice releasing its stranglehold on their ships Crozier as the expedition's leader made the agonizing decision to abandon the beset ships on April the 22nd 1848 his plan was to lead the remaining a hundred and four men to what he thought would be their salvation for four grueling days they drag their possessions across the ice on ships boats mounted on sledges to King William Island Crozier and his men came ashore in this Bay it became a gigantic marshalling yard where supplies from the ships were deposited the all well message that had been deposited in the cairn eleven months earlier by Gor was recovered and amended in Fitz James hand along its margins was recorded Franklin's death on the 11th of June 1847 the deaths of the other 23 men and the abandonment of the beset ships no reasons were given for their deaths scribbled in the corner in craziest handwriting were the words and start on tomorrow the 26th for backs fish river this cryptic PostScript poses one of the greatest mysteries of the whole Franklin saga for the backs river was 200 miles away to the south on the North American mainland and help from a Hudson's Bay Company outpost lay another 800 miles beyond that the most sensible thing to do would have been to have headed north to have somehow fledged across the ice back up peal sound then they would have known that search expeditions were coming through Lancaster Sound looking for them and the even if search expeditions hadn't been following them they could have had some chance of getting back to their own winter quarters on beachy Island where they left huge amounts of food and fuel so the sensible thing would have been to have headed north and people have often wondered why did Crozier head south he would have been very keen to complete it so John Franklin's mission the country was expecting them to discover the Northwest Passage it was so little left to do just to get down to the north coast of America where they'd be on previously explored grounds I believe they were heading to the most hospitable hunting area that they knew was within striking distance I think that their direction was absolutely correct they were headed for the nearest area where they had a fairly high expectation being able to reap revision with fresh food and also because it was such a good hunting area they had a very high expectation they would meet large and organized bands of any weight there might be able to direct them or send messages out or help them on their retreat even if the remaining crew members had been rescued in April 1848 the expedition would have already broken all records for deaths in marine exploration why then even before the final desperate march to the mainland where Franklin's loss is so heavy and why did a disproportionate number of officers die early on several theories have been put forward in the mid-1980s Canadian researchers assumed the three frozen bodies buried at beachy to carry out post-mortems on them all three bodies contained an unusually high concentration of lead perhaps the lead solder used in seeding the cans contaminated the contents and poisoned the men that theory gained wide currency but not everyone believes it there's nothing unusual about running lead in bones apart from that lead which is ingested is 90% excreted but of what is retained about half of it goes into the bones anyway the bones act as a sink and once it goes into the bone it is it is to a very large extent immobilized but it would it is entirely to be expected that anybody living at that particular time would have shown high lead levels in the bones lead poisoning is a progressive slow-moving debilitating disease and not one that would kill 9 officers and 12 men in that 10 month period before the ships were abandoned even if LED had got into the cans dr. phero believes it would not have contaminated the contents the lead would have been chemically attracted to the tin an iron of the can and not the food the electrochemical properties of a can of meat or can of soup at that comparatively low acidity such that the tin and the iron of the can protect the lead from solution so that the lead does not get into the food in sufficient concentration that's the first thing the second thing is that the quantities of canned food which were being carried by Franklin were simply not big enough to have raised the blood lead level to a concentration such that lead poisoning would eventuate those men may or may not have been suffering from lead poisoning I don't know but what I do know is that if they were it was not due to the canned food the same canned food supplied by the expedition's whittler Stephan goldner has become the subject of further controversy in the rush to deliver them Scot Cookman believes they weren't cooked to a sufficiently high temperature and as a result the contents were contaminated with botulism spores looking at the kinds of food that work and looking at the timeframe involved looking at the the fact that larger tins were substituted for for smaller ones particularly with the types of foods that were being handled the circumstantial evidence is extremely high that they were contaminated it almost certainly with several sorts of foodborne disease but the odds for botulism contamination are extremely high I believe but again dr. Farah a leading authority on 19th century canning techniques disagrees with this theory if the count had deteriorated in a word had gone off there would have been swelling because of gas production and in addition there would normally have been an unpleasant smell when the cameras finally opened this fort under processed can would have been pretty evident the most likely cause for the high mortality rate would have been scurvy a pernicious disease caused by lack of vitamin C and common among sailors lacking fresh meat and vegetables for long periods Arctic expeditions were particularly prone to it a third winter in the ice would have made Franklin's men easy targets the body needs vitamin C in order that its connective tissues can function properly the connective tissues are what have been called the packaging material of the body in that they surround separate protects the body organs and the joints by about six or seven months of vitamin C deprivation you get a classic symptom the swollen bloody guns the loose teeth beginning to appear in the mouth is first observed and after that really it's a slow process of degeneration towards death by nine months it's been shown in experimental studies that cardiac hemorrhage begins to occur and that of course is a fatal conclusion ever since Franklin's men have succumbed in the central Arctic people have been looking for one golden bullet or one reason that they died I don't really subscribe to the single cause theory I believe that essentially they ended up in a very inhospitable place as far from help as they could get and that they were in a no-win situation I think that given the same physical constraints a modern party would come to the same unfortunate result for those who had not yet succumb to the rigors of surviving in the Arctic for three years the great march south began on the 26th of April 1848 105 men hold the ships boats placed on sledges containing everything they felt they needed for their journey who you are so far away from home isolated from all you know isolated from life as you know it in what is seemingly an inhospitable sterile desert you've been trapped by ice it's been incredibly dark the wind never lets up and now you have to walk across a landscape of cold ice snow and ice fractured rock that twists your ankles and tears out in gnaws away at your leather boots Royal Navy tradition that strong tradition would have manifested itself again a strong definition of duty that everyone had rallying themselves for this last Herculean effort perhaps only very few of them actually realized the geography that they were facing and how the distances and they certainly if I was one of the commanding officers I would not have played up the fact that it was thousand miles to help speculate that they were still very much up to it and we're looking forward to making their way to the great fissure of her Beck's River and to salvation at a Hudson's Bay Company post the men were ill-equipped for such a huge undertaking no one had ever thought for a moment that so many men would have to brave the ice and extremes of the Arctic even today with technology and proper clothing and equipment it's an unforgiving region they would have had completely incorrect clothes for man hauling sledge boats they would have sweated very badly and that would cause them to have hardly any insulation left in whatever clothes they did have and they would have ended up being very prone to hypothermia if your feets aren't dry and they're sweaty or or you fall into the water you're going to get frostbite and I know for a fact that leather boots which they had those very low temperatures are just like pieces of I and in the morning they would have to virtually use a hammer to get the boots on to this week I had frostbitten fingers about five months ago and after about four months the the ends of the fingers the which of course are missing from from these fingers it just became leathery talons on the end and where the the live flesh met the dead flesh the air wasn't getting in so in fact about ten days ago I took a saw to the ends I've got the ends of the fingers in the drawer over there and cut him off just down to a level which allowed the air to get in so auto amputation is probably what they would have done or possibly cut off each other's frozen digits and we're talking about a lot of people with a lot of frostbitten digits as Croesus men trudged south along the shoreline of King William Island pulling their heavy sledge boats what were their chances of survival dish into the Arctic under James Clark Ross to search for Sir John Franklin had returned empty-handed Franklin had disappeared into an uncharted void and there was no agreement amongst the experts as to where he might be the search for Franklin was one of the biggest organized man hunts in history the Admiralty offered a series of prizes there was 20,000 pounds for finding Franklin himself 10,000 pounds for finding his ships in one season there were no less than 13 ships swarming all over the Arctic trying to find Franklin there were numerous eager volunteers for the dangerous enterprise one extraordinary expedition led by Captain Robert McClure scoured the Arctic for three and a half years they too were finally forced to abandon their icebound ship but were rescued before they suffered a fate similar to Franklin's men rescue parties used every means within their power to find Franklin with their ships and sledge teams they scoured thousands of square miles of the Arctic and in doing so showed great ingenuity balloons were launched with messages for the last expedition telling them where the rescue ships were they even attached collars to arctic foxes bearing similar messages for the missing men they left bundles of food and supplies at various locations here at beachy they erected a purpose-built storehouse some of the contents have survived to this day lady Franklin left no stone unturned in her campaign to find the missing men she even wrote to the President of the United States Zachary Taylor my husband Sir John Franklin is probably not unknown to you he is intimately connected with the northern part to accomplish the objects you have in view the attention of American navigators and especially of our whalers will be immediately involved she went even further in 1850 she started financing her own expeditions to search for her husband and his men independently of those being sent out by the Royal Navy when she started raising her own money to send her own expeditions she she threw down a kind of gauntlet they couldn't be seen to be doing less for a surfing British naval officer his wife was in 1854 the first concrete news of the expedition's fate was brought to England not by a Royal Navy searched ship but by dr. John ray of the Hudson's Bay Company here we have a man who happens to come across a group of Netsilik Eskimos who had a number of Franklyn related items almost chillingly they had the next badge of Sir John Franklin of his Guelph recorder they also related stories they had heard of cannibalism amongst some of the Franklin survivors suggestion of cannibalism brought back to England by dr. John Ray of the Hudson's Bay Company were very unpalatable indeed to the Victorian society could never think that gallant men of the Royal Navy and gallant British subjects could ever descend to such thing if cannibalism had happened on the expedition then there had been a kind of moral collapse which which contradicted everything that had been said about polar exploration as a noble virtuous moral calling it would have gone right against the way that people understood what it meant when British explorers went to the Arctic it was not until the 20th century that these apocryphal stories gained some credibility in 1993 a large collection of bones unearthed at Erebus Bay on King William Island were forensic ly examined by anthropologist and kingly side it was only when I got back to the lab and began my detailed investigation of these skeletal remains that I realized the extent of these cut marks the fact that they affected a quarter of the bones recovered the sheer number of the cut marks and the distribution and it became clear to me at that time that cannibalism was the only explanation for these cut marks they think well okay here's cut marks and bones cut marks must mean cannibalism I don't do that at all I say cut marks much more likely to mean an attack here we've got a hundred and five men coming down that coast amongst people who are living absolute on the ages of argyll so he was a huge threat to them to their survival apart from the face the hands and feet are the most recognizably human parts of the body in situations of cannibalism they're normally consumed last the fact that we're seeing cut marks on the bones of the hands and feet indicates the desperate situation in which these men found themselves the large number of cut marks as they're caught or on the hands now you don't have to be a police pathologist to realize that that's someone defending themselves those cut marks I find the evidence completely uncompelled on cannibalism but very compelling on an attack as these dark tales first conveyed by dr. John ray filtered back to England there was increasing frustration amongst the polar experts of the Admiralty their extensive searches had uncovered the sad evidence of Franklin's first winter at beachy but nothing more early search parties had gazed down peal sound saw solid ice and fatally concluded that Franklin could not have sailed down there this conclusion had colored all their subsequent areas of search they look for Franklin in every part of the Arctic except the right one in 1854 they declared the expedition members officially lost thereby suspending all further searches this announcement enraged lady Franklin and spurred her on to organize a fourth and final expedition of her own to be indecorous not to say indecent Lady Jane continued on her own hook antagonizing members of her family by scraping and borrowing and scripting and finding people who would get her money to hire ships and the last ship she sent was a little yacht really called the Fox and she was fortunate enough and that the captain for that expedition will be Leopold McClintock Leopold McClintock an experienced Royal Navy captain was highly skilled in overland travel using dogs and man holds ledges he covered huge tracts of King William Island in his search for the missing party his team were finally rewarded they discovered the can at crow's landing and within it the message left by the hundred and five survivors before they'd headed south [Music] along these desolate Shores mclintock's sledge party found no ships but plenty of tragic evidence of crows desperate march south with his remaining men it was from these sad objects and skeletal remains that the final days of the expedition were pieced together [Music] to see where England stands to sometimes come mclintock's most poignant discovery was made a terrible day 50 miles south from where the March had begun it was one of the ships boats containing two skeletons one of them was clutching a rifle because McClintock was only 11 years after the event these were still fairly well preserved remains the bulk was in good shape carpet slippers and throw rugs and books and other material was still in very good shape so it forms a little vignette of the March that these men were left behind by the compatriots and lived out the last few minutes with one strong one with a rifle protecting the other one and eventually succumbed the other thing he found was the skeleton lying on his face and essentially with no companions around him strongly indicates that he was a straggler who just fell behind their main party and sat down on a rock and then fainted on the beach very solitary depressing into this person's life I know my barn it gives me my [Music] in England lady Franklin as yet knew nothing of McClintock's tragic findings she clung to the hope that by some miracle her husband or a member of his party might still be found alive it was her final expedition that succeeded where 40 others had failed in London lady Franklin anxiously awaited news from her search party in late September 1859 she received a letter from its leader captain McClintock that they were beset in September 1846 off the northwest coast of King William Island Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June 1847 Franklin it turned out had died in 1847 this was both early enough and late enough early enough in the sense that he was dead long before the expedition resorted to cannibalism or didn't say it was free of it either way late enough because he had died at a point in the Northwest Passage which could there stretch of the imagination he claimed as its center point and Lady Jane devoted her energies then to his geographical indication she made him into the discoverer of the Northwest Passage by changing the meaning of those words suddenly discovery could be something you did without getting home alive without even sending the news to civilization if he frozen halfway through the Northwest Passage so the map of the eastern section of it could now be joined the map of the western section of it that was enough lady Franklin confirmed his reputation as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage with the unveiling of this statue in the heart of London in 1866 paid for by Parliament in her relentless quest to establish the expedition's fate she had become as famous as her late husband [Music] she became what might be called the polar Queen she was the goddess of search and she represented somebody who was never giving up would go on searching and searching and searching she represented every man's ideal of the fidelity they would like from their wife if they were lost and when women looked at her they saw an embodiment of every grief every anxiety they had about their nan folk their brothers husbands sons whenever they were away doing something dangerous in the greater world lady Franklin outlived her late husband by almost 30 years when she died in 1875 she was laid to rest in this catechu with a space next to her reserved for Sir John until her dying day lady Franklin spearheaded the search for the lost expedition she found an unlikely ally in Charles Francis Hall a small newspaper proprietor from Cincinnati he was so obsessed with Franklin he decided he would chuck everything and go and try and find not necessarily relics he had fixated in his mind that there were still people living and he was determined that he Charles Francis Hall was going to be the man to bring back one of the explorers himself he was probably the first white man to really submit to the Eskimo Way of life he ate their food he traveled with them he wore their clothes and in he learned how to adapt to their way of life it took whole almost ten years to reach the barren shores of King William Island because he was subject to the Eskimos nomadic life and their hunt for food rarely took them there when he finally gets to King William Island what he finds as a skeleton it was brought to England and they discovered it was the remains of the tenant lovest god of the Erebus they were able to identify it because of a plug tooth he devoted ten years of his life deeply believing somehow that there had to be Franklin survivors he really should have known better but holes quest was not in vain his journals contain many Inuit stories that seem to relate to the fatal March but there have been problems in understanding the Inuit oral tradition the reason why they get confused about explorers is they don't know the the the name of the Explorer or the difference from that's avoid people they see like there were all the same there is also a problem of chronology when stories are passed down that's how they get mixed up because nobody really could say this thing happened ten years ago or fifteen years ago if they try to talk about six years or five years back they don't have any work for it despite these problems of interpretation the Inuit stories suggests that Franklin's men did not march south in one organized group to die with the onset of winter in 1848 within sight of the North American mainland they indicate a much more complex scenario I started off with my research with the same opinion as most that the Inuit stories would not be very useful they were garbled and and impossible to corroborate and was amazed over the years of reading them how consistent they actually are I believe that the initial 1848 abandonment quickly came to naught that they realized that 105 men with a one-month window we're not going to make it violent and that they fell back on their only real alternative which was to return to the ships then I believe the ships were both freed and off in 18-49 by the ice to either sail or drift south into Erebus Bay and that is where the Inuit first interacted with Franklin's crews in fact they are very consistent in their tales that that is where the ships came to their land I think that 1850 was the time of the massive push to get out and that that was the disastrous push when most of the men met their doom but that some of them even survived that Louis Kamaka traveled across the sea ice to the tot islands one of the furthest points south reached by the survivors his research suggests many more franklin men made it this far south than had previously been thought ours believe todd island is one of the last point or they left kingdom island trying to get across the mainland and i believe that from victory point to todd island they covered about 200 miles you know dragging dragging their boats from the evidence i see each time I go there and it's it's not where some people just stopped there and died like they spend days there like there was a camp a big camp there I think there was maybe over 40 people and maybe 50 people in Todd island at one time so it's possible that almost half the men who set out from victory points made it this far an incredible feat Kamaka based his conclusions on the number of skeletal remains that he found there I think it's it's one of fragments meant like it's related right let's read so part of the skull is broken but the stock mark as we were going up like we're all just told by the older people our parents and grandparents if you're gonna travel on King William Island you don't travel alone you travel with someone else because you know it's there's a lot of spirit out there like the Englishman all tied up tied on island and that's one of the you know biggest reasons like that people respect these people that they dolphin island that suffered they they want to get back to their country but they all died off the people today's respect they're like this they're suffering there was not a single survivor it seems a handful cross from the tot islands to the North American mainland only to perish at starvation Cove the expedition that had sailed from England with such confidence and hope had become one of the biggest catastrophes in the history of exploration who was to blame [Music] the grand Arctic expedition that sailed away to forge the last link in the Northwest Passage had ended in tragedy there was a lot of hubris attached to it they thought they'd explored so much of the Northwest Passage that there was only a little bit left and therefore any technique would do you could get through whatever you tried so let's do it with big ships and the Royal Naval group because then there'd be lots of glory for Britain in this Franklin got further into that Northwest Passage than anybody else and he ran into that plug west side of King William Island which is still there each and every year in these days he ran into Mother Nature it was not bungling in my mind it was not fumbling on the part of the seamen the officers or the British Navy no they went to the very center of Canadian Arctic where they were absolutely beyond the pale of help from Europe they went just far enough to be almost to their goal which tended to make them persist rather than give up they were only 60 miles from discovering that last link in the Northwest Passage that they've been sent to find and that basically they were in a no-win situation one of the greatest ironies of it all is that John Franklin is greater in death than he was in life we certainly know the name Roe Donaldson and the tiny little Sloopy are the first to sail through the Northwest Passage but does Amundsen have the same draw as the name have the same recognition as Franklin no it's because Franklin died and in his death inspired a search and a quest which burned in the hearts of the world the search for Franklin ensured British sovereignty over the Arctic when British North America became Canada that sovereignty passed to the new nation strangely enough the Franklin disaster turned out to be the main agent in a way in the expansion of Canada as to what it is today one of the largest countries in the world would the longest shore line a portion of the Arctic was mobbed before some portion of central Canada with this expedition was is there any of it Franklin failed but he succeed through his failure in doing a lot for Canada but it's the scale of the tragedy and the unanswered questions that continue to provoke scholars today you have to real things that are the holy grail of the Franklin search the first will be logs convinced as their most that during the long winters the officers were employed in making duplicate logs which was normal practice and that once it became apparent that they were going to make a desperate attempt for safety that those logs would have been taken ashore and buried or secured in a appropriate place for later discovery it would have been the ship's logs for both ships the master books for both ships the surgeon's journals for both ships all the junior officers journals and a tremendous amount of scientific records particularly those of the magnetic observations they would either of being left in the ships or possibly buried somewhere in King William Island the next piece of evidence would be either of the two racks if we find either wreck it may give us clues as to the final days especially if the story did extend for a few years it may confirm or perhaps negate the theory that the expedition extended beyond 1848 location of ships like the Erebus and terror will obviously someday be known and mankind has been searching for them for 150 years and more and we did today's technology just a matter of time and some time of luck to locate them and identify them I believe also they are already located I hear of some accounts that there's some targets detected by sonar from the coast guard and so on not proven that truly identified so it's on a matter of time finding is in my view Within Reach very soon for me the Grail without any doubt is defined to the burial place of Sir John Franklin and of course the ships are important and of course any anything we find is important but define Sir John Franklin really would sort of make it first circle there were three possible things they could have done with his body the first was to bury him under the ice which was a fairly sort of traditional thing to do with branches right in the pack for a winter secondly they could have buried him on on King William Island and thirdly they could have kept him in the ship hoping to take the body home for proper burial in England so what I think probably happened was they would have brought it up from the hold or wherever it been stowed and put it in the great cabin at the stern of the ship they might even have taken the body out of the coffin and put it in the bunk I believe they buried Franklin on Kingdom Island and didn't bury him they put him in a vault like storing it safe like he's waiting to be brought back to England still waiting like that's my belief the most interesting aspect of the whole thing in business is the mystery the enduring mystery of it the fact that so many theories can be put forward and none of them can ever be exactly right it may be that there's a grain of truth in all of them but as for the final truth I don't think we'll ever know the truth rests with them those up there who went on that expedition and died and the truth died with them [Music] our week with the Explorers continues tomorrow at 9:00 with biography of another man who saw more than his fair share of ice Sir Ernest Shackleton [Music] you

Channel: William Greenwell

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Length: 67min 26sec (4046 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/carcarcarmi]

What I want to find is the video where they recreated pulling the boats...