In 1845, two ships entered the dark waters of the frozen
and barren Canadian Archipelago, in search of an elusive northwest passage. At the large mouth of the channel, they were met
by two whaling ships who saw them off shortly afterward. These would be the last individuals to see these ships
or the men on board ever again. For over a century, their whereabouts
remained a mystery, but slowly, for the past few decades, what happened to these ships and the men
on board has been discovered, and it is far more horrifying than anyone
could have imagined. This is Franklin's Lost Expedition. As always, viewer discretion is advised. [music] Living in the mid-1800s must have felt similar
to the digital boom of the '90s and 2000s, or the post-war economy
intentions of the 1950s because in just a few short decades,
everything had changed. The Enlightenment and the end of the Napoleonic Wars
had set a new way from much of the world. Steam engines had kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, and for the first time in human history, we were
close to having a map of the entire world. But to finish it, there was one final prize
that alluded everyone who had tried. This was the Northwest Passage. At the time, England and many
of the other world powers, had been spreading their influence
through trade and empire. But the shape of the Americas was a
natural barrier to sea travel. Since the technology to create something like the
Panama Canal wouldn't exist for some time, that meant that ships would either have to take
the long way down around South America, then all the way back up the Pacific, or sail
the other way around the globe. Either way, it was quite the journey.
So the chance, however small that a path might be found through the frozen
Northwest territories of Canada, was too much for the British Admiralty to give up. And even if it did prove impossible for trade, the prestige of filling in the last navigable
waterway on earth was enough of a prize that some people devoted
their entire careers to it. Like, for example, Sir John Barrow, second secretary
of the British Admiralty, aged 81 at the time, saw this as a chance to put one last grand feather
in his cap before retirement. So he ordered a final expedition to be assembled,
and set out to choose its leader. Barrow's first two choices had both declined, one of which was William Perry, who had
grown tired of the Arctic, and the wife of the other, James Ross,
convinced him not to go. The third choice, Francis Crozier, was passed over
by the Admiralty for being an Irishman and of low birth. Then the fourth choice, James Fitzjames,
was seen as too young and inexperienced to lead such an undertaking. So finally, the fifth choice and the man the expedition
would be named for, was Sir John Franklin. This would actually be Franklin's third attempt
to find the passage, having done so by seeing by land
before with mixed success. His previous attempt had even led
to the deaths of half his men, with the survivors resorting to eating moss
and leather to avoid starvation. Afterward, Franklin returned in shame,
known as the man who ate his boots. In spite of that though, Franklin was well-liked by his men, and he was known to be kind and cared
for their wellbeing, sometimes leading them in sermons, and going out
of his way to ensure their safety. He was also known to be a little overly enthusiastic
and had previously gotten carried away when a goal was in front of him, rushing to the finish
rather than doing things carefully. But a combination of care for his men
in a dangerous place, and the enthusiasm to see it through to the end
wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and thankfully, he wouldn't be doing it alone. Although they were deemed inadequate
to lead the expedition, Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames
would be joining Franklin as his second and third, and would be the
captains of two ships under Franklin's command, called the Terror and the Erebus. For the ships, there would be no expense spared
and no cutting-edge technology left out. The lead ship, the Erebus, was a
Hecla-class bomb vessel, commissioned 1826, and 105 feet
(32 meters) long. The Terror was a little older and smaller,
and was a Vesuvius-class bomb vessel from 1813, and 102 feet (31.1 meters) long. Both ships were chosen because bomb vessels
were meant to fire heavy mortar from their decks, so they had extra cross bracing. That also allowed them to better withstand
breaking through the ice in the north, but all of that was just standard. In addition to that, portions of the ship's wooden hulls
had been doubled in thickness with even more iron sheeting added to the bows
and along the water line for the expedition. Both ships also received vents for internal heating,
as well as a brand-new addition no ship in the Royal Navy had ever possessed before,
which was a propeller. And not just that, both ships could even
retract the propellers and rudders in recesses on the underside of their hulls
to protect them from the ice. To power this newly added propeller, each ship carried
a converted locomotive steam engine from the London and Greenwich Railway, to drive
the ships even in the absence of wind. These motors also required roughly
a ton of freshwater per hour, and spurred another invention to be included, which was desalination equipment to turn seawater
into freshwater. The expedition will also bring with it one of the
first types of photographic cameras ever to be sold to the public, called a
daguerreotype camera. They also even had an insulated diving suit on board if ice ever needed to be removed from
rudders or propellers. These features are obviously commonplace today,
and the Arctic is largely known about, but to the men actually going on the expedition,
it might've felt like going into space. Only six of the expedition's 24 officers
had been to the arc before, and to anyone seeing it for the first time, it might
as well have been another planet. Compasses would shift and wander because
of how close to the pole they were. Months could pass without the sun setting or rising. The entire ocean turns to solid most of the year,
and the land is so barren that you will only ever see white snow,
gray rocks, and dark blue waters. On the 19th of May, 1845, the Erebus and Terror set sail to Greenhithe just east of London,
and began their journey. Between them, they carried 134 men, a ship's cat,
a dog named Neptune, a monkey named, Jacko,
which was a gift from Lady Franklin. Two tons of tobacco, 7,500 liters of liquor,
around 12,000 books, theater costumes, sports gear, and one more brand-new
invention critical to the mission, which was 16,000 tin cans of food. These included fruit and vegetables to stave off scurvy, and would, for the first time, comprise
nearly all of an expedition's rations. The ships set sail up, stopping at Stromness in Scotland and then across the Atlantic, to Whale Fish Islands
on the west coast of Greenland, with two other ships accompanying them. The two ships would then top up the supplies
of the Terror and Erebus before departing back to England, and leaving
the expedition on their own. While they were on the islands, five members
of the expedition would also be discharged and sent home after falling ill
during the Atlantic crossing. Before the expedition set off again,
the crew spent a few days ashore where they wrote their last letters home
and enjoyed what relative warmth they could. In the letters, they said the officers
had already begun their scientific work, tracking the weather and other natural phenomena. Franklin had also reportedly banned
swearing and drunkenness, but there were doubts about how effective
that would be with the sailors. But overall, the crew was confident and excited. They were about to step off on the adventure of a lifetime and mark their names in the history books. The expedition set sail once again on the 12th of July,
1845, with 129 men aboard. Two whaling ships met up with them in Baffin Bay,
waiting for an opening in ice before seeing them off into a large channel
known as Lancaster Sound. This was the last time the Franklin Expedition
was ever seen alive. After entering the channel, they just vanished,
and it would take over 150 years and dozens of expeditions and investigations
to piece together what happened to them. These investigations are even still ongoing,
but here is what we do know. Sailing was slow in the north. Even during the summer,
most channels are packed with ice, and the ships need to push floating chunks of ice
out of the way as they progressed. If this was done too quickly, this would
gradually damage the ship's bows and potentially sink them. This would also show one of the first nails
in the expedition's coffin, which had always been there;
it just hadn't been realized yet. The steam engines carried by both ships, which powered
their revolutionary brass propellers, could only produce 25 horsepower at 4 knots. This was only a tenth of the power of icebreakers
less than half their size had at the time. This feature wasn't a mystery, however,
as the Admiralty had only included 12 days' worth of fuel
for the steam engines, which would've been much better use
for heat than propulsion. It's likely that these were seen as more of a
psychological benefit to the crew and the British public,
and were only of very limited use. As a result, the expedition would only travel around
800 kilometers, navigating around Cornwallis Island, before circling back to Beechey Island
by the first winter freeze. This put them only around 350 kilometers
from Baffin Bay where they began. But all things considered,
this was actually decent progress. Throughout the winter, both ships sheltered in a cove between Beechey Island and the much larger
Devon Island, to avoid the churning sheets of ice that piled on top
of one another in the high wind. Once the Erebus and Terror were frozen in sea ice, the crew gathered snow high enough to pack
against the sides of both ships as insulation. Up top, the sails were taken down
in a massive canvas tent and covered most of the vessel's deck space. This would've given the crew slightly more
space to move around in without being fully exposed to the elements. Over the winter of 1845 and into 1846, three members of the crew were buried
on Beechey Island. Pneumonia is believed to be the final cause of death,
but also not the only cause. By then, the second nail in the expedition's coffin
was slowly being revealed, and unfortunately, it was one they'd been eating
and drinking for months. The 16,000 cans of food that they brought
on the expedition with them, had been a rush job from the lowest bidder. Improper lead soldering had left traces inside the cans,
described like trails of wax down a candle, and many of the cans weren't even properly
cooked or fully sealed either. So not only was there lead, but rotten food, botulism,
and mold in many of the cans. Hair and tissue samples taken in 1984 confirmed that the men buried on Beechey Island
had substantial lead levels in their bodies. But incredibly, the levels found were still too much,
even for just the canned food. Apparently, the water desalination equipment
they brought with them should never have been used to supply drinking water because its lead piping could have easily
corroded when exposed to sea salt. In addition to that, another theory to explain
the unexpectedly high levels of lead in the bodies was a critical lack of zinc
in the crew's diet. A lack of which over time causes the body to
slowly begin cannibalizing its own bones, releasing even more lead into the bloodstream. So this combination of bad food, lead poisoning,
and zinc deficiency made any disease the crew encountered
that much worse, damaging their immune systems, causing brain fog,
and slowly building up as the years went on. Even worse than that, the five men
sent back home from Greenland before the ships even reached the
Canadian Archipelago, had tuberculosis, meaning there was already tuberculosis on those ships. In any case, the next year, the ship sailed south, towards what was then known as King William Island,
on the very edge of the known map. At the time, it was unclear if this was an island or not,
and Franklin had to make a choice. If he sailed down the eastern side of King William Island, and it was an island, he might reach
more southern waters faster. But if it wasn't, he'd have to backtrack
some unknown distance. The second option was to set sail west
around King William, since that was the direction they were trying to go anyways. Given that choice, it seemed less risky to sail west,
and so that was the choice he made. But in doing so, Franklin accidentally
brought the ships into one of the most dangerous places in the passage. The west side of King William Island
is like a funnel, narrowing down and collecting ice flows from two channels before pinching them between itself
and several smaller islands. The expedition had unknowingly sailed into some
of the densest ice flows in the world, and was given no chance to correct their mistake
before being locked on the 12th of September. They would then spend the winter of 1846 to 1847
on the ice once again. Back home in January of 1847, Lady Franklin
got more and more concerned. Although it was expected that her husband
would spend at least one winter on the ice, two just didn't sit right with her. First, she asked, and then she basically demanded that the Admiralty do something
and prepare a rescue operation. But the Admiralty maintained their confidence
that all was well. They did at the very least began to plan
a search if that became necessary. This didn't convince Lady Franklin though,
even slightly, and she went directly to the British public, calling in
every favor she had to get the word out. This included a personal friend of hers,
Charles Dickens, who used his standing as the most popular writer
in England to champion her cause. Already, the crew of the expedition
desperately needed rescue, but even they might not have realized it yet. With the improper sealing of many of their cans,
there was another fatal side effect. The Royal Navy had used bottled lemon juice
for generations to prevent scurvy, but the more modern practice was canned fruits,
just as it was with the expedition. The problem was with an improper seal
or contamination, vitamin C is chemically unstable
and will degrade over time. They likely didn't notice it during the first winter
or maybe even the second, but they had much less good fruit aboard
than they thought they did. Then, in May of 1847, 8 members of the
expedition would hike ashore with letters, crossing the ice to King William Island and leave two copies of report for
future explorers to find. The letters stated where the ships were wintering
with a set of coordinates. It also reported their previous stay at Beechey Island,
the trip around Cornwallis Island, that Sir John Franklin was commanding,
and finally, it read, "All well." The handwriting is believed to be
that of Captain Fitzjames, and the two officers who went ashore
signed both messages. These messages were then placed in stone cairns
to keep them safe, and there was no mention of anything wrong,
but that was about to change. The crew had likely expected to leave soon, which is
why they left messages in the first place, but that year, the Arctic hit
record-low summer temperatures. June, July, and into August, the ice never melted. The Erebus and the Terror, and all of their crew, remains stuck in the ice through the summer
and then into fall. Modern ice core samples have even confirmed
that 1845 to 1859 was the peak of an unusually cold 50-year period, with less season of melting than any period
in the previous thousand years. During this time, the Terror began to list
heavily in the ice, and most of the crew moved to the Erebus to share heat and consolidate what
decent rations they had left. The Terror was instead used as a cold storage
for excess supplies and for the bodies as they began to mount. Then, on the 11th of June, 1847, Captain
Sir John Franklin would join the dead. By then, the symptoms of scurvy and lead poisoning would both be apparent to the doctors
and scientists aboard the ships, but there wasn't much they could do
to stop them at this point. No notable plant life grows in the Canadian Arctic,
and the wildlife could be just as dangerous. The crews did have hunting tools, spears,
muskets, and other equipment with them, but the Arctic seals, polar bears and fish
all carry botulism type E. This is the only strain of botulism that can exist
in such cold temperatures. The native Inuit has spent thousands of years
building genetic resistance to it, but the same couldn't be said for Europeans. A single piece of meat improperly cooked,
or the blood of a butchered animal getting on another piece of food,
could be a death sentence. Finally, in the winter of 1847 to 1848,
with no sign of the expedition, the Admiralty agreed to act. Something was wrong,
and they couldn't afford to ignore the year-long public outcry any longer. In early 1848, a search and rescue operation was sent from both the Pacific and Atlantic ends
of the passage, as well as overland. One of the men to participate in the search
was James Ross, who was one of the men who had passed up a chance to lead
the expedition at the request of his wife. He then set sail on the HMS Enterprise to try
and save the life of his close friend, Francis Crozier. At the same time, the Admiralty offered a
20,000-pound reward for anyone who assisted the expedition,
or around $2.5 million today, and $10,000 for any information about what happened. In April of 1848, it must have been clear
to the expedition that they had no choice. Their food was due to run out that summer, and even those estimates had assumed that the
16,000 cans would all be edible. Even with rationing, the end of their supplies
was approaching, and with the seas frozen, they would have to walk. So on the 25th of April, they returned
to King William Island, and left another letter by writing
in the margins of the first. It said that Sir John Franklin was dead,
along with 9 officers, and 15 in crew total. It also stated that the ships had been
deserted on the 22nd, and 105 survivors under Crozier
would attempt to walk 240 kilometers or 150 miles to Back's Fish River,
also known as Back River. Then, once they were there, they would tried to row
to the nearest trading station. So after a year and seven months of unending winter, the crew finally left, and by then,
the situation was desperate. Many of them were unable to handle the
physical strain due to being weak, sick, and malnourished from years in living
in such horrible conditions. Over 20 bodies from the Erebus were found
on the coast of King William Island at a series of camps where they had no choice
but to leave the dying behind. It would've been bad enough if it
was just a walk, but it wasn't. The closest trading post was still hundreds
of kilometers upriver, so the men had to bring the ship's boats with them. These were massive rowing vessels loaded with
as many supplies as each could carry. Each one of these was roughly 3,600 kilograms
or 8,000 pounds. Then, with the ice flows piling up against
one another in the wind, freezing in uneven shapes, and King William Island
being rough limestone gravel, putting the boats onto sledges was the only option. So as they were slowly starving,
suffering internal bleeding from the onset of scurvy, and poisoned
from years of lead exposure, it would've been day after day of agony
to pull the boats they needed to live. At least some of them did.
With the hindsight of 150 years, we know that the trek south wasn't a unified one. Groups and individuals broke off from
the main party, either intentionally because of bad weather, or from being abandoned. But those group didn't give up either. In fact, bodies have been found
in over a dozen different locations. Some took parallel or alternate route south,
while others, especially those who fell out of the march early on, even returned to the ships where food,
fuel, and shelter still existed. That summer in 1848 was when the food was
expected to run out, had everything gone to plan. Even still though, decades and centuries later, unopened cans would be found aboard the wrecks of both ships and at numerous landing sites. It seems at some point, the crew must have realized the dangers of their own rations,
and chose to go without them. Then, sometime between July and August, 1849, it's speculated that the Erebus was freed from the ice. This is because Inuit have claimed to have
seen a three-masted ship off the coast of the Royal Geographical Society Islands,
and to have witnessed white men with guns and pikes hunting caribou
near the Adelaide Peninsula. This story is also reinforced by the fact that
the Inuit claimed that the group had a non-Inuit dog with them,
which was presumably Neptune. This was a detail that the natives couldn't
have otherwise known about. Whatever the case, a year later in 1850,
another group of Inuit claimed to have found another abandoned ship
stuck in the ice still. Climbing aboard, they found the ship
stove still burning, and several of the bodies of crew members
in their bunks still. At some point in the summer of that year,
the main party splinted further, and many of its members died in an area
known as Starvation Cove. Smaller groups also continued down to Chantrey Inlet
along various coastlines and paths. One group of four was reportedly
encountered by the Inuit, and weirdly, only one of the men
was on the verge of starvation. It was later learned that he was the only one
who had refused to engage in cannibalism. The Inuit then took them in to feed them
and tend to them, and in that time, another member
of the group died of disease before the remaining three were
strong enough to continue. Later in August, a search party would come upon
the first three graves on Beechey Island. This would've been the first concrete confirmation that
something happened to the expedition, and these would've been some of the first to die
early on before they traveled south. Following this discovery, and concerned about
what might have happened to the rest of the crew, as well as Lady Franklin's
continued public concerns, finding the crew drew more effort than
even discovering the passage had. No less than 11 ships set sail in 1850
with more to come. Several of which would have accidents of their own
in the coming years. As a quick side note, one of these ships, the HMS Resolute,
would be abandoned during the search and later recovered by an American whaling ship
in the next thaw. The wood from it would then be used to make the
Resolute desk and gifted to the US President, which has since been a permanent fixture in
the Oval Office. Incredibly, another ship, the HMS Investigator
under Captain Robert McClure, would actually find the legendary northwest passage
while looking for Franklin. But then, after sailing it from the
west side of the Arctic, this ship would also become trapped in ice
and abandoned after two years. In 1853, after a rescue party marched out and met them
from the HMS Resolute, the two crews then combined their resources to make it
to safety over the following year. All of this is to say that while it's easy
to point at all the things wrong with the Franklin Expedition, the place itself
was just as much responsible. Those are just two of many examples of ships
intended to rescue the expedition and later needing rescue themselves,
in spite of being prepared for it and knowing that help would come much faster. Of the remaining Franklin crew, the most
successful known group of survivors made it as far as Chesterfield Inlet
on the western coast of Hudson Bay by using a lighter inflatable boat. But for all the progress they made,
it just wasn't enough. Over the following decade, different Inuit groups
claimed to have seen as many as 40 men traveling south in 1850.
But by 1851, the group or groups had dropped to as little as four men,
no longer pulling any boats. It's believed that by the end of 1851, most or all of the members of the crew
had died of starvation or exposure. At the same time, during that era, the accounts
of the Inuit weren't really believed, so the searches didn't use much of the information
that could have been available to them. Then, in 1854, a Scottish surgeon
and explorer met several Inuit who gave him brass buttons and other items
from the expedition as proof of their claims. They also claimed to have come across
a grave with as many as 30 corpses, and evidence of the men cutting, cooking,
and cannibalizing their fellow crew mates. These claims were, again, quickly rejected
by the Victorian public, the families of the crew, and quite vocally
by Charles Dickens, who went on to write three stories
discrediting this idea. This left the Inuit testimony by the wayside
for well over a hundred years, until only recently, academic sources began to
compare and corroborate their accounts. In spite of the disbelief at the time, many of the
Inuit stories are consistent in their major details, even if the timing
isn't always right or the translation wasn't flawless. For instance, one group claimed
to have seen Captain Crozier and one other man, as late as 1852 to 1858. This doesn't necessarily mean
the account was incorrect, but rather that the timekeeping was off
or mistranslated somehow. For the main search party though, it wouldn't be
all the way until 1858 that a firsthand account would finally be found, when another expedition funded by Lady Franklin herself
came upon the cairn containing the two final reports
from the Erebus and Terror. Only then, at least eight years after the last
of the crew had most likely died, did they finally have hard evidence to go on. 10 years after that, in 1869, another explorer met a group of Inuit
on his second of three expeditions. They claimed to have met Franklin's men as well and offered them what food they could,
but there were just too many to save. To feed their own families, the Inuit were forced
to leave the men to their fates, which also didn't do anything to help the
British public's opinion of the Inuit. Finally, in 1993, 145 years after the search began,
the expedition's final camp was located, and every detail of cannibalism the Inuit
had spoken of was confirmed. Cut marks on the bones showed attempts
to remove the hands, feet, and heads, and the crew had even attempted to drill into
the largest bones to extract the marrow side. Today, we still don't know what happened
to the majority of the men. Even with that final camp, only a fraction have been
found, and many probably never will be. However, we might soon get a better idea
of what happened at least, because in 2014, the wreck of the Erebus was found
in Crampton Bay, remarkably preserved. It was also right where the Inuit said it would be
off the Adelaide Peninsula, lending more creed to the story of
some of the crew hunting with them, and the sightings of the dog, Neptune. Then, even more incredibly, two years later, the Terror would be found in, ironically enough,
Terror Bay. This bay had even been given the name
in the ship's honor without any idea that the ship was actually there. With both ships found, archeological expeditions
had been planned for the year 2020, but obviously,
those were interrupted. So finally, in May of 2022, limited work resumed. This means that there might be significant updates
to this story over the next few years, and the true last moments of the Franklin Expedition. Hello everyone and welcome to Scary Interesting. I have some exciting news. In the near future, we're gonna be starting a
Scary Interesting podcast. This will feature brand-new Scary Interesting content,
similar to what you see here on YouTube, but in an audio-only format
wherever you listen to podcasts. The video portion takes a lot of time and effort to create, so this is a way for us to bring you
new content more frequently. The only content that probably won't make it
onto the podcast are the stories that are map and diagram-heavy, where a
visual portion is really crucial. In addition to that, there are less restrictions on the types
of content that could be on podcast platforms, so some of the stories will be even crazier
than what you're used to. In any case, as the first episode release date
is finalized, I will make an announcement with all the details. Thank you all so much for watching, and hopefully,
I will see you in the next one.
