The Lost Franklin Expedition

In May of 1845, two vessels of the Royal Navy, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set out from England. En route to the Canadian Arctic, their mission was to find the Northwest Passage, a trade route from the Atlantic to the Pacific over Canada. But the men were never seen again. This mystery last almost 170 years before the ships were once again found. But these ships were some of the most technologically advanced and well prepared ships for the job. So just what happened? Check it out and find out just what might have happened to the Doomed Franklin Expedition.
#History #Disaster

Works cited:

AMC's The Terror

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[tacitus]

"They offloaded 5 men who were too ill to continue the journey."
They were the lucky ones.

[oban]

“He was simply tired of the arctic” as a soldier stationed in Alaska I feel this on a spiritual level.

[RuhrRedArmy]

The thought of Crozier potentially surviving years afterwards in the frozen wilderness is truly haunting and sad

[thundercactus]

I read a very interesting paper on the Franklin's lead toxicity. And it posited that the source was primarily, and overwhelmingly, the water purification system.
It's been assumed the cans were the primary source, BUT, despite being the first "batch" from that company, those cans were used many more times on many other ships without incident. And the amount of lead poisoning that could have been absorbed from the food just didn't seem to add up to what they were finding in the bodies.
What makes way more sense is the specialized water system on the Terror and Erebus.
Because they had steam locomotive engines fitted, which had massive 2000lb/hr water requirements, and seawater would have fouled them quickly, the ships needed a lot of fresh water in reserve to fill the need. Now, the primary source of distilled water on the ships was the Fraser patent stove, which was heated by steam, thus producing potable water for the crew (but only enough for the crew). There was a lead lined water tank as reserve, but if they were to use the engines they'd need a way to produce a lot of distilled water very quickly.
Enter the Fraser patent steam heating furnace. A furnace that heats the ship by steam, thus in addition to heating, also produces a lot of distilled water, has the heat to melt ice and snow gathered in a deck tank into fresh water, AND can also supply steam for the Fraser stove.
Now in most lead water systems on land, you get a nice calcification build up in the pipes which will naturally protect the lead from the water and vice versa.But on a freshly build heating system of lead pipes, with brand new lead water tanks, there's no calcification buildup. And distilled water does NOT like being pure water, so it desperately tries to absorb anything into it, like lead. And you know what makes that process MUCH faster? Heat.
So running hot steam through lead pipes, then gathering the condensate basically guarantees a large amount of lead contamination.
Not only were they drinking this water, but also using it to bake biscuits with all the flour they had brought.
This would explain the levels of lead toxicity, as well as providing a plausible reason they may have abandoned ship; had a furnace broken from corroding its own steam pipes, it could have been cause to abandon ship. Not just due to the change of environment, but the fact that damp clothing is very deadly for anyone wanting to go outside in the arctic.

[Henry-cdpw]

Fun fact about the 1819 franklin expedition where he ate his boots, there was also literal cannibalism. At one point they ran out of food, so some guys went off to hunt. Later only one returned and with lots of meat.
Soon afterwards one of the guys at camp died while “cleaning his musket”. To save themselves the remaining crew killed the cannibal, Michel, when he returned from hunting.

[lawsharland]

fucking crazy that Crozier was still trying to escape the arctic 12 yrs after the expedition first departed imagine being trapped in the great white nothing for 12 full years

[cdgconverselimbo]

800 Miles… that’s roughly the distance between Denmark and Italy …through snow, low on food and suffering from lead poisoning and scurvy. Fucking insane.

[armavirumquecano]

"And when I say there is no cannibalism in the Royal Navy, I do mean that there is a certain amount."

[Huntress_Hannah]

The man who stayed home with his wife successfully dodged being eaten

[beanieweenietapioca]

As a young child I remember watching the Nova special that featured the 1980s exhumation and autopsies of Beachy Island. My parents would never have let me watch, say, a zombie movie at that age; but a PBS documentary was just fine, right? The faces on those exhumed sailors horrified me for years afterwards.

[CoconutsGlow]

With names like Erebus (Darkness) and Terror... Hindsight is 20/20 but damn that's some heavy foreshadowing.

[indyj]

1846/47 was also the same winter when the Donner Party got trapped in the mountains, snowed in.

[brettspieleiq]

For me, the monster in the amazon series always was just a symbol of all the things the crew could not understand about the far north and the cold and the dangers that were out there or that they only imagined. I'm not normally into horror movies, but man was that series great!

[clemdane]

The Terror tv series on AMC was absolutely brilliant. Yes, they added some supernatural elements, which I would normally loathe, but it didn't detract from the story. The performances were stellar across the entire cast and the writing as well. I normally hate when anyone takes liberties with history, but in this case the look and feel of it made me feel like I had traveled back to 1845. Some found the series slow, but I didn't mind the pace. They managed to maintain the suspense and tension until the very end.

[EireForTheIrish]

Been fascinated and obsessed with this mystery for years now... I can't even open a tin of beans without thinking about these poor souls and what they went through....

[leflayart]

I watched the show The Terror, and the accuracy of casting look-a-like actors to the real life people is absolutely astounding.

[karanhdream]

We found the wrecks of those ships mainly thanks to the testimony of the inuit hunters and their oral history. Inuits have what could be the most accurate oral history on the planet. Since they have no written history, their lives depended on the accuracy of the information passed down.

Sadly, their testimony was ridiculed and denied by England's victorian society. They were insulted and dragged through the mud, because they saw how the men resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. 170 years later, it is thanks to them that the Erebus and Terror were found.

[tomhutchins]

Just a quick note on decoupling the screw propeller: while it is certainly a benefit that hauling the screw inside the hull would protect it from ice, the main reason this was done was because the screw was an emergency propulsion. Early steam engines were inefficient, used coal very quickly, and combined with the small coal bunkers on board this meant they were only used if the ship were dangerously becalmed. The reason you pull the screw out of the water is that trailing a static screw produces a lot of drag.

[admanios]

I feel like it's worth mentioning that Dr. John Rae was the one who reported to the Admiralty that the Inuit had discovered evidence of cannibalism among the Franklin crew. Franklin's wife took offense to that and had Rae's name dragged through the mud for taking the Inuit at their word.

[ImCarolB]

Even if I learn nothing new about the Franklin Expedition, which was not the case here, I have to listen to every podcast I encounter. It's so horribly fascinating.