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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Franklin Expedition · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: is with me too, and we're just a couple of
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: intrepid explorers sitting around in tiny rooms. I don't know
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: what we're exploring, but we're exploring something freezing to death. Yeah,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm a little warm. Actually, I'm kind of sweaty.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Maybe scurvy, I don't know, pneumonia.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Blood poisoning.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of bad things that happened about
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: this expedition that we're going to talk about. The Franklin Expedition,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: very very famous. I guess polar No, it wasn't a
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: polar expedition. It is an arctic expedition from the middle
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century. And if you've ever seen that
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: show on AMC, The Terror, Did you ever watch that?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: No? I wonder be recommending that a while ago though.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: It's so good, Chuck. So there's two seasons, two totally
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: different stories. I'm recommending the one because it's all about
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: like a speculative fiction about.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: This, about this very thing, no believe.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: It or no. The second season is about a Japanese
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: family in a tournament camp during World War Two.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That sounds equally uplifting.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Totally different. But the first season is really amazing and
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: it is all about this. All the characters in that
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: season are based on actually people from this expedition. It's
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: really neat.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Well, now it all hits home.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. So even before AMC came along
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: and did it, this is probably one of the most
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: famous expeditions in history, mainly because it was such a
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: colossal catastrophe. There are one hundred and twenty nine crew members,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: including the captain, the expedition leader, all the officers, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: all the crew, and not one survived. All of the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: crew was lost. That's really rare, even for Arctic exploration
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: back in the day. And then on top of that,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: for a very long time, we had no real clue
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: what happened to them. Well we did, we just ignored
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: the clues, but it was a mystery. They just vanished. Basically.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: The last time they were seen was by a couple
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of whaling ships at the very beginning of their voyage,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and that was it.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of ways to disappear, especially
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: in the Arctic. Yeah, in the Arctic in that time,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: of in the nineteenth century, very easy to happen.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but at the same time, this was remarkable. Even
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: at the time, it was weird that, like these guys,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: this expedition just went so colossally bad. And then one
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of the reasons, like I was saying that it's been
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: such an enduring mysteries because we never really knew. We
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: never had much evidence, and then we had scant evidence
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: over time, and the little evidence that we did collect
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: didn't really just explain everything. There were lots of question marks,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and even today, with all the stuff we found and
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: discovered along the way, we don't really know why this
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: whole thing went so pair shaped so quickly.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: But we're going to talk about whatever we do know.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I think that's our task today. Are you prepared for
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: this task?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a very not thought out name that our
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: show could have been called.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Our task is to explain this today.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: No, everything we do know instead of stuff you should know? Okay,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: should we talk about the Northwest Passage?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I would love to because it's kind of important.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, it's funny, it kind of is, and it
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: kind of isn't. I think that they thought it was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: going to be really really, really important back in the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: day when they were like, hey, listen, we got to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: find a route to sail basically straight from the Atlantic
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to the Pacific. And as it turns out, it didn't
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: end up being a big, heavily used passage. There's a
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: problem with the Northwest Passage and that is it's really
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: hard to get through. Yeah, there are a lot of
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Arctic islands up there north of Canada and there's a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: lot of ice. That ice moves around a lot. You
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: can never exactly predict where you're going to find that
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: ice or where it's going to recede, and even when
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: you're out there, it's going to be moving around. So
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it's almost like playing a game of Frogger. Sometimes when
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you're to the forget the car part, like the highway,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: like when you get to the river, because you're like, oh,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I got a passage now because I see
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it in front of me, but I might not have
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: it in an hour because the ice moves. So it's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a very tricky thing to get through. A lot of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: people and a lot of expeditions went tried to get
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: through it, charted, you know, great deals of it, and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: as we'll see in the end, John Franklin and his
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: crew was tasked with basically about three hundred miles of
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of figuring it out, charting it and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: that was sort of the last bit. And even had
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: it been all charted, it's still not like an easy
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: thing to get through.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: No, but just charting it was a huge mission for
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: the Royal Navy because at the time, the middle of
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, the British Royal Navy was the greatest
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: sea power in the world, and in their backyard, the Arctic,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: there was an entire piece of the globe that was
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: just a blank question mark. I saw a really great
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: documentary on Nova and they showed a map of the
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: world as they understood it in the mid nineteenth century,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: and everything else had been charted except for the spot
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the Arctic they actually did. They
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: had a blank space and a question more amazing, it
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: was like the Riddler had done that photography. But it
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: was like a blemish on the reputation of the British
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Navy that they still hadn't been able to chart it
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: despite trying for hundreds of years to at the very
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: least chart it, if not make it through. So it
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: was a big deal and that they really wanted to
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: do this.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I said, a lot of people. You
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: can't like point to a single person and say like
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: they discovered this passage kind of for some of the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: reasons we've been talking about the thirty thousand islands in
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the ice and people getting bits and pieces together a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: little bit at a time. But a lot of people
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: take credit. There are a lot of people that are
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: given credit for different parts of it. There was one
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: guy named Robert McLure from the Royal Navy, of course,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and he's credited as the first complete transit. Part of
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: that was on land. And then there's a guy, a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Norwegian named Roald Amundsen who was like, all right, now,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: this is the first guy who did it all by sea.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And this was like what fifty plus years after McClure
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: had done it partially on land. So it's like a
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: lot of time is passing, and this is at a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: time when the advances of sailing and getting through passages
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: like this was sort of at its peak.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, and by the way, rolled Mundson he was also
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: the guy who was the first to make it to
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the South Pole, so he was quite a show off.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: As far as explorers go, look at him. So yeah,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: it wasn't until the twentieth century that somebody actually made
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: it all the way through by ship. So it kind
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: of goes to show you that, like, they weren't really
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: successful this Franklin expedition and even after the expedition. But
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: what's interesting about it is Ed helped us out with this,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and he made a point that there were a lot
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of rescue missions to go find the lost Franklin expedition,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and while they were there they charted stuff that had
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: been uncharted. So Ed makes the point that by getting lost,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Franklin actually contributed more to the charting of this unknown
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: part of the Arctic than he did while he was
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: actually alive, because he didn't actually make it very far
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: and his crew made it kind of far. But by
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: the time they made it to where they were going,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: they couldn't have cared less about charting. They were just
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: trying to stay alive unsuccessfully, as we'll see.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Well, there you have it.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I guess I spoil after having already said that not
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: one of the one hundred and shine Men survived.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, no, wait, I spoiled it. In the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: first thirty seconds, not just now exactly. All right, well,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about Franklin. John Franklin, that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: is not Benjamin, of course, sure he hated boats. John
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Franklin was born in seventeen eighty six and he was
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: not a rich guy. He did not come from some
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: noble family. But he did end up getting a lot
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of seafaring experience in the Navy, a lot of combat experience,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Like he knew his way around a ship. So in
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen he saw that the British Navy was downsizing
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: some and the writing was kind of on the wall
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: for at least he felt the writing was on the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: wall for him, and he said, all right, what I
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: should do if I want to, you know, continue at sea.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And you know, I kind of like this life is
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: I got to get out of the military and become
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: an explorer, become an Arctic explorer, because that was like
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a path post some military that you could do. You
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: could become an adventurer.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was still part of the British Royal Navy,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: he was a captain in it, but he wasn't engaging
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: in warfareries engaging in explorations. So it was almost like
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: they had two prongs. He could either go like Discovery
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Corps or you know, the core of death and destruction.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Sounds like both leads to death.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in this case, Discovery cor didn't pan out very I.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Just want to spoil it again.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll just everybody just forget that. Everyone dies.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: We're working up to that, apparently.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So he got to work on his discovery path. He
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was doing pretty well. He commanded some expeditions here and there.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: One ended up being a big failure on the north
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: coast of Canada, exploring near the Coppermine River, and half
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: of the men died. The reason that this is noteworthy
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: is because that even though it was a big failure,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: he gained a lot of notoriety because he survived grim
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: conditions and very famously ate his boots to survive, ate
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the leather from his boots, which is a thing that
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: happened on alone on that TV show. I watched that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: some guy ate part of his belt.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how did it go down?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: It didn't go down.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I can't imagine it would, man, I don't think.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I think the idea when you boil leather like that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: is that it's just you know, some of the fat
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: will come off, and it's it might give you a
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: little bit of caloric intake, but it's it's not a
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: great plan for success long term. But Franklin earned a
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: lot of notoriety by eating his boots and wrote a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: big best selling book about it, and was knighted even
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: though it was a failure.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they kind of saw it as you know,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: he had sacrificed that much in the name of exploration,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: so sure, why not nightem? You know, it's better than
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: like throwing rawen tomatoes at him upon his return. The
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: guy had to eat his boots for Pete's sake, you know, Yeah, exactly.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: So that was one of his two initial expeditions. The
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: one that we're talking about today was his third. The
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: other one was pretty catastrophic too, nothing like the first
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: one and nothing like the third one, but still noteworthy
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: enough that it was not successful. They got lost, and
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: both of those first expeditions, Franklin and his crew were
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: bailed out by Inuit who basically made sure that they
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: stayed alive. He probably wouldn't have survived that first expedition
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: had it not been helped from the Inuit who made
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: sure that they made it back and were fed and
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. And that's a big recurring theme that
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: we're going to run into, is the Inuit were in
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the background. Like back in England, people knew they were there.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: They called them Eskimo, spelled like it would if you
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: were in New Orleans or something with the aux at
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the end. Oh really, yeah, that's what they did. They
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: were not thought very highly of. And yet the whole time,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: as we'll see, like the Inuit were just witnesses to
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: this history, had an extensive and detailed oral history, knew
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: exactly what happened, where everybody was and what went down when.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: And yet the British and other European explorers just would
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: not listen to them. And when they did listen to
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: them and they tried to explain it to England, England
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: shouted that person down and told them they were a
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: fool for listening to the chattering of these these eskimaux.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: So that's just kind of a common theme as we'll
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: see that the Inuit played a huge outsize role that
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: were only now starting to kind of like acknowledge or recognize.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They also there was a common theme that if
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: you were smart enough to listen to them while you
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: were there. Then you fared much better than if you
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: did things your own.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Way, definitely. But the problem was is like that was
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: not something you would want to do back in the
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century in front of your crew. Usually, Yeah,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: you could very quickly, like your crew could lose confidence
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: in you because you were doing something totally out of
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the norm and probably out of the bounds of respectable
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: behavior by following the lead of you know, an Inuit
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: at the time, or I'm sorry, an inook. Something I
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: learned is Inuit is the plural, inook is the singular.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So if you're talking to you wouldn't say I'm talking
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: to Americans, say I'm talking to an American, and in
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the same way say I'm talking to an Inuk who's
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: a member of the Inuit.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What they would were smart to do would be
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: to take an inook around behind a big block of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: ice and very quietly say, listen, old boy, if you
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: have any advice, please just let me know quietly, cappy
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: to follow.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Can you draw it where we should go in the snow?
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Right? And then yes, yeah, and then erase it very
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: quickly and with pe say face yeah, with your urine.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: So or no, no, no, wait, erase it with urine or
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: spell it out in urine.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: You would erase it with urine. You could do both,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: but the spelling it out with urine would would be
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: too permanent. You would want to pee all over it
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and it would melt out the instructions once you committed
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: them to memory, and everybody in your crew would have thought,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: you just want behind the ice block to pee.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Well, that's why they have the slogan as the sharpie
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of snow riting.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: What does P? Yeah, okay, I didn't know it. I
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: didn't know P had its own slogan.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: It did. I really circumnavigated at like a big ice
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: flow that was nice, clumsily somewhat breaking through with my
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: iron force.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: There were a couple of bumps in there.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Sure, all right? So where are we? He as he
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: had the second expedition that he said wasn't as bad
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: as the first, and third still not great. Right, He's
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: kind of thinking about hanging up his half eaten boiled boots.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: At this point. He's in his fifties, and in eighteen
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: thirty seven they said, no, why don't you take this
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: appointment as the Lieutenant governor Van Demon's Land, which we
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: now know as Tasmania, and that only lasted a few years.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: And his wife Jane said, you know what you should
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: really do is finished strong, you're getting old. You got
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: one morning. You just to sort of save the family
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: name one more Arctic expedition that might really be great
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and cement you as a victor. And he said, I
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: guess I'll try if they'll.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Have me, he said, Roger Roger. Yeah, so he did, well,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: she did, I should say he kind of just went
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: along with it. But lady Jane Franklin really worked behind
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the scenes to get her husband appointed to the head
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of an Arctic expedition, and in particular this one that
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: was considered potentially the last one to map the Northwest
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Passage because there was only that three hundred miles of
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: uncharted territory.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So I got a question, though, was this a situation
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: where they gave it to this older guy because no
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: one wanted to do it because it was so dangerous,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: or like I saw that the you know, younger captains
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you know, declined to take the position. Is it because
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it was just so fraught?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I honestly don't know. It's possible but
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: that seems like that would lie in the face of
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: like the Royal Navy and their attitude at the time,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: like you would step up and be like, yes, I'll
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: be the one to die, rather than be like I
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: don't want that, you know. So I'm not sure exactly
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: why I'll have to go back and watch the Terror again.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Is it like how historically accurate? Is it?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Extremely? But at the same time it also veers off
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: into like just wild speculation.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, I gotta see it now.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I can't really get across how good it is.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: And it's one of those ones where you know when
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: somebody talks something up and you go in expecting high
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: hopes or with high hopes and you're invariably let down.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: You will not be let down. All right, that's how
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: great it is. I expect texts from you every like
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: couple hours while you're watching it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, let's take
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a break. We've got it set up in that he
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: is going to take this final voyage to restore his
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: name and we'll be back right after this. I'll let
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you know what happened.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, So, Lady Jane Franklin has successfully secured the appointment
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: as head of this expedition in eighteen forty six. I
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: believe in eighteen forty six expedition to the Arctic to
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: uncharted territory, largely because no one else would accept it,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: but also because she maneuvered. I don't think. I think
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: without her wrangling he still might not have gotten it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Even though no one else wanted it. He was ready
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: to go out to pasture, and the Royal Navy was
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: more than willing to let him go. Lady James Franklin
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: said no, meet my sheer will, and they did, and
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: so he became head. And it's not like he was
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: just some hapless boob or something like that. He wasn't
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: the finest captain in the Royal Navy. He wasn't the
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: worst either. He was just you know, average, and his
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: track record wasn't so great, and there were plenty of
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: other captains in the Royal Navy that had far better
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: track records than him. But again, I don't want to
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: get across like he was the wrong man for the job.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: He just wasn't necessarily the best man for the job.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I was trying to make up a funny
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: name for the worst captain in the Royal Navy.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: But stop I got I got nothing either.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: No matter how I try, I guarantee it won't be good.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Like, uh, oh, what's something funny about someone who can't sail?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: They have lead feet?
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: About lead foot Mick can't swim?
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, that's not a good sailor right there? Or
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: James Francis can't steer?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? I love it. Should we speaking of steering?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Should we talk about these boats?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, let's because they're kind of important too.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very important. One, as I guess, is named for
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the TV show The Terror or vice versa. Yeah, and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the Arabis. What also said it was named after the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: TV show and the Arabis. These were previous to this outing.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: They were they were warships, but they were ships that didn't,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you know, have like cannons up and down the sides.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: They were delivering big mortar rounds close to shore, so
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: they were they were squatty, and they were super strong,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and they were sailing ships. But they were retrofitted for
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: this adventure. I keep calling you an adventure.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: It was an adventure. I think that's yeah.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: For a while at least they were retrofitted in a
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: bunch of ways. First of all, adding these iron plates
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: to the front to you know, break through the ice.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: But then they also added a steam engine to this
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: sailing vessel, not to just use full time, but you know,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: because you require too much coal, you can't do something
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: like that, but to get you through, like like I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: was talking about that moving ice. If they were like,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we need to get over there quick
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: because I see a channel that's closing, they could kick
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: in that steam and get over there faster. That's just
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: like one ways that they would use the steam engine.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like if you were playing Frogger, you wanted your
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: steam engines going exactly. So they also figured out how
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: to use the steam as basically central heating. This was
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: like a cool state of the art. We're talking like
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: the late eighteen forties here, and these guys were going
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: on an Arctic expedition and I think they may have
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: been the first crew ever to sail into the Arctic
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: with central heat. So that was an enormous luxury. And
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: they also used the steam system as a water distillation system,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: so they had all the fresh water they needed, but
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: they could desalinate it, they could decontaminate it. It was
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: just a really ingenious system, all kind of built into one.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you're wondering about the propellers, sure being
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a problem with the ice. They actually retracted back into
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the hole when they were in shallow water and icy water.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So for the eighteen forties, this felt like a very
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: modern operation.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. So it's important to remember though
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: that the steam was meant to just kind of give
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: them a boost. They were still sailing ships, that's yes.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Mostly how they moved was through sale.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they brought a lot of stuff. We always
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: like to talk about, oh boy, the load of any
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: expedition and what they kind of carried, because it's usually
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a precursor too. They didn't either have enough or they
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: had the wrong stuff. They had thirty two thousand pounds
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of beef, thirty three pounds of tinned meat, which will
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: very much come into play. We'll get to that later.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: They had fresh veggies, they had livestock. They had live
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: animals on board, right.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: They had cattle, sheep, pigs, hens. Sure, all meant to
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: probably not last very long, and then eating was good
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: at first, exactly. They also had pets to chuck. There
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: were three pets there was a monkey that Lady Jane
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Franklin gave to the ship as a president, and I
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: guess was kind of Captain Franklin's pet. Yeah, and they
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: apparently used to steal stuff a lot, but it was
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: a super cute monkey, so everybody forgave him every time. Yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Much more popular was a dog named Neptune and Newfoundland.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, it gotta have a dog on board.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: And then there was a cat that may or may
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: not have had a name, because I think I got
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: this information from a historian named John Geiger, who was
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: basically dedicated as a career to the Franklin expedition, and
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: he does not name this cat, and the fact that
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: he didn't makes me think that cat didn't have a name.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: It was just the cat.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think they named cats for a while.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen a lot of historical stories where there
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: was like a cat they just called cat.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: So like mister Sphinx didn't come around until like the seventies. Maybe,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know, we'll find out. What's the short stuff
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: just waiting to happen.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I totally They also had thousands of pounds of sugar,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: had ton of spices. I mentioned the veggies they had.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: You gotta have tobacco. They had about seven thousand plus
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: pounds of tobacco, tons of booze, four thousand gallons of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: either rum or wine, close to three thousand pounds of
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: candles so they could see because you know, it gets
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: during the winter there, it's dark for long, long periods
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: of time.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Lemon juice, lots of lemon.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Juice, that's a big one. They had nine hundred and
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: thirty gallons of lemon juice to stave off scurvy, and
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: every crew member got an ounce a day, and unfortunately
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: it didn't work for a lot of people. A lot
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: of guys seemed to have gotten scurvy. Their teeth fell out,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: and they were fatigued, and all sorts of terrible things
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: happened because of a vitamin C deficiency. And yet they
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: had enough lemon And apparently historians think that the lemon
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: juice may have started to ferment, and so to kill
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: off those that bacteria, they may have boiled the lemon
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: juice to get kind of recharge it, and in doing
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: so I would render the ascorbic acid, the vitamin C
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: totally ineffective, inert. Basically and so they could have been
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: drinking lemon juice all day long and they still would
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: have gotten scurvy. So that's a great theory. I don't
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: know how accurate it is, but it's the best one
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: i've heard. It's also the only one I've heard, but
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: it's still pretty good.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And how about we set up the first part of
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: this tinned food thing and then we'll reveal what happened later. Yeah,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: but he you know, it was sort of a new thing.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Usually you would take dry goods like salted pork and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: stuff like that if you wanted to eat well on
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a ship. But Franklin said, no, let's do this a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: little better. Tinning technology is new. I'm in a contract
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: with this guy's named Stephen Goldener, and he's well, I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: was about to say the best at this, but he
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: was doing this and they said, give us whatever you
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: can get us on time. We need eight tins of food,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: cooked beef, cooked pork, preserve meat, all soup even.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Don't forget that.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Oh well, what is pemmican? I've heard of that.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: It's uh, it's it's I saw it described as paste
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: of dried and pounded meat mixed with fat and spices.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: I saw it compared to oily beef jerkey, and then
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: some people like I guess keto, people like we'll add
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: like maybe some fruit or something to it, just for
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: a little bit of carbs. Okay, But it was a
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: very popular staple in the Arctic because it was fatty
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and full of protein and that's what you needed. Those
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: are good things, yeah.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: For sure. And Goldener was like, all right, uh, this
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: stuff is gonna be great. It'll last you a few
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: years and I need to get to work though, because
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I have a short timeline. But delivered those tins and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: that's where we're gonna leave it for now.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So they they took on all these supplies I
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: think after they passed Scotland in Disco Bay d s KO. Yeah. Yeah,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: they do not dance in Disco Bay. That's in Greenland
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: on the west coast of Greenland. That's where they took
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: on supplies. And then also really interestingly, they left behind
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: five guys. There were originally one hundred and thirty four
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: crew members, but five of them were left behind in
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Greenland because they were basically booted off the ship by Franklin.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: The only explanation I saw is that they had run
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a foul of his bands on swearing and drunkenness, so
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: they actually managed to avoid this grim fate by cursing
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and being drunk essentially. So yeah, for sure. So they
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: took on all of these supplies. They took on the coal,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: they took on all the tin meat and all that,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: and they started sailing toward baff And Bay. Not the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: one in Texas. This one is up in the Arctic.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: And they were about to enter Lancaster Sound, or they did.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Right before they did, they were sighted by a couple
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: of whaling ships, the Enterprise and the Prince of Wales.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And it's really disappointing. They didn't spell the Prince of
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Whales like a whale. They build it like the country.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: It's a whaling chip.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, I mean, and boat names are supposed
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to be buns.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. Like, oh man, I can't think
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: of one right now.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I can't either.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: All of them are, though, aren't they. Yeah, at least
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: the one's in Florida, and you know California, like San Diego.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're very funny usually.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, So these whaling ships hung out with them. Apparently
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: they boarded and like looked around and they were like,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: oh my god, central heat. When they took their leave
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: of the Arabis and the terror, they were the last people.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: They were the last Europeans to see these people alive.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And one of the other things I just want to
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: say about Lancaster Sound chuck from baff And Bay. If
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: you look at it on a map and they don't
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: map out the sea ice, it is a You could
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: shoot an arrow from baff And Bay to the Arctic Ocean,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: which would eventually take you to the Pacific, just straight
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: through Lancaster Sound. And yet because of the ice, it
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: was so bad they couldn't go anywhere near across Lancaster Sound.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: They had to immediately start to go south.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, go south. Indeed, I guess we should talk
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: a little bit about sort of how you navigate through
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: this ice. We did mention that that had, you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: iron on the front of their ships, and any any
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: sort of ice ship or fishing ship that's in icy
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: waters will have a reinforced hull because you know, you
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: can break through some of this stuff. If you ever
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: watch you know, Deadliest Catch. They do that kind of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: thing here and there. But if you really get sort
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of in a position where you you know the ice
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: is too thick, and you know this ice is continually
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: being just smashed against the shore until you have like
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: ice mountains along the shoreline and it just it just
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: stacks up on each other. So eventually, if you get
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to a place where you really can't get through, there
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: are a couple of things you can do. You can
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: wait for summer and like cross your fingers that it'll melt,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: because it may not even melt then. Or you can
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: use a process called warp, which is when you basically
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: inch yourself along little by little by If there's land nearby,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: you could like tie yourself to something strong on land
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and winch yourself by little by little. If there's no
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: land around, you can put your anchor in a dinghy
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and send somebody out, probably not a dingy, a little
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: bit bigger boat, drop the anchor, and then wind yourself
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: toward that anchor. But it is extremely slow going if
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: you can even get through at that point. I think
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Edie's one example of a rescue expedition that was trying
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: to find Franklin that spent nine hours basically going the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: length of their ship like an inch at a time,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: So it's not fun. It is, but it's like that
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: may be your only chance at survival sometimes because you can,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: you could get stuck in ice forever and die for sure.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: And that's actually what the Franklin Expedition found themselves in
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: that situation. Now, at first they were doing fine. They
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: wintered Ichy Island, which is not very far past where
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: they entered from baff And Bay, because I think they
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: set sail on May nineteenth, and winter comes quickly, right exactly,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: They finally oh sorry, they finally left Disco Bay in
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: July of eighteen forty five. So yeah, winter comes way
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: earlier up there than it does here. So they wintered
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly and they were successful that first winter. I
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: started to melt and they started to do some cool
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: little navigating and apparently doing U turns and all sorts
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: of stuff that will never probably know exactly what they did. Yeah,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: but that first winter and summer went fine.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but three guys did die of basically kind of
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: how you die back then in those conditions. Could have
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: been pneumonia, it could have been I mean, he knows
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: what kind of helped some of these guys are in
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't anything like super unusual. They just lost
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: three guys.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, but that supposedly was not a good record, even
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: for an Arctic expedition, losing three guys that quickly. Yeah,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: So aside from the three deaths, fine, things went pretty
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: well compared to the rest of the expedition. That was great, right, Sure,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: So the first winter comes and goes, the first summer
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: comes and goes, and now they've made it to the
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: northwest corner of King William Island and they get they
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: get iced in for the winter. And again, this is
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: what they're expecting. They had three years worth of supplies.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: They figured it would take that long to circumnavigate all
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: of this, you know, this ice flow and throughout these seasons.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: So they're not worried yet. When they start to worry
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: is when the next summer comes and the ice doesn't
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: melt right.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And that's what I mentioned earlier by crossing your fingers.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: You know, it sometimes it melts, sometimes it doesn't. It
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: all depends on the conditions at the time. At this point,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: they had been there for a while, like you said,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: we're surviving and they were even sending guys ashore that
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: were you charting their location, and nothing was really out
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of the ordinary, like you said, until they were like,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: well we're still stuck, and that's when it got fairly scary.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: This is I guess spring or what would be spring.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what you would call may in
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: that area in eighteen forty seven Winter part two, maybe sure,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: there was a team that went to leave. They had
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: this method for leaving messages. They would use these Royal
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Navy forms, basically like they should have just had letterhead
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: because they would have had more room to write, but
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: instead they would write in the margins of these Royal
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Navy forms, just to make sure people knew it was them,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and they would leave them in sealed canisters in various places.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: This one was under a cairn that someone else had
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: built before them, and it was a pretty brief note.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Things were okay, nothing out of the ordinary to report
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: at that time. These people came back to the ship
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: from you know, delivering this note and making sure it
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: was safe to be found later. And Franklin had died
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: while they were gone on June eleventh.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they even said in the note Franklin commanding and
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: then all as far as we know, right, So that's
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I mean that's kind of a big deal. I mean,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the leader of the expedition dies, it's not like, well,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: what do we do now? I Mean there was a
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: second in command, a guy named Francis Krozer, and then
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: a third in command named James Fitzjames, so there was
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: like a clear chain of command of able captains and leaders.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Right sure, but it's still I mean, at the very least,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that's just seems like bad juju when you're up on
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: an Arctic expedition and you've been snowed in through summer, right.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a few other people died too, so at
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: this point they've lost, you know, probably close to ten people.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: So from remember eighteen forty six when they first got
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: iced in for the second time, this time off the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: northwest coast of King William Island, all the way through
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight and actually beyond, they just sat there.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Their ships were iced in. They didn't move. They just
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: stayed there. If the ice moved, then the ships moved,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: but that was it. They didn't move within the ice.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: And these guys are like living on these ships, kind
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: of living on shore. They made camps and then they
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: finally abandoned the ships because it was becoming clear that
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I guess Krozier had this gamble to make. He could
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: either wait to see if the ice melted next summer,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: and in which case they could probably make it through
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: to safety. They could sail the safety during the summer
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: and be saved, but if the ice didn't melt, he
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: would have wasted several months waiting to see if the
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: ice melted when they could have been walking to safety.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: And he chose option B. He said, we need to
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: start moving towards safety because I don't think that the
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: ice is going to melt again.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the Inuit, uh, the ones who listened to them,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: a few dozen of them did make it to mainland Canada.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: But just because you made it to mainland Canada doesn't
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: mean like that you're saved. Like they were still in
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: big trouble. Yeah, obviously at this point, Lady Jane, well,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: should we take a break now?
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, let's take a break.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll take a break and talk about
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: what lady Jane did right for this. All right. So
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: at this point, things are going really bad the expedition itself,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: as far as trying to get these last three hundred
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: miles that that passage figured out was. I mean, forget
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: about that. At this point. These guys are just trying
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: to be alive.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: They're walking across yeah, frozen sea ice that they're just walking.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: It's that much ice that it's just like one continuous
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: sheet all the way to Canada.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not a healthy prospect for survival.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: No. And one other thing, Chuck, I want to throw in.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: They're not just walking. They're pushing huge ships loaded with supplies.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: They're dragging them and pushing them along this ice and rock.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, not a fun task, no, exactly. So this is
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: where the search period begins, which spanned from eighteen forty
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: seven to eighteen fifty nine. All kinds of people went
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: out looking. Lady Jane was ringing that bell. The Royal
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Navy was offering up twenty thousand pounds in eighteen fifty
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: ton of money.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Do you I know.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Hear it? Was this an American?
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Or I got both, buddy, Well, let's hear it. That
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: would be two point two million pounds today or two
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: point eight million dollars today.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: What about euros?
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Oh? I didn't do that one. You got me interesting,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: You could have said, what about Drachmas.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: You're typically more thorough. But that's fine.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Sorry, No, that's it, man.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of money enough to attract what eventually
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: ended up being over thirty expeditions that were gonna be
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: fraught with the same peril, you know. I mean it's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: not like things had changed and it was now easy,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: but it was you know, it's sort of like in Jaws.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: You know, all these all these people had money on
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: their mind. They had their mind on their money and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: the money on their minds right, and wanted all those pounds,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and it was a big uh, it was a big
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: public thing. Like people, people wanted them back, and they
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: tried to get them back their hardest.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you know, one of the reasons why John
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Franklin was known was because he was the man who
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: ate his boot, going to get that guy the English public, right,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: and the English public was also very much fascinated with
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Arctic exploration. It would be kind of analogous to the
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: American public being interested in going to the moon in
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: the sixties.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, not like no, no
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: one cares, no.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Sadly, hopefully everybody will get reinterested again when we start
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: going to the moon again soon.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: One of the big names in the one of these
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: search parties was a guy named John Ray. He was
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: He was a guy that sort of well, we'll get
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: to kind of his big reveal in a second here,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: but he was very noteworthy and proficient guy. He knew
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. He had been all over the Arctic.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I think he was one of the guys who listened
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to the Inuit, right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: He was, and he was. He got shouted down as
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: a result because he came back from this exploration and
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: interviewing a number of Inuit and he said, hey, they
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: told me that these guys probably not probably, but definitely
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: engaged in cannibalism. That's how desperate they became. And that
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: did not No, that did not sit well with Lady
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Jane Franklin, and she actually got Charles Dickens to basically
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: write this diatribe about how terrible a person Ray was
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: for listening to the Inuit and how terrible, yeah, how
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: terrible the Inuit were. John Geiger says that it was
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: just a stain on his reputation that continues today. It
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: was very racist, the stuff that he wrote, and he
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: did it on behalf of Lady Jane Franklin. To basically say, like,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: you're slandering these heroes, and Dickens even said, if there's
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: if they're dead, I'll bet it was the Inuit that
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: did this. Anything but the possibility that they actually became
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: so desperate to engage you cannibalism. And as we'll see,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: it turns out the Inuit who said that this happened
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: were actually proven correct, like a century later.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, by the nineteen hundreds, they had found graves,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: they had found corpses, they had found a lot of
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the stuff except for the ships. And remarkably, just oh
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: how long, not even ten years ago, in twenty fourteen,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and in twenty sixteen they found the Erebus and the
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Terror respectively in about thirty feet of water, fairly intact
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: considering how long it had been. And this was I
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: think Terror was off of King William Island. Arabus was
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a little further south near the Adelaide Peninsula. And they
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: just don't know for sure how the Arabis exactly got there,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: whether it was sailed there or moved there, or just
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: accidentally drifted there some combination of all those.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Who knows, Yeah, it's possible it drifted like after the
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: ice melted some people say maybe the ice moved it
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: all the way down there. That wouldn't have happened. It
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: would have crushed the boat. It could have very easily
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: been sailed. But either way, like finding those ships was annoyed.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: And there's really cool Parks Canada videos of scuba divers
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: swimming through these ships that are like almost entirely intact.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: There's like still dishes on the shelves and bottles on
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: shelves and like desks intact, and they the drawers are closed.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: They think because of the state of the water and
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: the anaerobic conditions that there's probably lots of documentation of
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: what went on during the expedition in those drawers that
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: they're going to eventually be able to get to totally.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: As far as why they perished, there were a bunch
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: of theories sort of you know, three of them can
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: be kind of lumped together, and it could happen to
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: sort of any expedition, which is, you know, bad luck
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: with the weather. You know, those two really bad winters
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: in a row, without that summer thaw that they maybe
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: were counting on, combined with not being as prepared as
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: you should have been. I guess two not three. Even
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: though they were prepared, they were heavily stocked. This was
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: just really rough territory, and the clothes they had might
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: not have been perfect. They really held water well, which
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: would freeze. The equipment was really heavy. They, like we said,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: they weren't listening to the locals about how you should
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: really do things. They were doing things their way. So
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: that's a kind of underpreparedness. And so those are just
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: sort of under the normal ways that one could die
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: on an expedition like this.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Then, and with the bad luck in particular where they
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: got iced in for that second winter, even the Inuit
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: are like, well, you don't really go around there. They
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: called it two New Knee, which is back of Beyond,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: which is a terrible name for a place that you're
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: iced in in the Arctic. And then on that No
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: documentary they took ice core samples and they found that
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: those winters that they were iced in were two of
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: the worst winters in seven hundred years in that area.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: That's called bad luck.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: They had terribly bad luck for sure.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, slash under prepared because they shouldn't have been there
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to begin with, right, So those are all sort of
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: normal ways that you could perish. Like I said, the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: last one that we have to talk about, though, is
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: this lead poisoning. We talked about the contract with the
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: guy that was innovating with his ten meats. He had
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: rushed this thing through it apparently leaked lead and you know,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it was lined with lead and that leaked into the food.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: They did lots of studies over the years. The first,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I believe was nineteen eighty one. There was an anthropologist
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: named Owen, doctor Owen Beatty and basically was the first
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: person to say, you know, I think this. We literally
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: are founding lead in their bones, like at levels that
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: we should not see. And it seems pretty obvious that
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: was lead in the examined corpses. Like it may not
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: have been everything, but it definitely had something to do
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: with a lot of the deaths.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of criticized that he didn't have a
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: control group, Like it's possible these guys had tons of
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: lead in their bodies anyway, just from lifelong exposure to lead,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: and that it's possible their bones released it as they
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: started to die. Basically, we don't know because there isn't
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: a control group, but it is it's quite possible that
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: it had some effect on the expedition if it wasn't
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: directly killing people. They also think that the contaminated tins,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: or that the poorly soldered tins may have been contaminated
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: with botulism, which would have killed off a lot of
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: people too. And then yeah, so's it's just not clear
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: a lot like those first three graves that they found
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: from the first winter, like you said they were, I
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: think they died from pneumonia from tuberculosis, But so few
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: people have been found and the state that they've been
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: found in hasn't really allowed for forensic anthropology to say
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: this is how this guy died, this is how this
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: guy died. So it's all left to the imagination. Yeah,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that captures my
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: imagination the most is that there Inuit reports that in
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: the summer of either eighteen fifty one or eighteen fifty two,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: there were still four survivors left from this crew, four
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: of them and a dog, probably Neptune the Newfoundland, I imagine,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: and that they were the most skilled at hunting, so
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: they had survived the longest and they were all that
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: was left, and by eighteen fifty one eighteen fifty two
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: there had already been numerous search expeditions launched, so that
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: means that there were people searching for them while there
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: were still survivors. They just didn't their paths didn't cross.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: They just didn't find one another. And those guys were
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: those last four were the last of them, and I
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: guess they did not go on.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess we should talk a little bit about
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: the cannibalism thing, because that's, you know, that was what
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Ray was sort of brave enough to talk about and was,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like you said he was. He was basically
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: shunned because of this. They didn't want to hear anything
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: like that, and it turns out that he was. He
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: was basically he was right. I mean, there's no other
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: way to say it. They found cut marks on bones,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: on leg bones, They found a skull from the same
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: person that was intentionally broken. All these like they now
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: that we know what cannibal sites look like, it has
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: all the markings basically literally, yeah, like intentionally breaking bones,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: cutting bones on purpose. What else they found like clusters clusters.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Of bones together like they'd just been tossed.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: That weren't like just part of the body dying, Like
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: bones that shouldn't be together, were together.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then a lot of the bones that were
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: found were like long bones, so they suspect that they
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: had just been like carrying arms and legs. Is portable food.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: It was. It was a bad jam. So there is
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: it is clear that they did engage in cannibalism, and
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: not only was Ray right, they into it who told
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: Ray that they had engaged in cannibalism were right. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: throughout some of these expeditions that came during this what's
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: called the Franklin Search period from eighteen fifty seven to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: fifty nine, a lot of Inuit agreed to be interviewed
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: with translators with some of these explorers, and they documented
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: these interviews and it wasn't until like a century later
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: that historians like John Geiger went through this stuff and
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, the Inuit knew all along exactly what
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: had happened. Apparently one of them pointed to where the
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: ship was that I think the Arabis, and they still
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: didn't discover it for another century after that. So it's
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: a really interesting, just kind of side note that like
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: there's this whole group of people were willing to cooperate
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: and share their knowledge and they were just totally ignored
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: and that's what led to the mystery that lasted for
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: over a century.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think if it hadn't been for
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: him poking around more, they were quite happy just to
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: leave this as it was and that sort of be
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the end of it all.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, so, I guess.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: So good stuff.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the Franklin expedition. And now that we
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: found the ships, yeah, they are pretty confident they we'll
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: have a lot more information soon. So that'll be pretty
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: cool to look out for. And since I said it's
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: cool to look out for. Oh, by the way, if
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: you want to know more about this, go check out
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: that Nova episode on it. It's really really good. And
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: since I said that, it's time for listener now.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this the shortest short stuff because
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: this is from Kent and Kent Talks. He's basically sending
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in a short stuff suggestion, but I think says enough
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: about the thing that it can just be its own
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: little episode. Here at the end, Oh, we were talking
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: about the seventies trucker craze on the trucker episode Long
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Haul Trucking, and he said, we all know truckers have
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: their own lingo. But one phrase that has died out
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: in usage is the mond Fort lane. Have you ever
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: heard of this?
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: I had until I wrote his email.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Montfort lane referred to the left lane of
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: the interstate. In the early seventies of Colorado, cattle legend
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: named Kenny Montfort started shipping meat to the East coast.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: He had a fleet of supposedly triple digit trucks and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: drivers who are not afraid to mash it. They turned
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: two trips a week from Colorado to New York City.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: One driver recalled he had twelve hundred dollars in speeding
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: fines one year. When these were back when tickets were
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: about fifteen bucks and points didn't accumulate on your license.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: It's important.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just rack them up forever and have the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: company paid for him, I guess. And interestingly, the Monfort
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: family is now the principal owners of the Colorado Rockies
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: baseball team. That is very interesting, and that is from Kent.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Kent, good stuff all around. That was
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: the short stuff right there on the end of the
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Franklin Expedition episode. Great if you want to be like,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: what was it, Kent?
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Kent?
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Kent and give us
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: a little short stuff that we can add on as
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: a listener mail. I think that's a cool new thing.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Let's give it a shot and you can send that
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.