This episode was suggested by Tara and Matthew on Facebook, and Sarah on Patreon. If you'd like to suggest a topic, you can do so on Facebook and Instagram at Morbid Curiosity Podcast, on Twitter at Morbid Podcast, and on our website, www.MorbidCuriosityPodcast.com. If you'd like to become a patron of the MCP, go to bit.ly slash morbidpatron, that's bit.ly slash morbidpatron, and you can support us for as little as $1 an episode. Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so the mysterious and unsolved.
Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called Morbid Curiosity, and it has gripped hundreds of people throughout the ages. I am one of those people. My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast. During our Ghost Ships of the Northwest Passage episode back in April, I summarized the Franklin Expedition down to about a paragraph.
This was difficult as it's such an interesting topic to me. It's a story fraught with tragedy and mystery, but also adventure. I'm so glad other listeners were just as interested as I am, so I could dedicate an entire episode to it. Therefore, this will be a two-part episode delving into the story of Sir John Franklin and his final journey into the Arctic waters of the Northwest Passage.
History is most often written by those that succeed, survive, or conquer. They are the ones left standing to write it. This means that the stories of those who failed, perished, or were conquered are often lost or pushed by the wayside. However, one story of failure and loss has captured the imaginations of millions of people since the event took place.
That is the tale of Sir John Franklin and his expedition to the High Arctic of Canada to find a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. His final attempt was not his first attempt. He had tried twice before, commanding overland expeditions with the goal of mapping the Arctic coastline. Others too had tried to find the Northwest Passage before and after Franklin's attempts.
The reasons for these many ventures into the cold and dangerous seas of the Arctic had to do with trade, politics, and the race for scientific discovery. During the 19th century and before, there were only two ways for Britain and many other European countries to trade with Asia, either trekking across the land or sailing by sea. Both routes were long and arduous, but the sea route was preferred as it didn't require a long march for those on the journey and more supplies could be traded at a time. However, it was still a very long and dangerous journey as the ships had to sail south around the Horn of Africa and then back up to India, China, and Japan.
They faced rough waters, pirates, and malnutrition. Therefore, it was proposed that it might be easier to find a sea route that passed over North America. This theoretical route was called the Northwest Passage and for a long time it remained theoretical, but heavily believed to be true. It was theorized that just past the ice that lined Baffin Bay and sometimes blocked Lancaster Sound in northern Canada, there would also be open water.
So despite all the failures to find such a route, the British Admiralty still believed it was possible to find it and beating any other European countries to claim this route would be greatly beneficial both commercially and scientifically. There was also the desire to be the first to see and map the area. Britain could become the authority in a Canadian Arctic archipelago if they got there first learned about its environment, its flora and fauna, and named the locations they found. This would put Britain in the forefront of scientific discovery.
When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Great Britain finally had an excess of money and men and the most powerful navy in the world. The British Navy under the direction of Sir John Barrow believed the Northwest Passage existed thanks to the presence of ice-free open waters found north of Norway, which are due to funnels of warmer water that follow currents up to Norway's Arctic shores. However, they didn't know that no such current flows through the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The maze of ice and islands was almost completely unmapped, so the British Admiralty had no idea what they would find, but they were optimistic that they would find similar open waters.
Before 1819, the northern coast of Canada had only been seen by two Europeans, Samuel Hearn in 1771, who followed the Coppermine River to the coast around 2,400 kilometers or 1,500 miles east of the Bering Strait. In 1789, Alexander McKenzie traced the river that is now named after him to the open sea, about 800 kilometers or 500 miles west of the Coppermine River. In 1818, the first expedition to discover the Northwest Passage set out, led by John Ross. This expedition ended after it entered the Lancaster Sound and this took it for a bay due to the massive amounts of pack ice blocking the way west.
It was later revealed that the Lancaster Sound is the entrance to the Northwest Passage. This was discovered in 1819 by William Edward Perry. Franklin was part of a simultaneous expedition to Perry's, one that almost ended in tragedy, but we'll get to that in a moment. First, let's talk about John Franklin himself.
John Franklin was born on April 16, 1786, in Silsby, Lincolnshire. He was the ninth of 12 children born to Hannah Weeks and Willingham Franklin. His father was a merchant and a country gentleman who hoped that Franklin would find a career in the church, but young Franklin was already interested in seafaring, possibly inspired by his uncle, Matthew Flinders. Flinders had joined the British Navy at 15 and aided in the exploration of the area around what we know today as Tasmania, but was then called Van Diamondsland.
Franklin entered the Navy at 14 and was assigned to the HMS Polyphemus, a 64-gun, third-rate ship in late 1800. A year later, the Polyphemus participated in the Battle of Copenhagen, a naval battle between Britain and the Danish, in which Britain scared the Danish into becoming their allies against the French. Franklin then served with Flinders as a midshipman and chartmaker on his ship, HMS Investigator, when they circumnavigated and mapped the coast of Australia between 1801 and 1804. It was this voyage that sparked Franklin's lifelong love affair with exploration.
As the Napoleonic Wars had begun in 1803 while he was away, Franklin was put to work in the Royal Navy as soon as he returned. He was made midshipman and joined the crew of the Earl Camden under Captain Nathaniel Dance. With Captain Dance, Franklin participated in the Battle of Pula Ara, a minor battle in the South China Sea. In 1805, he was moved to the HMS Bellerophon and was present at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Conflict then arose between Britain and the United States in the form of the War of 1812. Franklin, now lieutenant, served aboard the HMS Bedford in the 1814 Battle of Lake in the Gulf of Mexico. He was also present and wounded during the Battle of New Orleans a month later in which the U.S. forces killed over 2,000 British soldiers.
In 1818, Franklin was named second in command of a British Admiralty expedition of discovery to the Arctic under Captain David Buchan. He commanded the HMS Trent while George Fisher commanded the HMS Dorothea from London to Spitsbergen, the largest island in what is now known as Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago. The closer they got to Spitsbergen, the more the water was populated with pack ice, which is sea ice that isn't attached to land and therefore mobile. This ice can cluster and block ships from passing or cause damage when they don't give way as ships try to force their way through.
Pack ice can also slide beneath ships and cause capsizing or large waves and collisions when they resurface. After a month or so, the expedition was about 30 miles into the ice and could go no further. On their way back almost as soon as they reached open water again, the Dorothea was damaged in a storm. Franklin suggested he go ahead to the Arctic himself with Trent, but Captain Buchan commended both ships return to London.
Now we come to 1819 when Franklin was chosen to lead an expedition across Canada and the Northwest Territory to search for the Northwest Passage and map the coastline of the Canadian Arctic archipelago east of the Coppermine River. This expedition came to be known as the Coppermine expedition. With him were George Back and John Richardson, who would later become well-known Arctic explorers themselves. While Franklin traveled overland, Captain William Edward Perry traveled by sea and it was hoped that the two would meet up during their separate journeys.
Unfortunately, there were several issues, one being that the expedition was poorly planned. The group expected to be assisted by local fur traders and the native people of the area, the Inuit, when it came to supplies, but neither the traders nor the Inuit were very forthcoming with help because of the second issue, an unusually harsh winter. The deep cold and heavy winds and snow resulted in an absence of wild animals available for hunting by all parties, so sharing was not something anyone could do without risk to their own group. Therefore, Franklin's men were close to starvation the entire trek.
They eventually reached the Arctic coast, but they had only mapped around 340 kilometers or 211 miles of coastline before exhaustion made them turn back. Their retreat was even more desperate. They had only likened to eat, a plant-like organism that often grows on bare rocks and tree trunks. They also attempted to eat the leather from their shoes to survive.
This gained Franklin the nickname, the man who ate his boots when he finally returned to England. Eventually, the expedition was rescued by a people then known as the Copper Indians, now known as the Yellowknives Diné First Nation. The expedition had lost 11 of the 20 men they had set out with. Most died of starvation, but there were stories of murder and rumors of cannibalism when Franklin returned to England.
Despite these rumors, Franklin was hailed as a great explorer and made a fellow of the Royal Society. He married Eleanor Ann Porton, a poet, in 1823, and together they had a daughter, Eleanor Isabella, a year later. In 1825, Franklin was chosen to once again brave the Canadian Arctic in an overland mapping mission. His wife, who was very ill with tuberculosis, gave him her blessing, but sadly died only six days after he left England.
The goal of this new expedition was to start at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and follow the coast west, possibly meeting up with Frederick William Beachy, another English explorer, who at the same time was attempting to sail northeast from the Bering Strait. Also at the same time, William Perry would try to sail west from the Atlantic. Supplies were better organized this time around, mostly by the Hudson Bay Company, a fur trading group. Franklin was again accompanied by George Back and John Richardson, and the group successfully mapped around 640 kilometers or 397 miles of new coastline.
When he returned in September of 1827, Franklin was welcomed back as a hero. In November of 1828, he married Jane Griffin, a 36-year-old intellectual, feminist, and one of his deceased wife's closest friends. On the 29th of April 1829, he was knighted by King George IV and awarded the first gold medal of the Geographic Society of France. Franklin was at the height of his career, a hero of exploration.
However, with the end of the wars and England not ready to send any more men to the Arctic after so many failures at finding the Northwest Passage, things began to slow down for Franklin. Politics soon threatened his heroic reputation, and he would become desperate for one more chance at glory in the way he had achieved it before, an Arctic expedition. But before we get into that, let's pause for a word from our sponsors. Our regular sponsor is Audible.com.
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At the age of 50, Sir John Franklin was offered the governorship of Van Diamondsland, what is now the Australian state of Tasmania. He and his family, which consisted of his wife, his daughter, and his two nieces, embarked on a four-month voyage to Van Diamondsland. They arrived in Hobart Town in February of 1837. Unfortunately, Franklin's term in office was rife with political undermining.
At the time, Van Diamondsland was both a free colony and a prison colony. The free colonists had done well using the system that had provided them with land grants and free prison labor. Convicts considered safe and not assigned to public works and maintenance projects had to work for the colonists. Soon after Franklin took office, the British Parliament investigated the system and noticed it was being abused.
Unfortunately, convicts were no longer being sent to other Keno colonies, so more and more were arriving in Hobart Town and a stricter enforcement of the laws was required. Franklin, while an adventurer, was also a gentleman and didn't like the barbaric system of flogging that prisoners were often subjected to. Therefore, he was constantly undermined for being opposed to the system that had brought many free colonists prosperity. Eventually, Franklin was recalled to England to settle things down.
This tarnished his reputation and he and his wife began to search for a way to remove this stain upon his record. Jane Franklin was intelligent, inquisitive, and industrious. She too enjoyed exploring and often hiked alongside her husband in all weather, as well as ventured into the outback. She may also have been one of us, the morbidly curious, as she often toured prisons and prison ships.
She was the first woman to summit Mount Wellington and the first to travel overland from Melbourne to Sydney. When she and Franklin put their heads together, they came up with a plan to restore his good name, a return to the Arctic, to finally find the Northwest Passage. Franklin, his wife, and fellow polar explorer Sir John Ross petitioned the British Admiralty to send one more mission to the Arctic. The Admiralty was willing to give it another go, but wanted someone younger to lead the mission.
However, all the other explorers they asked turned them down, either because they truly did not want to return to the Arctic or because they wanted Franklin to be the one to lead. Franklin too was conflicted about his age, but as this would be a sea mission and not an overland trek, he was sure he was fit enough for the expedition. He even got a doctor, his friend and fellow explorer from the Coppermine expedition, Sir John Richardson, to confirm he was healthy enough. The Admiralty finally agreed on February 7, 1845, but wanted to make sure this expedition was well planned and every precaution was taken.
All the latest technology and the most trusted and able officers would accompany Franklin on his mission. The expedition crew were given what was thought to be the best cold weather clothing available, woolen mittens and coats, leather square-toed boots and woolen leggings. If you've ever been in cold temperatures or camped in the winter, you may recognize that wool isn't the best material to wear in the cold. It gets damp easily from sweat and can freeze, bringing the body temperature down.
Square-toed boots leave a lot of room for cold to surround the toes and leather can easily freeze and crack in below zero temperatures. Some of the officers were issued sealskin and deerskin gloves and caps, which are much better for Arctic temperatures. Franklin may have known that wool wasn't the best, but he may also have had great confidence in the other technologies he would be bringing, such as steam-heated ships and tinned food. The ships chosen for the expedition had already survived polar temperatures and war.
The HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were triple-masted Royal Navy bombships designed for shore bombardment. They were built to withstand the heavy recoil of the three-ton mortars they shot. The HMS Terror had participated in the War of 1812 and served in skirmishes in the Mediterranean. It had also sailed with George Back to the Hudson Bay in northern Canada, its first Arctic expedition.
After it narrowly escaped the Arctic with Back, it was paired with the Erebus for an Antarctic mission with John Ross. The two ships were specially reinforced for Franklin's expedition. Their bows were covered in iron to withstand the scrapes and pressure of the Arctic pack ice. They were also fitted with special boilers and a steam apparatus which conveyed hot water through pipes around the decks to warm the insides of the vessel.
Desalinators or water processors that removed the salt from seawater so that it's drinkable were built into the galley stoves, and a 20-horsepower engine was put inside the HMS Terror. A 30-horsepower steam locomotive engine with specially adapted screw propellers was installed in the HMS Erebus. This would help it break through tough pack ice in an emergency. The food rations were also considered state-of-the-art.
The expedition brought tinned food with them, meat, vegetables, soups, and lemon juice. The lemon juice was to make sure the crew got their vitamin C, as scurvy, a disease due to vitamin C deficiency, was a large problem for sailors as they rarely had access to fresh fruit or vegetables. The rations for the expedition also included chocolate, tea, sugar, and alcohol. They packed three years' worth of food, which would last longer if they rationed it well.
They also brought around 1,000 books to feed the minds of the men, as boredom had caused issues on past expeditions. A relatively new device was also brought aboard, a camera, with its skin equipment for gathering biological samples, taking magnetic readings, and other research instruments to carry out their scientific goals. No previous Arctic expedition had been so lavishly equipped. Franklin was also not the only experienced explorer assigned to this expedition.
Francis Crozier, a Royal Navy officer and polar explorer in his own right, was assigned to Captain the Terror and was made second-in-command after Franklin. James Fitzjames, another Royal Navy officer with exploration experience in Mesopotamia, was made captain of the Erebus. Aside from Franklin and Crozier, there were also several other men who had made polar excursions before. The assistant surgeon, Harry Goodsir, and two men known as Icemasters, James Reed and Thomas Blankey.
In total, 134 men made up the expedition crew, and they were all paid in advance, as the dangers of Arctic exploration were well known. The set goal of the expedition was to find and map the missing pieces of the Northwest Passage route, and collect scientific information and samples of any flora and fauna they found. They would also track ocean currents by noting their own latitude and longitude on paper forms, putting the forms in bottles, and throwing them overboard to be carried with the current. The forms had instructions to send them to the British Admiralty if found.
Out of the 200 bottles brought on the expedition, only one of them has ever been recovered, and it was dated to a time before the expedition's position was lost. The route the Admiralty gave Franklin was to sail to Baffin Bay, pass through Lancaster Sound, and make it to the Bering Strait, completing the Northwest Passage. These directions are quite vague, and it's been suggested that this is one of the reasons the expedition went awry. There were also no plans for assistance from the Admiralty should the expedition fail to complete its mission and return within three years.
However, the Hudson Bay Company, which had two outposts in the Northwest Territory, was instructed to alert native Inuit traders and other fur traders to look out for Franklin's crew and send word if they saw them. Franklin's crew was instructed to cultivate friendships with the indigenous peoples, but also not to trust them. This is another reason that has been suggested as contributing to the ultimate failure of the expedition. The Admiralty, the members of the expedition, and the general public all believed the mission could not fail.
They seemed to have prepared for every eventuality. HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set sail from London on May 19, 1845. They stopped briefly at Strongness Harbor on the Isle of Orkney, in Scotland, and left from there with a transport vessel, the Beretto Junior, that carried much of their store of food. Once the three ships made it to the Whalefish Islands in Disco Bay, just off the western coast of Greenland, the rest of the supplies on the Beretto Junior were transferred over to the Erebus and Terror.
It was here that the first tins of food were opened and consumed. Franklin, Fitzjames, and several other crew members had letters and journals sent back home at this point, most of them full of words of optimism. Many showed confidence in Franklin's ability to lead them to success. Five men who had suffered illness on the journey so far were also sent home, as well as some of the tin food that couldn't be packed into the already stuffed ships.
They were so laden with supplies that both ships sat very low in the water. On the 12th of July, 129 sailors, a pet dog named Neptune, and a pet monkey named Jacko, sailed west toward Baffin Bay. The two ships made contact in Baffin Bay with two whaling ships, the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise, at the end of July. Franklin's crew was reported as in remarkable spirits and good health.
They expected to finish the journey in good time, but that they could make the provisions last for five to seven years. In early August, the ships parted ways. The Erebus and Terror were last seen headed toward Lancaster Sound, the most eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage. They were never heard from again.
This silence was expected for the first two years they were gone. Anxiety over their absence only began to stir near the end of 1847. By early 1848, the idea of sending a relief expedition was mentioned in Parliament. It was known that the expedition had only enough food for three years, maybe five if they went down to half rations, so their supplies had to be dwindling by this point.
The Admiralty agreed that another expedition should be sent to check on Franklin. They sent Captain Henry Kellett to the Bering Strait and John Clark Ross to Lancaster Sound, both by ship. Dr. John Ray and Sir John Richardson were sent overland down the Mackenzie River.
Not one of these parties found any sign of Franklin. This failure turned their anxiety into fear that something terrible had happened. On top of this, Ross's expedition was nearly lost itself. His two ships, the Enterprise and the Investigator, left on the 12th of May, 1848, with three years of supplies, including canned meats and vegetables, as well as salted meats.
The ships were forced to spend the winter in Port Leopold, which is located on the northwest coast of Somerset Island, nearly in the middle of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The ships were quickly frozen into the pack ice. A wall of snow was built to link the two ships together, so the crew could move between them with ease, and awnings made of wool were stretched over both decks like tent to protect them from the weather. An outbreak of illness swept through the crew that winter.
It was thought to be scurvy at first, but the symptoms included melancholy, which is not usually observed in scurvy. Four men died before the end of winter. Then the long darkness set in, as the sun doesn't rise above the Arctic Circle for much of the winter. From the 9th of November to the 9th of February, it was continually night.
On May 15, 1849, the first search for Franklin by Sledge was sent out from where the ships were frozen fast. The search party marched across the northern coast of Somerset Island, then went south, charting the western coast as they searched. Two weeks into this journey, another of Ross' crew became seriously ill, with stomach pains, weakness, and anxiety. The illness spread to the other men soon after.
Still the crew struggled southward, traveling around 400 kilometers or 250 miles before Ross abandoned the search. At the farthest point they traveled, they built a cairn or pile of stones and deposited a note inside a copper canister, which told of their search and their future travel plans in case Franklin's crew came upon the cairn. Unbeknownst to Ross, his expedition had come within 320 kilometers or 200 miles from where Franklin's ships had been deserted the previous summer. More on that in part two of this episode.
Ross and his crew then made the long journey back to their ships. Ross knew that though he had come to rescue Franklin, his crew would soon need a rescue of their own. Despite their rations of lime juice to stave off scurvy, the crew seemed to be rife with the mystery disease. The sick were pulled on sledges by the healthier men.
They finally made it back to the ships 39 days after they had set out, completely exhausted and devastated by disease. While they were gone, other search parties had set out, but similar health issues had prevented them from going far. One of the parties located a structure that had been occupied by Sir John Ross' men during his 1832-1833 expedition. No one was there, but a large stock of tinned food was found.
This search party also erected a cairn and then returned to the ships. While the search parties were gone, illness had also broken out on the ships. On June 15, 1849, the assistant surgeon on the Enterprise died from what was thought to be consumption or tuberculosis. The head surgeon was also ill.
Ross ordered a cache to be constructed and filled it with fuel, carpenter's tools, blankets, stoves and other provisions and an account of their expedition to let Franklin know that while they had failed to find him, they had left him some relief. Ross and his expedition left, attempting to head west before once again being frozen in the pack ice and carried with the currant back toward Baffin Bay. They were freed after three weeks, but by this point the illness was so widespread amongst the crew that Ross was forced to abandon the search. The Enterprise and the investigator made it back to the English port of Scarborough in November of 1849.
Ross' efforts were called puny by the press and his spirit and health seemed to have been broken. Unbeknownst to everyone, Ross' expedition was the only one that might have been able to find Franklin and his crew still alive. Next time in part two of this episode, we'll talk about the artifacts from the Franklin expedition that have been discovered over the years, including the human remains. From these artifacts, we'll piece together the story of what happened to Franklin's lost expedition.
Until then, I hope part one has piqued your curiosity. The Morbid Curiosity Podcast As I said before, if you really like the MCP, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon. You can also give one-time donations by going to our website www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com and clicking the donate button. On our website, you can also find links to all our social media and sponsors and other ways to contact us.
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My name is Hallie, and until next time, thanks for listening.