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Tonight, a historic expedition sets sail into a labyrinth of ice.

This is without a doubt the best planned and best equipped expedition ever to

try to find the Northwest Passage. Lots of provisions, technically advanced

ships, and it all just vanishes. That disappearance sparks a search for clues

spanning nearly two centuries.

For the British...

It was unthinkable these two exploration ships could be lost.

It's just pure luck that there were enough Inuit eyewitnesses to even piece

together a rough idea of what happened to these poor men.

Now, we'll investigate the top theories surrounding this legendary

disappearance. Something happened before the crews abandoned those ships.

Nobody wants to believe men of the Royal Navy would resort to cannibalism.

If the men believed the ships were cursed and decided to leave, their fates

already sealed.

What really happened to the men of the Franklin Expedition?

On a spring morning in 1845,

Two British Royal Navy ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus, depart

England under the command of Sir John Franklin.

Their quest, the elusive Northwest Passage.

At this time, for ships traveling from England in order to get to Asia, you

really just two options.

You can either travel around the tip of South America and up into the Pacific

Ocean, or you can travel down the tip of South Africa and then work your way up

to the Indian Ocean.

They both take a really long time. It was speculated there had to be some sea

route by which ships could travel up around Greenland and then across from

Atlantic all the way to the Pacific.

The quest for a Northwest Passage is huge because it would cut travel time

considerably. What the British do is they send out continual expeditions.

From the west, they've come almost to the middle, and from the east, they've

come almost to the middle.

And that little middle, maybe 300 nautical miles, that's a blank on the

still. All the other routes were known, so if you could get through that middle

part, you would get to the other side.

The big problem, of course, is it freezes every year.

Shipping is going to come to a standstill, so there were only certain

the year where it could be traveled.

By 1845, explorers have charted enough of the Canadian Arctic to make the Royal

Navy confident that the Northwest Passage is finally within reach.

To complete the final push, the British Admiralty selects 59 -year -old Captain

Sir John Franklin to lead the expedition.

He isn't their first choice.

The British Admiralty had approached a number of known Arctic explorers.

Sir William Perry was too old by that time. He declined.

The Rosses were involved with other expeditions.

So they actually considered delaying.

But at the last moment, under pressure from Lady Jane Franklin, Sir John was

chosen.

John Franklin, for one thing, was kind of old. He was 59 years old, which for a

Royal Navy officer is pretty up there.

And although he had... led two former expeditions, they weren't particularly

successful.

In fact, in his first one, half of his crew had died.

They ran out of food and they were reduced to eating boots.

Despite his age and despite the fact he hadn't commanded a ship in some years, I

imagine he wanted to redeem himself after his prior failures.

To help in Franklin's Arctic mission, the British Admiralty spare no expense,

starting with the two ships he'll set off in, the HMS Terror and the HMS

For the day, the Erebus and Terror are the best ships that the British Navy

could use for maritime exploration.

They're converted bomb ships, which means they're heavy, they're robust.

were refitted, especially for this expedition.

They both had iron reinforced hulls to withstand and be able to maneuver

ice. One new technological advancement that they also had was a propeller,

could actually maneuver up and down as needed.

They were very, very big.

They had powerful engines. They were good for carrying a whole lot of heavy

cargo.

Thousands of cans of food, thousands of barrels of pickled, preserved

vegetables, flour to be made into bread.

It is hoped that the whole trip will take maybe about a year, maybe a little

more. Nevertheless, the ship can carry three years' worth of provisions, and

those three years could be stretched out to five years through rationing. This

is by far the best planned and best supplied expedition ever to try to find

Northwest Passage.

The morale, according to all reports, among the crew and the officers is

extremely high.

They think this is the voyage that's going to find the Northwest Passage.

The expedition gets off to a good start, reaching Greenland by mid -July. The

letters that the sailors and officers send home are full of confident

predictions about this being a huge success.

In July 1845, a group of whaling vessels in Baffin Bay spot the

HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror heading west toward Lancaster Sound.

The Royal Navy had set a plan for Sir John Franklin and his crew to navigate

through Lancaster Sound into the archipelago and find a calm area where

be able to shelter down during the winter.

Because they're already anticipating that they're going to be trapped in sea

for quite some time.

Once the ice melts that spring, they're supposed to continue on their voyage,

maneuver through this archipelago of islands.

They're supposed to send a message as soon as they get through. But no letter

comes, no ships in the Pacific report ever having seen the Erebus and the

Terror.

1845 passes, 1846 passes, 1847 passes.

Jane Franklin, Franklin's wife, is concerned.

So both her and the British Parliament, they are putting pressure on the British

Admiralty to do something.

From the British Admiralty's perspective, they don't want to say

there being a problem with this expedition.

So they're really going to wait as long as they can.

By 1848, there's enough pressure on the British Admiralty that they issue a

reward of 20 ,000 pounds.

By today's standards, that's $2 million.

1848, three years after the expedition set sail, the Admiralty launches the

first of a number of search parties, traveling both over land and by sea.

two years, many others have joined the search.

In 1850, the first major clue is found on a tiny island just past Lancaster

Sound. At Beachy Island, they find the first camp where they overwintered, and

they find three graves.

Those belong to John Hartnell, John Torrington, and William Brain, three

members who had died during that first winter. And so they have...

actual sort of physical evidence that the Franklin expedition had been there.

The timing of the deaths of the three men indicates that something had

and they're not sure what, but it's not a good sign.

The other thing is that the ship doesn't find any record, any message left

by the Franklin expedition.

In 1854, nine years after this expedition first set sail and six years

first search crew was sent, the British Royal Navy completely drops this search

and declares this expedition as officially lost.

Lady Jane Franklin was quite outspoken for a woman around that time, and she

also had a lot of influential friends.

And so she decided she was going to raise her own money and have a private

expedition to find out what happened.

Sita wants to know what's happened to her husband. She raises enough money to

buy a ship called the Fox and to pay a crew and a captain to try

to find the Erebus and the Terror.

In 1857, 12 years after the expedition first set sail, the Fox departs

England on the trail of Franklin's lost ships.

Two years into the voyage, Leopold McClintock, who is commander of the

Fox, finds evidence that might explain what happened to the ships.

February of 1859, the Fox crew is on an overland search on King William Island.

Leopold McClintock comes across one of these Inuit field hunters, and they have

some knickknacks and some buttons that are part of the Royal Navy.

The Inuit, after being questioned about this, point the crew in the direction of

a place called Victory Point.

Victory Point had been established back in 1830 in an earlier expedition. They

erected what's called a cairn. It's just a mound of stones.

McClintock and his crew find nestled within these stones a tin canister,

and within that canister, a letter.

The Victory Point note is a pre -printed official Royal Navy document.

It also contains two very different handwritten messages.

The first message is very positive. It's dated May 1847,

a report that all is well.

Franklin is still in command and really doesn't indicate anything to worry them

other than the fact that they have been stuck in ice for a long time.

The second message is written on the same sheet of paper, but is scribbled

around the margins.

It's written nearly a year later and tells a far bleaker tale. The second

message is from April 1848.

It says, the ice never melted, which means they have been

stuck there for 19 months.

So the area in which they got stuck is called the Back of Beyond, and not even

the hunters will go there. It's very barren, and unfortunately, that's

where they got stuck.

According to this note at the time, 24 crew members had already passed away,

including, unfortunately, Sir John Franklin himself, who had perished just

weeks after the first note was written.

The idea that an entire summer could pass without the ice melting enough for

ships to move, it's unheard of. There have been multiple expeditions through

this area. That's never happened before.

So once this information is seen in the letter, the reaction is, how can this

possibly be true?

In 1859, search parties looking for the lost Franklin Expedition find their most

telling bit of evidence yet, the so -called Victory Point Note.

The second message on the note, written on the 25th of April, 1848, almost three

years after the expedition first leaves England, provides a clue to their fate.

The second victory point message is actually signed by the two commanding

officers of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.

This is James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier.

The second message makes clear that ICE never thought that the two ships just

remained imprisoned by the icy conditions, and it had now been 19

There's a postscript that says, And start on tomorrow, the 26th, for Bax

Fish River.

Bax Fish River is 200 miles away from the ship. This is a heck of a trek

going to have to take across a completely desolate area.

By this time, Bax Fish River has already been searched in 1858, and nothing was

turned up. So the reaction to this message is disbelief.

But in 2005, climate scientists make a discovery in the Arctic ice that could

provide fresh insights.

A team of climate researchers headed up by a scientist named Roy Kerner drills

out core samples of the ice going down about 300 feet. Upon studying these ice

cores, they discover why it is that the Erebus and the Terror were not able to

escape from the ice.

You have different layers in each ice core.

And that gives you a glimpse into environmental and climate factors going

to when that layer was formed, all the way back to the 1840s. It was the

freeze since the last ice age.

People in the mid -19th century don't have the kind of understanding of

atmospheric warming and cooling that we have today.

John Franklin had literally picked the worst time. We're talking a 1 in 10 ,000

-year winter to go through the Northwest Passage.

To face the perils of winter, Franklin is sailing in ships that are state -of

-the -art at the time.

One of the reasons why there was so much faith in this voyage was that the

Erebus and the Terror had these state -of -the -art engines.

These engines generate 25 horsepower, which, whoa, that's amazing.

Well, modern icebreakers have 75 ,000 horsepower to cut through the thickest

ice. The Erebus and the Terror with only 25 horsepower, they don't stand a

chance. Yet, despite the freak weather the expedition is unwittingly sailing

into, the victory point note offers another clue to what doomed the

Not only is he running into this weather phenomenon, but he's also made some

choices for the expedition that was going to carry the Erebus and the Terror

into some dangerous uncharted waters.

Lancaster Sound is the entrance to the passage. That is already known. So the

idea was to go through there until he came to a spot where the map was no

filled in.

After his first winter at Beachy Island, Franklin then heads south through Peel

Sound, where he faces a crucial decision.

He had come to what turned out to be the northern tip of King William Island,

but what he didn't know, of course, was what was beyond it. So he did have a

choice to make there whether to head east or west in his route. The

recorded in the victory point note make clear that Franklin chooses the western

route. Franklin is going to take the ships west of King William Island. The

uncharted waters that Franklin enters is an area where water from different

sources is flowing in, and it acts as a funnel.

So you've got ice flowing and meeting in the middle, and this is where Franklin

and his ships were, and it was the worst place in the Arctic to be.

And what they don't realize is right behind them, the water is freezing. As

these ships are moving in, so they're locked into place.

That's where the expedition is stuck, and there's no way out.

Had he sailed down the east side and then past King William Island and then

the west, had Franklin done that, we don't know what would have happened.

Maybe he would have made it.

Fifty years later, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen takes the eastern route.

and successfully navigates the Northwest Passage for the first time.

But for Franklin and his men, after 19 months trapped in the ice, they are

desperate enough to abandon ship.

There is very little daylight because they're so far north.

24 people had died. Maybe they're afraid they're going to be stuck there for

another year, but there could be something else.

There's something that could be terrifying these men enough to leave the

relative safety of the ships to go through this desolate area.

1848, three years after setting sail, the Franklin expedition abandoned their

ships off King William Island.

Meanwhile... The first British search team is setting off to rescue them over

land. Led by explorer John Ray, for the next six years, they scour the Arctic.

John Ray is a Scottish explorer.

He got his start as a surgeon with the Hudson Bay Company.

Unlike Franklin and his men, Ray has learnt from the local indigenous people,

the Inuits.

And so he's wearing fur instead of wool.

He's using sleds and snowshoes. He's able to survive in that harsh

Arctic environment just like the Inuit.

And he covers, by 1854, more than 5 ,000 square miles.

In May of 1854, at a place about 150 miles east of King

William's Island, they encounter a group of Inuit who want to trade with them.

And he noticed on the wrist of one of the Inuit hunters, his sealskin parka, a

gold band.

And Ray immediately recognizes it for what it is. It's a cap band.

It's an officer's cap band.

And he knows the chances of an Inuit being given that are very, very

So he starts a dialogue with this hunter and asks, where did you get that?

The Inuit tell Ray...

that four winters previously, they had encountered a group of about 40 white

dragging a boat south through this area. The Inuit described the leader of this

group as a tall, stout man with a telescope. Their description matches a

description of Francis Crozier, who had been Franklin's second -in -command.

The Inuit stated that the white man communicated using gestures, saying that

their ships had actually been shot in ice and they had fled to land in order

hunt deer.

Obviously, Ray is excited by this news, and he immediately wants to figure out

where they've gone.

The Inuit explain all of these men are now dead, and they believe that they

why.

The Inuit provide further information about this group of men as well.

The Inuit say that they actually encountered their camp several months

discovered 30 corpses on site.

They were quite sure that Franklin's men, or at least some group of them, had

resorted to what Ray called the last resource, cannibalism.

So the Inuit tell Ray that they had seen pots in which human flesh had been

cooked.

People with their arms or limbs cut off, severed, signs of the flesh being

removed from the bones.

When the Inuit discovered this camp, not only do they have this shocking news,

but they actually have physical artifacts to buttress their claim.

There was a silver plate that actually belonged to Franklin.

So for Ray,

Both what the Inuit tell him and the artifacts that they've brought him, it's

enough to convince him that he knows what happened to Franklin and his men.

But he writes a written report of his employers to Hudson's Bay Company,

detailing what he has found, and the report, as it turns out, gets to London

before Ray does.

Ray is satisfied that he's finally solved the riddle of the missing

but his report isn't well received.

Nobody wants to believe that men of the Royal Navy

would resort to cannibalism.

Cannibalism is something that savages engage in, not civilized men of the

greatest empire in the world.

Charles Dickens gets involved in this because he's a friend of the Franklins,

and Lady Franklin apparently urges him, to attack Ray and the

Inuit who make these claims.

Dickens implies that the Inuits actually killed Franklin's men, and then they

took these artifacts, which was totally not true.

Ray collects the reward money, but his reputation is pretty well shot, and he

does not make a return trip.

It turns out, much, much later, he was right.

1981. On King William Island, a team of scientists, led by Owen Beatty, recover

bones belonging to members of the Franklin Expedition.

After forensic analysis, these bones reveal that the Inuit's claim may have

true. Bones that were retrieved show...

cut marks on them from knives, and they also show that they were indeed cooked

and that they were boiled to draw the bone marrow out.

Despite this compelling forensic evidence, questions remain about how the

the Franklin expedition could have starved to death.

They were equipped with over 8 ,000 tins of food and vegetable, so they should

have had enough provisions to have survived.

Ray also reported... that the Inuit told them that they found many cans that

were unopened.

So why were men resorting to cannibalism if they weren't eating the food

that they had brought with them?

In 1845, the ill -fated Franklin Expedition set sail from England,

a route to the Far East through the Arctic Circle only to mysteriously

and die.

Then in 1981, researchers start to ponder a new cause.

Could what doomed the men be something else entirely?

So on King William Island, a team led by Dr. Owen Beattie find bones that

show evidence of cut marks.

And this clearly indicates cannibalism.

Something else they find when studying these bone fragments is that they

crazy high levels of lead in them.

Lead is incredibly toxic to humans.

It can lead to a number of complications, including stomach aches,

seizures, and ultimately even death.

The results of Beatty's analysis suggest that these bone fragments have 10 times

the normal amount of lead. That is shockingly high.

The amount of lead in a person's body accumulates over their lifetime, so it

doesn't speak to a particular time or period. It just speaks to the overall

amount of lead in the person.

A more useful way of determining lead content that would not only tell you how

much lead there is, but when it was introduced to the system, can come from

analysis of hair, fingernails, and toenails.

Unlike bone, it's harder for nails and for hair to be found. So really you need

a body.

And of course, most of the Franklin remains are only bone.

Yet Beattie and his team realize there's one site that could provide the

material they need to test their theory.

So in 1984, Owen Beattie is given permission to dig up, to exhume the

graves on Beach Island.

The first grave that they exhume is the grave of John Torrington.

His body is so well preserved in the ice that you'd think if you touched him, he

would wake up.

The lead levels found in Torrington's body were so high, he would have been

suffering from a whole host of mental and physical problems.

The question is, how does that level of lead enter their bodies?

The answer may be found not far from Torrington's body. About a half a mile

those graves, his team find a garbage dump that include a whole bunch of

tin cans.

Cans that would have held the food that supplied the men of the Erebus and the

Terror. They find evidence that they have been soldered shut very shoddily.

what was used for the solder?

Lead.

In preparation for this expedition, Sir John Franklin makes the deal with a food

supplier by the name of Stephen Goldner.

He's commissioned to make these tin cans to be able to supply the crew with

provisions that they would need for their long expedition.

The contract calls for him to provide about 34 ,000 pounds of preserved canned

meat, which is about 8 ,000 cans.

The whole process of canning meat is very new at this point. This is a full

years before there's any understanding of how to sterilize food to begin with.

So any kind of canned food in the mid -19th century is going to be kind of

dicey.

Goldner is informed that Franklin needs 34 ,000 pounds of canned meat

in seven weeks. That is a really short period of time.

By all accounts, with this expedition on the horizon, Goldner and his team are

completely overwhelmed in order to be able to produce these 8 ,000 cans.

An analysis of the cans suggests that they're cutting corners on soldering

cans shut. The soldering job was so shoddy that it's easy to see how lead

could have contaminated the meat inside.

To make matters worse.

Expedition records suggest the tinned food might not be the only source of

poisoning.

Each ship was equipped with a locomotive engine, and this allowed them to travel

slowly, say when there wasn't wind, and it also provided heat throughout the

ship. But those steam engines do other important things.

They allow for the distillation of salt water.

The only problem is this fresh water is passing through lead pipes, and it's

easy to see how lead could have contaminated that water.

Franklin's men were subjected to this for two years.

Could the amount of lead that they consumed in their drinking water, that

consumed in the atmosphere, could it have contributed to their decline in

their mental and their physical health?

Maybe they irrationally believed that it made sense to leave the safety of the

ships and risk death on the frozen tundra.

The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 while en route to

the fabled Northwest Passage.

has baffled the world for generations and sparked one of history's longest

rescue searches.

In addition to Lady Jane Franklin, a number of independent researchers

that they would try to find out what happened to the Franklin Expedition.

Some people are still convinced that there's a chance that some survivors

be alive.

And one of them is an American named Charles Francis Hall of Cincinnati.

Charles Francis Hall, an American newspaper publisher in 1857, decides

just going to head up on his own and launch his own search to find out what

happened to the Franklin Expedition.

He figures his best lead are the Inuit who interacted with these people. So he

spends a long period interviewing any Inuit that he can find who would have

encountered these men.

1869. After nine years searching and countless interviews with the Inuit,

ends his Arctic expedition.

A decade later, U .S. Army Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka picks up the trail.

In 1879, He's exploring King William Island with a dog sled team, and he

encounters an Inuit woman who does remember the time of Franklin and has a

about what the men look like.

What she observed was a group of white men moving very slowly, sort of

their feet across the ice.

They looked thin, and their mouths were dry, hard, and black.

Swatka finds this odd.

Why would their mouths be black and hard and dry? He doesn't know what to make

of it, so he just kind of files it away.

But 50 years later, the story about the starving sailors with black mouths draws

renewed interest.

In the mid -1930s, an English doctor named Richard Cyriax is doing research

new book about the Franklin Expedition. When he reads the account from Schwatka

about the sailors having black mouths, he realizes he's seen that symptom

before.

Scurvy is basically a disease that prevents the body from keeping its blood

vessels, skin, bones, and muscles healthy.

People suffering from scurvy often have blackness around their mouth because

they bruise very easily, and also their gums bleed. So that could explain those

symptoms. Other symptoms of scurvy, fever, seizures, personality changes,

and if it's allowed to progress far enough, death.

The root cause of scurvy is vitamin C deficiency.

Most animals are actually able to produce vitamin C themselves, but humans

cannot. So we're required to get all of our vitamin C from foods, such as fresh

fruits and vegetables.

Scurvy had been the scourge of navies around the world because on voyages of

exploration particularly, you're going so far from your original supplies, so

you're getting mostly dried and preserved food that's lost all of its

After three or four months, it's almost inevitable that people are going to

start to fall victim to the first symptoms.

Between the 16th and 18th century, approximately 2 million sailors lose

life to the conditions of scurvy.

The disease kills more sailors in the 18th century than died from enemy

In 1747, a British naval surgeon, James Lind, he discovers that

there's a very effective way to prevent scurvy, and that is to consume citrus,

things like limes, oranges, and lemons.

According to Navy records, the Franklin expedition set sail with a three -year

supply of lemon juice.

But the Royal Navy may not have taken into account the effects of such a long

journey on the ship's reserves.

The problem could have arose because after three years they may have run out,

as Cyriax points out, after a year the lemons may have started to ferment.

And so it's believed that they probably smelled it and it smelled rotten. It had

fermented and they tried to boil it. But unfortunately, you're getting rid of

all the vitamin C by doing that. And so that could have led to them getting

scurvy. Once scurvy takes hold, the symptoms begin to progress incredibly

So by the time the Franklin crew realizes that their lemon juice is no

effective, it's ultimately just too late.

So the scurvy may not have been enough to actually kill everyone off, but it

could have set things in motion.

You're talking about people getting sick. They're now thinking maybe this

is cursed, and so they want to go and seek resources elsewhere.

So then they get off of the boat.

There's no going back from that decision.

While the Erebus and Terror were locked in snow and ice, it's likely the men

would venture out of the ships to hunt for any game they could find.

Fresh meat would have made all the difference to these men because they

have acquired vitamin C and then, of course, protein from eating the meat

itself. Polar historian Ken McGugan puts out a book that suggests that one

particular type of game in the Arctic could have possibly doomed the crew.

McGugan learns about an expedition that took place in 1619.

65 men on this expedition, led by a Danish -Norwegian explorer named Jens

They're hunting beluga whales up in northern Hudson Bay, and they're not

any luck.

And so they shoot a polar bear, and they eat it.

The Inuit have always known that in order to get enough vitamin C, you eat

raw. So the Inuit, for example, they hunt seals, whales, caribou, but they

hunt polar bear.

Raw polar bear meat is often infected with a microscopic parasite called

trichinella. And for a human that consumes it, you can actually come down

disease called trichinosis.

Eating the flesh of an animal with trichinella means that the parasites go

inside of you.

Eventually, the parasites make their way to the muscles.

and induce fever and seizures, inflammation, ultimately death.

And it would be an agonizing death that takes place over a period of weeks.

One of the things McGugan reveals is that after eating this polar bear flesh,

the entire group, with the exception of Monk and two others, end up dying.

McGugan speculates that a similar thing occurs to the Franklin Expedition while

the Terror and Erebus are stuck in the ice.

And this is an area with heavy polar sea ice. This stuff is impenetrable. You

couldn't drill a hole in it and fish through it. It doesn't have an edge, and

the ice edge would be where you would hunt sea mammals.

You're stuck hunting what's available on land.

And certainly a polar bear would be a very tempting target.

Enough food for everybody in the whole party.

In the Royal Navy, it's tradition that the first officers would be the ones

would hunt, but they would also get first dibs on the meat. The rest of the

would get the reserves the next day.

According to that second victory point note, 24 men have died, 15 crew and 9

officers, despite far fewer officers on the expedition.

This means these officers have died at twice the rate of the rest of the crew.

If they're eating contaminated polar bears, it's the officers who are going

suffer disproportionately as a result of this.

The message found doesn't indicate when these men died or how these men died,

but the fact that so many officers seem to be dying might help us to understand

why the rest of the crew would become spooked and decide to get away from the

ships.

Even stuck in the ice, these ships provided the best protection from the

elements. But if the men believed the ships were cursed or spreading disease

decided to leave, at the time of the abandoned ship, their fates were already

sealed.

September 7, 2014.

A team of Canadian marine archaeologists finally discover the remains of the HMS

Erebus.

Two years later, the wreck of the HMS Terror is also found.

Yet for some unknown reason, both shipwrecks are many miles away from the

coordinates where the victory point note tells us they were abandoned.

The team studying the ships happened to notice that the propeller of the terror

is down. So this raises a fascinating possibility.

that maybe the old assumption that those ships got stuck in the ice and never

moved again under their own power, maybe that's wrong.

Maybe crew members found their way back to the ship and once the ice had freed

them, had managed to move them.

Historians hope that ongoing analysis of the Erebus and Terror Rex will help

explain what ultimately doomed the crew and forced them to flee on foot.

It's just pure luck that there were enough Inuit eyewitnesses to even piece

together a rough idea of what happened to these poor men.

It's certainly possible to survive being stranded somewhere over months if you

have adequate provisions, if you have adequate nutrition, if you have adequate

medical care. But if you find yourself in the wilderness...

starving so dramatically that you're willing to engage in cannibalism chances

are not just one thing has gone wrong but everything has gone wrong when we

about the mystery and the expedition i think we tend to forget that these are

real people you can imagine fear hunger the horrific effects of scurvy

you can easily imagine people going mad in those circumstances

Nearly 180 years after the vessels carrying explorer John Franklin and his

vanished, while navigating the Northwest Passage, the expedition's demise is

still generating new theories. Maybe another clue will one day emerge from

ice to finally solve the mystery of the Franklin Expedition. I'm Lawrence

Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.