All language subtitles for Ch4.Secret.History.2015.Hunt.for.the.Arctic.Ghost.Ship.1080p.HDTV.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

In 1845, an ambitious
British expedition

set out to find one of the greatest
prizes in all exploration -

the elusive Northwest Passage.

Armed with the latest equipment,

Sir John Franklin led two ships
into uncharted Arctic waters...

..but they vanished,
never to return.

There is no story in the history
of British exploration

that ends as tragically as this -

129 men disappear off the face
of the earth.

Clues have been found -

bodies in the ice,

unexplained sightings of
a mysterious ghost ship,

even signs of cannibalism...

..but without the ships themselves,

this remains one of the world's
most enduring maritime mysteries.

Ships don't just disappear...

..and if there is a Franklin
expedition ship, we will find
that ship.

In 2014,

archaeologists mounted the biggest
modern search for the wrecks.

Combining 21st-century technology

and previously dismissed
eyewitness accounts,

they made an astonishing discovery.

We're both looking at the
sonar monitor,

I jabbed my finger at the screen
and lunged forward and said,

"That's it! That's it!"

'The search teams have finally
hit the jackpot.'

After more than a century
of searching,

one of Franklin's lost ships
is coming back from the dead.

Oh... Is that a gun?

Oh, my God. We are going to open up
a window directly into history.

This is the exclusive inside story

of a discovery that's set to rewrite
the history of exploration

and could finally solve
the mystery of John Franklin's
doomed expedition.

In the summer of 1845,

Sir John Franklin led an expedition
to conquer the Northwest Passage,

the fabled route linking Europe
with Asia.

The approaches to the passage
were already mapped,

but in between,

a treacherous uncharted maze of
islands and ice

had defied explorers for centuries.

Franklin's mission was to navigate
that final link

and claim the passage for
the British Empire.

The fact that there's an empty space
on the chart, a terra incognita,

that's both appealing but also
an insult to the British Navy.

They need to fill in
the lines on the map.

There's power in the ink lines
that are drawn on charts -

it's ownership, it's sovereignty,
it's politics.

Franklyn's expedition set off
in a blaze of publicity,

surrounded by a great
deal of enthusiasm.

Franklin, the distinguished
veteran of the Arctic,

would lead this two-ship expedition
to success.

To force the passage,

Franklin assembled the best-equipped
Arctic expedition there'd ever been.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror
were ex-gunships,

now fitted with the
latest innovations,

such as central heating
and steam propulsion.

Plans held at the
National Maritime Museum

show their hulls strengthened
against the ice

with extra layers of oak
and iron plating...

..protection against the desolate
and hostile wilderness

they were about to enter.

It was somewhere that had fascinated
men for hundreds of years

but they'd never mastered
the environment.

It was very much the dark side
of the moon

as far as the Victorians
were concerned.

In July 1845, Erebus and Terror
were last seen by whaling ships

at the gateway to the
Northwest Passage.

From there, they sailed off
the edge of the known world.

They never came back.

In 2014, the biggest modern hunt
for Franklin's ships

is getting underway.

Led by the Canadian government,

this multi-agency task force is the
culmination of six years' effort...

..with icebreakers, helicopters and
state-of-the-art sonar equipment,

all carefully manoeuvred
into position.

One of the driving forces behind
this year's search effort

is John Geiger.

It's the greatest mystery
in exploration history,

There is nothing that compares
with it.

It's really important from
a historical standpoint

to understand what happened to them.

Parks Canada's lead diver,
Ryan Harris,

has been searching for the wrecks
for much of his career.

This is actually our sixth
field season

searching for Franklin's lost ships.

We're hoping that there is going to
be a payday down the road here.

These hostile seas are frozen
solid for ten months a year,

leaving only a brief summer
search window.

With huge expanses of ocean floor
to survey,

underwater archaeologist
Marc-Andre Bernier

knows they'll have to work fast

so, this year, they've brought
a secret weapon.

Well, what we have here is an
autonomous underwater vehicle -

it's basically an
unmanned torpedo

that we can deploy and it will follow
the route that we've asked to follow,

gather data and come back
with that data.

This piece of equipment
is quite spectacular.

Better known as the AUV,

it uses sonar technology to obtain
a detailed image of the sea floor.

..to Zodiac, just to confirm,
the vehicle is go.

Originally designed to
detect naval mines,

it will now be used to search
for the two missing wrecks.

This is Zodiac. We will hang by
in location for a little longer.

Franklin's expedition entered
the Arctic in 1845

with supplies for three years...

..but, three years later,
there was no news

and, with every passing month,

fears were growing that something
had gone wrong.

In 1850, search parties were sent
to the Arctic...

..and, on Beechey Island, at the
entrance to the Northwest Passage,

the first clue was found...

..graves -

three sailors who had died during
Franklin's very first winter
in the Arctic.

This shouldn't happen,

three men should not die in the first
winter of an Arctic expedition.

They've only been out of Britain
six months. What's killing them?

With Erebus and Terror stuck
in the ice,

Franklin's expedition spent
their first winter here,

at Beechey Island.

Overwintering was something
they'd anticipated,

burying three of their crew was not.

Strangely, they marked one grave

with an unsettling quote
from the Bible:

"Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
consider your ways."

Puzzling, it's ominous.

Has something gone wrong?

Do they sense that something
is going to go wrong

for the rest of the expedition?

It's tragic but it's also
the first proof

that this is where Franklin
and his men have been.

Over a century later, in 1984,

archaeologists exhumed the bodies
to try to find out why they died.

The corpses of Franklin's men

were shockingly well preserved
in the frozen ground.

Tests revealed high levels of lead,

giving rise to the theory that toxic
tinned food had poisoned them...

..but what actually killed them
remained a mystery...

..and, frustratingly,

nothing at the grave site indicated
where the expedition had gone next.

All we know is that by springtime,
the ice had broken up

and Franklin pushed on,
deeper into the maze.

In the waters of
the Northwest Passage,

the search for Franklin's
lost ships continues.

The AUV has brought back
detailed images of the seafloor.

Anything man-made would
show up immediately.

So far, they've drawn a blank.

And there's worse to come.

When this part of the search team
runs into heavy sea ice,

it's a worrying development.

As hard as it may be to believe,
this is somewhere in the Arctic.

This is...parts of the Arctic.

This is as good as it's going
to get this year.

There's more ice here this summer

than there's been
for several years.

It's thought that Franklin faced
exactly the same conditions

170 years ago.

In some odd way,
this is as it should be.

This is a lot closer to what
Franklin was dealing with.

And you get here and you realise that
this is why Erebus and Terror

have not been found.

It's a very difficult
part of the world to operate in.

If it were easy, it would
have been done many, many years ago.

Maybe we'll get lucky.

In the same waters in 1846,
luck was not on the side of Franklin

and his crew.

More than a decade after
the expedition disappeared,

a second vital clue was found,

left by Franklin's men
in an icy cairn.

The note's an incredible document,

the only written record of the fate
of the Franklin crews.

How can a piece of paper

hold fortune in its hands?

This is the most important object

that has been recovered.

This precious piece of
the Franklin puzzle is now

held at the National Maritime Museum
in London.

It was standard naval practice
to issue these kind of notes

with a standard blank form that
would be filled in when necessary.

The notes were then placed in tubes

like these, they could just be left

for people to find information
about the expedition.

The note reveals that, after
their first winter in the Arctic,

the expedition sailed
some 300 miles south

before the sea
froze around them again.

And they spent a second winter
locked in the ice.

But crammed in around the margins
of the same note

is a disturbing update.

Added a year later,
it contains only bad news.

Doctor? Yes?

HE COUGHS

Sir John Franklin was dead.

Nine other officers and
15 men had also passed away.

Something was going seriously wrong.

The loss of any leader in the middle
of an expedition isn't good news.

Particularly so when you're
stranded in the middle of nowhere

in a hostile environment.

A devastating morale-blow.

To make matters worse, that summer
the sea refused to thaw.

Trapped in the ice,

the crew now faced a third
gruelling winter in the Arctic.

In the perpetual gloom, the ship's
bells where rung every half an hour

to mark the passing of time.

The note says that the captain
of HMS Terror, Francis Crozier,

was now in command.

With Franklin dead
and supplies running low,

he ordered the men to
abandon the ships.

They would attempt to march
hundreds of miles south

where a river provided
a possible route inland

to the nearest trading post.

It is the most enigmatic of clues,
it's just enough to locate them

in the landscape,
it's just enough to tell you

that something terrible has happened,

it's just enough to point you in
the right direction to follow them

but there are so many things
that are not there.

Thanks to Captain Crozier's note,
the search team has

the coordinates of the last known
position of Franklin's ships.

There's thick ice here, so with
their summer-search window

closing fast, the coastguard
helicopter goes up

to look for open water.

RADIO STATIC

'...the ship right here,
you've got at least...

'eight to ten miles in open water

'before the next
concentration of ice.'

That's good.

Actually, that's excellent.

It's been a sort of
cat-and-mouse game.

We feel like we have a break,
we feel like we have a shot

and then the ice shifts
and the doors close.

The good news is that, to the north
of us, there is a large opening.

This is right where we want to be,

it's right in the primary
search zone, so, essentially,

we have a shot here, a chance
to get the AUV in the water.

We're waiting to launch
the first mission of the day.

We're going to look
at the first block of 4km long.

There we go.

Now the waiting starts.

Do you have a visual on it now?

Just a couple of hours in,

drifting ice is yet again
spotted near the AUV.

The run is aborted.

In the northern area,
it's been the problem.

It's changing very rapidly.

This morning we had a window, a very
large window, so we went out and,

very rapidly, that opening
closed on us from outside,

so now we had to abort.

The ice is moving quickly around us,
again capturing us, trapping us.

With heavy sea ice all around them,
the AUV is pulled out of the hunt.

It's a frustrating setback
and winter is approaching fast.

But all is not lost.

The team has also
been following a second lead,

based on information
that was once overlooked.

In the oral history
of local Inuit populations,

there are intriguing stories
of a long vessel...

..seen drifting 100 miles from where
the ships were supposedly abandoned.

At the last recorded
position of Franklin's ships,

thick sea ice is blocking the
search.

But further south,
there's a second search zone,

based on some intriguing clues.

Nomadic Inuits have lived in this
part of the Arctic

for nearly 1,000 years.

There's no written history here,

but information is handed
down in other ways.

Oral history is our science,
it's the science of Inuit.

That's how we learn about where to go
and get the food,

or you may know about these
ice conditions in the springtime.

Oral history had to be very,
very accurate

because if it was not,

it could mean death.

Could these oral traditions provide
an important clue

to the fate of the Franklin
Expedition?

In 1848, after three winters
stuck in the ice,

the surviving crew members
abandoned the ships.

Stories passed down by Inuit
hunters record sightings of the men

as they marched south.

Behind them, they dragged boats,
laden with supplies.

They were walking in the soft snow,
and then into cracks in the ice

where your foot would plunge
through.

It was an extremely hard, physical
and therefore mental experience.

If they stop, they die,
but there's no solution,

so they walk, and they pick
themselves up and they try

and head south, pulling the ship's
boats behind them.

One remarkable face-to-face
encounter with the starving crew

was described by Inuit hunters.

MAN CALLS OUT

HE CALLS OUT AGAIN

An English officer came forward,

shouting the Inuit
word for "friend".

Some believe
this was Captain Crozier,

who had learned some
words on a previous expedition.

HE SPEAKS INUIT

He was given seal
meat for his hungry crew.

HE GASPS

But there was no way the Inuit
could support so many men,

so they left, knowing it would have
been suicide to stay.

HE CALLS OUT AFTER THEM

Franklin's doomed crew
continued to march south

through the frozen wilderness.

The word "cold" as we know it
takes on a different meaning.

You feel like you want to roll
up in a foetal ball all the time.

You become inactive, weak-willed,
you don't want to do anything

other than creep into some place
where there is no wind and no cold.

As you get farther from the ships,

bodies are found lying on the beach,

lying on gravel ridges, lying
in small camps, bodies everywhere.

Some time later, Inuit hunters
came across one of these camps.

With no sign of survivors.
They made a grisly discovery.

When news of it reached England,
it sparked outrage.

So this is 1854,
this is The Times, October 23rd.

"The bodies of some 30 persons were
discovered. Some were in a tent.

"Others under the boat, which had
been turned to form a shelter.

"From the mutilated
state of many of the corpses,

and from the contents
of the kettles, it is evident

"that our wretched countrymen had
been driven to the last resource...

"..cannibalism...
as a means of prolonging existence."

It's a horrendous, horrific truth
for the Victorian public to hear.

Heroes don't eat each other,
least of all naval heroes.

To many in Britain, the stories
of cannibalism were an insult,

and none other than Charles Dickens
leapt to the men's defence.

He dismissed the Inuit accounts as
the uncivilised chatter,

"Of a gross handful of people,

"with a domesticity of blood
and blubber."

But in 1992, archaeologists
settled the matter once and for all

when they examined another camp in
forensic detail.

This site map shows
the distribution of the bones

that we uncovered at the site.

On this end of the site,
there is a scattering of bones,

they are fairly widely scattered,
and then as we move towards this end

of the site, you see a dense
concentration of bones

in this area here.

The first bone in which I identified
a cut mark was a left pelvic bone.

I turned it over, uncovered it,
lifted it up from the soil

and found a distinct cut mark,

clearly identifiable as the mark that
was not made by an animal.

These kinds of human-made cut marks

tend to have a V-shaped
cross-section,

depending on the shape of the blade.

The marks were made by metal blades.

Flesh was stripped from these bones

by knives forged from British steel

in a last,
desperate bid for survival.

MAN COUGHS

The Inuit reports were vindicated.

In its disgust,

Victorian Britain had rejected their
stories as unreliable folklore.

But in dismissing Inuit oral
tradition,

many later searches also
overlooked clues

about the fate of Franklin's ships.

According to Inuit accounts,
one of the abandoned ships was

crushed in the ice before sinking
off King William Island.

But oral history also preserves
clues about the fate of the
second ship.

In recent years, this local
knowledge has been gathered together

by amateur historian Louis Kamookak.

With the elders involved,

we collected all the place
names in this region,

because place name is one way
oral history is passed down.

Oral history is passed down by
speaking, telling stories,

but it's also in the place names.

Those names all point towards the
presence of a ship far to the south.

So there's places like...
Simpson Strait...

a boat place,

that's a story where one of the ships
was when it was still afloat.

That's why it's called a "boat
place".

The idea that one of Franklin's
ships could have made it this

far south, 100 miles from its last
recorded position, is intriguing.

Other Inuit sightings extend right
down towards the mainland,

and guided by that information,

this has become another focus for
recent searches.

'So what do we have?

'Detailed oral history'

that really helps us
define where to start looking.

Were it not for information provided
by the Inuit,

we would have no reason to start
looking for Franklin's ships

down in Wilmot and Crampton Bay.

These southern waters have remained
ice-free all summer

and a boat run by the Arctic
Research Foundation has been

surveying here with a towed sonar
unit.

That's the safety cable for this
one, we don't want to lose it!

This time, the data comes in live

and searchers work in shifts to keep
a constant eye on the screens.

Another team of archaeologists is
looking for evidence

of the Franklin Expedition on land,
led by Professor Doug Stenton.

When they return from a routine
survey, it's helicopter pilot

Andrew Stirling who brings
news of an exciting breakthrough.

Just walking on the beach, something
caught my eye,

and it just looked out of place,
the colour, behind a rock,

so I just went over to investigate
it.

Wasn't sure at that time
what it was.

It was a large piece,
it was unusual,

it wasn't your usual artefact on the
ground so I looked around,

Doug's finished up, so we called
him over,

and he's like, "Oh, good find!"

It was just unmistakable what the
significance was.

It was marked with two Royal Navy
broad arrows,

an indisputable indication
that this came from a Royal Navy ship

and undeniably from either Erebus
or Terror.

In the 19th century,

these arrow ship marks were used to
identify British Navy property.

The object is quickly identified
from the ship's plans

as the metal fitting that supported
one of the ship's cranes.

In over a century of searching,
this is by far

the most important clue to the
whereabouts of Franklin's ships.

This large iron object,

very close to where the Inuit report

that they encounter one of these
ships,

to find this in that vicinity
is very exciting

and it really told
us we were barking up the right tree.

The discovery of a metal artefact
from one of Franklin's ships

has dramatically reduced
the radius of the search.

The object is too large and heavy

to have travelled far
from its parent ship.

So the Parks Canada team
deploys its sonar equipment

in the surrounding waters.

After just a few minutes,
a signal appears.

My colleague and I
were manning the sonar station.

We were both looking at the sonar
monitor and there it comes.

It was the unmistakable outline
of a shipwreck.

No doubt what it was.

Started to scroll down the monitor.

And it wasn't even halfway onto
the screen

before you really knew
what you were looking at.

I jabbed my figure at the screen

and kind of lunged forward and said,
"That's it, that it!"

When I saw...

the image of the ship coming down,
I just...it cut my legs, literally.

Oh, my God!

This is going to be
a treasure trove of information

and we are going to really open up
a window directly into history.

This is a great
moment for exploration.

We have been searching for 160 years
for answers

to what happened
to the Franklin Expedition.

The best equipped, most finely
prepared and trained expedition

that had ever set out
for the North West Passage

and to have it literally obliterated,
end in mass disaster,

no survivors and no ships.

It's just, er,
it's been a confounding mystery.

To finally have something
significant,

to finally have a ship is incredible.

I had spent most of my adult life
dreaming of this day

and, you know, it's here.

This is a day of some very good news

and that is that we have found
one of the two Franklin ships.

APPLAUSE

Scientists have located
one of the ships

from the fabled
Franklin Expedition....

One of two ships used to search for
the North West Passage...

The search team have finally
hit the jackpot...

An absolutely incredible
day for those people,

some of whom have spent
a good chunk of their lives...

For the search team,
it is the find of a lifetime.

But there is no time to
bask in the glory.

They are hoping for a closer
look at the wreck

before the seas
freeze over for the winter.

3,000. Right. 21.

They waste no time putting
the first divers in the water.

I caught a glimpse of the timber
on the sea floor,

followed along its length.

Just growing anticipation
and excitement and then, boom!

Towering overhead out of the haze

loomed the bulk of this
stately shipwreck.

Four or five metres tall.

That sensation,

finally laying hands on the side of
this historic shipwreck...

it was quite a remarkable experience
that I will never forget.

From the beginning of that
dive to the very end,

it was almost too much to take in.

Sitting 11 metres below the surface,

the wreck is a diver's dream.

In the cold Arctic water, the level
of preservation is remarkable.

And artefacts are strewn across
the site in plain view.

'Is that a gun? It's a cannon.

'Incredible! Is that two of them?
Two of them.'

There is so much to see,
it boggles the mind.

From the surface, the Canadian
Hydrographic Service carries out

more sonar work to build up
a 3D image of the entire wreck.

Its masts have been swept
away by drifting ice.

But the body of the ship remains
remarkably intact.

Holes in the deck

even allow the divers to get their
first look inside the ship.

I was peering around inside the
ship, just gazing inside

and you could look forward and see
murky features.

Just the incredible
sensation of being inside.

Sharing this place where the men of
Franklin Expedition went through

these difficult experiences.

That is where they would have spent
long, harrowing winters,

the dark Arctic nights.

It's just an absolute
remarkable site,

the fact that it still stands intact,

it allows you to, sort of,
place yourself there.

You feel this connection with the
past. It's really quite astonishing.

To cap it all off,
an iconic prize lay in wait.

I hear John call
over on the headset saying,

"You're not going to believe this,
but I found the bell."

And I thought I must have
misheard him.

But sure enough, I went over
and there was the ship's bell,

lying in plain sight,
right on top of the upper deck.

Embossed on the side is the year
the ship set sail - 1845.

A poignant reminder of the terrible
fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Today was an extraordinary day.

I've never had the like of it
in my entire career

and I probably never will
after this day.

This wreck site, without a doubt,

is one of the most extraordinary
things I have ever laid eyes on.

It is absolutely an underwater
archaeologist's dream.

Tilt it slightly back.

Back at the Parks Canada laboratory,
the bell is carefully cleaned.

We really want to capture this...

Cast in Britain 170 years ago,

it's now scanned in 3D

to create a digital replica
that will never decay.

By matching up the sonar data

with plans from
the National Maritime Museum,

the wreck is confirmed as
HMS Erebus, Franklin's flagship.

The sonar image enables us to build

a computer-generated picture of the
wreck in all its glory.

The find is a stunning success
for the team

and a vindication of the Inuit
oral tradition that led them to it.

In many ways,
this is just the beginning.

The wreck will be explored
in great detail in years to come

and anything brought to the surface

will undergo painstaking
conservation and study.

But already, this wreck has thrown
up one extraordinary possibility.

An idea that could rewrite
the history of exploration.

Originally, it was thought
both ships had been abandoned

off King William Island,
much further north.

So how did this ship move
100 miles to the south?

Where the wreck of Erebus is found,
it actually happens to be protected,

almost surrounded by a barrier of
small islands and islets.

What we ask ourselves is how this
ship arrived at that location.

One option is that HMS Erebus was
carried by the ice itself.

Satellite imagery from the
Canadian Ice Service shows that

ice in this area flows south
with the prevailing wind.

You see the tendril of ice
coming down the bottom of the screen

and that is being expelled from the
strait into the Queen Maud Gulf.

It's not terribly surprising
that at least one of the ships

ultimately would have been
directed towards Crampton Bay.

What is less clear, however,
is how it could have got through

this tangled web of small islands
and shoals,

how it worked itself into a protected
pocket where we find it today.

It is unlikely the ice
could drag a ship intact

through this dense network
of reefs and shoals.

But there is a more plausible
explanation.

According to Inuit testimony,
when Erebus was spotted here,

smoke was rising from the ship

and a gang plank had been lowered
to the ice.

Had some men returned to the ship
while the rest continued to march?

And did they steer the ship
to where it now lies?

There has to be some sort of human
hand into getting the ships there.

When did that start and how easy
was that?

Those are the kinds of questions
that we are going to look into.

The possibility that crew members

steered Erebus to its final
resting place is crucial.

From this point onwards,

the North West Passage
had already been surveyed.

Any of Franklin's men who reached
this spot would have completed

their mission's goal.

These men, that last surviving band,

a final fire before
the flame goes out,

these men have, in effect,

completed the final link in the
chain of the North West Passage.

But that is so far
from their minds at that moment.

These men are thinking
nothing of fame or records.

They are thinking
of the following day.

Inuit accounts mention a few sets

of what they call white man's
footsteps heading inland.

A last trace of the last
remaining souls.

In navigating the ship
to where it now lies,

those men would have found

the final link of
the elusive North West Passage.

The wreck of HMS Erebus is a
monument to their achievement.

And to the sacrifice of all 129 men
of Franklin's lost expedition.

# We were homeward bound

# One night on the deep

# Swinging in my hammock
I fell asleep

# I dreamed a dream
and I thought it true

# Concerning Franklin
and his gallant crew. #