Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

- Tonight, a historic expedition sets sail

into a labyrinth of ice.

- [John] 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 believe the ships were cursed

and decided to leave,

their fates are already sealed.

- What really happened

to the men of the Franklin Expedition?

(dramatic music)

- [Laurence] On a spring morning in 1845,

two British Royal Navy ships,

the HMS Terror and the HMS Arabis,

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 have 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 the Atlantic

all the way to the Pacific.

- The quest for a Northwest Passage is huge

because it would cut travel time down 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 it's that little middle, maybe 300 nautical miles

that's a blank on the map 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 gonna come to a standstill,

so there were only certain months of the year

where it could be traveled.

- [Laurence] 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 Parry.

He 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] 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.

- [Laurence] 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 Arabis.

- For the day, the Arabis 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.

They were refitted especially for this expedition.

- They both had iron reinforced hulls to withstand

and be able to maneuver through ice.

One new technological advancement that they

also had was a propeller,

which 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.

- [John] It is hope 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 can be stretched out to five years

through rationing.

This is by far the best planned

and best supplied expedition

ever to try to find the 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.

- [Laurence] 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 Arabis 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 they can be able

to shelter down during the winter,

'cause they're already anticipating that they're going

to be trapped in sea ice 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 Arabis and the Terror.

(tense music)

- 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 anything about there being a problem

with this expedition,

so they're really gonna 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.

- [Laurence] 1848, three years after

the expedition set sail,

the admiralty launches the first of a number of search parties

traveling both overland and by sea.

Within 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 Beechey Island, they find the first camp

where they overwintered, and they find three graves.

(ominous music)

- Those belong to John Hartnel,

John Torrington, and William Braine,

three crew 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 happened 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.

- 1854, nine years after this expedition first set sail

and six years after the 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.

- [John] She still 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 Arabis and the Terror.

- [Laurence] 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 ship, the Fox,

finds evidence that might explain

what happened to the ships.

(tense music)

- [Maynard] February of 1859,

the Fox crew is on an overland search on King William Island.

Leopold McClintock comes across one of these Inuit seal 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.

- [Laurence] 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 too worrisome

other than the fact that they have been stuck in ice

for a long time.

- [Laurence] 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.

- [John] This second message is from April 1848.

It says the ice never melted,

which means they have been stuck there for 19 months.

- [Karlene] 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 exactly where they got stuck.

- [Maynard] According to this note, at the time,

24 crew members had already passed away,

including, unfortunately, Sir John Franklin himself

who had perished just two weeks

after the first note was written.

- [John] The idea that an entire summer could pass

without the ice melting enough for the 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?

(dramatic music)

- [Laurence] 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 Arabis.

This is James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier.

The second message makes clear the ice never thawed,

that the two ships just remained imprisoned

by the icy conditions and it had now been 19 months.

- There's a post script that says,

"And start on tomorrow, the 26th,

for Backs Fish River."

Backs Fish River is 200 miles away from the ship.

This is a heck of a trek

they're going to have to take

across a completely desolate area.

By this time, Backs Fish River

has already been searched in 1858 and nothing was turned up,

so the reaction to this message is disbelief.

- [Laurence] But in 2005,

climate scientists make a discovery in the Arctic ice

that could provide fresh insights.

- [John] A team of climate researchers

headed up by a scientist named Roy Koerner,

drills out core samples of the ice

going down about 300 feet.

Upon studying these ice cores,

they discover why it is that the Arabis

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 back to when

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

It was the deepest freeze since the last Ice Age.

- [John] 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 one in 10,000 year winter

to go through the Northwest Passage.

- [Laurence] 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 Arabis 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 Arabis and the Terror with only 25 horsepower,

they don't stand a chance.

- [Laurence] Yet despite the freak weather,

the Expedition is unwittingly sailing into,

the Victory Point note offers another clue

to what doomed the Expedition.

- [John] 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 Arabis

and the Terror into some dangerous, uncharted waters.

(dramatic music)

- 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 longer filled in.

- [Laurence] After his first winter at Beechey 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.

- [Laurence] The coordinates recorded

in the Victory Point note

make clear that Franklin chooses the western route.

- [John] 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 that 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 passed King William Island and then to the west,

had Franklin done that,

we don't know what would've happened.

Maybe he would've made it.

- [Laurence] 50 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.

- [John] There is very little daylight

because they're so far north.

24 people had died.

Maybe they're afraid they're gonna 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.

(ominous music)

(wind blowing) (tense music)

- [Laurence] 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 Rae.

For the next six years, they scour the Arctic.

- John Rae is a Scottish explorer.

He got his start as as a surgeon

with the Hudson Bay Company.

- Unlike Franklin and his men,

Rae has learned from the local indigenous people, the Inuit,

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.

- [John] And he covers, by 1854, more than 5,000 square miles.

In May of 1854, at a place

about 150 miles east of King Williams Island,

they encounter a group of Inuit who want to trade with them.

- [Rob] And he noticed on the wrist

of one of the Inuit hunters,

his sealskin parka, a gold band.

And Rae immediately recognizes that

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 unlikely.

So he starts a dialogue with this hunter

and asks, where did you get that?

- The Inuit tell Rae that four winters previously,

they had encountered a group of about 40 white men

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.

- [Maynard] The Inuit stated that the white man communicated

using gestures saying that their ships

had actually been trapped in ice

and they had fled to land in order to hunt deer.

- [John] Obviously, Rae 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 know why.

(tense music)

- The Inuit provided further information

about this group of men as well.

Inuits say that they actually encountered their camp

several months later

and discovered 30 corpses on site.

- They were quite sure that Franklin's man,

or at least some group of them,

had resorted to what Rae called

the last resource, cannibalism.

(ominous music)

So the Inuit tell Rae

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 did 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 Rae, 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.

- [Russell] But he writes a written report

to his employers, the Hudson's Bay Company,

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

gets to London before Rae does.

- [Laurence] Rae is satisfied that he's finally solved

the riddle of the missing expedition,

but his report isn't well received.

- [John] 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 Rae and the Inuit who make these claims.

- [Rob] Dickens implies that the Inuit

actually killed Franklin's men,

and then they took these artifacts,

which was totally not true.

- [John] Rae 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.

- [Laurence] 1981 on King William Island,

a team of scientists led by Owen Beattie recover bones

belonging to members of the Franklin Expedition.

After forensic analysis,

these bones reveal that the Inuits claim

may have been 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.

- [Laurence] Despite this compelling forensic evidence,

questions remain about

how the men of the Franklin Expedition

could have starved to death.

- [John] They were equipped with over 8,000 tins

of food and vegetable,

so they should have had enough provisions to have survived.

Rae 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,

searching for a route to the far East

through the Arctic Circle,

only to mysteriously vanish and die.

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

Could what doom 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.

- [John] Something else they find when studying

these bone fragments is that

they have crazy high levels of lead in them.

(unsettling music)

- [Maynard] Lead is incredibly toxic to humans,

it can lead to a number of complications

including stomach aches, headaches, seizures,

and ultimately even death.

- [John] The results of Beattie's analysis suggest

that these bone fragments have 10 times

the normal amount of lead,

that is shockingly high.

- [Rob] 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.

- [John] 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 an analysis of hair,

fingernails, and toenails.

- [Rob] 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 bones.

- [Laurence] Yet Beattie and his team realize

there's one site that could provide the material they need

to test their theory.

- [Rob] So in 1984, Owen Beattie is given permission

to dig up, to exhume, the three graves on Beechy Island.

The first grave that they exhume

is the grave of John Torrington.

- [Paul] His body is so well preserved in the ice

that you'd think if you touched him, he would wake up.

(dramatic music)

- [John] The lead levels found in Torrington's body

were so high, he would've been suffering

from a whole host of mental and physical problems.

The question is,

how does that level of lead enter their bodies?

- [Laurence] The answer may be found

not far from Torrington's body.

- [John] About a half a mile from those graves,

his team find a garbage dump

that include a whole bunch of tin cans,

cans that would've held the food that supplied

the men of the Arabis and the Terror.

They find evidence that they have been

soldered shut very shoddily.

And what was used for the solder? Lead.

- In preparation for this expedition,

Sir John Franklin makes a deal with a food supplier

by the name of Steven Goldner.

He's commissioned to make these tin cans to be able

to supply these 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.

- [John] The whole process of canning meat is very new

at this point.

This is a full 70 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 gonna be kind of dicey.

Goldner is informed that Franklin needs

this 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.

- [John] An analysis of the can suggests

that they're cutting corners on soldering these cans shut.

The soldering job was so shoddy that it's easy to see

how lead could have contaminated the meat inside.

- [Laurence] To make matters worse,

expedition records suggest the tinned food might not

be the only source of lead 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 they consumed in the atmosphere,

could it have contributed

to their decline in both 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.

(dramatic music)

(intense music)

- [Laurence] The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition

in 1845 while on route to uncover

the fabled Northwest Passage

has baffled the world for generations

and sparked one of history's longest rescue searches.

- [Rob] In addition to Lady Jane Franklin,

a number of independent researchers

decided 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 might be alive,

and one of them is an American

named Charles Francis Hall of Cincinnati.

- [Rob] Charles Francis Hall,

an American newspaper publisher, in 1857,

decides that he's just going to head up on his own

and launch his own search to find out what happened

to the Franklin Expedition.

- [John] 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've encountered these men.

- [Laurence] 1869, after nine years searching

and countless interviews with the Inuit,

Hall ends his Arctic expedition.

A decade later,

US 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 story about what the men look like.

What she observed was a group of white men

moving very slowly,

sort of shuffling their feet across the ice.

They looked thin and their mouths were dry,

hard, and black.

- [John] Schwatka 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.

- [Laurence] 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 on a new book

about the Franklin Expedition.

When he reads accounts from Schwatka

about the sailors having black mouths,

he realizes he's seen that symptom before.

(tense music)

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,

- [Maynard] 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 food

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 vitamins.

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 to 18th century,

approximately 2 million sailors lose their life

to the conditions of scurvy.

The disease kills more sailors in the 18th century

than died from enemy combat.

- [Rob] 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.

- [Laurence] According to Navy records,

the Franklin expedition sets 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.

- A problem could have arose

because after three years they may have run out,

or 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 fast.

So by the time the Franklin crew realizes

that their lemon juice is no longer effective,

it's ultimately just too late.

- [Karlene] 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 boat is cursed,

and so they wanna go and seek resources elsewhere

so then they get off of the boat.

There's no going back from that decision.

(dramatic music)

- [Laurence] While the Arabis 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've made all the difference to these men

because they would've acquired vitamin C,

and then of course, protein from eating the meat itself.

- Polar historian Ken McGoogan puts out a book

that suggests that one particular type of game

in the Arctic could have possibly doomed the crew.

(dramatic music)

- McGoogan learns about an expedition

that took place in 1619.

65 men on this expedition, led by

a Danish Norwegian explorer named Jens Munk.

- [Rob] They were hunting beluga whales

up in Northern Hudson Bay

and they're not having 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 meat raw.

So the Inuit, for example, they hunt seals, whales, caribou,

but they don't hunt polar bear.

- [Maynard] 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 with a disease

called trichinosis.

- [John] 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 McGoogan reveals is that

after eating this polar bear flesh, the entire group,

with the exception of Munk and two others, end up dying.

- [Laurence] McGoogan speculates that a similar thing occurs

to the Franklin expedition

while the Terror and Arabis 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 that would hunt,

but they would also get first dibs on the meat.

The rest of the crew would get the reserves the next day.

- [Laurence] According to that second Victory Point note,

24 men have died, 15 crew and nine officers,

despite far fewer officers on the Expedition.

This means these officers have died

at twice the rate of the rest of the crew.

- [John] If they're eating contaminated polar bears,

it's the officers who are going to 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.

- [Maynard] 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 and decided to leave,

at the time they abandoned ship,

their fates are already sealed.

- [Laurence] September 7th, 2014,

a team of Canadian marine archeologists

finally discover the remains of the HMS Arabis.

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.

- [Laurence] Historians hope that ongoing analysis

of the Arabis and Terror wrecks will help explain

what ultimately doomed the crew

and force them to flee on foot.

- [Karlene] 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 talk 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 men vanished

while navigating the Northwest Passage,

the Expedition's demise is still generating new theories.

Maybe another clue will one day emerge from the ice

to finally solve the mystery of the Franklin Expedition.

I'm Laurence Fishburne,

thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."

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