"HMS Terror" Death on the Arctic Tundra

In 1845 two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror & HMS Erebus, departed Britain on an expedition into the Arctic. Along their ill-fated icy expedition, they disappeared almost completely, becoming one of history's greatest maritime mysteries… In this episode, Anthony and Maddy follow the trail of clues left behind by the crew of this doomed voyage and uncover what really happened to them... Edited by Anna Brant. Produced by Tomos Delargy and McKenna Fernandez. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello After Darkers. Now brace yourselves for a public service announcement.

• 0:04Anthony Delaney?

  History Hit, the production company behind After Dark, also makes documentaries. And I'm talking beautifully shot, fantastically told, immersive histories on screen. There's hundreds and hundreds available to watch right now, online at historyhit.com with a new release each week.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  There's a lot to digest there, but guys, take a deep breath because there is more. Anthony and I have made two new History Hit TV documentaries. I have recently made one about London's most notorious haunting, the Cock Lane Ghost, based on my new book Hoax that is releasing for Halloween.

• 0:36Anthony Delaney?

  And I've got one following that about the Great Irish Famine, which is coming soon.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  To see what's on offer and to subscribe, visit historyhit.com/subscribe to start exploring the past.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Everybody, listen up.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  In 1845, 129 men vanished in the Arctic. Not one of them came home. HMS Terror and Erebus sailed from Victorian Britain on a mission to conquer the Northwest Passage. They were packed with supplies, armed with cutting-edge technology, and commanded by experienced Royal Navy officers. But somewhere in the frozen wilderness, everything went catastrophically wrong. For decades, nobody knew what had happened. Then the clues began to emerge: abandoned ships, desperate messages, starvation... And evidence of cannibalism.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  So what went wrong? How did one of the greatest missions of the Victorian Age become one of history's darkest mysteries? From the icy shores of the Canadian Arctic, welcome to After Dark.

• 2:30Anthony Delaney?

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  And I'm Maddie.

• 2:34Anthony Delaney?

  Now, in 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, departed Britain on an expedition into the Arctic. Along their ill-fated icy expedition, they disappeared almost completely, becoming one of history's greatest maritime mysteries.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Dun, dun, dun. Committed After Dark listeners will know that we have already done this topic. This was, now, I don't know if it was actually the first episode, but it was the first week of recording.

• 3:07Anthony Delaney?

  First batch of recordings, yeah. Three years ago, Paddy Melling.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Three, almost three years.

• 3:13Anthony Delaney?

  And I've gotten younger in the interim.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. The injectables are all working, babe. Looking good.

• 3:19Anthony Delaney?

  Definitely have more botox than I had then.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, you were wrinklier and I was blonde. Now it's all gone.

• 3:24Anthony Delaney?

  Oh my god, you were blonde!

• 3:25Speaker 00

  I was blonde. Crazy times. Go back and find that. Oh, there was no YouTube. You won't be able to.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, this, I am obsessed with this history. I've been obsessed with it for a while. People who might not know the real history might have seen The Terror.

• 3:40Anthony Delaney?

  That's how I came to this initially.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Phenomenal.

• 3:42Anthony Delaney?

  Great, great, great, great, great.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Great cast. Love it. There will be fewer murderous polar bears in this version.

• 3:50Anthony Delaney?

  Fair enough, though.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Sadly.

• 3:51Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, fair.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I think a murderous polar bear makes everything better.

• 3:54Anthony Delaney?

  I've seen pandas on Instagram. They're so cute.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Seen what, pandas?

• 3:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I know they're not polar bears, but they are bears.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Sorry, did you say, have you just seen pandas?

• 4:05Anthony Delaney?

  On Instagram. Because like, they get frights all the time. They're always jumping.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, they do.

• 4:11Anthony Delaney?

  Jesus.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  My favourite is the goats that get startled and then they faint and they just go sideways. And they go like rigid.

• 4:16Anthony Delaney?

  I want a goat.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  And they just, yeah.

• 4:17Anthony Delaney?

  Anyway, HMS Terror, no polar bears in this episode.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Well, there were, I think there were some goats. There was definitely sheep. Sheep and also a monkey aboard this expedition, so we'll get to the animals. In, just to say, in the old episode that we did, the early episode, we do go into a lot of the primary source material. And because it's the old-style episodes, there are some pretty rip-roaring narrative sections in there, so...

• 4:42Anthony Delaney?

  Oh my god, remember we used to do those?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:44Anthony Delaney?

  And then we got too busy.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  I wrote all of that episode. I was very proud of it. So if you want to hear some more discussion of the primary material, go back and listen to that. But listen to this first. We're going to do an overview of everything. And we're also going to talk about a new discovery this year relating...

• 4:59Anthony Delaney?

  Maddie, just talk about this, yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  I also told Anthony to queue me up to say that, but...

• 5:02Anthony Delaney?

  Ash Duna's, that's right.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  It's the end of the day. This is the last episode of a recording.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  I'd do my own work on this pod. Would you like to know what's happening in the wider world at this moment?

• 5:12Anthony Delaney?

  So, okay, yeah, so we're, before we zone into that new stuff, we're going to zoom out a little bit.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, let's do the story.

• 5:18Anthony Delaney?

  1845, one thing I can tell you that's definitely happening, Great Irish Famine, that's probably not on your list, because it may not be having global impact, but it is happening.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  It's...

• 5:26Anthony Delaney?

  Is it on your list?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  It's not on my list. That's pretty shocking, isn't it? Fire whoever wrote this script.

• 5:33Anthony Delaney?

  Turns out it was Maddie.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  It wasn't this time. It really wasn't. I just don't care about Irish history. Untrue.

• 5:39Anthony Delaney?

  Clip that!

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Clip that, put it on socials. Okay, right, 1840s. I'm really, I love this time period.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  For a project at the moment, I'm spending time in the late 1830s, start of the 1840s. I think it's a really interesting time. Yes, we are technically in Britain in the Victorian era, from 1837 onwards. But it's not the Victorian era that you might picture with, you know, sort of plump old Victoria, the height of the Industrial Revolution, you know, Sherlock Holmes going about the streets of London. He wasn't real, just before anyone in the comments says, "Excuse me, that was not a historical figure." This is, you know, we've had global war with, against Napoleon, you know, fought across the British and French empires.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  We've had the Regency. We've had the sort of slightly grimy, fatigued world that comes just after that conflict and British victory. But we're not quite yet in that sort of height of Victoriana. So it's a slightly strange and I think really delicious, quite Gothic time. And this story absolutely feeds into this.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  It is a period of naval dominance by the Royal Navy. As I say, the Napoleonic war's over. Britain has defeated the French. There's negotiations, in heavy quotation marks, in terms of trade with China, when Britain wins the First Opium War at the end of 1842. So there are new discoveries happening. There's this kind of sense that imperial prestige is growing. The British Empire, point two, is arriving. We've had the Georgian version of it, focused largely on the transatlantic slave trade, and then turning towards the East Indies. And now this is the era of, you know, the Victoria, Empress of India and all of this.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  So it's a world where trade is incredibly important. And that brings us to the Northwest Passage. Ever heard of it?

• 7:45Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, it's what I do when I have chia seeds in a glass of water. And it helps me to...

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Why did I know that was...

• 7:53Anthony Delaney?

  I'm 42 now. I can't...

• 7:55Speaker 00

  You're not. You are not 42.

• 7:57Anthony Delaney?

  I mean, you know this. You genuinely, I just lie about it so often that you're like, wait, what? Yeah, this is...

• 8:03Speaker 00

  God, you actually are.

• 8:04Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. And so I, I need...

• 8:08Speaker 00

  You need some assistance.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  If you set out in a ship in the 1840s, you'd have to take your chia seeds with you.

• 8:16Anthony Delaney?

  Chia seeds in water, but you have to leave them for a while because they expand. Also, I take this thing called, what's it called? I just call it poo juice, but I don't know what it's, it's this, it's a powder. NHS use it. They didn't give it to me. I just, I got it online. And you put it into water and you think, honestly, if you're backed up, which you would be if you were on HMS Terror and Erebus...

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Thank you for linking that back to the history.

• 8:37Anthony Delaney?

  Then it will be a good thing.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  I'm just going to end the episode there.

• 8:41Anthony Delaney?

  And I might as well just finish there now, Maddie. Pick that up.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  I'll just pick that. Okay, right. Northwest Passage, right. In reality, the Northwest Passage is basically, it's an Arctic sea lane. It was kind of, it's often described as being fabled, right? It was hard to find. The idea is that, you know, in this world of trade, you need to be able to link up the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans because at the moment, the Brits are having to go down all the way under South America to get up to like China and all of that. So if you could go over the top, that would be quicker, it'd be easier. Whoever, it's a kind of a race to find the Northwest Passage, to find a route through sort of the, we're talking about like the far north coast of Canada. You know, there's pack ice, there's little islands dotted up. It's extremely dangerous place to go.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  But if you can find a way through, you are in charge. It's a bit like the Strait of Hormuz, right, on a small scale. As in, Strait of Hormuz is smaller than Northwest Passage? Yes, it must be.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Somebody comment in the comment section and tell me if I'm correct.

• 9:43Anthony Delaney?

  She's spiralling. This is what Maddie spiralling looks like.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  I'm doubting myself. Oh my god.

• 9:46Anthony Delaney?

  Just to let you know. Can I ask you a question? That's also, you know that we were talking about trade?

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:51Anthony Delaney?

  In gay lingo, what, do you know what trade means?

• 9:54Speaker 00

  No.

• 9:56Anthony Delaney?

  So trade is like...

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Well, you just had to explain what cottaging was to me off mic a minute ago, so...

• 10:02Anthony Delaney?

  Explain that. And trade is like a good-looking man. So trade is like, is X trade, and then you say whether he is or he isn't. So now you know.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:14Anthony Delaney?

  That's not what's happening here, but I'm just introducing some gay shit.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. Some gay shit, literally, across this section we've had.

• 10:21Anthony Delaney?

  Ooh. They're going to love that in the comments, aren't they?

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Okay, right. Recover this.

• 10:30Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, HMS Terror, HMS Erebus.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Possibly the two best named ships.

• 10:36Anthony Delaney?

  I'm not getting on a ship called HMS Terror.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  I know, I know, it's not great, is it?

• 10:41Anthony Delaney?

  What does Erebus mean?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Erebus is.

• 10:43Anthony Delaney?

  Is a classical.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Classical.

• 10:44Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, sure.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:46Anthony Delaney?

  Right, so HMS Terror, HMS Erebus, we have people aboard. Who are they and what are these ships doing?

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Okay, so first of all, the ships, they're not particularly new ships in this period. They're designed as warships. They've been adapted again, thinking, you know, we're in this sort of strange moment in between eras. So we're in 1838, HMS Temera, the Fighting Temra that Turner famously paints, you know, being, being pulled away by a steamship. These, the world of sort of wooden warships, HMS Victory, Trafalgar, all of that is going.

• 11:21Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  And steam and engines are coming in. And I think Terror, if not Terror, and Erebus are both fitted with engines, but they're wooden ships, they have sails, they're this kind of weird hybrid, which, you know, causes massive problems in terms of like bringing loads of coal and then the engines don't work up, work properly and all this. So that they're sort of strange, organic, metal, odd beings. Huge food supplies, as you might expect, come with them on this voyage. We're going to be gone for around about three years, they plan for. So when you go up into the Antarctic, you can expect to get stuck in the pack ice and have to winter there. So the ship is stuck in the ice, you don't go anywhere.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  That can be for months at a time, so that's normal, that would be expected. So you take things with you. So importantly, they take a lot of tinned food with them. And there's a, a theory, which I think has kind of been debunked now by a lot of historians, saying that when, when the, the, this expedition is, is commissioned, the company that makes the tin food in London have to rush through the order because they've got it. They have to go to catch the season to get stuck in the pack ice at the right time, et cetera. And there's this idea that the, the tins were sealed with lead and they weren't done properly. And lead seeped into the food, they all got lead poisoning and they all went mad.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Um, there is going to be a descent into absolute chaos on this, this expedition.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Was it from the lead? I think that's been debunked now, but it's a common narrative that comes up with this. There are live sheep, live pigs, live chickens that are taken, of course. There's a dog called Neptune, which I love. I don't think we're ever gonna hear the end of Neptune.

• 13:11Anthony Delaney?

  I would, I, I bet you I would have been like the weirdo in the corner who's like cuddling the sheep or something, because.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I mean, I always feel so sad, like, is it Shackleton? One of Shackleton's expeditions where they take all the dogs and there's photographs of the dogs from like 19, what is that expedition, like 12, 14 or something, it's just the outbreak of the First World War. Dogs are so beautiful. Every single one of them gets eaten. They have to eat all the dogs, every single one.

• 13:35Anthony Delaney?

  It's like, by who?

• 13:37Speaker 00

  The men. And I think, I think it was that expedition where the, the cook has a cat aboard the ship and they have to eat the cat. And the cook goes absolutely mad because he's like, that's my best friend. And I think, I'm pretty sure it's a Shackleton expedition and they all get a medal afterwards, apart from the cook, because he backchatted about the cat and fair enough to him, so that's kind of sad. Also aboard the ship is this monkey.

• 14:03Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  So we're gonna meet some people aboard in a second, but Captain Sir John Franklin is in charge of this expedition. It's his wife who's like, darling, here's a monkey to take with you. For goodness sake. I, I, my husband's in the army and he's been deployed all over the world. And I have on occasion sent him off with ridiculous things. I once sent him, I think I saw it down here in the bookcase somewhere. Dalrymple's Massive History of the East India Company, which is a tome. Anarchy, yeah, it's, I, I've seen it here somewhere, which is a brilliant book, but it's literally a doorstop. And yeah, Matt had to carry it from country to country and was like, this was not helpful.

• 14:44Anthony Delaney?

  Well, funnily enough, my husband is a monkey. So in ways those two stories come together.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  That's, it's always nice to share things from our personal lives. Okay, cast and crew.

• 14:56Anthony Delaney?

  Go on.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  So we have Captain Sir John Franklin. He's, he's a fascinating figure, so he's not really the first choice for this expedition. I know. He's, he's one of these. Nobody likes him. And so, okay, so he's one of these people, which is, you know, not uncommon in the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries, who joined super young. He's at the Battle of Trafalgar as a young man. He spends his career doing a lot of Arctic exploration, actually, and Antarctic. And he, at some point, I think it's when he goes to the Arctic and he comes back to Britain. He's like, he, he literally presents this to like the Royal Society or some kind of highfalutin society,

• 15:42Speaker 00

  saying, I found a new mountain range in this unexplored part of the world, blah, blah. Here's a, you know, update to the map, kind of thing, it's really important. And when some people go back, the next time they're down there, turns out no mountain range, twas clouds.

• 16:01Anthony Delaney?

  Is he Irish?

• 16:03Speaker 00

  I don't think so. No, why won't I say that?

• 16:06Anthony Delaney?

  Something's telling me he's Northern Irish.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Is that because they're known for mistaking class of mountains?

• 16:12Anthony Delaney?

  No, something was telling me he was Northern Irish, maybe I'm thinking something else.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  No, there were, there's other Irish people in this story.

• 16:19Anthony Delaney?

  Good, because I couldn't care less if there wasn't.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Well, absolutely. So, okay, so Franklin, by the time he goes, he's in his early 60s. His wife is hella pushy back home. She is.

• 16:30Anthony Delaney?

  I know.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Constantly garnering support from patrons, trying to raise money. She's, she is desperate to send him away. She's buying him pet monkeys, but she's like.

• 16:39Anthony Delaney?

  Take the monkey, yeah. But it's taken him time to get this command, hasn't it? He's not being.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, and she's ambitious, she's like, come on, we need to make something of ourselves. And, and you know, fair enough.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  So the Admiralty eventually are like, okay, Franklin can do this expedition. There are other people who want it, other people they have in mind, but eventually, for various reasons, it goes to Franklin. So Franklin's second in command is an Irish officer named Francis Crozier, who's the captain of HMS Terror, played by Jared Harris in the Terror, very brilliantly. Like Franklin, he's been in the navy since he was 13. He's a really sort of seasoned professional, a little bit fatigued, I would say at this point. No spoilers to say, this is gonna be his final voyage and, you know, it's, he's done, he's seen a lot in his life. Then we have on HMS Terror, oh, sorry, he's on HMS Terror.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  On HMS Erebus, we have Captain James Fitzjames, who is in the Terror. He's played by.

• 17:38Anthony Delaney?

  Oh my God, I love that you just gave me who the cast is.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  I know, yeah, but this is how I visualize them. He's played by Claire's husband in Outlander.

• 17:44Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I haven't seen it, so I can't help you.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Frank, anyway, yeah. He's also in The Crown, anyway, okay, moving on.

• 17:50Anthony Delaney?

  I do like The Crown. Oh, I really liked it.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  First bit, sure, later season's nice.

• 17:55Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, I agree, actually. The first few seasons, great.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:59Anthony Delaney?

  Then, once we got to, once we got to, Olivia was the turning point for me.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, once we got to Will's and Harry, I was like, I don't, I don't want to see you at university.

• 18:08Anthony Delaney?

  We were, we were gone to EastEnders territory there and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with EastEnders, just not for me.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Just not, yeah, exactly. Okay, so we're setting off from Britain. We have 134 men in total, we've got officers, we've got sailors.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Now, interestingly, the majority of the sailors are English, Welsh and Scottish, as you might imagine. There's a lot of Irish aboard as well. And obviously, this is the beginning of the Irish famine in this moment. So there's a, you know, I suppose, an influx of people wanting to get out and survive. And, you know, no, this isn't, this expedition's not a great alternative, as it would turn out. Interestingly, there's also a Canadian and a Norwegian on board, which I think gives a sense of the sort of the British Empire at the time and, and the sort of international movement of people in and out of Britain. So, May 1845, we set off from England.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  The ship goes past Aberdeen, it goes past the Orkney Islands, over the top of Scotland, to pick up supplies. It's making its way to Greenland and out into the North Atlantic. When it gets to Greenland, five men get off the boat because of illness, which is not that unusual. The other thing that happens in this moment is it's the last place, Greenland's the last place where there's a postal system. And so we have a lot of letters. Written by the crew and the officers in this moment, which is, it's fascinating because it shows, you know, this isn't very long into the voyage at all at this point. This is, I suppose, a matter of weeks it would take to get to Greenland.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  I'm looking at you like you would know, I'm sure. But we see, you know, kind of little individual sort of nuggets here and there. So we know, for example, that Franklin, who's in charge of the, the two ships overall, bans swearing and drunkenness, which is, you know, not necessarily unusual in terms of Royal Navy discipline, but the banning of swearing in particular, this is very, you know, he is gonna do it, he's running a tight ship, literally. Crozier, who's the captain of the Terror, the Irish officer.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Says in the letter that he leaves in Greenland, he says, in truth, I am sadly lonely.

• 20:23Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, I think I was mixing up Franklin and Crozier, by the way.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:27Anthony Delaney?

  At the start of this episode. Yeah, it's it's Crozier that is a little bit like wah wah. It's just a little bit Debbie Downer.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  I feel like, I feel like he was done with his career and he shouldn't have done this one.

• 20:38Anthony Delaney?

  It was a trip too far. Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, he should have just put his feet up.

• 20:41Anthony Delaney?

  And he's the one that was trying to also get ship commands, but was not being successful.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, I remember this from the last time we did this episode. Yeah, exactly. So he, he had ambitions elsewhere and it hadn't really panned out.

• 20:54Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Being, being second in command to Franklin of all people, like it's, it's not a great.

• 20:58Anthony Delaney?

  This wasn't where he was hoping to land.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Greenland is also the last time the expedition's going to be seen by Europeans. And that's important because we're going to encounter the indigenous people when we go to the Antarctic. But for now, Europeans, 26th of July, 1845, there's a whaling ship called the Prince of Wales that sees Terra and Erebus moored to an iceberg in Baffin Bay, which is just to the west of Greenland. So they've, they've left. And they are, they're there just waiting for good weather to carry on further into the Atlantic. And we're going to go to a break now, but when we come back, you're going to hear a little bit

• 21:40Speaker 00

  of me storytelling what happens on this voyage from the first episode that we did.

• 21:50Anthony Delaney?

  Week, oh my God, we're time travelling back to our own episode. Okay, after this break, it's past Maddie.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Dun, dun, dun.

• 21:58Anthony Delaney?

  Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way, same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 23:16Speaker 05

  She leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 23:38Anthony Delaney?

  Right, I'm back. I've got myself a mint because I've just had a drink of coffee and it was making me feel sick. But we're about to hear Past Dan's Maddie talk us through, I love that this says this in script. From here, the story becomes very difficult to piece together, but Maddie had a go in our first hour.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  She didn't succeed.

• 23:55Anthony Delaney?

  She gave it a go. Let's see what she came up with three years ago on, on After Dark.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  It's April 1848 and we're standing on the ice encrusted deck of a ship. Its engine has long been quiet and its propeller frozen in the pack ice that surrounds us. For months, we've been living under polar night, 24 hours of darkness, punctuated only by the moon's eerie reflection on endless snow. It's so cold that were you to remove the woolen balaclava from around your face, it would lightly rip your skin away with it. Around us, a weary crew of men are gathered, their faces barely visible under layers of clothing are gaunt from hunger and the cold. And their rasping breath lingers in the air.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  At their head stands Captain Francis Crozier, a once imposing presence, now reduced to a haggard stoop. Beside him, Commander James FitzJames is giving instructions.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  The decision has been made to abandon ship in a desperate bid for survival. What started as an ambitious Royal Navy expedition led by Britain's finest and most experienced, has turned to disaster. But worse is yet to come. What lies ahead is starvation, scurvy, pneumonia, tuberculosis and lead poisoning. As supplies dwindle and food becomes scarcer, the rules of order that have governed life on board HMS Terra and its sister HMS Erebus will collapse into chaos.

• 25:37Anthony Delaney?

  Your voice has changed.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  I sound so young on that. Oh my God. Hello, I'm Maddie. Welcome to After Dark. That was cringe listening to myself.

• 25:48Anthony Delaney?

  No, it wasn't cringe. It was Monday.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  God.

• 25:50Anthony Delaney?

  September 2023, Soho. That was one of the fanciest studios we were ever in. They let us into a full sense of security. We went into this incredible studio.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  For week one of recording. We were like, oh my God, are we superstars?

• 26:03Anthony Delaney?

  And then the following recording, a light fell on my head.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  We were in like a damp basement somewhere.

• 26:08Anthony Delaney?

  We never went back there, to be fair, but a light literally fell on my head.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  It literally did. It literally did.

• 26:13Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  And the, the people who weren't there just picked it off you and were like, sorry.

• 26:19Anthony Delaney?

  I'm fine. Everything's fine.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Don't worry, I'm okay.

• 26:22Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, so, okay, this, this is the last time that we're, well, when we left them, it was the last time that we had seen them.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  You do a grand job of talking with a mint in your mouth.

• 26:32Anthony Delaney?

  There's two mints in my mouth, one on both sides. But they, they had that, they, they kind of disappeared. But if they disappeared, how do we know all of those details?

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Good question. Okay, yeah. So at this stage, we know things are going to go wrong. We know that the ships are abandoned in the ice, two years into the expedition.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  The crew is gone. We don't know where. There's no, the ships are left, like go ships, stuff still in them. Where's everyone gone?

• 27:07Anthony Delaney?

  And as you say, they had partially planned to be stuck in the pack ice.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  Yep, nothing unusual there.

• 27:13Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  The only unusual thing is they're not with the ships.

• 27:15Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. So we're not, we're not surprised that they're in the pack ice. We're surprised that the ships are gone.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we, we, we left England in 1845. In 1847, people back home were a little bit like, they're getting a bit twitchy. Mrs Franklin is thinking, well, Lady Franklin is thinking, where's my husband? What's going on? The Admiralty, though, is like, two years is nothing for this kind of trip. It's fine. We all need to relax. But Lady Franklin, she makes a petition to send a search party. She even petitions the Russian Tsar and the US President for help in this. So she's really, she's like, something has happened. I know something has happened. This isn't right.

• 27:56Anthony Delaney?

  She's right. It feels like a lot from her, but she's right.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Like, kudos to her. I think she's a really interesting figure. There's a little bit of hesitation about sending a search party. Again, this is a dangerous part of the world. It was expensive to send the expedition out. Now you've got to send a search party.

• 28:11Anthony Delaney?

  So what, what year are we in now where she's, they're, they're contacting presidents and Tsars?

• 28:16Speaker 00

  So that's the end of 1847. 1848, the first search is launched. People are like, we probably do need to. Because also, don't forget, we need to find the Northwest Passage. So if these people have failed to do it and are all dead, we need to send someone else. Like, trade is important. We need to crack on with this. We know with hindsight, this first search party goes out, does not find anyone.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Does not find the ships, I think. At this point, some of the crew from HMS Erebus and Terra are still alive, but they're not found.

• 28:47Anthony Delaney?

  Oh.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  So then they're not found by the search party.

• 28:51Anthony Delaney?

  Do we know where they are at this point? Or do we just know retrospectively that they must have been still alive at this time?

• 28:55Speaker 00

  We know retrospectively. The search parties have no idea. The likelihood is, from their point of view, everyone is, is potentially dead. There are going to be dozens of search missions that go out. This is one of these fascinating, literally dozens. It's, it's one of those expeditions that fascinates people. People become obsessed with solving what is, you know, a tantalizing mystery of what has happened. We only start to get a clear sense of what had gone wrong in 1858. So what's that?

• 29:29Anthony Delaney?

  12 years later, 12 years after the.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:32Anthony Delaney?

  11 years after the first rescue.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Yes, sure. Yeah.

• 29:35Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. So a decade later, essentially.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  A decade later, yeah. And this is, you know, Lady Franklin has not given up. She is determined to find her husband. She. Helps fund a search party that's, uh, that's commanded by Leopold MacClintock. Um, it's at sail, it arrives in the part of the world where they were last known to be or where they were heading. Um, and this is where the search party has some success. It comes across the first and only piece of documentary evidence we have from, yeah, from the crews of the Terra and Erebus that says, that gives us some sense of what happens, right? This is a really famous, um, piece of paper called the Victory Point Note, right?

• 30:20Speaker 00

  So, um, there are cairns that are set up, so literally just piles of rocks, um, on King William Island, which is part of Canada's Arctic kind of collection of islands. And it's found in May 1859. So the point of the cairns is that they're kind of visible in this really bleak landscape and that you can leave bits of information in them. You can use them as, um, sort of navigational points, but also you can leave pieces of paper. And this, this piece of paper, it's, um, a sort of Admiralty standard form, uh, that is, it has sort of printed text on it and it's filled in by hand. Um, and it's rolled up and put into, I think of just like a metal canister, um, and stored in the cairn.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  So they find this. And now this, what is so tantalizing is it is, it has two different time periods represented on it. As you say, it's, um, this printed text that says, whoever finds this paper is requested to forward it to the Secretary of the Admiralty of London with a note of the time and place at which it was found. So basically, um, you know, for explorers going off around the world, you would leave the, these, um, and they had details of your expedition where, where you were up to, how you were doing, what was happening. And if anyone found them who came looking for you, they, they could piece together what happened, basically. So that's, this is kind of function that's put in place in this empire as a way of, um, sort of documenting if people go missing, et cetera.

• 31:42Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, it's in loads of different languages underneath as well.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's in, uh, what's that? French, uh, German, Spanish. Yeah. Um, so the, the first note is the form officially filled in nice and neat. And this is dated to the 28th of May, 1847. So two years into the expedition. Um, but things are still going fine. So at this point, it has details of where the ship has wintered. So where it's been stuck in the pack ice. Um, it says the condition of the expedition is, is going okay. Uh, and it's, there's a really famous bit here where, um, the person who's filled it in has written all well and underlined it. All well, all is good, all is fine.

• 32:28Anthony Delaney?

  As expected.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  As expected, all going swimmingly.

• 32:31Anthony Delaney?

  So that's from 28th of May, 1847.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:34Anthony Delaney?

  You mentioned already that there is another time period involved in this. And is this all the scrolls?

• 32:40Speaker 00

  So all the writing around the edge is from a year, almost a year later, from the 25th of April, 1848. Now, this is an indication of the rapid deterioration. So the, what happens essentially is that they are stuck in the pack ice. And things have gone horribly wrong. So the writing around the edge set, states that both Terra and Erebus have been stuck in the ice since September, 1847. Um, on the 22nd of April, 1848, so the whole, they've done the whole winter in the pack ice. They've decided to abandon both ships. And this note is written three days after they've abandoned the ship.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  So they've walked from the ship to the cairn to detail that this has happened.

• 33:27Anthony Delaney?

  So it's a three day journey from wherever they left the ships.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Both ships are described as being beset, trapped in the ice. The information, um, also says that Franklin, who's in charge of the expedition is dead. He died on the 11th of June, 1847. So quite a while ago, the second date being April, 1848. So he's died.

• 33:50Anthony Delaney?

  Okay.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Uh, almost a year ago already. Um, it states that the total loss by deaths of this expedition so far has been nine officers and 15 men. That's quite significant.

• 34:03Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  It also states, Crozier, Captain Crozier, the second in command, is now in charge. He's taken control. The officers and crew, there's a hundred and five of them left. They are now under his command. And this, the, the writing around the edge, this secondary date, um, is signed by Crozier and also James Fitzjames, who remember is the captain of, uh, the Erebus, who is now the second of command. Obviously he's gone up the chain because Crozier is now in charge. Um, the decision to abandon ship is enormous. It, this is a bleak, empty landscape that these men are not equipped to travel. And this is, these are vast distances. So things,

• 34:50Speaker 00

  you know, the, the ships themselves are set up to be at home away from home. Yes, they're not filled with luxury necessarily, but it, they're meant to represent safety. There's meant to be enough supply of food, of water, everything. It's meant to be, you're meant to be able to survive this on the ship.

• 35:08Anthony Delaney?

  Clearly that's not happening.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  That has not happened. Uh, Franklin's dead. They have made the decision. And we talked about this in the, the earlier episode that we did on it. Um, one of the things that gets, or some of the things that gets left behind, things like musical instruments, because you can't take them across the ice, they're not needed. Gifts that have been made by people back home. I remember there's a really gorgeous glove. Do you remember the glove? And it's, I think there's like an embroidered heart and some initials, something in the palm. Um, and it's just so tragic to think that that's left behind, that someone was in such a state of survival that they thought, I don't need to break this. This is not a vital, um, item.

• 35:47Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, this is not something when, when, when Crozier or Fitzjames or both of them together suggested or told the crew that this is going to be their next step. Those men are probably not necessarily thinking, great, this is what we all hoped for. We wanted to get off the ships. Off we go a little. They're like, this.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  This is how we die.

• 36:05Anthony Delaney?

  We're not going to survive.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the, the plan essentially is that they're going to try and walk across the ice to get to the nearest colonial outpost, which is, I think, hundreds of miles away. They have got to cross vast amounts of ice and snow to get there. This is incredibly bleak. Now, interestingly, some of this is witnessed by the indigenous Inuit people. And there are encounters between them and the expedition at various points. And then between the Inuit and the search parties. And this is how we know something of, we can piece together a little bit of what's happened based on the Inuits' witness testimonies to these groups who then come looking for them.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Um, so there's an American organized expedition group that, that goes at one point. And it speaks to, uh, an Inuit family who reports seeing the burial, probably in 1847, of a high ranking officer. We think it's Franklin. And the description, and bearing in mind this has been translated into English and, you know, um, but there's, the description is, they say, one man died on the ships and was brought ashore and was buried on the hill near where the others were buried. So we've already got a bit of a graveyard going on. This man was not buried in the ground like the others, but in an opening in the rock. His body was covered with something and many guns were fired. So there's a kind of, um, a really poignant, I think,

• 37:29Speaker 00

  attempt at a, like a military funeral, given what they've got, basically. They're just trying to make the most of it. Um, you know, this sort of attempt at dignity and pomp and circumstance and, you know, doing things properly and in the British manner, uh, even in the face of like desolate landscape and, um, a complete tiny chance of survival.

• 37:52Anthony Delaney?

  Isn't it interesting that even within that context of what we understand in, in, in the kind of white British context of formality and dignity and, and, and the way in which one should be buried according to one's status, et cetera, the indigenous people are looking on going, they did something weirder with him?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:13Anthony Delaney?

  Whatever that was.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  And also they're probably thinking that when they see, so the Inuit, um, also see when the ships are abandoned and they, they see various groups under Crozier and Fitzjames who kind of splinter off into different, different groups. They see them trying to get across the ice. And, you know, they must have been thinking, what are you doing? Um, that's, don't go that way. You're not going to survive this.

• 38:36Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Um, you know, and the, the Inuit, they're in their furs and they're properly equipped for this, the landscape in which they understand and live. Um, you know, and I think it, it speaks to that kind of, the colonial arrogance of the Brits at this moment where they're like, we can do this. And, you know, they, they would have been able to had they stayed on the ships potentially. They, it might have been survivable.

• 38:56Anthony Delaney?

  I presume they, they came off because there was no food or anything. The provisions must be gone.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Again, there's a suggestion that the, the lead sealed tins, that the food's gone off, there's not enough of it, that there's an issue there. Um, simply that they're getting through the supplies too quickly because of the harsh winter. Um, that it's, the, the ice hasn't melted when they expected it to melt. It's been a much longer season. They simply, they're running out of everything and time is running out and they've got to make a decision.

• 39:23Anthony Delaney?

  Well, we have some further testimony from the indigenous people that's going to help to illuminate what has happened to these people. And we're going to find out a little bit more about that after the break.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  She leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 40:37Anthony Delaney?

  So you spoke already about an expedition in 1858, but you also said that that wasn't one of the first ones. So in 1854, there is a Scottish expedition, well led by a Scottish man.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:51Anthony Delaney?

  And this is where we get some of this Inuit testimony.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Dr. John Ray is a Scottish explorer. He, in 1854, goes looking.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  For the Erebus and the Terra, as many have done before and as many will do afterwards. And this is, you know, this is why it's such a tantalizing, tantalizing mystery, because we have these different flashpoints, these different pieces and clues, bits of information that we can use to piece together what happened. But actually, there's so much that we don't know. We don't know exactly why they abandoned the ship. We know when they did it. We don't know why they splinter off into different groups. So Dr. John Ray meets a group of Inuit and they describe that around about four winters ago,

• 41:41Speaker 00

  that's how they communicate it, so about 1850, they encountered at least 40, the word they use is cabloonat, I think that's how you pronounce that, which means non-Inuit, it's Europeans, who are dragging a boat south, because this is the thing, right? They abandon the ship, Terra and Erebus, and they take smaller boats, rowing boats with them. And the idea is they're going to drag them across the ice to then launch into the sea to try and, yeah.

• 42:12Anthony Delaney?

  But that's 1850, we think they're saying that they saw them.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Some are potentially still alive in 1850. So they were abandoned ship 1847, no, sorry, 1848.

• 42:23Anthony Delaney?

  Two years later, we're still dragging ships around.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  And you know, this is Inuit memory, you know, they're talking about several years ago, so we're not, it might not be that precise. But they mentioned seeing the leader of this group is a tall, stout man, he's carrying a telescope. We think that might have been Crozier, he might still have been alive at that point. They managed to communicate to the Inuit that their ship is being crushed by the ice. It's not movable, it's, I mean, it's creaking, it's, it's literally being crushed by the, the pack ice has been pushed in. You know, the, the damage to the vessel is so extreme, it's not going to be used, yeah. And they, they communicate as well that they're heading, they're trying to head south, they're trying to hunt deer, they're trying to survive.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Again, I'm kind of interested in what the Inuit take on that was, you know, seeing these men dragging a boat across the land, saying they're hunting deer, seems pretty incompetent from their point of view, surely. What we think happened then is this group certainly, and maybe some of the others that have splintered off, are trying, they're, they're trying to head over 250 miles of land, over King William Island where they are. They're trying to head to this place called Black River to then

• 43:46Speaker 00

  use the boats to try and get to an outpost that way and to be rescued essentially to, to find Europeans that could help them. The likelihood is that they filled the boats that are dragging with the provisions, with tools, with weapons, anything that they can that's useful. We know they never make it to the colonial outpost that they're clearly aiming for. That is not the end of the story, though.

• 44:15Anthony Delaney?

  Is it true, because I, I mean, I know where this is going, as you say, we've, we've covered this before. And one of the most gruesome and fascinating things therefore, because of the gruesomeness, is the idea around cannibalism. Now, I think we should be very upfront about the fact that in extreme circumstances, cannibalism is nowhere near as rare as one might hope it would be. So this is not beyond the realms of possibility, it's certainly not unheard of in seafaring, you know, disasters where people have, are, are lost in abandoned places.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  We've encountered it in ship narratives on this show more than once, yeah.

• 44:53Anthony Delaney?

  How do we, how do we know about those stories of cannibalism, or is this, or potential cannibalism? Or is this just something that's grown up in legend afterwards, or do we have some historical documentation that can point us to it?

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Okay, so there are, there are various pieces of evidence that we have for this. So first of all, Dr. John Ray is still out and about with his search party in the 1850s. The information that he also gets from the Inuit that he speaks to is that having seen these men led by Mam of the Telescope with the boat, a few months later in the spring of 1851, the Inuit come across 30 corpses. Maybe it's the same group, maybe it's a different group, that's unclear. Obviously, the Inuit aren't personally acquainted with these people. As evidence of this, they give Ray a small silver plate that has John Franklin's name engraved on it.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  So clearly, what, the, the bodies that they have found and the supplies they found and everything are from the Terra and Erebus. I mean, it's not like there were loads of expeditions coming and going in this part of the world, but like, it absolutely concretely is these people.

• 46:01Anthony Delaney?

  Links it to this, yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Ray, so, yeah, the Inuits say that the corpses they found had signs of cannibalism, right?

• 46:09Anthony Delaney?

  And there's 30 of them.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  There's 30. And, you know, some have died of hunger, but there, there's, according to the Inuit, there have been attempts to eat certain members of this group.

• 46:19Anthony Delaney?

  I just, what does that look like?

• 46:22Speaker 00

  We, we will get to that. But John Ray himself doesn't see this evidence, it's just coming to him through the Inuit. He writes two reports that he sends back to the Admiralty, one is for public consumption, one is not. In the public version, he doesn't mention the cannibalism, in the private version he does, but they're switched, whether by accident or on purpose. Supposedly accidentally, the wrong report reaches the public and there is an outcry in Victorian society, this idea of, you know, we talk so much about the sort of, the respectability of the British Empire and that it's, it's Britain, you know, being put to the test far from home. And of course, we in the British Empire, we don't, we don't do this kind of savagery.

• 47:03Anthony Delaney?

  We would never fall to this.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, we would never do this. Charles Dickens is one of the people who weighs in on this discourse from the comfort of his own warm, cosy armchair, having never been lost in the, the icy desert of the Antarctic. And he launches this tirade against John Ray, the doctor who's, who's gone up to find them, and says, oh, the Inuit can't be trusted, that testimony is nonsense, like, they, they just want to make us seem uncivilized, like, we can't, we have to take this with a pinch of salt, this is ridiculous. However, I think that's, that's classic Charles Dickens, by the way, I can't stand the man. 1854, you know, this, by now, it's well known, they're not coming back in Britain.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  There's the suggestion of cannibalism, at least, you know, it's attached itself to the story. Whether or not they believe it's true is kind of not the point anymore. 1854, the navy officially declares that the crew are dead, they're not coming back, yeah. 1859 is when the first human remains are found.

• 48:06Anthony Delaney?

  1859, okay, yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so think of how many expeditions have gone out in that time to try and find, first of all, survivors and then the bodies. These remains, though, have no evidence of cannibalism, these are, these include burials that have obviously been done at an early stage in the expedition, when the ships were still in play. You know, I don't know if Franklin is ever found actually, but there are other crew members who have been buried in very kind of dignified, official ways, early on. We have to wait till the 1980s to find more skeletons. And when that happens, so multiple bodies are found

• 48:52Speaker 00

  kind of along the route that is taken across King William Island.

• 48:56Anthony Delaney?

  This is in the 80s.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  This is in the 1980s. And there is evidence. And, no, I've read before that it's a kind of camp that was discovered and that everything's sort of frozen in time, and I think that's possibly a little bit cinematic. But certainly, there is a pot on the fire that's still there. There, you know, so the, basically, cannibalism has happened. So we have human bones with knife marks on, where it's been clipped butchery, you know, evidence that there's, there's been boiling taking place, there's, there's been preparation of human beings for food, basically.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  So, yeah, it's, it's the 1980s that that is.

• 49:44Anthony Delaney?

  In the, in the 80s, are they pretty upfront about that, like, or is that something that they're trying to suppress again? Or are we so far beyond it?

• 49:50Speaker 00

  I think, I think at that point, it's, you know, and this is such a famous story as well, even before this point, that I think the discovery is, is really big news. And, you know, as we started to start this episode, and we'll talk about this in a second, but, you know, the Erebus and the Terra are, are in the news cycle on a semi-regular basis. This is something people are still interested in, there's probably still elements of the expedition to find out on the ice. We said this in, in the, the earlier episode that we did, but, you know, the, some of the bodies, the burials are absolutely incredible. There are photographs, there's a book by Michael Palin about this, and there's photographs in there of some of the sailors, and obviously, it's so cold there, they're preserved.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  And you can see, I mean, that, that they didn't die two minutes ago, you know, they're very clearly been dead for a long time. But you can still see their facial hair, their nails, in some cases, their eyes. It's really incredible, and all of their clothes are preserved. And I just, I find this so, it's a little bit like, I know you're so interested in catacombs, and when you get, what's the, the famous one in Italy where there's people in like 18th century clothing, who've been put into the catacomb and it's all preserved, and it's, it's so uncanny and strange. And it's like just meeting someone, it's like time travel, it's so bizarre.

• 51:13Anthony Delaney?

  I think we did it with Cat Irving while you were off.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  I know, I'm so gutted. Yeah, I really wish I'd been there for that one. But yeah, so if, if you are inclined, you can see these images on Google, and, you know, they are, they're really striking. And it does feel like time travel back to the 1840s. So just to kind of summarize what we think happened, the crew, 1846, September, they become trapped in the ice for the entire winter until the spring. They realize they've got to abandon the ship, Franklin dies June 1847, Crozier takes over command. There's only 105 men left at this point, and they decide to go across the ice. They all splinter off into groups, some of them eat each other.

• 51:56Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, so that's what we know, we have archaeological evidence to suggest that that eating is the case.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 52:04Anthony Delaney?

  We have potentially a scattering of bodies across a geographical distance to show maybe the route that they took. We have testimony from the indigenous Inuit people from the 1850s to show that they're speaking to the, the Scottish explorer who goes to try and find them. So we're piecing all of this together. Now, all of that, we have had before, Maddie, so I don't know why you wasted my time telling me it all again. Unless there's something new to tell me, which apparently there is.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  So there have been recent discoveries. So 2014, which is not that recent, I realise as I'm saying this. A Canadian team used sonar to locate the Erebus, which obviously being a wooden ship was stuck in the ice and then eventually went to the bottom. And is now at the bottom of what is Wilmart and Crampton Bay. Two years later, in 2016, it was announced that the Terra had been discovered slightly to the south of King William Island. Obviously, these ships have moved with the pack ice, so they're not in the location they were when they were abandoned. Most recently, though, in 2026, anthropologists.

• 53:08Anthony Delaney?

  2026, that's now.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  That's right now. Anthropologists at the University of Waterloo, which is in Canada, analysed DNA samples from some of the skeletal remains from those burials. And with DNA matches of descendants, they have been able to identify four of the sailors who are buried. Would you like to hear their names?

• 53:28Anthony Delaney?

  I'd love to, yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  We have Harry Pegler, who was captain of the four top on HMS Terra. We have John Bridgens, who is subordinate officer's steward on HMS Erebus. We have David Young, who is boy first class, presumably quite young, on Erebus. And William Oran, able seaman on Erebus. Isn't that incredible?

• 53:48Anthony Delaney?

  So we have two officers and two seamen, two, two lower class probably people. That's interesting. It's crazy that they've been able to put those. So I presume they found distant descendants and all of a sudden then matched up their DNA things.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Absolutely incredible. And it's testament to, you know, how compelling this story is. The, the mystery is still occupying us. It's still getting academic funding, you know, this is. Because, you know, this, this is, there is archaeological evidence of this still out there to find. We don't know exactly what happened. We don't know the circumstances in which some of the other people died. We've never found them. I was recently in the National Maritime Museum. Again, I know I've said this recently loads on this podcast. Keep going back. I just love it so much. If you are, if you work at the National Maritime Museum, invite me to come and do something. I love it so much. And there's a, there's a little display case all about the Erebus and the Terra. And there is one of the leather boots that one of the men was wearing.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  And you can see teeth marks in it where they've tried to eat the leather of the boot. They're so hungry. Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely incredible. Yeah, a really, really, really fascinating artefact. And it just gives you such a kind of visceral sense of what that situation would have been like.

• 55:08Anthony Delaney?

  Do you know what? Like, if I was more adventurous, I'd be like, oh my God, let's do an expedition and go there. I'm not, but at least it's cold. That would be, that would be something that I could deal with. But maybe we should send like Dan Snow off on an expedition or something.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Dan can go and do it. I'm surprised he hasn't. It's giving Dan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:25Anthony Delaney?

  But it is fascinating. And I do really love, this was the, this was the naval history because as you know, three years ago, I was very much like, aye, aye, ships, who cares? But now I care.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  Loads of people, including Anthony.

• 55:37Anthony Delaney?

  And now I'm like, oh yeah, okay. It's the, it's the mini world on the sea thing. It's the, it's the extremities. It's the.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  I also just love this time period, the, the 1840s. I think it's so fascinating. Like I say, I'm spending a lot of time there at the moment for a project and it's so aesthetically, I love it. It sits between the Georgian and the Victorian world. It's the, the rate of change in the world and in Britain, how Britain's seeing itself is so rapid and so dizzying for the people who live through this. You know, these are people who have felt the effects of the French Revolution, in the case of Franklin, fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, but also have some of the earliest photographs taken of them. There are photographs of the entire, I think every single member of the crew, certainly all the officers, on this expedition. That's some of the earliest photographs ever taken.

• 56:26Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  And they survive and we have them.

• 56:28Anthony Delaney?

  All of those.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  We know what each one of these people looked like. We have their photographs. That is wild to me. That, that they, they straddle this bizarre, bizarre moment of the 19th century. It's, I love it.

• 56:44Anthony Delaney?

  What are you gonna have for dinner later?

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Hmm. Something frozen.

• 56:52Anthony Delaney?

  I don't know what I'm gonna have. I'm gonna be on a train. I think I'm gonna have a train dinner.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Oh, you love a train dinner.

• 56:57Anthony Delaney?

  I don't, I hate.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  You're always posting it to socials, you are.

• 57:00Anthony Delaney?

  I know, because it's so sad. But that's the only reason I posted it. It's like, wah, wah, wah. But it's.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  All right, crozier.

• 57:06Anthony Delaney?

  I don't like to, I don't like to travel and consume.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Oh no.

• 57:10Anthony Delaney?

  Don't like it.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Shouldn't be moving and eating at the same time.

• 57:13Anthony Delaney?

  I don't need to be digesting.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  You would not survive a, a ship at sea then, would you? You'd be like, can we put the anchor down so I can have my tea?

• 57:20Anthony Delaney?

  I really wouldn't. And there's no point in saying I would, but there is a part of me now, because of this podcast and this particular history, that is like, but I would be curious to know if I could maybe. Whereas before I would never even, I'd be like, put me in a castle and let that be a palace, rather.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Could go to sea or could eat a person?

• 57:38Anthony Delaney?

  Oh no, could go to sea, calm down. It's one step at a time. Although again, it is that thing of, of in extremity, it's incredible how.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  What people are capable of.

• 57:48Anthony Delaney?

  It's a default, almost, that I'm gonna try and survive, sorry, you know. And they have the conversation amongst themselves sometimes of, of going, look, if I go, you can and don't feel like you can't.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  I wouldn't eat you if we were stuck in a boat.

• 58:04Anthony Delaney?

  I'd give you permission to, if I was.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know you would, but I wouldn't eat you.

• 58:08Anthony Delaney?

  I'm not that precious.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Would you eat me? Yeah, you would. Just a leg.

• 58:12Anthony Delaney?

  I don't know. It depends how hungry I was. If I was on jabs, maybe not, because they're suppressed the.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  So that's how you brought the aesthetic to the sea with you.

• 58:22Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. God, if you and I did end up going to sea and it was just you and I, one of us is eating someone because we're not surviving.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  We'd be like just floating off Dover. We'd be like, oh God, cannibals.

• 58:34Anthony Delaney?

  Pop, just like.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  Call them the R and L I.

• 58:37Anthony Delaney?

  Still got the white kips in the background going, I'm starving. I'm suddenly starving. Nobody panic. And somebody row faster. Like, where are we even going? Why are we here?

• 58:45Speaker 00

  Oh my God, sign off for the good people.

• 58:49Anthony Delaney?

  Well, thank you. Actually, do you know what? If there's any other episodes you'd like us to revisit for whatever reason? That might be interesting, right? We've never really done that before.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  Episodes where they've been in the news recently.

• 58:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Or like, if you're listening and you're just like, well, hold on, you didn't mention this or you, you, you, what about this angle or something? Drop us an email at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Did you know that we're also on YouTube now? So you can find us at After Dark.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  I didn't. We've been filmed the whole time.

• 59:18Anthony Delaney?

  This is why we're in the studio right now. And you can go there and you can watch these episodes. We have a classic episode that comes out on Mondays and a brand new episode that, that coincides with the podcast release on Thursdays. And then you can watch along and have a conversation in the comments. And it's a, it's been really weird because if you've been listening to After Dark the whole time, the YouTube iteration has brought a whole new audience in.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  A whole audience that's then like, wait, this is a podcast?

• 59:44Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I know. It's just like, we've been here for three years and then now they're discovering the back catalogue. So if you've been listening the entire time, go and join in with the new people and, and guide them towards the old episodes as well. Help them, give them a helping hand in, in getting to know Maddie and I and the whole team. And yeah, let us know in the comments how long you think it would take for you to start turning to cannibalism if the, am I gonna get in trouble for saying that?

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  Don't, don't you think that's cancelable?

• 1:00:10Anthony Delaney?

  Okay. So thanks very much and I'll see you soon. Love you. Bye.