These cold water wrecks are basically a time capsule! I still remember being super amazed how well Shackleton's Endurance has been in pristine condition.
I remember reading about an old steamer found in (I think?) the Missippissi river (spelling’s off, I know). They found cans of sealed food over 100 years old, when lab tested they discovered that the contents were still safe for human consumption. The food has lost nutritional value, and the colour and flavour was ‘off’, but there were no signs of botulism or other nasties. Properly canned food stored in the right conditions will last a real long time. Just an aside, 🙂 🤝
I've been waiting for years for more info and photos of the wrecks and now they finally exist, thanks for posting. These wrecks and the story of them is a very big deal in Canada as the search for the wrecks and the crews lead to much exploration of Canada, I don't think people outside of Canada can appreciate the historical place these hold. I'd hope and think recovery of one of the ships is possible, as the ships are relatively small and at shallow depth and given the importance of them. And or more exploration will happen and the need to open those closed doors and desks etc is vital to learn more as the crews stayed on and lived most of their missing years aboard and the assumption has always been records would have been left onboard, on purpose, as once the crews left the ships they knew their odds of survival were small indeed at that point. Some of the comments below about Canada being too broke are childish and very disrespectful and ignorant.
You know what I re-realised researching this? Canada has a kak load of northern territory. I mean you guys lucked out. You have dominion over land because of Great Britain that are so very far away north there's no possible way you could actually hold them.
Well up to now I mean. In the next 100 years that land will be huge so basically considering this was not even 200 years ago a huge investment in history.
The last photo is of the expeditions copper plate film camera. Next to it i believe sits a box, which most likey contains the copper plate film used in the camera. The thought (as unlikely as it may be) of uncovering actual photos from the expedition is very very exciting one indeed.
@@Bobtowngardenare you too young to have had to wait to have pictures processed? those negatives might have information regarding what happened during the expedition
Those poor men endured three indescribably harsh winters. I cannot even begin to imagine the desperation and despair they must have felt before and after they left their ships. It is not hard to understand how it is that almost nothing of the party that abandoned their ship have been found. The harsh and unforgiving weather and the probability of them having died on sea ice with their bodies and equipment sinking into the water during summer melting. It would have been an absolutely awful way to die. May their souls rest in peace.
"Those poor men endured three indescribably harsh winters." Even worse: There is good reason to think that the last Franklin survivors lasted as long as 1851. If that is true, *they* would have lived through SIX very harsh Arctic winters.
IMO , I accept the theory that "The lead in their canned goods drove them " mad". It is the only explanation for the fact that the "ship's boat" they used as a sled and pulled using human power for many miles to try to reach a settlement/outpost, was loaded with many 100's of pounds of "superfluous chit" not needed for survival in such a place, - find building terror. blogspot. com /2019/01/ a-man-hauled-boat-sledge-from-hms-terror.html If are you some geeky bastard or non-bastards, or if you felt "mad" about invention of the Ti-100 and/or the later graphing calculators, . 😎 who might have been at a Trekkie/GenCon convention in the 1980's. Yep, UB here and this history is very cool. Such nerdy phuckers interested in such, are few and far between. Please excuse my many English language inferences the above paragraph :)aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this one as well.
@@richardmalcolm1457So puzzling that they knocked around that island for six years rather than attempting a run for the south. Maybe the lead poisoning theory explains it?
@@SonOfTheOne111 My guess is that they were simply too weak at any point in those final years to mount a long overland march. Perhaps they hoped to find enough game locally to build up their strength, and it didn't work out. (Possibly, in desperation, a small party of the healthiest men might have been dispatched at some point...but if that happened, we have never found any trace of it.)
I think this is one time we should be treating these wrecks as archeological sites, and try to recover, and preserve as much items and details as we possibly can. I think the crew would want people to know as much as possible about their expedition. Not recovering anything from the wrecks is an awful thought. Kind of disrespectful to those brave men if you ask me. Like we cant be bothered to try and figured out more about what happened to them. Kind of what we did with the Hunley, we should do here. Try to recover, preserve, and learn about as much as possible.
I agree. These aren't even grave sites, which is used as a reason of excuse in cases like Titanic. The general thinking has beent that the Brits were careful record keepers and would have left records of what happened on the ships, though it's possible they took them all with them, but the discovery was also talked about as being a source of more info than has been know up until now.
Crozier's cabin could be the biggest archaeological find of the century, helping to finally unlock the mystery of this expedition. If those log books are found it will be insane, they need to get on with it, it's taking them way too long.
@@keithskelhorne3993 It's a long shot but not outside the realm of possibility if conditions are favorable. If they cam decipher the Herculaneum carbonized rolled up scrolls, the Crozier logs should be a walk in the park.
You're right, Eric! I've been puzzled at the slow pace and slow reveal of what they have recovered. Like the book they found. That was recovered going on 2 years ago? Why is there no official word on what's in that book. Or is it just blank inside? Why is that a big secret? Are these explorations done by private companies who are retaining infor an artifacts to be able to profit from having them and secreting whatever they have learned?
Is there any chance they might raise terror and preserve it in a similar manner to the vasa? Such a beautiful time capsule being left to rot would be a tremendous shame
Who’s going to pay, the Canadians are broke as a joke, and the Arctic is extremely difficult to work in a short time and everything needs to be forward deployed. It can be done just insanely expensive.
My good friend who is part of the dive team on the Erebus, brought to light a lot of details about her. Thank you Skynea History for the history lesson.👌
While it takes 100% liberties with the story the AMC show “the terror” is a really good watch about the ship and it’s crew. Now it takes a turn with a creature and all but it’s great fun
The creators clearly were more interested in making a historical drama than a creature horror. I didn't like the Tuunbaq either, but if you ignore those horror monster scenes, the series is remarkably detailed recreation of the expedition. The film sets were built 1:1 based on the floor plans of the Terror as to be an exact replica, and the costumes were made to be historically accurate (this accuracy is down to the year of the naval uniform for the officers, though behind the scenes the costume designers said they had to do more guesswork for the lower ranking sailors because there was less record of what they wore) and overall the series makes the characters and ships feel remarkably lifelike and lived in. The strong character writing and acting also helps. Definitely a good watch, makes you feel the claustrophobia and tension these men would've gone through as they were marooned and stared down almost certain doom. The story is terrifying enough as is, but the book/show added the supernatural horror element so it is what it is. I would've preferred it to be completely historical fiction, but for being such a good show I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in the Franklin Expedition.
The MOST INTERESTING ELEMENT of this great tale of exploration and the resulting mystery is that nearby Inuit knew the location of one of the ships because it's main mast stuck up out of the water for well over a century. However the prevailing attitude towards aboriginals in the late 1800's was that they were savages unable to tell the truth and prone to mixing their history with folktales to the point that it was foolish for the white men to put any stock in Inuit tales. I can recall an Inuit man who said the mast pole was still sticking way up out of the water to the point that he had to watch for it during snowstorms while driving his skidoo.
These two ships had the unfortunate luck to arrive at the eastern entrance of the NW Passage during a mild summer. The ice had retreated enough to open the passage allowing the ships to enter and they proceed to the southern most point of the passage where they wintered. The next summer was probable colder and the entrance froze over and trapped these ships. The passage didn’t reopen again forb many years as the rescue expeditions searched this area for years and didn’t find the entrance again. I suspect the western route also remained frozen as the ships did not escape by sailing west. Their timing was just bad!
Were you aware of the 3 bodies buried on Baffin Island by the Franklin expedition? All 3 showed high concentrations of lead. Additional testing of food tins left on the island indicated that the lead based solder used to seal them had high concentrations of lead leaching into the food within the can. In short the combination of lead buildup in the crews bodies combined with the icebound ships probably triggered insanity. It might also explain why on HMS Terror 2 perfectly useful and probably much needed rifles were left behind
I really really loved the video! I been interested in the franklin expedition for quite some time and was so happy so see this video in my subscriptions.
Captain Franklin, sir, bad news! HMS Starving Cannibal and HSM Weareallgoingtofuckingdie are out of commission! We will have to shettle with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
Really cool video. I think every Canadian in elementary school read a historical fiction book on the expedition. Men frozen in ice, suffering from scurvey, the tin(?) Cans of food posioning them also. Some tried to go south. Make it to a Fur trading fort or an Inuk village
Im Canadian and I knew nothing about Franklins expedition until I read a book about it in my 30s. The education system seems to bypass all the interesting material and focus mainly on the eastern explorers.
It’s worth mentioning that the sealed tins of food are what they believe doomed the Franklin expedition. They used lead based solder to “ seal” the tins of food that the expedition was well stocked with. The 3 bodies buried off Baffin Island all died early on in the expedition hence why they were buried on Baffin Island. 2 of the corpses John Torrington and another man who’s name escapes me were exhumed first and were found to be in an extremely well preserved state ( Torrington even still had the labels on his clothing intact). The 3rd body was that of William Hartel a royal marine who also died early on. His remains though were definitely examined post death by what’s believed to be the expedition’s doctor. Torrington was hired on as a stoker but he took ill early on and the doctors wanted to send him home on the tender ship. Ultimately the 3 died in 1848 and the cold preserved their bodies enough to determine that all 3 had died of lead poisoning. After examining discarded tins the researchers concluded that the lead solder used to seal the food cans leached into the food in the cans and those eating the tinned food were slowly poisoning themselves. It’s believed a combination of lead poisoning and desperation caused the remaining crew to abandon the icebound ships and drag boats full of useless stuff 100s of miles before succumbing to exposure. This might explain why the rifles were left behind as the insanity of the lead poisoning could explain why they left useful items like guns behind and took useless junk
The other sailor's name was John Hartnell. He died next after John Torrington and in January as well. A royal Marine named William Braine died in April of 1846. I was first interested in the Franklin Expedition when I watched Nova's Buried in Ice.
Lead has been essentially disqualified from the expedition as a cause of disaster-while the bodies on Beechey did show elevated lead content, it was not much higher than the normal levels of lead found in people living in England at the time, and there was no "spike" of lead levels as one would expect if they had started to intake far more lead than normal on the expedition. There is native testimony suggesting Terror sank suddenly, with little time to get everything off-this would explain why a lot of useful things were left on the ship. The "useless junk" was probably brought for barter with local Inuit in exchange for food.
Lead poisoning is generally accepted as not likely being a significant factor in the disappearance of the crew. Lead levels found in Torrington were somewhat higher than those of Braine and Hartnell (who both had fairly average Lead levels) but it's suggested that this is due to the breakdown of tissue causing higher concentrations of lead in the places samples of tissue were taken from prior to death. it's possible that it could have had an impact - this is reflected by the high mortality rate of officers compared to men as stated in the Victory Point Note (canned food was mostly reserved for officers with regular crewmates being issued standard navy rations).
Do you have any additional information on the steam locomotives used as boilers? As a Railroad/Railway Enthusiast, this topic has always interested me.
Bomb ketch’s were notable for being fitted with mortars rather than cannons. Both could fire shells but mortars were very hard on timber hulls because the recoil on a mortar is more vertically down.
cannons are wheels and recoil backwards, mortars can’t move only traverse up and down or pivot around…the whole deck and the sides have to absorb the recoil with the sea taking the rest
@@bostonrailfan2427 Mortars could rotate through 360 degrees on bomb ketches. They were mounted on the centerline of the ships (to better transfer the force to the keel). Rotating cannon had to wait until armoured turrets became a thing. Hydraulic recoil dampers followed. Typically a mortar has a minimum elevation of greater than thirty degrees (and usually more). A cannon will have a maximum elevation of 55 degrees (for maximum range (you get less air resistance when you lob a shell into the stratosphere)) and possibly a slight depression capability (for point blank firing). Age of sail ships were however limited by the propellant and the ability to gauge ranges and rarely needed more than ten degrees elevation. Howitzers can do both tasks but that came later.
@@thomasvarley380ikr. The Tuunbaq was my least favourite part of the series. Especially because the series is otherwise very serious about depicting the historical setting, these men's feelings of dread and struggle, and their interpersonal conflicts. The story of being marooned and facing a cold, slow death is already very existentially scary, they didn't need a bad CGI demonic polar bear. But, it is what it is, they did it to make the series more high-concept, and it is still an incredibly good watch. For the beautiful and historically faithful sets and costumes, great character writing, great acting, and eerie cinematography.
Great video, Skynea! Nitpick at @5:42: "They most likely never sailed again." Talking about almost everything after July 1845 (as you said earlier) is to a large degree speculative; but I am grateful that you later note that the location of the ships, and Inuit testimony, has shifted historiography of the Expedition to the growing suspicion that they probably *were* re-manned after the 1848 march south; Dave Woodman for example has suggested that TERROR's location in particular seems less plausible for having ended up where she is by mere pack ice drift. If any written records can be retrieved from TERROR, of course, we might be able to answer that question.
13:30 Funny you should say that, they _did_ take plates & cutlery and all sorts of other odd, useless items like button cleaners, combs, even a brass curtain rod for a pantomime show. It's always struck me as one of the more baffling of the Franklin Expeditions questions: why take all this heavy, unnecessary stuff, that you'll have to man-haul for years over the ice and rocks? I think Crozier was too lenient with the men with regards to personal artifacts and perhaps there was pressure from the lieutenants to maintain their higher standards of living with all the extra stuff. Compare this to the Shackelton expedition in 1914-1917 where they could only take 3 pounds or so of personal gear, so at most, a book or a couple of tins of extra food.
@@Littleowl85352 The Inuit would have use for metals sure, but not plates or a meter high stack of clothes or a curtain rod or kilos of books. Are you aware of just how much useless stuff they brought with them? They had to man haul all of it! It was a lot of stuff, far more than would be needed for bartering (e.g. even few needles for sewing would get you a igloo made, as McClintock discovered). I wonder if they were preoccupied with saving items of worth and underestimated the toll man-hauling would take. Maybe button cleaners & combs because they were still expected to be in good nick, as all sailors were (e.g. during the Napoleonic wars, men had to buy their own shaving tools and keep their buttons and boots polished, even though they weren't paid an allowance for that). I very much doubt it was motivated entirely by bartering.
Also consider the state of mind and decision-making abilities of these surviving men at that time, lost and trapped in the arctic for years, both physical and mental health deteriorating badly, these random artifacts also represented a way of clinging to their safe and recognized way of living in the hostile environment as they set out on the ice.
@@liden77 Yes, quite true, though I'd have imagined just as soon as you start man-hauling over the frozen ocean, ice ridges blocking your way, coupled with the pain of the sledge harness, these obstacles would quickly dissuade you of keeping any unnecessary artifacts from home. But, as you alluded to, I suppose there'd be an element of not frightening the men, still, I find it hard to reconcile.
They probably didn't take the rifles because they had others. If you have 100 rifles, you don't need to carry all of them out when you're trying to conserve weight.
In 2016, the Chrystal Serenity cruise ship traversed the Northwest Passage from Seward AK to NYC in 32 days. The Franklin expedition should have waited for all that ice to melt.
Good video. I wonder if terror if in such good shape could be raised. Turning it into a museum would be quite an historical accomplishment. The wooden nature of the ships dictates they better come up with some way to preserve them as quick as they can.
I just finished watching the first season of _The Terror_ this weekend. It's on Netflix now and I recommend it if you're into historical fiction. My wife couldn't get past episode 4, it was too scary for her. Thinking about the mindset of those men does take one to dark places. I hope those poor souls are resting in peace.
I was watching a video of the diver going trough Terror I think, and on one of the shelves you could see a box with tripods. One of the comments mentioned that it is probably the Daguerreotype camera that the crew brought along and used to take the portraits of the officers. Which makes me think if they ever took any photos and somehow managed to develop them onboard.
The oceans and seas and Great Lakes are littered with the wreckage of ships. I have mad respect for those who put out to sea. I keep you all in my prayers. I wish you calm seas and good fortune. 🌹⚓
I think officers and crew took all log books and diaries in their push to the south. So it's unlikely to find it on the ships. They left the papers behind later somewhere the middle of nowhere.
im hopeing they can get to terror at some point soon and check all the desks, though id imagine if anything in there can be preserved after nearly 2 centuries, adding an additional year or two probably wont make a huge difference
It's not the ship, it's the location. Terror is literally on the middle of nowhere, the logistics would be too expensive. can it be done? Yes. Will It be done? Well, considering the costs, probably no
They should raise HMS Terror at least. It would certainly be a expensive undertaking but nevertheless its worth it, and it will pay for itself in the long run if they turn it into a pay-for-entry museum.
Oh, so that's the fate and wreck of one of the ships that partially inspired The Star-Spangled Banner. I didn't know that, so it's all new and interesting to me.
Possibly! But it is worth noting Inuit testimony indicating that one of the ships (probably TERROR, I suspect) sank very suddenly. If that is true, then there may simply not have been time to remove valuable items from the ship before it sank. Unfortunate for the Franklin men, but very useful to archaeologists...
@@ostrich67 "Or they may have already had a weapon or two and didn't need to carry more." Oh, that's certainly a possibility. Again, it's all speculative! That said, a Brown Bess rifle like this would be of more value than the shotguns for hunting game, which had to have been a top priority at that point, and the inventory of rifles on board TERROR was quite limited. But...we will only know the answer if we recover an intact ship's log or officer's journal, though.
@@richardmalcolm1457 The ship that sank suddenly, if it was a Franklin ship, must have been Terror. The testimony referring to Erebus (the "Utjulik" ship) is very clear that she sank in shallow water, rather gently.
I love how certain things like the camera, the sunken library, etc., create a fertile bed for alien conspiracy theorists, hollow earth believers, and people who believe in dimensional portals, time warps and other similar fantasy explanations.
Maybe it was like to them in 1845 like the first moon landing back in July of 1969. Plus the promise of double pay lured some of the sailors to signing on. They had no idea that it would be doomed.
@@Terry-hm4bsThe pay was definitely a drawing factor for them, and the glory as well because they were explorers making history. I read that Goodsir for one joined up because his previous job as a university researcher was paying pennies and he was fed up with being a dirt broke academic.
Thank you Skynea history!! Fantastic vid. Great narrative, great presentation, keep them coming. With global warming coming I wonder if Terror will be raised??
A question for anyone knowledgeable about historical wreck diving. The divers take pictures of flasks and books and items that , to my unlearned eye, could be picked up and brought to the surface. Why don't they do it? Surely just leaving them means they will continue to deteriorate.
They did. So far they've retrieved about 350 items from the wrecks. But I imagine it isn't as easy as it looks to bring things up and make sure they aren't damaged. That, added to the bureaucracy and Covid delays, have made the whole archaeological exploration of the wrecks slow-going.
It was an interesting series with some great actors but completely fictitious. Maybe the best of the series was the ability of the writers to place the few spared facts that are well known in a fiction plot.
It was based on a supernatural novel from years earlier. It was amazing watch them having to reshoot scenes as the discoveries at the wreck changed the story.
Specifically it's based on the 2007 Dan Simmons novel of the same name. Simmons retold it as a supernatural horror story. The show runners, to their credit, tried to maximize the historical authenticity of the adaptation, and they succeeded stunningly in the re-creation of the ships and equipment. But yes, the man-eating demon bear is entirely fictitious.
@@ianobrien3248 I really like Dan Simmons, but I have to say, THE TERROR felt like a misfire from him; and Crozier's relationship with Silna at the end was a key reason why. It felt forced and contrived, and a disservice to her character. I think the show writers did a good job of "fixing" this aspect of the story. (Much as I wish that Crozier IRL had some kind of a redemptive hopeful moment before he died.)
I believe I've read somewhere that standard RN practice on an orderly abandonment of a (not sinking) ship was to leave a secured copy of the ship's log, against the possibility of its recovery. I believe this happened with HMS Resolute on her abandonment. But that said, if the Inuit testimony of a sudden sinking is about the Terror . . . there may simply not have been time to retrieve the log before the men fled the ship. The only way to know is to get into that desk in Crozier's great cabin.
My understanding is that native peoples visited both ships before they sank and stripped out all of the metal parts (to make tools) and also took any combustibles (like books) to make fires with. This makes it unlikely that logbooks etc are still present on board.
Im an old New Englander and we are a superstitious bunch up here. Especially when it comes to seafaring. There's no way in hell I'm climbing on a ship called Terror to go on an expedition to unknown uncharted waters 😂. The irony of losing your life in a horrifying way on a ship called Terror is to much.
Yeah, well. If you won't go, someone else will and take all the glory. I bet it was the opportunity of a lifetime for the men selected, to go and make history, too good to pass on, the one you'd have to push your superstitions aside for. Since a disaster of that magnitude had never before happened, they were also pretty (over)confident in their mission's success, and it certainly beat fishing, whaling or worse, being unemployed and having to seek work in a coal mine. What the Franklin expedition eventually became had a sobering effect on everyone regarding Arctic exploration.
@@TTFerdinand That's a really good point. It was terribly cold and dangerous, but probably the sailors didn't see it as being any worse than the other jobs they could get. Being a 19th century sailor meant living in inhumane conditions by modern standards. At least with this expedition they weren't going to war. They probably saw it as a stable job - keep the ships running so the officers could do their mapping and research, and that was it, they had a living for three years.
I don't see any reason for leaving items to rot on the seafloor. Lost forever intead of put on display in rememberance. Materialistic things were not the actual human who was using it. I just wish it was something all of us could view, not just a select few.
Both ships were remanned after marching overland failed in 1848. For an unknown reasons not 1 European crew of 130 made it back to civilization. Perhaps some men survived until 1850-51. I like to thing the expedition's charts were lost at some point and crew members without officers were unable to find their way
These cold water wrecks are basically a time capsule! I still remember being super amazed how well Shackleton's Endurance has been in pristine condition.
I remember reading about an old steamer found in (I think?) the Missippissi river (spelling’s off, I know).
They found cans of sealed food over 100 years old, when lab tested they discovered that the contents were still safe for human consumption.
The food has lost nutritional value, and the colour and flavour was ‘off’, but there were no signs of botulism or other nasties.
Properly canned food stored in the right conditions will last a real long time.
Just an aside, 🙂 🤝
I've been waiting for years for more info and photos of the wrecks and now they finally exist, thanks for posting. These wrecks and the story of them is a very big deal in Canada as the search for the wrecks and the crews lead to much exploration of Canada, I don't think people outside of Canada can appreciate the historical place these hold. I'd hope and think recovery of one of the ships is possible, as the ships are relatively small and at shallow depth and given the importance of them. And or more exploration will happen and the need to open those closed doors and desks etc is vital to learn more as the crews stayed on and lived most of their missing years aboard and the assumption has always been records would have been left onboard, on purpose, as once the crews left the ships they knew their odds of survival were small indeed at that point. Some of the comments below about Canada being too broke are childish and very disrespectful and ignorant.
I'm English and outside of Canada, i appreciate these historical places 100%
You know what I re-realised researching this? Canada has a kak load of northern territory. I mean you guys lucked out. You have dominion over land because of Great Britain that are so very far away north there's no possible way you could actually hold them.
Well up to now I mean. In the next 100 years that land will be huge so basically considering this was not even 200 years ago a huge investment in history.
The last photo is of the expeditions copper plate film camera. Next to it i believe sits a box, which most likey contains the copper plate film used in the camera. The thought (as unlikely as it may be) of uncovering actual photos from the expedition is very very exciting one indeed.
The photos can survive those conditions.
What the hell are you talking about Willis.
@@Bobtowngardenare you too young to have had to wait to have pictures processed? those negatives might have information regarding what happened during the expedition
it’s why that was the past image shown and what the final words allude to…
@@1220bpossibly but might not have anything on them due to degradation, there’s also the chance that the negatives might be untouched
Those poor men endured three indescribably harsh winters. I cannot even begin to imagine the desperation and despair they must have felt before and after they left their ships. It is not hard to understand how it is that almost nothing of the party that abandoned their ship have been found. The harsh and unforgiving weather and the probability of them having died on sea ice with their bodies and equipment sinking into the water during summer melting. It would have been an absolutely awful way to die. May their souls rest in peace.
"Those poor men endured three indescribably harsh winters." Even worse: There is good reason to think that the last Franklin survivors lasted as long as 1851. If that is true, *they* would have lived through SIX very harsh Arctic winters.
IMO , I accept the theory that "The lead in their canned goods drove them " mad". It is the only explanation for the fact that the "ship's boat" they used as a sled and pulled using human power for many miles to try to reach a settlement/outpost, was loaded with many 100's of pounds of "superfluous chit" not needed for survival in such a place, - find
building terror. blogspot. com /2019/01/ a-man-hauled-boat-sledge-from-hms-terror.html
If are you some geeky bastard or non-bastards, or if you felt "mad" about invention of the Ti-100 and/or the later graphing calculators, . 😎
who might have been at a Trekkie/GenCon convention in the 1980's. Yep, UB here
and this history is very cool. Such nerdy phuckers interested in such, are few and far between.
Please excuse my many English language inferences the above paragraph :)aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this one as well.
Not to mention mysterious snow beasts! lol
@@richardmalcolm1457So puzzling that they knocked around that island for six years rather than attempting a run for the south. Maybe the lead poisoning theory explains it?
@@SonOfTheOne111 My guess is that they were simply too weak at any point in those final years to mount a long overland march. Perhaps they hoped to find enough game locally to build up their strength, and it didn't work out. (Possibly, in desperation, a small party of the healthiest men might have been dispatched at some point...but if that happened, we have never found any trace of it.)
I think this is one time we should be treating these wrecks as archeological sites, and try to recover, and preserve as much items and details as we possibly can. I think the crew would want people to know as much as possible about their expedition. Not recovering anything from the wrecks is an awful thought. Kind of disrespectful to those brave men if you ask me. Like we cant be bothered to try and figured out more about what happened to them.
Kind of what we did with the Hunley, we should do here. Try to recover, preserve, and learn about as much as possible.
I agree. These aren't even grave sites, which is used as a reason of excuse in cases like Titanic. The general thinking has beent that the Brits were careful record keepers and would have left records of what happened on the ships, though it's possible they took them all with them, but the discovery was also talked about as being a source of more info than has been know up until now.
Crozier's cabin could be the biggest archaeological find of the century, helping to finally unlock the mystery of this expedition. If those log books are found it will be insane, they need to get on with it, it's taking them way too long.
yeah,,, paper, water, nearly 200 years immersion,,, good luck readin those books.
@@keithskelhorne3993 It's a long shot but not outside the realm of possibility if conditions are favorable. If they cam decipher the Herculaneum carbonized rolled up scrolls, the Crozier logs should be a walk in the park.
I was gonna say there getting text off those scrolls so the logbook can be done
What are you doing to help?
You're right, Eric! I've been puzzled at the slow pace and slow reveal of what they have recovered. Like the book they found. That was recovered going on 2 years ago? Why is there no
official word on what's in that book. Or is it just blank inside? Why is that a big secret? Are these explorations done by private companies who are retaining infor an artifacts to be able to profit from having them and secreting whatever they have learned?
Thank you for bringing these historic wrecks to a wider audience.
Is there any chance they might raise terror and preserve it in a similar manner to the vasa? Such a beautiful time capsule being left to rot would be a tremendous shame
Who’s going to pay, the Canadians are broke as a joke, and the Arctic is extremely difficult to work in a short time and everything needs to be forward deployed. It can be done just insanely expensive.
@@kyk1682 maybe the British government?
@@Heemanngeesushahahahahahahahaha, they broke
@@kyk1682yea we are so broke, just look at all the money we gave to ukraine. Definitely something a broke country does.
Am no broke more than happy to start fundraising
My good friend who is part of the dive team on the Erebus, brought to light a lot of details about her.
Thank you Skynea History for the history lesson.👌
While it takes 100% liberties with the story the AMC show “the terror” is a really good watch about the ship and it’s crew. Now it takes a turn with a creature and all but it’s great fun
The creators clearly were more interested in making a historical drama than a creature horror. I didn't like the Tuunbaq either, but if you ignore those horror monster scenes, the series is remarkably detailed recreation of the expedition. The film sets were built 1:1 based on the floor plans of the Terror as to be an exact replica, and the costumes were made to be historically accurate (this accuracy is down to the year of the naval uniform for the officers, though behind the scenes the costume designers said they had to do more guesswork for the lower ranking sailors because there was less record of what they wore) and overall the series makes the characters and ships feel remarkably lifelike and lived in. The strong character writing and acting also helps. Definitely a good watch, makes you feel the claustrophobia and tension these men would've gone through as they were marooned and stared down almost certain doom. The story is terrifying enough as is, but the book/show added the supernatural horror element so it is what it is. I would've preferred it to be completely historical fiction, but for being such a good show I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in the Franklin Expedition.
Seeing the interior of the ship is so utterly cool to me.
The MOST INTERESTING ELEMENT of this great tale of exploration and the resulting mystery is that nearby Inuit knew the location of one of the ships because it's main mast stuck up out of the water for well over a century. However the prevailing attitude towards aboriginals in the late 1800's was that they were savages unable to tell the truth and prone to mixing their history with folktales to the point that it was foolish for the white men to put any stock in Inuit tales. I can recall an Inuit man who said the mast pole was still sticking way up out of the water to the point that he had to watch for it during snowstorms while driving his skidoo.
It would be neat to see terror preserved like vasa.
These two ships had the unfortunate luck to arrive at the eastern entrance of the NW Passage during a mild summer. The ice had retreated enough to open the passage allowing the ships to enter and they proceed to the southern most point of the passage where they wintered. The next summer was probable colder and the entrance froze over and trapped these ships. The passage didn’t reopen again forb many years as the rescue expeditions searched this area for years and didn’t find the entrance again. I suspect the western route also remained frozen as the ships did not escape by sailing west. Their timing was just bad!
Were you aware of the 3 bodies buried on Baffin Island by the Franklin expedition? All 3 showed high concentrations of lead. Additional testing of food tins left on the island indicated that the lead based solder used to seal them had high concentrations of lead leaching into the food within the can. In short the combination of lead buildup in the crews bodies combined with the icebound ships probably triggered insanity. It might also explain why on HMS Terror 2 perfectly useful and probably much needed rifles were left behind
Absolutely fascinating, and the thought that these might be the only footage that we get for a couple of years makes it all the more valuable
These are some of the most interesting wrecks out there
I really really loved the video! I been interested in the franklin expedition for quite some time and was so happy so see this video in my subscriptions.
Captain Franklin, sir, bad news! HMS Starving Cannibal and HSM Weareallgoingtofuckingdie are out of commission! We will have to shettle with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
😂
Utterly Fascinating!!! I hope the people who have been restoring the Dead Sea Scrolls are involved, in some way, with the Erabus book.
you do know that the Dead sea Scrolls were dicovered in CAVES near the afformentioned sea and not "under" its surface?
Really cool video. I think every Canadian in elementary school read a historical fiction book on the expedition. Men frozen in ice, suffering from scurvey, the tin(?) Cans of food posioning them also.
Some tried to go south. Make it to a Fur trading fort or an Inuk village
Not to mention cannibalism
Im Canadian and I knew nothing about Franklins expedition until I read a book about it in my 30s. The education system seems to bypass all the interesting material and focus mainly on the eastern explorers.
This was a British expedition not Canadian. 😊
@@vvinniem8907 I know. Just here in Canada some of us are taught this story
It’s worth mentioning that the sealed tins of food are what they believe doomed the Franklin expedition. They used lead based solder to “ seal” the tins of food that the expedition was well stocked with. The 3 bodies buried off Baffin Island all died early on in the expedition hence why they were buried on Baffin Island. 2 of the corpses John Torrington and another man who’s name escapes me were exhumed first and were found to be in an extremely well preserved state ( Torrington even still had the labels on his clothing intact). The 3rd body was that of William Hartel a royal marine who also died early on. His remains though were definitely examined post death by what’s believed to be the expedition’s doctor. Torrington was hired on as a stoker but he took ill early on and the doctors wanted to send him home on the tender ship. Ultimately the 3 died in 1848 and the cold preserved their bodies enough to determine that all 3 had died of lead poisoning. After examining discarded tins the researchers concluded that the lead solder used to seal the food cans leached into the food in the cans and those eating the tinned food were slowly poisoning themselves. It’s believed a combination of lead poisoning and desperation caused the remaining crew to abandon the icebound ships and drag boats full of useless stuff 100s of miles before succumbing to exposure. This might explain why the rifles were left behind as the insanity of the lead poisoning could explain why they left useful items like guns behind and took useless junk
The other sailor's name was John Hartnell. He died next after John Torrington and in January as well. A royal Marine named William Braine died in April of 1846. I was first interested in the Franklin Expedition when I watched Nova's Buried in Ice.
Lead has been essentially disqualified from the expedition as a cause of disaster-while the bodies on Beechey did show elevated lead content, it was not much higher than the normal levels of lead found in people living in England at the time, and there was no "spike" of lead levels as one would expect if they had started to intake far more lead than normal on the expedition. There is native testimony suggesting Terror sank suddenly, with little time to get everything off-this would explain why a lot of useful things were left on the ship. The "useless junk" was probably brought for barter with local Inuit in exchange for food.
Good point
Thats what we think in england happened.
Lead poisoning is generally accepted as not likely being a significant factor in the disappearance of the crew. Lead levels found in Torrington were somewhat higher than those of Braine and Hartnell (who both had fairly average Lead levels) but it's suggested that this is due to the breakdown of tissue causing higher concentrations of lead in the places samples of tissue were taken from prior to death. it's possible that it could have had an impact - this is reflected by the high mortality rate of officers compared to men as stated in the Victory Point Note (canned food was mostly reserved for officers with regular crewmates being issued standard navy rations).
What eerily appropriate names.
These old ships need to be brought up and placed into museums, just as the Vasa was. These are historic treasures.
I love history.
Do you have any additional information on the steam locomotives used as boilers? As a Railroad/Railway Enthusiast, this topic has always interested me.
Shoutout to my frozen broskis on Beechey island !
Bomb ketch’s were notable for being fitted with mortars rather than cannons. Both could fire shells but mortars were very hard on timber hulls because the recoil on a mortar is more vertically down.
cannons are wheels and recoil backwards, mortars can’t move only traverse up and down or pivot around…the whole deck and the sides have to absorb the recoil with the sea taking the rest
@@bostonrailfan2427 Mortars could rotate through 360 degrees on bomb ketches. They were mounted on the centerline of the ships (to better transfer the force to the keel).
Rotating cannon had to wait until armoured turrets became a thing. Hydraulic recoil dampers followed.
Typically a mortar has a minimum elevation of greater than thirty degrees (and usually more). A cannon will have a maximum elevation of 55 degrees (for maximum range (you get less air resistance when you lob a shell into the stratosphere)) and possibly a slight depression capability (for point blank firing). Age of sail ships were however limited by the propellant and the ability to gauge ranges and rarely needed more than ten degrees elevation.
Howitzers can do both tasks but that came later.
@@allangibson8494 you said exactly what i said…
@@bostonrailfan2427 Later guns didn’t have wheels…
Great video
I know the Ridley Scott tv series was silly in parts. The misery pain and suffering it portrayed for the crew was horrific
Yeah . That bloody bear was tragic . The CGI was absolute pants .
@@thomasvarley380ikr. The Tuunbaq was my least favourite part of the series. Especially because the series is otherwise very serious about depicting the historical setting, these men's feelings of dread and struggle, and their interpersonal conflicts. The story of being marooned and facing a cold, slow death is already very existentially scary, they didn't need a bad CGI demonic polar bear. But, it is what it is, they did it to make the series more high-concept, and it is still an incredibly good watch. For the beautiful and historically faithful sets and costumes, great character writing, great acting, and eerie cinematography.
Great video, Skynea! Nitpick at @5:42: "They most likely never sailed again." Talking about almost everything after July 1845 (as you said earlier) is to a large degree speculative; but I am grateful that you later note that the location of the ships, and Inuit testimony, has shifted historiography of the Expedition to the growing suspicion that they probably *were* re-manned after the 1848 march south; Dave Woodman for example has suggested that TERROR's location in particular seems less plausible for having ended up where she is by mere pack ice drift. If any written records can be retrieved from TERROR, of course, we might be able to answer that question.
Must all be recovered and formed into a fantastic museum
13:30 Funny you should say that, they _did_ take plates & cutlery and all sorts of other odd, useless items like button cleaners, combs, even a brass curtain rod for a pantomime show. It's always struck me as one of the more baffling of the Franklin Expeditions questions: why take all this heavy, unnecessary stuff, that you'll have to man-haul for years over the ice and rocks? I think Crozier was too lenient with the men with regards to personal artifacts and perhaps there was pressure from the lieutenants to maintain their higher standards of living with all the extra stuff. Compare this to the Shackelton expedition in 1914-1917 where they could only take 3 pounds or so of personal gear, so at most, a book or a couple of tins of extra food.
@@Littleowl85352 The Inuit would have use for metals sure, but not plates or a meter high stack of clothes or a curtain rod or kilos of books. Are you aware of just how much useless stuff they brought with them? They had to man haul all of it! It was a lot of stuff, far more than would be needed for bartering (e.g. even few needles for sewing would get you a igloo made, as McClintock discovered). I wonder if they were preoccupied with saving items of worth and underestimated the toll man-hauling would take. Maybe button cleaners & combs because they were still expected to be in good nick, as all sailors were (e.g. during the Napoleonic wars, men had to buy their own shaving tools and keep their buttons and boots polished, even though they weren't paid an allowance for that). I very much doubt it was motivated entirely by bartering.
Also consider the state of mind and decision-making abilities of these surviving men at that time, lost and trapped in the arctic for years, both physical and mental health deteriorating badly, these random artifacts also represented a way of clinging to their safe and recognized way of living in the hostile environment as they set out on the ice.
@@liden77 Yes, quite true, though I'd have imagined just as soon as you start man-hauling over the frozen ocean, ice ridges blocking your way, coupled with the pain of the sledge harness, these obstacles would quickly dissuade you of keeping any unnecessary artifacts from home. But, as you alluded to, I suppose there'd be an element of not frightening the men, still, I find it hard to reconcile.
They probably didn't take the rifles because they had others. If you have 100 rifles, you don't need to carry all of them out when you're trying to conserve weight.
That, and they probably wanted to have at least a couple to come back to if they had to abandon supplies and return to the ship.
Yes they left some rifles but they took useless things like silverware and tea paraphenalia for the officers.
@@jakhamar55 Those "uesless" things could be used to barter food from the Natives.
In 2016, the Chrystal Serenity cruise ship traversed the Northwest Passage from Seward AK to NYC in 32 days.
The Franklin expedition should have waited for all that ice to melt.
Good video. I wonder if terror if in such good shape could be raised. Turning it into a museum would be quite an historical accomplishment. The wooden nature of the ships dictates they better come up with some way to preserve them as quick as they can.
WOW !!--THAT BEAUTIFUL BOWL !!--IS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING --I COULD LOOK AT IT ENDLESSLY--
I just finished watching the first season of _The Terror_ this weekend. It's on Netflix now and I recommend it if you're into historical fiction. My wife couldn't get past episode 4, it was too scary for her. Thinking about the mindset of those men does take one to dark places. I hope those poor souls are resting in peace.
A lot of the desks used on ships had secret drawers to safe keep valueble and important things.
"The bombs bursting in air bit of a certain national anthem..." Hey Francis, I think he's talking about your song.
Yeah I caught that too, as if its not ok to say US National Anthem....
I was watching a video of the diver going trough Terror I think, and on one of the shelves you could see a box with tripods. One of the comments mentioned that it is probably the Daguerreotype camera that the crew brought along and used to take the portraits of the officers. Which makes me think if they ever took any photos and somehow managed to develop them onboard.
So cool. Can’t wait to see what they find!
The oceans and seas and Great Lakes are littered with the wreckage of ships. I have mad respect for those who put out to sea. I keep you all in my prayers. I wish you calm seas and good fortune. 🌹⚓
I think officers and crew took all log books and diaries in their push to the south. So it's unlikely to find it on the ships. They left the papers behind later somewhere the middle of nowhere.
im hopeing they can get to terror at some point soon and check all the desks, though id imagine if anything in there can be preserved after nearly 2 centuries, adding an additional year or two probably wont make a huge difference
I don't understand the hesitancy to salvage everything'possible from Terror. No crew were lost so not like disturbing the final resting place.
I’d love to get a good look at those bottles 🎉
The wreck of HMS Terror is awesome. Strange to see a ship that fired on the continental U.S. at one time.
Secrets of the long lost come to light, fantastic! I bet the Inuit knew all along, but no one asked the right questions.
Sea Water does not rot wood; fresh water does. Plenty of oak ships can last well over 100 years.
My forefathers expedition xo thank you for sharing .. kellie franklin xo
Terror would be a great tourist attraction if it was raised and preserved. Its been done with much more fragile ships.
It's not the ship, it's the location. Terror is literally on the middle of nowhere, the logistics would be too expensive. can it be done? Yes. Will It be done? Well, considering the costs, probably no
2:24 “They were made in a bomb factory. They’re bombs.”
Just looking at the wrecks is incredible. The story they have and how long they have been there
Great video and well told 👌
Great video and explanation , i am currently watching the Netflix series based on these two ships . Thanks for posting :)
Whats the name of it?
Its called The Terror, A fictionalized horror based on the expedition, its a good watch.@@wirelessone2986
Thanks for doing these videos
The netflix show about this is quite good.
I wish the TV show was more grounded and didn't include the CGI polar bear, the true story would be scary enough..
@skynea History where do you get the pictures? are those general news outlets or is there a official investigation site that posts this?
Love your content, keep it up!
Lead poisoning from early attempts at soldering cans for food storage... a creepy story.
Yep the crew was slowly poisoning themselves and didn’t know it
What caused them to sink without holes in the hull...?
They should raise HMS Terror at least. It would certainly be a expensive undertaking but nevertheless its worth it, and it will pay for itself in the long run if they turn it into a pay-for-entry museum.
Oh, so that's the fate and wreck of one of the ships that partially inspired The Star-Spangled Banner. I didn't know that, so it's all new and interesting to me.
Suspect the weapons may have been left due to shortage of ammunition and powder.
Possibly! But it is worth noting Inuit testimony indicating that one of the ships (probably TERROR, I suspect) sank very suddenly. If that is true, then there may simply not have been time to remove valuable items from the ship before it sank. Unfortunate for the Franklin men, but very useful to archaeologists...
Or they may have already had a weapon or two and didn't need to carry more.
@@ostrich67 "Or they may have already had a weapon or two and didn't need to carry more." Oh, that's certainly a possibility. Again, it's all speculative! That said, a Brown Bess rifle like this would be of more value than the shotguns for hunting game, which had to have been a top priority at that point, and the inventory of rifles on board TERROR was quite limited. But...we will only know the answer if we recover an intact ship's log or officer's journal, though.
That was my thought . Damp powder or lack of shot .
@@richardmalcolm1457 The ship that sank suddenly, if it was a Franklin ship, must have been Terror. The testimony referring to Erebus (the "Utjulik" ship) is very clear that she sank in shallow water, rather gently.
I love how certain things like the camera, the sunken library, etc., create a fertile bed for alien conspiracy theorists, hollow earth believers, and people who believe in dimensional portals, time warps and other similar fantasy explanations.
Lesson: never enlist on a doomed expedition.
Maybe it was like to them in 1845 like the first moon landing back in July of 1969. Plus the promise of double pay lured some of the sailors to signing on. They had no idea that it would be doomed.
@@Terry-hm4bsThe pay was definitely a drawing factor for them, and the glory as well because they were explorers making history. I read that Goodsir for one joined up because his previous job as a university researcher was paying pennies and he was fed up with being a dirt broke academic.
13:47 I love how it just says Terror at the top, like it's the name of the flower.
Screw the ships. They can be recreated. What’s important is finding a written record of what happened between Beechey island and the final exodus.
Definitely
So, what's the situation with the book that was found?
Thank you Skynea history!! Fantastic vid. Great narrative, great presentation, keep them coming. With global warming coming I wonder if Terror will be raised??
A question for anyone knowledgeable about historical wreck diving. The divers take pictures of flasks and books and items that , to my unlearned eye, could be picked up and brought to the surface. Why don't they do it?
Surely just leaving them means they will continue to deteriorate.
They did. So far they've retrieved about 350 items from the wrecks. But I imagine it isn't as easy as it looks to bring things up and make sure they aren't damaged. That, added to the bureaucracy and Covid delays, have made the whole archaeological exploration of the wrecks slow-going.
Cable Network AMC aired a TV series "The Terror" in 2018 based on this story.
It was an interesting series with some great actors but completely fictitious.
Maybe the best of the series was the ability of the writers to place the few spared facts that are well known in a fiction plot.
It was based on a supernatural novel from years earlier. It was amazing watch them having to reshoot scenes as the discoveries at the wreck changed the story.
Specifically it's based on the 2007 Dan Simmons novel of the same name. Simmons retold it as a supernatural horror story. The show runners, to their credit, tried to maximize the historical authenticity of the adaptation, and they succeeded stunningly in the re-creation of the ships and equipment. But yes, the man-eating demon bear is entirely fictitious.
@@richardmalcolm1457The book is great. I couldn't get into the show for some reason but I really do hope Crozier escaped with the mute girl irl.
@@ianobrien3248 I really like Dan Simmons, but I have to say, THE TERROR felt like a misfire from him; and Crozier's relationship with Silna at the end was a key reason why. It felt forced and contrived, and a disservice to her character. I think the show writers did a good job of "fixing" this aspect of the story. (Much as I wish that Crozier IRL had some kind of a redemptive hopeful moment before he died.)
What's with the alien writing in front of the ship's bell at 44 seconds?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics
I would expect the Captain to have taken the ships log with him when he departed.
I believe I've read somewhere that standard RN practice on an orderly abandonment of a (not sinking) ship was to leave a secured copy of the ship's log, against the possibility of its recovery. I believe this happened with HMS Resolute on her abandonment. But that said, if the Inuit testimony of a sudden sinking is about the Terror . . . there may simply not have been time to retrieve the log before the men fled the ship. The only way to know is to get into that desk in Crozier's great cabin.
It is probably still in Captain's Crozier's office.
@@samkohen4589 You think it's still on board the Terror?
@@samkohen4589 It is definitely reasonable to think there is a good chance that it's in one of those drawers in his desk or the wall cabinets.
@@cristosl Maybe not the majority of the logs, but I cannot imagine that some record was not left on board providentially.
My understanding is that native peoples visited both ships before they sank and stripped out all of the metal parts (to make tools) and also took any combustibles (like books) to make fires with. This makes it unlikely that logbooks etc are still present on board.
Eskimos are snow gypsies?
Can you help me out, I don't see any rifles on the wall.
Under the rusticles
Im an old New Englander and we are a superstitious bunch up here. Especially when it comes to seafaring. There's no way in hell I'm climbing on a ship called Terror to go on an expedition to unknown uncharted waters 😂. The irony of losing your life in a horrifying way on a ship called Terror is to much.
Yeah, well. If you won't go, someone else will and take all the glory. I bet it was the opportunity of a lifetime for the men selected, to go and make history, too good to pass on, the one you'd have to push your superstitions aside for. Since a disaster of that magnitude had never before happened, they were also pretty (over)confident in their mission's success, and it certainly beat fishing, whaling or worse, being unemployed and having to seek work in a coal mine. What the Franklin expedition eventually became had a sobering effect on everyone regarding Arctic exploration.
@@TTFerdinand That's a really good point. It was terribly cold and dangerous, but probably the sailors didn't see it as being any worse than the other jobs they could get. Being a 19th century sailor meant living in inhumane conditions by modern standards. At least with this expedition they weren't going to war. They probably saw it as a stable job - keep the ships running so the officers could do their mapping and research, and that was it, they had a living for three years.
Are there plans to raise the wrecks? Since they are grave sites, does the possibility exist to raise them?
I don't think there are any human remains, the crew had to leave the ships.
It reminds the (very good) TV series "The Terror".
13:57 gets creepy Alien xenomorph vibe, what's inside them?
Extraordinary
No short faced bear found ?
I like how're you're almost Skynet, but not quite.
Men Abandoning the safety of ships in extreme cold probably sealed the fate of the Franklin expedition.
If I remember correctly the crew were killed by a winibago or something
You right tho, HMS Erebus is da bomb ship.
I don't see any reason for leaving items to rot on the seafloor. Lost forever intead of put on display in rememberance. Materialistic things were not the actual human who was using it. I just wish it was something all of us could view, not just a select few.
Controversial opinion I say salvage Erebus to protect her from further weather damage Terror is safe for now
bro u gonna detail the skull @13:30
A floatcrane could raise them so that they can be preserved and exhibited.
Um. I was told that there was a mythical ice bear, but I don't see it.
I once owned a motor scooter.
Спасибо. Мне интересно.
These ships are two which should surely be raised before its too late.
A direct family member served on Terror and Eribus and we have cliffs named after us. The cotter cliffs in ross sound just saying
Ooh get you lol. Nah, I'm kidding, that's cool
I have a "Sound" named after me "Ross" Just saying Limey
History is exponential
Both ships were remanned after marching overland failed in 1848. For an unknown reasons not 1 European crew of 130 made it back to civilization. Perhaps some men survived until 1850-51. I like to thing the expedition's charts were lost at some point and crew members without officers were unable to find their way
The Erebus may not be in good shape now, but at least it didn't have it's face cut off by Horus.
Hence the term "Bombshell"