After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - HMS Terror Death on the Arctic Tundra

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

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 survey here.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 for more information.

Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Bronties or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hair. Plus, with your History Hit subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. 125, 129 men vanished in the Arctic. Not one of them came home. HMS Terra 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. 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. Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. Now, in 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and HMS Eribus, 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. Dun-da-da. Committed, After-Dart 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.

First batch of recordings we ever did. Three years ago, Paddy Melling? Three years, almost three years. And I've gotten younger in the interim. Yeah. The injectables are working, babe. I'll definitely have more vortex than I had then. Yeah, you were wrinklier and I was blonde.

Now it's all gone. Oh my God, you were blonde. I was blonde. Crazy times. Go back and find that. Oh, there was no YouTube. You might be able to. Okay, yeah, this, I am obsessed to this history. I've been obsessed with it for a while.

People who might not know the real history might have seen the terror. That's how I came to this initially. Phenomenal. Great, great, great, great, great. Great cast. Yeah. Love it. There will be fewer murderous polar bears in this version.

Fair enough, though. Sadly. Oh, fair. I mean, I think a murderous polar bear makes everything better. I've seen pandas on Instagram. They're so cute. seen what? Pandas?

Yeah. I know they're not polar bears, but they are bears. Have, sorry, did you just say, have you just seen pandas? On Instagram?

Because, like, they get frights all the time. They're always jumping. Yeah, they do. They do. Oh, Jesus. My favorite is the goats that get startled and then they faint

and they just go sideways. And they go like rigid. I want a goat. And they just, yeah. Anyway, HMS terror. No polar bears. 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. Oh my God, remember we used to do those? Yeah.

And then we got too busy. I wrote all of that episode. I was very proud of it. So if you want to hear some more discussion on 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. I also told Anthony to cue me up to say that.

Ash's the end of the day. This is the last episode we're recording. I'd do my own work on this pod. Would you like to know what's happening in the wider world at this moment? Okay, yeah. So before we zone into that new stuff, we're going to zoom out a little bit. Oh, yeah. Let's do the story.

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. Is it on your list? It's not on my list. That's pretty shocking, isn't it? Fire, whoever wrote this script. Turns out, it was Maddie.

Yeah, no, it wasn't this time. It really wasn't. I just don't care about Irish history. Clip that. Click that, put it on socials. Okay, right, 1840s. I'm really, I love this time period for a project at the moment.

I'm spending time in the late 1830s, start 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 out the streets of London. He wasn't real. Just before anyone in the comments says, excuse me, it's not a historical figure. This is, you know, we've had global war with, against Nepal.

fought across the British and French empires. We've had the regency. We've had the 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 Victoria. So it's a slightly strange and I think really delicious, quite gothic time.

And this story absolutely feeds into this. It is a period of naval dominance by the Royal Navy. As I say, the Napoleonic Wars 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. So it's a world where trade is incredibly important. And that brings us to the Northwest Passage. Ever heard of it? Yes. It's what I do when I have chia seeds in a glass of water. And it helps me to... I'm 42. do now. You're not. You're not 42. I mean, you know this. You genuinely, I just lie about it so often that you're like, wait, well, yeah.

This is like, you actually are. Yeah. And so I need, why am I talking about this? If you set out in a ship in the 1840s, you'd have to take your chia seeds with you. Chear seeds and 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 I, it's this it's a powder

NHS use it. They didn't give it to me. I just got it online and you put it into water and you say honestly if you're backed up which you would be if you're on HMS Terran Arabis. Thank you for linking that back to the history then it will be a good thing I'm just gonna end the episode there

and I like I just finish there now I'm going to pick that up. I'll just pick that okay right North West 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. little islands dotted everywhere. It's extremely dangerous place to go. But if you can find a way through, you are in charge. It's a bit like the straight of Hormuz, right?

On a sort of small scale, as in straight of Hormuz is smaller than Northworth Passage? Yes, it must be. Somebody comment in the comment section. She's spiraling. This is what Maddie's spiraling. I'm doubting myself. Oh, my gosh. Let you know.

Can I ask you a question that's also, you know the way you're talking about trade? Yes. In gay lingo. What do you know what trade means? No. So trade is like. Well, you just had to explain what cottaging was to me off mic a minute ago. Let's 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. Okay. That's not what's happening here, but I'm just introducing some gay shit. Thank you very much. Some gay shit literally across this section we've had. Ooh, they're going to love that in the comments, aren't they?

Okay, right. Recover this. Okay, HMS Terror, HMS Erebus. Possibly the two best-named ships ever. I'm not getting on a ship called HMS Terror. I know, I know. It's not great, is it? What does Erebus mean?

Erebus is classical. Yeah, sure. Yes. Right, so HMS Terror, HMS Erebus. We have people aboard. Who are they and what are these ships doing? 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, HMIS Temera, the fighting Temera, that Turner famously paints, you know, being pulled away by a steamship. The world of sort of wooden warships, HMS Victory, Trafalgar, all of that is going. 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 properly and all this. So there are sort of strange, organic, metal, odd beings. Huge food supplies, as you might expect, come with them on this four. 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. 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 theory, which I think has kind of been debunked now by a lot of historians.

saying that when when the this expedition is commissioned the company that makes the tin food in London have to rush through the order

because they got it they have to go to catch the season to get stuck in the pack ice at the right time etc and there's this idea that 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 there is going to be a dissent in absolute chaos on this this expedition um was it from the lead i think that's been debunked now

but it's a common narrative that comes up with this um there are live sheep life pigs live chickens that are taken of course there's a dog called neptune which i love um i don't think we're ever gonna hear the end of neptune i would i i bet you i would have been like the weirdo in the corner who's like cuddle in the sheep or something because oh yeah i mean i always feel so sad like it is it shackleton um one of shackleton's expeditions where they take all the the dogs and there's photographs of the dogs from like 19 was that expedition like 12 to 14 or something it's just the outbreak of the first of war the dogs are so beautiful every single one of them gets eaten they have to eat all the dogs every single one it's like by you 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'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 become sad um also aboard the ship is this monkey oh yeah so um we're gonna meet some people aboard in a second but um 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 um i mean 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 wouldn't send him. I think I saw it

down here in the book case somewhere. Dahl Rimple's massive history of the East India Company, which is a tome. Anarchy or something, right? Anarchy, yeah. 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. Well, funnily enough, my husband is a monkey. So Well, there we go. Those two stories come together. It's always nice to share things from our personal lives. Okay, cast and crew.

Go on. So we have Captain Sir John Franklin. He's a sort of fascinating figure, so he's not really the first choice for this expedition. I know. Nobody likes him. 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 literally presents this to like the royal society or some kind of highfalutin society saying, I found a new mountain range in this unexplored part of the world. blah blah, here's an 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. Oh, is he Irish?

I don't think so. No, why won't we should say that? Something's telling me, he's Northern Irish. Is that because they're known for mistaken class of mountains? No, no, he's my dad.

No, something was telling me was Northern Irish. Maybe I'm thinking something else. No, there was other. Irish people in this story. Good, because I couldn't care less if there wasn't. 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 constantly garnering support from patrons, trying to raise money. She is desperate to send him away. She's fine in pet monkeys, but she's like... Take the monkey, yeah. But it's taken time to get this command, hasn't it? He's not being... Yeah, and she's ambitious.

She's like, come on, we need to make something of ourselves. And, you know, fair enough. So the Admiralty eventually 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 HMA's Terra, 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. say is there's going to be his final voyage and you know it's he's done he's seen a lot in his life and then we have on hmas terror sorry he's on hmas terror on hmas eribus we have um captain james fit james who is um in the terror he's played by oh my god i love that you just give me who the cast is i know yeah but that's how i visualize them and he's played by claire's husband in outlander oh i haven't seen it so i can't help you frank anyway yeah um he's also in the the crown anyway okay moving on i do like the crown yeah oh i really liked it first bit sure

later season's oh yeah no i agree actually the first few seasons great yeah then once we got to once we got to olivia was the turning point yeah once we got to wills and harry i was like i don't i don't want to see you at university we were we were gone to east enders territory there and that's fine there's nothing wrong with east end it's just not for me just not for yeah exactly okay so we're setting off from britain we have a hundred 134 men in total. We've got officers, we've got sailors. 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, this isn't, this exhibition is not a great alternative, as it would turn out. Interesting, it'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 the sort of international movement of people in and out of Britain. So May 1845, we set off from England. 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 kind of, 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. 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 two ships overall bans swearing and drunkardness 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 going to

do it he's running a tight ship literally Crozier who's the captain of the terror the Irish officer says in the letter that he leaves in Greenland. He says, in truth, I am sadly lonely. Yeah. No, I think I was mixing up Franklin and Crozier, by the way, at the start of this episode. Yeah.

It's Crozier that is a little bit like, what, it's just a little bit Debbie Dyer. I feel like he was done with his career and he shouldn't have done this one. It was a trip too far, yeah. Yeah, he should have just put his feet up. And he's the one that was trying to also get ship commands. but was not being successful. Yes, I remember this from the last time we did this episode. Yeah, exactly.

So he had ambitions elsewhere and it hadn't really panned out. Exactly. Being second in command to Franklin of all people. It's not a great place. This wasn't where he was hoping to do that. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Greenland is also the last time the expedition is 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 left and 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 of me storytelling what happens on this voyage from the first episode that we did.

We, oh my God, we're time-traveling back to our own episode. Okay, after this break, it's past Maddie. Dun-d-d-da-da. 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 tense 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 ever episode. didn't succeed. She gave it again. Let's see what she came up with three years ago on After Dark. 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 woollen 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. 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.

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 Terror and its sister HMS Erebus will collapse into chaos.

Your voice has changed. I sound so young on that. It sounds like pitched higher. Hello, I'm Maddie. Welcome to talk to talk. That was cringe listening to myself. No, it wasn't cringe. Oh, my God.

September 2023, Soho. That was one of the fanciest. studios we were ever in. They led us into a full sense of security. We went into this incredible studio. For week one of recording. We were like, oh my God, are we superstars? And then the following recording, a light fell on my head.

We were in like a damp basement somewhere. We never went back there, to be fair. But a light literally fell on my head. It literally did. It literally did. And the people who weren't there just picked it off you and were like, sorry. I'm fine. Everything's fine.

Don't worry. I'm okay. Okay. Okay, so, okay, this is the last time that we're, well, when we left them, it was the last time that we had seen them. You did a grand job of talking with a mint in your mouth. There's two mints in my mouth, one on both sides. But they had that, they kind of disappeared. But if they disappeared, how do we know all of those details?

Good question. Okay, yes, 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. The crew is gone. We don't know where. There's no, the ships are left like ghost ships, stuff still in them. Where's the wrong gone? And as you say, they had partially planned to be stuck in the pack ice.

Yep, nothing unusual there. Yeah. The only unusual thing is they're not with the ships. Exactly. So we're not surprised that they're in the pack ice. We're surprised that the ships are gone. Yeah. So 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, what 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. I mean she's right. It feels like a lot from her, but it's just right. 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. So what year are we in now where she's, they're contacting presidents and czars? 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. 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. Oh. So they're not found by the search party. 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? We know retrospectively. The search parties have no idea. The likelihood is, from their point of view, everyone 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 one of those expeditions that fascinates people, people become obsessed with solving what is, you know, 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? 12 years later, 12 years after the... Yes. 11 years after the first rescue thing. Sure, yeah. So a decade later, it's actually. A decade later, yeah.

And this is, you know, Lady Franklin has not given up. She is determined to find a husband. She helps fund a search party. that's commanded by Leopold McClintock. It sets sail, it arrives in the part of the world where they were last known to be or where they were heading.

And this is where the search party has some success. It comes across the first and only piece of documentary evidence we have from the cruise of the Terran Arribus that gives us some sense. of what happens, right? This is a really famous piece of paper called the Victory Point Note, right?

So there are cairns that are set up, so literally just piles of rocks on King William Island, which is part of kind of this 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 sort of navigational points, but also you can leave pieces of paper. And this piece of paper, it's a sort of admiralty standard form that has sort of printed text on it and is filled in by hand. And it's rolled up and put into, I think, a stick a metal canister

and stored in the can. 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 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, you know, for explorers going off around the world, you would leave these,

and they had details of your expedition where you were up to how you were doing what was happening. And if anyone found them who came looking for you, they could piece together what happened, basically. So this is a kind of function that's put in place in this empire as a way of documenting if people go missing, etc. Oh, it's in loads of different languages underneath as well. Yes, yeah, yeah. So it's in, what's that, French, German, Spanish, yeah. So 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, but things are still going fine. So at this point, it has details of where the ship is wintered, so where it's been stuck in the pack ice. it says the condition of the expedition is going okay and there's a really famous bit here where the person who's filled it in has written all well and underlined it all well all is good all is fine

as expected as expected all going swimmingly so that's from 28th of May 1847 yes you mentioned already that there is another time period involved in this and is this all the scrolls So all the writing around the edge is from almost a year later, from the 25th of April 1848. Now, this is an indication of the rapid deterioration. So what happens essentially is that they are stuck in the pack ice. And things have gone horribly wrong. So the writing around the edge states that both Tara and Erebus have been stuck in the ice since September 1847.

on the 22nd of April 1848, so 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. So they've walked from the ship to the can to detail that this has happened. So it's a three-day journey from wherever they left the ships. Yeah.

Both ships are describing as being beset, trapped in the ice. The information also says that frankly, 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 almost a year ago already. It states that the total loss by deaths of this expedition so far

has been nine officers and 15 men. That's quite significant. 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 writing around the edge this secondary date is signed by Crozier and also James Fitzjames who remember is the captain of the Erebus

who is now the second of command obviously he's gone up the chain because Crozier's now in charge the decision to abandon ship is enormous it's this is a bleak empty landscape that these men are not equipped to travel and this is these are vast distances so things 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 clearly that's not happening that is not happened, Franklin's dead, they have made the decision. And we talked about this in the earlier episode that we did on it. 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 or something in the palm. And it's just so tragic to think that that's left behind that someone was in such a state of survival that I thought, I don't need to bring this. This is not a vital item. Yeah, this is not something 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 want to get off the ships.

Off we go and little. They're like, this is how we die. We're not going to survive. Yeah. So 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 Inuit's witness testimonies to these groups who then come looking for them. So there's an American organized expedition group that that goes at one point. And it speaks to 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, but 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 you'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 a really poignant, I think, attempt at a like a military funeral given what they've got, basically. They're just trying to make the most of it. you know, this sort of attempt at dignity and pomp and circumstance and, you know, doing things

properly and in the British manner, even in the face of like desolate landscape and a complete tiny chance of survival. Isn't it interesting that even within that context of what we understand in, in the kind of white British context of formality and dignity and and the way in which one should be according to one status, etc. The indigenous people are looking on going, they did something weirder with him, like whatever that was. And also they're probably thinking that when they see,

so the Inuit also see when the ships are abandoned and they see various groups under Crozier and Fitzjames who kind of splinter off into different groups. They see them trying to get across the eyes. And they must have been thinking, what are you doing? That's not how you do that way. You're not going to survive this. You know, and they're in their furs

and they're properly equipped for this, the landscape in which they understand and live. You know, and I think 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 would have been able to had they stayed on the ships potentially. It might have been survivable.

I presume they came off because there was no food or anything. The provision must be gone. Again, there's a suggestion that the lead sealed tins that the food has gone off, there's not enough of it, that there's an issue there, simply that they're getting through the supplies too quickly because of the harsh winter, that 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.

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. 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. There is. Well, a led by Scottish man. Yep.

And this is where we get some of this Inuit testimony. Yeah. So Dr. John Ray is a Scottish explorer. He, in 1854, goes looking for the Arabis 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 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 shit. 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, that's how they communicate it. So about 1850, they encountered at least 40, the word they use is cablunat, 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 abandoned 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. That's 1850, we think they're saying that they saw them.

Some are potentially still alive in 1850. So they abandoned ship 1847, no, sorry, 1848. Two years later, we're still dragging ships around. 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, start 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 literally being crushed by the pack ice is being pushed in. You know, the damage to the vessel is so extreme. it's not going to be used. Yeah.

And 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. 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. It 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 slanted off are trying, 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 Back River

to then use the boats to try and get to an outpost that way and to be rescued essentially to find Europeans that could help them. 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. Is it through, because I mean, I know where this is going, as you say, we've covered this before. And one of the most gruesome and fascinating things therefore, because of the,

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 possibilities, certainly not unheard of in seafaring, you know, disasters where people are lost in abandoned places. We've encountered it in ship narratives on this show more than once, yeah. How do we know about those stories of cannibalism 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? Okay. So 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 the.

These men led by man with 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. So clearly, the bodies that they have found and the supplies they found and everything are. from the terror and Erebus.

I mean, it's not like there were loads of expeditions coming and going and as part of the world, but like it absolutely concretely is these people. Links it to this, yeah. Yeah. Ray, so, yeah, the Inuit say that the corpses they found had signs of cannibalism, right? And there's 30 of them.

There's 30. And, you know, some have died of hunger, but there's, according to the Inuit, there have been attempts to eat certain members of this group. I just, what does that look like? We will get to that. But John Ray himself doesn't see this evidence. It's just coming to him through the end of it.

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, the, respectability of the British Empire and that it's Britain being put to the test far from home. And of course, we in the British Empire, we don't do this kind of savage reasons. We would never fall to this. 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, cozy armchair, having never been lost in the icy desert of the Antarctic. And he launches this tirade against John Ray, the doctor who's gone up to find.

them and says, oh, the Inuit can't be trusted. That testimony is nonsense. Like, they just want to make us seem uncivilised. Like, we can't, we have to take this with a pinch of salt. This is ridiculous. However, I think that's a classic Charles Dickens, by the way. Can't stand the man. 1854, you know, this, by now it's well known. They're not coming back in Britain. 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. 1859. Okay, yeah. 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 include burials that have obviously been done at an early stage in the expedition when the ships were still in play. I don't know if Franklin has 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 until the 1980s to find more skeletons. And when that happens, so multiple. bodies are found kind of along the route that is taken across King William Island.

This is in the 80s. This is in the 1980s. And there is evidence. And now I've read before that it's a kind of camp that was discovered and that everything sort of frozen in time. 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 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 yeah yeah um so yeah yeah it's it's the 1980s that they 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 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 really big news and you know as we said at the start this episode and we'll talk about this in a second but you know the Arabists and the terror 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 exhibition to find out on the ice we said this in the earlier episode that we did but 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. They're preserved and you can see I mean they didn't die two minutes ago 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 Catecums and when you get what's 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 so uncanny and strange and it's like just meeting someone it's like time travel it's so bizarre I think we did it with cat Irming while you were off. I know, I'm so gutted. Yeah, I really wish I'd been there for that one.

But yeah, so 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 meet each other. Okay. So that's what we know. We have archaeological evidence to suggest that that eating is the case. 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 and newer people. from the 1850s to show that they're speaking to 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've wasted my time telling me at all again unless there's something new to tell me, which apparently there is. 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 it is

now at the bottom of what is Wilmot and Crampton Bay. Two years later in 2016, it was announced that the terror 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... 2026, that's now. That's right now. Anthropologists at the University of Water Toulou, which is in Canada, analyzed 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 were buried. Would you like to hear their names?

I'd love to you. We have Harry Pegler, who is Captain of the Four Top on HMS Terror. We have John Bridgons, who is subordinate Officer Stewart on HMS Eribus. We have David Young, who is boy first class, presumably quite young. on Erebus and William Oren, Abel Seaman on Erebus. Isn't that incredible? So we have two officers and two seamen, 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 them matched up their DNA things. Absolutely incredible. And it's testament to how compelling this story is. the mystery is still occupying us, it's still getting academic funding because, you know, 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 work at the National Maritime Museum, invite me to come and do something.

I love it so much. And there's a little display case all about the aerobus and the terror. And there is one of the leather boots that one of the men was wearing. And you can see teeth marks in it where they've tried to eat the leather of the boot. They're so hungry. Stop. Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely incredible.

Yeah, a really, really, really fascinating artifact. And it just gives you such a kind of visceral sense of what that situation would have been like. Do you know what? But 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 something that I could deal with. But maybe we should send like Dan Snow off on an expedition or something.

Dan can go and do it. I'm surprised he hasn't. It's giving Dan. Yeah, yeah. But it is fascinating. And I do really love this. This was the naval history. Because as you know, three years ago, I was very much like, hey, y, ships, who cares.

But now I care. Lots of people, including Anthony. And now I'm like, ooh, yeah. okay it's the it's the mini world on the sea thing it's the it's the extremities it's the i also just love this time period the the 1840s i think 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 rate of change in the world and in britain hubbard 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 there's some of the earliest photographs ever taken and they survive and we have them

we know what each one of these people looked like we have their photographs that is wild to me that they they straddle this bizarre bizarre moment of the 19th century it's I love it What are you going to have for dinner later?

Hmm Something frozen I don't know what I'm going to have I'm going to be on a train I think I'm going to have a train dinner Oh you love a train dinner I don't I hate You're posting it to social as you are

I know because it's so sad But that's the only reason I posted It's like Wwantwit But it's All right crozier I don't like to have I don't like to travel and consume.

Oh, no. Don't like it. If I'm in motion, I don't need to be digesting. You would not survive a ship at sea then, would you? You'd be like, can we put the anchor down so I can have my tea? 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 at. Palace rather. Could go to sea or could he? person. Oh no, could go to C. Calm down. Okay. One step at a time. Although, again, it is that thing of, of, of, in extremity, it's incredible how what people are capable of default. Yeah. Almost that I'm going to try and survive. Sorry. You know. And they have the conversation amongst

themselves sometimes of going, look, if I go, you can and don't feel like you can. I wouldn't eat you if we were stuck on a boat. I'd give you permission to if I was, if I was, if I was, I know you would, but I wouldn't eat you. I'm not that precious. Would you eat me? Yeah, you would. Just a leg. I don't know.

It depends how hungry I was. If I was on jabs, maybe not, because I just suppressed the appetite. So let's hope you brought the ascent pick to the sea with you. Yeah, I mean, God, if you and I did end up going to see it was just you and I, one of us is eating someone because we're not surviving. We'd be like just floating off Dover. We'd be like, oh, God, catapops.

Stop, it's just like. Calling the R&L. Still got the white clips in the background going, I'm starving. I'm suddenly starving. Nobody panic. Somebody row faster. Like, where are we even going? Why are we here?

Oh, my God. Sign off for the good people. 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. If there's any episodes where they've been in the news recently. Yeah.

Or like if you were listening and you're just like, well, hold on. You didn't mention this or what about this angle or something? Drop us an email at AfterDark at HistoryHit.com. That's AfterDark at HistoryHit.com. Did you know that we're also on YouTube now? So you can find us at After Dark. I didn't. We've been filmed the whole time.

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 coincides with the podcast release on Thursdays. And then you can watch along and have a conversation in the comments. And 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. A whole audience that's then like, wait, this is a podcast.

Yeah, I know. It's just like, we've been here for three years. And now they're discovering the back catalog. We have a back catalog. So if you've been listening the entire time, go and join in with the new people and guide them towards the old episodes as well, help them, give them a helping hand 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 going to get in trouble? for saying that. I don't think that's cancelable. Okay. So thanks very much and I'll see you soon. Love you. Bye.