Dan Snow's History Hit - HMS Terror: Cursed Arctic Expedition

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Was ever a ship more aptly named? In 1845, HMS Terror (and its forgettably named sister ship HMS Erebus) set off from Victorian Britain. Their quest was to discover the fabled Northwest passage through the Arctic ice. The crew were heroes in waiting. Yet by the end, the rules that govern life on board Royal Navy vessels collapsed into chaos and cannibalism.Maddy tells Anthony this story about life in the Royal Navy, Arctic winters, badly written poetry, and the thin line that separates us from horror.Written by Maddy Pelling. Mixed by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm very excited to introduce the newest podcast in the History Hit family, After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I spoke with hosts Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney about their first episode. It's on HMS Terror. Enjoy. It's on HMS Terra. Enjoy. Maddy and Anthony, welcome to the team, folks. Thanks for launching this podcast. Thank you for having us. It's very exciting. We are absolutely thrilled to be part of the History Hit family.

Well, I'm thrilled to have you in the family. And it's such a cool podcast, this, right? Myths, Misdeeds, and the paranormal after dark. I mean, it's not just the paranormal. It's not just like ghost stories. It's what is the truth behind them? Why do they matter? How do they make people act in the past? Yeah, absolutely, Dan. As the name would suggest, we are looking at the darker side of history. I think our tagline, we often say, come with us to the shadier corners of the past. And we're looking at people behaving badly, people behaving in strange ways, people existing on the edges of society. And it's really what we're trying to do is kind of bring our attention to and take seriously beliefs in the past, superstitions in the past. past, superstitions in the past. These are elements of people's lives in the past that shaped how they behaved from the lowliest factory worker right through to the royal family. People

throughout different cultures, throughout different societies have nurtured folklore, have claimed to see ghosts, have committed all kinds of crimes against each other. And we are bringing, I think, a much needed historical perspective to that. Yeah. And we've given ourselves quite a broad remit because the name of the podcast is After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. And some of the first episodes, which you'll be able to go and listen to right now, cover Burke and Hare, the famous grave robbers, or were they grave robbers? It's one of the things we're looking into. We also look at the origins of Halloween with Professor Ronald Hutton, which was just such a fantastic conversation. It was really, really kind of inspiring to hear his personal insight,

as well as the kind of historical insight. And then we looked at the multitude of ways that murder was committed in ancient Rome. So within that title, we're giving ourselves a lot of space to kind of explore these different supernatural, but also crime-related topics that give us a pause for thought across the whole kind of gamut of history. So it's been really, really interesting. What I like about this is you are bringing your big historical brains to bear on the myths, the magic, the paranormal, and you're going to be studying it in the historical context so we're kind of enjoying all the eccentricity of our human journey but we're also trying to get to grips with what it all actually means and what actually happened yeah absolutely so for us

dan this podcast is uh an opportunity to explore some cases in the past where people have behaved oddly imagine that someone behaving oddly. It never happens. I can't think of any examples. Arguably, that's all of human history. But, you know, where people kind of see the world in a different way, there's magical thinking, there's a belief in the supernatural. And it actually has these really tangible effects on how they behave, how they treat other people from someone working in the fields who maybe has superstitions in the medieval times, right up to James VI and I of Scotland, you know, and him writing, for example, demonology that across human history, across the spectrum of

human history, across social class, religious belief, that there is this way of trying to understand the world. And for us, a way into that is to think about ghosts, to think about true crime, to think about people experiencing understanding the world in a different way and how that has really affected and shaped history. Yeah. Like some of the episodes that we're going to be looking at include the case of Sarah Malcolm, who was an Irish immigrant to London and she was a laundress and she was moving between these houses and was eventually a celebrity for her involvement in this murder. And what we're looking at is not necessarily the act of the killing, although that comes into it too, but also why a poor Irish woman

was able to infiltrate these homes. What did that allow her access to when she went on trial? What were people thinking about this working class woman who had infiltrated and killed people above her socially in terms of class? And then, as Maddy mentioned, James VI and I, for instance, he's writing about demons, he's writing about witchcraft. We look at other parts of his reign, so why wouldn't we look at that kind of supernatural element to his belief system as well? So we traverse the whole kind of social scale from working class right up to kind of monarchy. And I think it's just a really interesting way to draw out stories and draw out facts from the archive that can tell us a little something from a different perspective, I think. You're starting with HMS Terror because it was the most aptly named vessel in British naval history. And this is, well, I guess this

is an intersection between the unknown, the mysterious, the mythical. This is a terrifying story, isn't it? It really is. And there's so many unanswered questions around it. It takes human nature to the very brink of sort of what's acceptable, what's normal. It's a real breakdown of so-called quote-unquote civilization. We think of ships in the past, particularly British Royal Navy ships, as being these kind of floating microcosms of order and stability and regimen and hierarchy, for better or worse. What we have in the Terra is a real, just catastrophic disintegration of all of that. And the results are pretty horrific.

And we should say a breakdown because they were pushed beyond what any of us can imagine. I mean, locked into the ice, not just for one winter, but for multiple seasons. It's terrifying. That's exactly it. It's not to trivialise it, but like narratively, what HMS Terror, what the history of HMS Terror gives us is just this incredible landscape or seascape that we are trapped in during this history. So we have kind of intermittent light, mostly darkness, which is fairly apt for after dark. We have this group of men who are together on board these two ships to begin with that start to go missing, that start to die. We have the ice that's kind of cracking and breaking around them

at all times. It's just so atmospheric. And so to begin with HMS Terror, and also kind of like you were saying earlier, Dan, it's grounded in the archive. These are histories. This isn't necessarily a superstition. Some superstitions grew up afterwards around what may have happened, but this is a history. And it just seemed like a really good place for us to start. It had so many incredible elements and it, well, ends in some pretty gory morsels of... Morsels. Oh, you tease. Yes. Shall we leave it there? Yes. I mean, we're talking cannabis, but I mean, as you say, the archives are really interesting around our respectful and use of the sort of oral histories of indigenous peoples as well. And it just seems to

have all the different archaeology, you know, modern marine archaeology now. We have so many different elements to try and piece together this mystery and this terrible event, don't we? It's a real snapshot moment of early 19th century history of how the world was kind of interacting with itself in all these different ways. Now, Dan, one thing I have to ask you, you know, when we were looking at this history in particular, Anthony and I were kind of trying to imagine what it would be like to be in this incredibly cold environment for a prolonged period of time. And I know you're no stranger to that. So can you maybe give us a sense of what it's like to go to an icy landscape and to kind of survive this.

Maddy, you must not believe the publicity. I was staying on a lovely ice-breaking vessel. I had really nice clothes. I had a hot shower. And occasionally I posed outside for photographs. We've exposed the truth here. Trying to get that little weird frosting in the beard. You know the way men do that?

He didn't eat a single person during his entire time. I'm so disappointed. So, but all I can say, probably because of that, I have got no idea. You know, sometimes when you go to places, you know, you are both a fantastic historian and you mix this ability to do your work in the archive,

then to go and look at stuff on the ground. And you get a, perhaps a more, sometimes a slightly broader understanding of what occurred what is the only place i've ever been in my life high latitudes where when you're sitting at home you think yeah you know you've survived for a few months in minus five i can do that when you're up there you're like after 15 minutes you want to run inside and just cry and you go i have no idea how they i didn't so i actually have less idea having been to high latitudes in the Arctic and Antarctic, how those early expeditions survived

than I would have done if I just sat at home with my feet up, where you assume it would probably be all right. Like you feel your body dying because we simply are not supposed to be in those places. And so, yes, this story in particular is one that I find so horrific. And also that it's the fragmentary nature of our sources. And we just get a sense of, as you start to leave these boats because the boat represents safety, right? As long as they stay there, they're going to be okay, or so they think. But actually, once they decide to abandon the Erebus and the terror, that's, can you imagine, like, it's impossible to imagine what they're

thinking, what they're feeling. And it's, it is frozen in the landscape. Whatever they were thinking, whatever they are feeling is captured there eternally. It's a haunting of sorts in its own way. And you know, it's so interesting, Antony, that you talk about feeling there. Dan, you're talking about this kind of fragmentary evidence that's left behind. Something that we're going to get into in the episode is some of the objects that were discovered frozen in the landscape in the years, the decades after this story has unfolded. And a lot of them really do give an insight into the human nature of these people. They are human beings.

They felt, they desired, they loved, they missed people. They, you know, they were carrying objects that were made for them by their families at home that represented to them the places in England that they were from in Scotland and the home lives that they had. And it really brings it home just quite how far they were from, in Scotland, and the home lives that they had. It really brings it home just quite how far they came from that, to the very edges of

survival and civilisation that they travelled. Well, and beyond the edge of survival, if that's the metaphor. What I find really interesting about your work is this idea of the mask of humanity. We have this idea, we're all talking to each other now in a very civilized way. But if something goes wrong, whatever, you could just bludgeon me to death with that microphone stand because you need to escape

from rising floodwaters or whatever it is. Give us a bit of time to settle in first. That's what's so extraordinary about our species, right? Half the time we're doing acts of unimaginable brutality and other times we're writing treatises on Newtonian gravity. Like

that's what makes us so extraordinary. And you guys are living in the line between those. You're specialising in the moments where those behaviours bleed over from one to the other. And it's, God, it's just so fascinating. Well, everyone, make sure you check out After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. It's got its own feed wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I'm Dr Maddy Pelling. And I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. And this is After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. We have such a fantastic case this episode.

I can't wait to get into it. It's such a strange, unsettling story. There are so many unanswered questions about it. So do you know anything about the story of HMS Terror, Anthony? I mean, the first thing that strikes me is that the setting is really evocative, right? Like that being in the ice, in the dark, it's cold, it's bleak, it's kind of, they're left to their own devices out in the middle of nowhere. There's so much human drama. And of course, famously, this story has been dramatized by the BBC in the series The Terror, which I'm sure many listeners will have seen. I was

a huge fan of that. And I think, for me, that was the root into this story. I didn't know much about the history until I watched that on TV. So it's a really remarkable story of human survival or the struggle to survive. It's no spoilers, but not everyone's going to make it. They don't make it out. They certainly don't. So should we make a start on some of the background information? Go on, tell me, what are they doing there in the first place?

Why have they taken this trip? It seems like a very thankless journey to make. So this is the 1840s, the late 1840s. And it's an expedition that has these two ships, HMS Terror, HMS Erebus, that are sent by the British Admiralty in search of the Northwest Passage. So the Northwest Passage is this really vital sea route between the Atlantic and the Pacific that people assume it exists, and they've been searching for it for at least a century at this point. And if it is found, it will provide a route for trade, basically, and it opens up the whole world. So it's really kind of crucial that they find it. People are really, really keen from an economic point of view. Britain is really keen to be the nation that finds it and the nation that controls it as well.

So when we're talking about this period in time, we're looking at the 1840s, right? So what do we know is happening in society more generally at this time as this ship is getting ready to go on this expedition? So in Britain, we have Queen Victoria on the throne. She's been on the throne for three years at this point. In 1840, she marries Albert famously. Britain, I suppose, is looking back at the wars that have happened in the previous decades at the opening of the 19th century, and it's still kind of coming to terms with the defeat of Napoleon. And, you know, Victoria is, she's presiding over an empire that will come to be described as an empire on which the sun never sets. You know, this is the beginning of the

British Empire in the 19th century. It's the empire on steroids, basically. I think a lot of people, even today, look back on that period as kind of this zenith, right, or heading towards a zenith. And for other people, it's an incredibly problematic, incredibly tense time in, as you were talking about, the development of that empire. And that kind of juxtaposition is present even then. And the kind of expectations and regulations that are happening throughout society, like, for instance, because we're going to be dealing with a crew of men on board this ship, expectations for masculinity have really kind of hardened after the Georgian period. Absolutely. You know, I think there have been decades of war leading up to this point and it has, I guess, hardened ideas of masculinity. It's a kind of pared back masculinity in some ways, I suppose,

compared to the decorative elements of how maybe a Georgian, even a Georgian army officer or a naval officer would have looked in this period. And this idea of manhood and empire is absolutely interlinked. And this is something that comes up in the story a lot, you know, that there's this kind of this weight on these men's shoulders that they are carrying the hopes of Britain, I suppose, off to the Arctic with them. They're there to represent their country and to bring their country glory and to get the job done looking for the Northwest Passage,

which is going to bring in all this opportunity for wealth and trade that Britain needs. And I presume these ships, I mean, they're going into fairly tumultuous waters or ice particularly, but like the ships are often reused in in expeditions like this so this these are not ships specifically built like or are they have they been adapted are they built specifically for this trip i i assume they've been around for

a while so they have been around for a while they're actually they're relatively old at this point and they're built for a world that doesn't exist anymore. So they're basically built as bombships. Now, bombships are vessels that are used to fling ammunition onto the land. And they've been used since, I think, 1812. But they've been all over the world at this point already. So they're really, they've proven themselves, these vessels, you know, they are kind of floating microcosms of the empire of Britishness, And they represent this kind of military might the generations before. So they come with this history. They've been down to the Antarctic. They've actually been to the Arctic before as well, which is where we are at this

point. They've been to Australia. They've been all over. And a lot of the crew on them, including Franklin, who is the expedition leader, they have used these ships before. They've been on these ships for many years off and on. So they're familiar environments in that way. They're really emblems of military might, of colonial prowess, imperial expansion, all of that. And of course, this is absolutely what they're doing, looking for the Northwest Passage. It's putting Britain on the map, imposing it. Yeah, even more so. So you mentioned Franklin there in terms of the crew. Who else are we dealing with? What kind of

size or what size of the crew? Mind you, you mentioned it's over 100 men, right? Who else is on there leading this expedition? Yeah, so John Franklin is in charge, and he has 129 men under him. So that's a mixture of sailors and officers. Franklin himself has served at the Battle of Trafalgar so he is quite an old man at this point and he has I think kind of quite a mixed reputation back in Britain. I think there's a famous incident where he is in, it's either the Arctic or the Antarctic, and he sees a mountain range that he names. He's discovered it. He's associated with it. Turns out it was clouds.

Right. Yeah. You can name a bunch of clouds, I guess. I mean, they're not going to stay in place, but good for him. Yeah. So it's a bit disastrous in terms of his reputation. And he has this really powerful wife at home who really is like social champion. She's very ambitious for him.

And she is the one who is the sort of the driving force behind this expedition. She pushes for patrons to put money to back it. She gets her husband on this trip. So that's Franklin. He's really well liked on board. So we have really early correspondence from the crew when they're leaving, they go past Greenland. And that's the last time we have their side of the correspondence before after that point, there is no one to take the letters. And interestingly, the correspondence from friends and family becomes one sided,

which is again, so evocative. But we do know that he was really well respected. Now, the other person who is the second in command is Francis Crozier, who is an Irish-born officer. And I know that he joined the Navy at age 13, which isn't that unusual, but it's quite remarkable for the present day. Now, Crozier is one of the people that I know a little bit about before you kind of introduced the topic, because Crozier being Irish I'm Irish there is a statue in County Down

to Crozier and I always thought the little that I did know about him I always thought it was a bit odd because he's surrounded by polar bears

and it strikes me that he would probably prefer not to be memorialised with polar bears It's a bit on the nose Yeah it's a little bit gosh just put him

sitting by a fire or something but I think his Irishness is really interesting here because from what It's a bit on the nose. Yeah, it's a little bit, gosh, just put him sitting by a fire or something. But I think his Irishness is really interesting here because from what I understand, he suffered because of his Irishness on board, right? Because he was second in command, if I'm correct, like correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think he was second in command. But they didn't give him all the responsibilities of the second in command. So, for instance, as I understand it, he wasn't allowed to pick the crew, which usually is what they can do. Instead, that went to Fitzjames.

Am I right there? Yeah, James Fitzjames, who is another commander on the expedition. I mean, I think that's so interesting that his Irishness was obviously an intrinsic part of his identity, but it's also maybe a barrier in his career. For many people on board, this expedition in particular marked,

it's a real turning point in their careers and it's a way that they're going to prove themselves. And I think Crozi is no different in that regard, that he's there to take this quite incredible opportunity and, you know, hopefully they're going to make their name, finding the Northwest Passage. The timing's interesting. They don't. Yeah, no, they don't get there. The interesting thing about it is the timing too, right? Like, because it's 1845. So it's right at the beginning of the Great Irish Famine. So he is, and County Down would have been quite affected by the famine as it was unfolding there.

But he escapes that. He has his own trials to undertake, but obviously he doesn't know that. So 1845 is when we set off, right? Yeah, so we set off. And it's obviously there's already tensions on board. There are class tensions between officers and sailors, even if Franklin himself is popular, that there are these sort of intrinsic hierarchies that at the moment are governing that life on board the ship and it's a way of regulating everyone's behaviour.

And in that sense, you know, a ship is very much a very concentrated, microscopic version of society at home. And so interesting that Crozier's position in that maybe doesn't quite fit in. And that's fascinating. So they set off. And like I say, we have these letters, these letters that go from Greenland, and it becomes one-sided. So what happens next is kind of a bit of a mystery. They spend several winters in the Arctic

and very quickly the pack ice comes around the ships and the ships do get stuck. Which is where we started, right? With your narrative about we are stuck on the ice, it is perpetual night time, freezing cold,

like, you know know dangerously cold conditions taking off skin when taking off clothing like it's horrendous it is horrendous the the initial moment at which they're stuck in the ice they expect that that's part of the expedition to begin with it's not a disaster but things are about to go downhill quite considerably and by the end all 129 men will be lost. Right, go on. Tell me the next bit. In the early days of the expedition, Erebus and Terra worked their way north

until winter halted their progress. On board was enough tinned food to last three years, as well as chickens, sheep, pigs, hens, 7,000 pounds of tobacco, a dog called Neptune, and even a monkey gifted by Franklin's wife. But soon they entered the bleakest and most remote territory, referred to by the Inuit as Tunanik, meaning the back and beyond. There, under glowing skies and atop a treacherous ocean, the men found themselves alone but for local wildlife, seals, narwhals, bears. As winter set in, the ships froze in the ice.

Unmoving for months, the crew battling boredom in the darkness. At night, temperatures would reach minus 48 degrees Celsius, so that even under thick woolen overcoats, the men's sweat turned to ice. Life was precarious, and by June 1847, Franklin was dead, along with nine other officers and 15 men. By the following spring, the mysterious decision had been made to leave the vessels behind and go on foot in search of salvation. To this day, the events that led to this choice remain unknown. That is fascinating. I mean, for a crew to abandon a ship, something has significantly gone wrong. That is not something that they are

going to do just off, you know, just on a whim. So what do you think did go wrong? Well, essentially, it's really, really, really difficult to reconstruct it because we don't have any of the paper records really from the ship that you'd expect. There are no journals, there are no letters, there are no logbooks books pretty much everything has been lost so there's none of these voices we don't hear any of the opinions of the crew we don't hear anything of these tensions that we identified at the beginning that are maybe developing as conditions get more and more difficult there's no sense of what happens here. The only piece of information that we have, and it's a really remarkable one, is it's literally a piece of paper. It's like one of the very few pieces of paper to be recovered.

And it's known today as the Victory Point Note. So this was discovered several years after the expedition, after it became clear the expedition had failed. expedition after it became clear the expedition had failed and it's left in a stone cairn that had been built by a previous expedition I think in 1821 I think and it's a piece of paper there is it's a it's a form essentially a naval form it's has printed text on it and some handwriting and it's it's obviously been used twice on two separate dates and that is absolutely crucial so the first part of the note says everything's going swell the words all well are underlined several times for emphasis it's all fine there are potentially a few people who've already died at this point i think It's somewhat to be expected on an expedition like this.

Yeah, disease, obviously scurvy is a big problem. But there's no disaster. There's no catastrophe that's happened yet. All is fine. Franklin is still in charge. Interestingly, he doesn't sign the paper himself, but he is still in place. Still there, still alive.

Yeah, as the leader of the expedition. However, the second entry on the note is so poignant and it's very clear at that point everything's gone wrong. It's in a more scrawled hand and it's written on the edges of the paper around the form. And so it's literally going outside the lines. We're already losing some of that order and regulation of the Navy and the ways in which you're expected to report

things to record things and the note basically says so it's dated the 25th of april 1848 the first note is dated from the following year so a whole year has passed right and it basically says the arabus and the terror have been deserted for three days. So what's happened in that year? Franklin has died for a start, along with, I think it's nine officers and 15 men. So that's not great. What's happened there? What has killed them all?

Is it disease? Is it an accident? Is it a bear? We don't know what has happened. It's a really, can you imagine having to take that decision as a group of people who have been ensconced together in these two ships over years now at this point? This has become your family.

It has become your understanding of what society and culture is in a microcosm of, you know, as you were talking about earlier about what life is like back in Britain. Well, this is your Britain on these two ships. And the fear that would have been involved in abandoning those ships on an individual, on a human level, it's kind of, sometimes it's very easy to just remember that we're left with these two great hulking vessels in the middle of ice and surrounded by the cold and the dark. But actually, there are people climbing down off those ships. They are going to be afraid. They're going to be, you know, unspeakably cold.

And some of them, some of them will probably have known that that was the last journey they were going to make. On a human level, these are very, you know, it's easy for us to kind of sit back into it and think, oh, this kind of big history on these big ships and these are people, distant people, 150 plus years ago. But actually, these people had emotions, these people had feelings, these people were scared, these people had wives, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, whatever it is. And as they're setting foot off of these ships, they must be thinking of those things, they must be thinking of those people, they must off those ships. And while the kind of vessels themselves have been somewhat preserved and there are certain items that have been recovered, those emotions kind of just get forgotten in the kind of historical archive. Whereas actually those were tangible things to those people at that time and really important and heartbreaking as well. It makes the history all the more relatable, all the more present tense, I think. Yeah, it really does. You know, these ships were people's homes. They were the spaces in which they worked, but also the spaces in which they lived.

They exercised on board the deck, often accompanied by music from an organ grinder, or sometimes they sang their own songs that they'd made up. They would do things like amateur dramatics. When these ships were in the Antarctic, they were strapped together and were used as a ballroom. One ship had the food and the drinks, and the other was for dancing. And so these are sociable spaces. These are spaces that have tangible, lived-in experiences. And one of the things, so we'll go on to talk about the ships today and where they are and what's left on them, because they do survive. The people who lived in these spaces left all kinds of objects behind.

So things that weren't necessary on the ice, things that were too heavy to carry. So we have things like musical instruments. We've got toothbrushes. We've got these fine dinner plates, cups and saucers in the officers' quarters. We've got all these things that just make up a life that people brought with them to accentuate their personalities in what is a regimented space,

to accentuate their social class, whatever it was. All these precious things things they had to leave them there was a i think i remember reading at some point in the past about a pair of gloves that were really badly made but had hearts on the palms as if like you know a love the love of that person the partner of that person had made these not the most skillful gloves but you know these are all things that tie you to home. So it's this kind of real, I mean, life at sea is difficult enough as it is. Life in the polar Arctic or Antarctic, it's going to be more extreme again.

And then to have to leave these things is just, you know, it's heartbreaking. But so they leave the ship. And where do we go from here? breaking. But so they leave the ship. And where do we go from here? So just to recap, at this point, we've got 129 men, a number of them are now dead, including Franklin. They have brought this archive of incredible things with them and things that would give them strength in a task that they believed was bringing glory to Britain and bringing glory to themselves. And something has gone wrong. We know that from the victory point note. And the decision, I think the decision to leave would have been absolutely crushing for every

single man on board there, that there would be a feeling of letting down your family, your nation, the other men around you. And so I think what happens next is all the more tragic for that, the fact that they're so invested in this mission, and it goes so horribly wrong. Right, tell us Maddy, what happens next? Of the 105 men who set out across the ice under Captain Crozier, none would survive the March South. Weakened by starvation, by scurvy, pneumonia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, they began to split off into smaller groups as supplies dwindled and food became scarcer.

At home in Britain, Lady Franklin, wife to the expedition's original leader, was becoming increasingly concerned. By 1847, three years after Erebus and Terra had embarked on their voyage, she began to petition for a search party, even asking the Tsar of Russia and the US president for help. By the 1850s, the first team arrived in the north. What they found was truly shocking. Among the scattered and preserved remains of the crew were mutilated body parts, some hacked with knives and others placed in cooking pots.

For around 30 of the crew, as witnessed by Inuit on their journey south, it seems cannibalism had become a last miserable resort. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were

by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Wow. I mean, that is an intense history, an intense naval history. But one of the things that struck me about that part of the story is Lady Franklin, actually. Like, she is determined. And you had said at the outset of this conversation that she was raising money for the trip. She was, you know, acting as kind of a, not a sponsor, but she was, you know, overseeing the administration of the ship before they left. So now that they've gone missing, she has taken a pretty active role too. She absolutely does. You know, she's convinced quite early on that something's gone wrong. She knows that they have three years worth of supplies aboard the ship. And when three years are up or coming to a close, she's increasingly concerned. And what is so touching, I i think is that she obviously had such deep love for her husband and clearly missed him a lot despite her ambition for his career you know

she did want him home safely something that i read which i just found this so poignant and so sad is that she continued to write to him well into the 1850s, after the point where these remains, these human remains are found long after that. She still addressed the letters to him. She includes things like gossip from London life. She includes information about her life, what she's been up to, what she hopes he's up to, that he's safe. It's kind of like a ghostly correspondence, right? Because she will have known, well, at some level, she will likely have known that he was dead. I think so. It's kind of like a ghostly correspondence, right? Because she will have known, well, at some level, she will likely have known that he was dead. I think so. It's almost like a kind of a prayer or a meditation by writing it to him, right?

She's kind of evoking him. She's allowing him to haunt her space again because she can never be with him again. So it's this really, I don't know, it's really tangible, again, emotional. Sometimes we forget about these emotions, but you can't when these people are writing these letters. That's incredible. Yeah, and he becomes a kind of ghost of her own making through the letters that she kind of manifests him.

And I wonder as well, what point in that correspondence he becomes a ghost for her? You know, at what point does she realise he is probably dead? And does she ever fully give up hope? Yeah. So, you know, I don't think he's wandering around the Arctic now, but... He has his iPhone out with his Google Maps going, why, why can't I find...

No, that's probably... No signal. Yeah. So by 1854, the first search parties are arriving and they obviously discover these really, really grisly finds. And these are some of the elements of the story that have kind of made it this enduring, I guess, horror story. It is a horror story. It's a story of absolute human failure and the lengths that some will go to to try and survive.

Maddy has very kindly given us some quotes from people who were on that rescue mission so I'm just going to read a little bit of one of the things that Maddy provided first thing this morning and this is a great way to start your day by the way. From the mutilated state of many of the bodies and the contents of the kettles it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative as a means of sustaining life. A few of the unfortunate men must have survived until the arrival of the wildfowl, say, until the end of May, as shots were heard and fresh bones and feathers of geese were noticed near the scene of the sad event. Maddy, I'm dread to ask, but tell us what that actually means.

What are they saying? What is in those kettles? So this is a letter written by Dr John Ray, who's part of the search expedition. And unfortunately, he does mean that there are human remains in the kettles are cooking vessels, you know, put over the fire. There are bodies found underneath an upturned rowing boat that are trying to shelter. And these poor people, these poor men are preserved in the moment of death you know and they have all their clothes still on them they have objects that they have bothered to bring or they were able to bring with them from the ships and the scenes you know the tent is still up the people are still by the fire it's a really quite gruesome and ghoulish discovery and i think it was incredibly shocking when news of this came back to britain

dr ray's account is that you know his words are published and it was as shocking as it is to us today i mean still it's hard it's difficult reading. But in terms of the news reaching Britain in 1854, 1855, this is catastrophic for the reputation of the Navy, for, obviously, Lady Franklin, who's been so hopeful in kind of putting forth this narrative that they're all going to be found safely. The evidence of cannibalism is only in the small number of men that are found. And we do know that earlier on in the expedition,

when those first men died around the same time that Franklin himself died, a lot of them were buried properly. So, you know, it's not that it was all chaos from the outset. And indeed, some of those bodies that are buried from the earliest parts, the earliest years of the expedition, some of those are completely preserved and have been exhumed since. And you can see photographs of them on Google Images for better or worse. You know, and they are human remains. They are so incredibly tangible. These people, these bodies haven't really decomposed.

You can see the facial hair. You can see the teeth. You can get a sense of the person when they were alive. You can imagine them as animated people. And again, it just brings home that human element. It just makes them seem like real people. And it just, again, it just brings home that human element. It just makes them seem like real people and you can imagine yourself

in their snow-covered boots, I guess. I mean, obviously, be wary if you're Googling those images. They do exist. They are online. They are, as Maddy says,

images of human remains. But you are also listening to After Dark, so there's a good likelihood that you're going straight to Google them right now. But either way, one of the things that struck me is

some of them are actually identifiable in the artwork through their remains. I have never seen that in any historical event or time period before. There was one particular, and I can't remember the gentleman's name, but it showed a picture of his, of what remained of his body and a portrait that had been painted

before he left and you could clearly tell it was the same person and i have never experienced that before and in that sense you know we talked about franklin haunting his wife but like even even through google even you know whatever 200 years later 250 years later it's it's a haunting image in a real kind of present tense sense again. And it's this thing, that's one of the things that's so fascinating about history and about tales like this.

They can, it becomes a very present tense thing sometimes. We always think about history in the past tense, but actually when you're face to face with human remains and you're looking at the portrait and you're looking at the clothes,

they're buried in their clothes and you can see those clothes, they're buried in their clothes and you can see those clothes. They're really intact. Then it becomes incredibly present tense. And those people somehow inhabit 2023, even though they've been dead for quite a long time. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think as well, what's so fascinating about this expedition in particular in the 1840s is that the whole crew is photographed before they leave. And it exists in that strange time. Okay, we are into the Victorian, we're a decade into the Victorian period at this point,

but that technology is still relatively new and expensive. And, you know, they go there on ships that were used in wars in the 1810s. And yet they're part of this modern world that's emerging. And they're frozen in time in that way. Literally, that's, yeah. Yeah, literally frozen. Yeah. So thinking about where we are today, then, what has there been, have the wrecks been located? I think you said they have. What is happening with kind of any analysis? Have we found everything that there is to find?

What status are we looking at now in terms of the terror and the Erebus? Yes. So in 2014 and 2016, the wrecks of Erebus and terror respectively were discovered. So they are now under the water. They're not frozen in the ice anymore. They are underwater. They've been investigated by Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust, and they kind of have joint ownership, joint control of those sites. But because of the nature of this case and the fact that the men abandoned the ships, there is some debate that

some of them went back to the ships, by the way. So that's another kind of complicated layer. But the fact that the entire crew went onto the ice and then split up into different groups means that the evidence of what happened is scattered over a vast area and an area that is a changing landscape. You know, also thinking about how climate change might affect that in the future, that all this evidence is frozen. But how long will that be the case? I don't know. And I think I think think the takeaway with the material that is left for me, it's not so much the focus on the cannibalism and these horror elements, but actually it's these objects that speak to the hopefulness of human beings.

You know, you mentioned the really badly made gloves. They're both left-handed, by the way, which I don't think means the person was left-handed. Just really, really badly made gloves um they're both left-handed by the way which i don't think means the person was left-handed but just really really just really badly made but you know they have these hand-stitched hearts and they've those objects are actually they were found on a rock they've been left out in the sun to dry and so it's almost like someone's going to come back for them you know and i think that the connection that those represent to the people back home, to human individual relationships, but that kind to someone else in the crew, either something that he had been gifted by someone that he maybe someone dying had asked him to take it back home with him. Maybe he's taking it off a body. We don't know.

But it's full of poetry. And these are original compositions. Some don't make sense. There's some very odd things in there. And they're kind of a mystery in their own right. You didn't make sense. There's some very odd things in there and they're kind of a mystery in their own right. You didn't say it was good poetry. But, you know, some of it, and interestingly, some of the lines... details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings,

Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit

wherever you get your podcasts. Potentially may have been composed for Franklin's funeral quite early on. They reference things that, you know, suggest maybe that's what they were used for. But I think, you know, this human compulsion to create art and to be hopeful and to yearn for home and love and all of that in this environment of absolute adversity and what becomes real horror. I think that's the takeaway, really. So in terms of the ships themselves, they have been discovered. There have been dives to them and there's so many unanswered questions. The other fascinating thing, I think, about the attempts to reconstruct the scenario that of them leaving the ship and what what played out afterwards comes with um the scientific analysis i guess of

the lots of the dna because of course the bodies are so well preserved the teeth the nails in some cases the hair can be used um and it's been tested to to look at things like the nutrition levels in the body, that kind of thing. So many listeners will know that there is a debate around whether the crew were suffering from lead poisoning. So the supplies aboard the ship, there was a meat packing company in London that the Admiralty paid, and they packed the meat into metal cylinders that were sealed with lead. And of course, the lead seeped into the food. There's a question there about what that will do to a human being eating that over up to a three-year period.

That has been challenged recently. So there's some suggestion that actually the levels of lead in their bodies wouldn't have been any different from anyone else in Britain at the time and that other malnutrition other diseases compounded the levels of lead in their body towards the end of their lives and it becomes more visible in some way I'm no scientist but but you know that that's a possibility I gather um so there are lots of questions there about what exactly caused a lot of the deaths of these people you know is it disease is it just starvation why are they at the point where they're starving there's yeah all kinds of mysterious questions and the one for me that has just a huge question mark over it and i think this is so evocative and absolutely needs more work to be done on it is that in some of the DNA that was taken from these bodies we're able to establish that they are European humans but in a lot of cases the Y chromosome

is missing. Now this could be that early DNA testing had some issues where the Y chromosome wasn't as visible or it might be that some of these individuals were female and I think even if the reality is that the DNA has just been you know mistested in the past that just the question mark that hangs over that opens up all these other interesting questions about gender aboard ship about women in the armed forces in the the 19th century and what roles they did play. And I think it kind of, it opens that door to possibility and to us thinking more deeply about women's roles. You know, we've got Lady Franklin pulling a lot of strings

from back in Britain in this story, but it is possible that there were women closer to the front line. And that's one of the things that we want to continue to explore in After Dark is that kind of nuance between what is in the record, what we can interpret through kind of unconventional ways. So thank you, Maddy, so much for sharing that with me. I think it's really had some insight, but actually some of those details, the gloves particularly stick with me, some of those more kind of human elements that write the writing of the poetry, the writing of the letter to Franklin. Those are things that like I will remember rather than just the facts and the dates. I think that's kind of what makes history come alive. Absolutely. I think, you know, it's a

case that invites us to think about how we construct historical narrative as well, that the traditional records that we would maybe take from a ship and use that to reconstruct a voyage, they don't really exist. And so we have to look elsewhere. We have to look to the bodies. We have to look to even the one-sided correspondence coming from home. We have to look at these incredible objects that have been preserved. And unfortunately, some of the more grisly elements of the evidence that was recovered.

But it gives us an incredible story and a story that has huge gaps in it and that really does provoke more questions than answers, I think. But it's absolutely fascinating. I hope you were listening to that wrapped up warmly, because I know I'm starting to shiver a little bit now talking about all this ice and cold and dark, but definitely a fitting After Dark episode. And thank you, Maddy, for sharing all that information. You're very welcome. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of After Dark.

If you liked what you heard, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time for another spooky, historical investigation into the darker side of history. Bye.