You're Dead to Me - Arctic Exploration (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Vanessa Heggie and comedian Stu Goldsmith to learn all about the perilous history of Arctic exploration.From the 15th to 20th Centuries, Europeans searched for the Northwest Passage, a supposed seaway between the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic Ocean. Indigenous groups had been traversing the passage for centuries, using small skin boats and dog sleds, but from 1497, European expeditions were launched to find and claim it. Most of these ended in failure, with explorers either returning home empty-handed or not returning at all. Some even got completely lost, arriving in Hawaii or North Carolina rather than Canada!In 1845, the most famous Arctic expedition, led by Sir John Franklin, was launched. Within a few months, his two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, with their crew of 129 souls, had vanished. It was not until 1906 that a Norwegian team, led by Roald Amundsen, finally navigated the passage. This episode explores the often fatal quest for the Northwest Passage, charting the various expeditions that tried and failed to find and traverse it, uncovering the men who lost their lives looking for it, and asking why Europeans were so keen to explore such a hostile region of the world. And we unravel the mystery of just what happened to John Franklin and his men out there on the ice.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Matt Ryan Written by: Matt Ryan, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

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BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our tins of preserved beef, donning our thermal undies and sailing off in search of the Northwest Passage. And joining me on the good ship, You're Dead to Me, are two very special shipmates.

In History Corner, she's Associate Professor in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Birmingham's Department of Applied Health Science. What a title. You may have read her long running science column in the Guardian newspaper or her recent book, Higher and Colder, on the history of extreme exploration.

And you will definitely remember her from our episode on Victorian bodybuilding. It's Dr. Vanessa Hegge. Welcome back, Vanessa. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. And in Comedy Corner, he's a sensational standup and the host of the brilliant bodybuilding. It's Dr Vanessa Hegge. Welcome back Vanessa. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. And in Comedy Corner, he's a sensational stand-up and the host of the brilliant

The Comedians Comedian podcast, which I love. You may have seen him on BBC Live at the Apollo recently or on Conan O'Brien's show, but you will definitely remember him from our back catalogue, including episodes on the history of fandom and Blackbeard the pirate. It's Stu Goldsmith. Welcome back, Stu. Aye, aye, Captain. He said clinging on to the thing that you set up some three minutes ago about how we were on the good ship you're dead to me. Captain. Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be back. I'm very excited to be here.

Lovely to have you back Stu. Thank you. I'm clearly giddy with glee to be here. I know you're interested in climate change as an area of policy and discourse but also comedy, right? Yes for sure. Yes. I absolutely love trying to make jokes about ocean acidification fly in a comedy club on a Friday night. So what does the North West Passage mean to you or the Arctic? Very little and when I found out this was going to be the subject it did occur to me

to do revision and I didn't because I've got principles. So I shall be looking forward to all of this information being new. So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, will know about today's subject. And I am guessing everyone knows where the Arctic is, but if you are confused it's the bit at the top. Maybe people have heard of John Franklin's famed 19th century expedition which recently was fictionised in a novel, and then the TV series, The Terror. God, that was great.

Good telly. It also has inspired many novels, a book by national treasure, Michael Palin. I love him so. If you're listening from Canada, you might be familiar with the song, Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers. But what is the Northwest Passage?

Or what was the Northwest Passage? Why did so many explorers risk everything to find it? And how was the humble tin can, both blessing and a curse? Let's find out. Right, we've called this episode Arctic exploration, but really we're talking about the Northwest Passage. Which is what? Or which was what? I mean, is it still a thing? It sure is. The Arctic Passage is a seaway between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean going through the Arctic Ocean. It's a maze of hundreds of different islands and also a lot of sea ice. So it goes across the top of the North American continent and it's probably many

Northwest passages because obviously the way you sail through it will depend on how big your ship is and where the ice is at any one time. Given how inhospitable this environment would have been, why do you think European explorers were so keen to go and stick their flag up this back passage? I would say, glossing over the awful entendre that you just conjured, I would say why do people do anything money and war and power? So probably if you get to be in charge of the bit that's on the top of the world, you get the strategic advantage over, well, sort of everywhere that it looks down on. I mean the main appeal of it is it's a massive new trade route. It's a super highway through

to China. So Northern Europe can get to China and Asia without having to go around the bottom of South America or of Africa or going over land. And there's all those lovely Chinese luxury goods that you can trade for. We have to sort of say it's not just European explorers. I mean, indigenous peoples were already sort of exploring this. They'd already discovered it by the informal man. They were living there. Yeah, definitely. And they were moving around extensively in the area as well. So there's evidence of some migrations prior to the 12th century. And I think for this space, it's important to remember that it's quite resource scarce.

So there'll be populations who'd be following food sources like walruses or like fish stocks. There's also evidence of trading between North American populations and sort of Norse populations as well. And they may also have been moving for other resources like iron deposits and stuff like that so there's quite a lot of movement going on in the Arctic early on. The first European voyager was in 1497 and like you Stu he had a Bristol connection. Do you know who this explorer might have been? 1497 set off from Bristol? Blackbeard. I mean it was a curveball guess wasn't it? 1497 set off from Bristol was it someone awful like Cabot? It was Cabot! Oh god. Yeah okay. Yeah it was Cabot who had variety of names we call him John Cabot in England but he was Zwan Cabotil because he was

Venetian which is a different dialect. Was he really? I didn't know that. He was a Venetian. Oh good we can declaim him. You could try. You could try. Say it again please. Zouane Cabot. Zouane Cabot. But also he was also Jean Cabot.

He was also Jean Cabot to the French, and he was John Cabot. Any old name in a port, as they don't say. But what a lovely thing to have a basic name and then turn up and just do regional variations on it. It's good, isn't it? Yes, when I perform in Paris, I'm Stuart de Gullstein. Very lovely. He sets good, isn't it? Yes, when I perform in Paris I'm Stuart de Gullstein.

He sets off from Bristol, why? Because he's of a nation, what's he doing in Bristol? Well, I'm not sure we really know why he moved to England. There are little bits of his life that are mysterious, but he was there by the late 1400s and he gets permission basically from the King to set off for an Arctic voyage. Has a fail in 1496, has a second go in a boat called the Matthew in 1497. He gets as far we think as the coast of Newfoundland but he's mostly along sort of the coastline of Quebec around the coast of Canada. He names some things, unfurls a flag, gets very

excited about it, comes back home thinking that he's discovered China. Oh much colder than we were expecting Your Majesty. Yeah so John Cabot or Zwan Cabotobotto was sent off by Henry VII, Henry Tudor, father of Henry VIII. There are more expeditions and they're not, they don't go that well, do they Vanessa? No, he's definitely not alone in getting quite confused about where he is. There's also the Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano and he's looking specifically for the Northwest Passage and he thinks he finds it, but he finds it much further south than anyone expected it to be. And it turns out what he thought was the open Pacific Ocean,

he'd actually landed about 3000 kilometers south in North Carolina. Oooh. So that was 1523. Let me get more explorers heading off to chart Newfoundland's coastline. Everyone's racing. Our next contestant is a man called Henry Hudson. Heard the name? Er, no. Okay, that's fair. He's not, you know, he's quite famous because he's got... I've heard of the movie Hudson Hawk and the Hudson River and that's all my Hudson's.

The Hudson River. The Hudson River. Yes. Well obviously he invented or fell in that river as a result of his name before or after him. You're not far off there actually, Stu. So he's got a bay named after him, he's got a river named after him. That must mean he did something heroic, no? Yeah, well he attempted the first ever overwintering in the Arctic. So the idea was to sail up, stay in the ice over the winter and then have a further sail afterwards to try and find the north-west passage. He got as far as Labrador and he found what he thought was open sea and it turns out to be what's now known as Hudson's Bay. So he successfully overwinters but then when the ice melts in the summer his crew are like well we're going home now

and he wants to go further north so there's a mutiny. We don't have certain reports of what happened on the mutiny because obviously we only have the mutineers story about what happened. Presumably they won. Yes. Gotcha. So we got a journal from the ship's navigator who's called Abacut Pricket and apparently… Such a great name, sorry. Abacut Pricket.

Abacut Pricket. It's a great name. I, Henry Hudson, forgive the mutiny. Lots of love, Henry. Written in someone's left hand. It's pretty much exactly that. He basically said that there was some rumour that Hudson was hoarding food and that men didn't like that and then apparently there was some sort of dispute over a stolen coat

and fundamentally the outcome was allegedly alive and well Hudson, his teenage son, seven under crew members were put in a small boat with supplies and kind of sent off into Hudson's Bay to fend for themselves and the Discovery sailed home with everybody else. And the upshot is that Henry Hudson is left to die. Much like his crew, we have to leave Hudson behind. Sorry Hudson. Nice lovely link. I'd feel more happy about the link than the naming of the bay. I'd be dying in the Arctic thinking well maybe one day a podcaster in the future, I don't know what that is, but maybe they'll segue away from me with a reference to my death. Various other explorers kept venturing into these very dangerous waters.

Can you chart us a course through these next two centuries of attempts? What are the highlights or lowlights? Sure, the stories are going to be all the same, which is people going, getting lost, getting trapped in the ice and coming home or not coming home. I think one of the big stories is the expedition by Jens Munch, who was sent out by the Danish king. And that one's just notable because he lost all but three of his crew due to scurvy and came back. So that was 1619. So there's a little bit of a lull in the 17th century. People aren't trying for the Northwest Passage for obvious reasons. Because they've heard about Jens Munch, presumably.

Yeah, but there's this infrastructure being set up. So the Hudson's Bay Company is founded in the 1670s. And the result of that is it's setting up forts and trading posts and ports to enable fur trade and things like that. And that's a resource that the Arctic explorers can start using. And it also means that quite a few people

are getting their first experience of the Arctic on land working for the Hudson's Bay Company. And then they try for the route itself. Then we get Sir John Barrow and he's got a plan. Definitely. We are peak hunt for the Northwest Passage time now. We're into the 19th century. It's all really kicking off. So Sir John Barrow is second secretary to the Admiralty. He really pushes not just for Northwest Passage but also for attempts at the North Pole as well. This is again partly for trade

and power and the rest of it but it's also the fact that America now independent, so there's now pressures on the British in the sort of North American regions. Russia has now taken Alaska, so they're not the only power in the area. And also we've just had the Napoleonic Wars and there's this massive well-resourced navy who kind of don't have any more battles to fight, so it's useful for them to have something else to do. And so the Northwest Passage is kind of part of that. We've paid for all these ships and now they're just sitting idle. I love the moment of realization when they were like well that's Napoleon dealt with what are we gonna hang on like I love the idea of someone who ever had this

I'm gonna get I'm gonna get some land for this idea. Yeah and so Barrow is he's off his expeditions in 1818 and do they succeed? No he sends out two different expeditions in 1818 in two different directions and both of them find an impenetrable wall of ice and have to come home. Right, good, ditto. So we've got naval officers sitting around naval gazing but they can't get through the ice. Naval gazing!

I feel like that didn't get what it deserved. How would you entertain a ship full of sailors who are sort of hunkered over in the ice? Drag sea shanty. I'm up for that. Drag sea shanty competition. Nice. And in stages, knock out tournament. That'll keep there? Drag sea shanty. I'm up for that. Drag sea shanty competition. Nice. And in stages, knockout tournament. That'll keep us going for a month. So 32 drag artists whittle them down. Yes, lovely. Okay, I mean that's pretty good. I mean I just

went straight off the top of my head there but I think that would work. Yeah, okay, so we've got various sort of powers and superpowers in the region but in the 1840s Britain, hello Britain, at last launches the most famous Arctic mission of all, the Franklin But in the 1840s, Britain, hello Britain, at last, launches the most famous Arctic mission of all, the Franklin. In the 1840s. So it's it's pretty, you know, this is kind of peak Queen Victoria era. She came to power in 1837.

So we are in the Victorian era. And the Franklin expedition is the big one. It's the one that we're probably going to focus the rest of this episode on. Can you talk us through this Franklin chap? Who is Sir John Franklin? John Franklin. So by this point the 1840s he's quite famous, he's a well-known naval explorer and sailor, he has experience in arctic waters. He was

actually one of the crews on that first 1818 expedition out that John Barrow sent out. He'd done an overland expedition to find passage in 1819 and in 1823 he'd had a third expedition out by sea and that was the one that really made his name because he came back with really good maps of the area, he wrote a popular book and he got knighted so that he was really well known as an Arctic explorer at this point. So he sounds like he should be top of the list for candidates being drawn up to lead this new, this latest expedition. Is he, is he the kind of number one go-to guy? He's not even close. Really? Barrow has a list of alternative people all with with Arctic experience, who he wants. But they pretty much, most of them turn it down and

he kind of ends up with his last choice of Franklin, who is 59 at this point. So on the 19th of May, 1845, the HMS Erebus under Franklin and the HMS Terra under Crozier. Crozier had been offered the position to lead and he'd apparently turned it down out of modesty. So those two guys are together. Oh, that's so wonderfully tense. Off they go. And these are not ordinary naval ships. They're naval vessels. Yeah, but they've been souped up basically. So they've got an internal central heating system that's steam powered and they have these very fancy, powerful screw propellers that are reinforced with steel and they are vastly provisioned as well. So the plan is

to have at least three years of food supplies in there because we know the Arctic is resource limited. So they're taking things like 8,000 tins of food with them. Amazing. This is a problem though. I don't think anything can go wrong with that tin food. No, definitely. And the issue is that they're planning at quite short notice. So the tins have to be made really, really quickly and the suppliers, even Goldner, ended up doing them as a rush job

So some of the lead soldering from the outside wasn't applied properly and has dripped down inside That can't be bad lead in your food. There's gonna be no side effects from that at all I imagine. Just sit there in the hull for two years. Just relax in the terror. So 129 crew on the two ships. Stu what food would you pack for an Arctic expedition? You've got 8,000 tins to fill. What are you popping in there? Oh I could put anything in a tin. Spaghetti hoops, my wife's too good for them. She won't have them in the house. Spaghetti hoops for sure. I think, well, you'd want carbs, you'd

want meat, I think. You'd want protein and carbs. But you'd also not want to neglect your fruit and veg. Would the fruit and veg need to go into tins for three years? It sure would. Peaches, I'd go for. Good, yeah. I don't know what's available at the time. I'd want every fifth tin, I'd want to be a don't know what's available at the time. I'd want every fifth tin I'd want to be a secret tobacco stash you could reveal at parties and make up for your drag show. Of course. What are the foods of the time? Can you get a fray bentos? No, yeah well sort fray bentos is about 1880 it's a little bit later. Oh my god you're good! But it would be it would be tinned salted meat and tinned salted vegetables as well

and occasionally fruits. Tinned salted fruit. All right so we've got two ships, 129 crew, two captains, one of whom was off of the job and turned it down, one of whom shouldn't have been off of the job but took it anyway and off we go with our lovely voyage. Talk us through it. So we stop at Orkney for some fresh water and then we finally sail on to Greenland where we go to Disco Bay, call off, bring in some fresh meat supplies.

Hang on, I'm gonna stop you there. Is this drag show happening or what? We're at Disco Bay. In Greenland. How are we spelling Disco? With a K. Oh, you're throwing this. That's even cooler, it's more kind of 80s. D-I-S-K-O. Tragically, this is also where the men write their last letters home. Oh, let's put a downer on it. And Franklin tells them that there's going to be no swearing and no drinking on the expedition. Oh yes, yes, you see us how to motivate your crew. Yeah, another mutiny. Perhaps they get food, they get water, off they go, they go to Greenland, and then what?

That's the big question. We do have a sighting in July 1845 there's two whaling ships Prince of Wales and Enterprise both better names yes they spot the the expedition in Baffin Bay where they're hold up waiting for slightly better weather to continue and that is the last time that any Europeans see the ships or the crew. Wow and up till now? Up until very recently. Yeah, I've got you. see the ships or the crew. Wow. And up to now? Like have we? Up until very recently.

Yeah, gotcha, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Spoilers, there's stuff coming. We'll come to stuff later. There are campaigns to go and rescue them. Obviously Lady Jane Franklin is very keen to get her husband rescued. She is a- So this is Sir John's wife.

Yes, this is Sir John's wife. And she is a force to be reckoned with. She is an explorer in her own right. She went up Mount Wellington when they were in Tasmania. She did all these bush walks and things like this. She's actually the first woman to be awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founders Medal in 1860 in recognition of all the amazing geographical work that was done on the expeditions that she sponsored to go and look for her husband. So she's quite a force. She manages to get the Admiralty after the three years

are up to send out the first rescue missions. They were last seen in 1845. So they set out in 1845. They set out in 1845. And then three years later Lady Franklin says I do think maybe we need to send some ships. We need a plan. Because they're running out of food, if they're still alive they will need help. And off goes this sort of big mission and what do they find Vanessa? So the initial Admiralty expeditions don't find any trace of Franklin, they don't find where he is. Lady Franklin continues to push them a little bit to send out further expeditions.

The first traces are found in 1850 and that's when one of the Admiralty expeditions, that's the Lady Franklin as it happens, finds three graves on a place called Beachy Island. That's John Hartnell and William Brayne from Erebus and the lead stoker John Torrington from the Terror. So they knew that the ships had spent the winter in the ice at this point from 45 to 46, but they still didn't know what had happened to them or to the rest of the crews.

At what stage does the Admiralty go? We think they're lost. They officially declared them dead in service on the 31st of March, 1854. So that's when they've been away nine years and there has been no sightings and no traces of them. Nine years? Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. They're officially MIA but then KIA. So killed in action, I suppose. But the nail in the coffin is 1854. It's a report, isn't it? John Ray. Yeah. So the main work done in the 1850s,

trying to look for Franklin, is this Scottish explorer, John Ray. He's funded by the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the Admiralty on some of these. And he's doing that inland exploration. So he's going through rivers and lakes and looking at the coastline and his big thing was he really relied on Indigenous testimony and Inuit populations to try and get reported sightings of white people in the Arctic to find out what's going on He managed to trade or buy some relics that he could prove came from the Franklin ship

so like a spoon with a mark on it or a cap band, a Navy cap band. And by tracing this and sort of going back to places where he thought they might possibly have been, he was able to build up this story about what probably happened to them and write a report for the Admiralty that said they probably all died. They landed and probably all died somewhere in the region of King William Island. And he had some really unpleasant evidence that they'd experienced some real desperate times. This is a quote from his report that he got from an Inuit witness, that from the mutilated state of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it's evident that our wretched countrymen have been driven to the last resource, cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence.

Oh, and did they tin each other? Well, that's the thing. The kettle is for boiling meat, right? Yes. Brings a whole new meaning to, the kettle is for boiling meat right? Yes. Brings a whole new meaning to pop the kettle on doesn't it? So this is obviously shocking news, nine years to officially sort of declare the mission a complete failure and everyone dead and then this sort of comprehensive report by by Ray. How did the British public back home? You know this is the height of the Victorian Empire, this is sort of pomp and circumstance, you know we are, Britain is a superpower at this point and suddenly this message comes back saying everyone's dead and they ate each other.

This is I mean, it's a huge admiralty fail in terms of publicity, because John Ray was actually writing a separate report for the public. They probably shouldn't have published the cannibalism story. I was going to say, how did they let that get out? But once it's out, it's out. And there is huge resistance and denial to it. And that's made easier by the fact that this is not what John Ray saw himself firsthand. This is still all second hand reports from indigenous witnesses. So there

are people like Charles Dickens, is the really famous one, who are writing these sort of op-ed pieces basically saying, and I'm going to use his words here, that these are savage people, they can't be trusted, they're natural born liars, they're just making stuff up and you couldn't possibly believe what they have to say. Wow, I mean the big takeaway for me with all respect to Franklin is that Dickens wrote like that. That's a shame. I mean that's a very difficult thing for people to hear. Is that the last word on the expedition then Vanessa? I mean you know nine years it's been missing, a report has been issued, the public has scandalised, the Admiralty presumably in the, well, do they get chastised and criticised or is it just bad luck? It's just bad luck, it's another

one of the expeditions. Most of them had failed at this point. But Lady Jane Franklin is not accepting this. The Admiralty are not going to send out any more search and rescue missions. So she starts funding her own. She basically crowd funds it. So crowd funds a ship. Oh, in order to find it, like to prove that there was cannibalism.

To prove he survived. Effectively. Yes. Yes. So she sends out an expedition in 1857. It sails out of Aberdeen, and that one finds some certainty. In 1859 it discovers the Cairn, the one I mentioned, and it has a note inside it which is the last written note of the expedition. It's known as the Victory Point Note, and

it is in King William Island, as John Rainey had suggested. The Victory Point Note is actually two separate notes. So it's one note that's written in May 1847 that says everything's well, and then there's one written in April 1848 that says, no, everything's really bad now. So they're two conflicting stories. And according to the note, Franklin had died sometime in June 1847. We don't know why, but over the course of being stuck in this area, 24 men on the ship had died. Captain Crozier had taken over the whole expedition, and after 19 months of the boats being stuck

and drifting in the ice, they decided months of the boats being stuck and drifting in the ice they decided to leave the boats and try and head over land to get to a Hudson Bay Company camp in order to be rescued and it seems like when we sort of think where are the fines are, the corpses were, the message and the Inuit testimony that what happened was all of the men died on that inland trek. So the survivors of the ship went overland and then just succumbed to cold dehydration food? Cold, starvation, scurvy. There were reports of them literally dropping as they walked across the ice. There were reports that make it sound like they were probably suffering

from the symptoms of scurvy and other starvation related diseases. Was there any proof of A or A on the cannibalism? Besides, when she found the note in the can, did it end? And no matter what anyone says, we definitely didn't eat Tony. There was almost certainly cannibalism of some of the members, yes. I mean, it's always a little bit difficult, but there have been remains found. There is a suggestion that that happened, yes. Role Amundsen actually finally makes a successful attempt on the North West Passage. He starts in 1903. Doesn't actually make it all the way over to

Alaska till 1906, so it still takes him three years to do it, but he does it in small boats and sleds. He doesn't take a big ship, he learns from the local travel. Is that the first part? I'm sort of getting as we go, not till 1907? Well he starts in 1903 and he gets there in 1906. So in 1906 it finally gets done. So 60 years later it's finally done by Amundsen who of course later famously is the conqueror of the South Pole the race to the South Pole that's it Northwest achieved but not for a large boat oh of course of course so the whole point of it is still you can't trade in a small kayak to China so well no unless you've got any porcelain? What's the one? Saffron?

What's the one so small? Musk probably would be the best option. Saffron, musk, plutonium. Yes, something really... Oh, too heavy. At what point does trade happen via that route, if ever? Well, the cargo ships are 2008, so it's late. 2008?

We invented planes and then it didn't matter so much. Oh, God, that is a killer, isn't it? All right, what have we learned since then? Because since then we've got marine archaeology and sat nav and geostationary satellites and archaeology so... Yeah, so there are still competing versions about what exactly happened to the expedition. Lots of people have gone back to look for more relics, more skeletons and so on to recollect the testimony.

There's an idea that some of the men didn't die entirely on the walk. They may actually have gone back to one of the ships, remanned it and sailed it a little distance and then it sunk and that's where the five people died. They walked halfway, half of them died and then they turned around and went back to the ship. It's definitely a theory. We exhumed the bodies on the island in 1984 and did proper forensics on them and that's when they were discovered to have very high levels of lead. So there was a strong theory that actually lead poisoning led to some of the deaths. Although even there

there's some questions because people in the 19th century had much higher levels of lead in their body anyway. Oh sure. Yeah. And a lot of hope was pinned on finding the boats. Cause if we get the boats, then we'll get the answers. And it's again, with indigenous testimony, Parks Canada finally managed to find both of the boats. They got the Erebus in 2014 and the Terror in 2016.

But even here, that's just caused more problems in some cases. So the Terror wasn't quite where they thought it should be. It didn't have its anchor down so it looked like it had been sailing. Some hatches are open, some are closed so was it sinking or not sinking? There's a small boat on it so why didn't they use that for evacuation if it sank? There's just more questions to be answered. We don't really know the detailed complete fate of everyone on that expedition still. Whoa. I mean this is where I should chip in with a funny comment but I'm afraid I'm reeling

from that. That's incredible. Me too. The Nuance Window! Time now for The Nuance Window. This is the part of the show where Stu and I sit quietly in Disco Bay with our drag cats. With our various drag outfits. Yeah exactly. For two minutes while Professor Dr Vanessa takes the ship's wheel to tell us something that we need to know about Arctic We're not various drag outfits. Exactly. For two minutes while Professor Dr. Vanessa takes the ship's wheel to tell us something that we need to know about Arctic exploration. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Vanessa.

OK, I want to undermine the entire point of this episode by asking people to think about how incredibly boring exploration actually is. That might seem counterintuitive because exploration is about movement and adventure and novelty. But the reality is that a lot of the Northwest Passage Expeditions, particularly by sea, were frequently static because getting your boat stuck in the ice over winter was part of the

tactic of getting around, and sometimes that ice didn't melt in the summer, so you could end up being stuck in the same place for a year, two years, same horizons, same cantonians, same food for all of that time. When we debate the legacy of great explorers, we often talk about their leadership skills and we tend, I think, to focus on the drama. Did they get their men through disaster and death and crisis? But I think we also need to think about how they motivated their teams and stopped them from being bored because that's what basic psychology is a really crucial part of leadership, particularly for this sort of expedition. An iced in boat

does still need a certain amount of maintenance. You can keep people occupied swapping decks and making food. You can send people out to do science. They can take the weather measurements. They can draw up maps and things like that. But it's not enough. We also need arts and crafts. So you're going to have some men who are going to be painting, they're going to be sketching, they're going to be whittling, they're going to be singing. But these ships also put on, for example, extravagant theatrical productions with full sets, costumes and brand new musical songs. Now sissy that mission!

They also produce what we call zines, so amateur magazines that would have satirical plays and poems and drawings and cartoons and that the men would actually sometimes take home as keepsakes of this like really cool time they had in the ice with all of their friends, like a happy memory. So the skill of the expedition leader is balancing that sort of irreverent fun with not losing respect and control, but also making sure that your men aren't bored. And they're doing this with this sort of eclectic mix of science and exercise and food and celebration, but also crucially using the arts. So as well as 8,000 tins, Franklin also took over a thousand

books on his voyage to stock the library to keep everyone interested. So there's a lot of lessons we can draw here and I think the really crucial role of the arts to keeping up human morale is definitely in there. But what I'd like to emphasise is that while our most common image of exploration is this sort of macho adventure novelty, for a lot of the people a lot of the time, it's actually quite boring, routine, domestic work. See Mum, comedians can be useful on a mission. Chief morale officer. Yeah exactly that's always what I'd rely on. If you want more of that you can check out our episodes with Stu on Blackbeard and Ancient Medicine

which are sort of medical and maritime too. For more of Dr Vanessa, Professor Dr Vanessa, choose our Victorian bodybuilding episode which is also about sort of masculinity in the 19th century, sort of similar themes. And remember if you've enjoyed the podcast please leave review share the show with your friends subscribe to your dead to me on BBC sounds to hear these episodes first because they come out a month earlier on BBC sounds switch on your notifications otherwise you won't be told just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in history corner we had the incredible

dr. Vanessa Hegge from the University of Birmingham thank you Vanessa thank you for inviting me pleasure and in comedy corner we have the stupendous Stu Goldsmith. Thank you Stu. Thanks for having me and if anyone listening to this knows my mum can you drop her a text and tell her you heard it because she'll be awfully proud. And to you lovely listener join me next time as we navigate another treacherous historical subject but for now I'm off to go and bin all my tin food and scrub my kettle. Bye! Ha ha ha! ["Infinite Monkey Cage Theme Song"] Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox, and we would like to tell you

about the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. In this series, we're gonna have a planet off. We decided it was time to go cosmic so we are going to do Jupiter vs Sefton! Well it's very well done that because in the script it does say in square brackets wrestling voice question mark. And once we touch back down on this planet we're going to go deep. Really deep. Yes we're journeying to the centre of the earth with guests

Phil Wang, Chris Jackson and Anna Ferreira. And after all of that intense heat and pressure, we're just going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing altruism. We'll find out what it is, exploring the history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So if that sounds like your kind of thing, you can listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage, first on BBC Sounds. She was the epitome of elegance. She was the epitome of mystery, intrigue and beauty. One of the 20th century's most amazing characters, a Hollywood sex symbol whose story you might think you already know.

Hedy Lamarr, the film star. But there's another side to her story. She was an inventor at heart. Her scientific contribution, no other star has been able to match. We really should put her into the limelight she deserves. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr.

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