In 1845, 129 Victorian explorers sailed into the Arctic on two state-of-the-art ships with three years of food aboard, and simply never returned. It took nearly 170 years to find the ships and is still revealing names today through DNA.
This episode is a deep dive into Sir John Franklin's doomed search for the Northwest Passage. We explore the Victorian spaceship technology, the fatal navigational choice, the cannibalism the British refused to believe, and how modern forensics combined with Inuit oral history finally cracked the case.
HMS Erebus and Terror had iron-reinforced hulls, locomotive steam engines and over 1,000 books aboard
The Victory Point Note shifted from all well to 24 dead within 11 months
Explorer John Rae reported Inuit accounts of starvation and cannibalism, which Dickens and Lady Franklin tried to discredit
Forensics revealed starvation and zinc deficiency, not lead alone; bones showed cut marks and pot polishing
The wrecks were found in 2014 and 2016 only by following Inuit testimony, with DNA naming crew as late as 2026
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