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In 1845 Sir John Franklin attempted his famous and fatal attempt to open a lucrative Northwest Passage. This article, in the New York Times a day or two ago, focuses on genealogy. The fatal voyage of Franklin through the Canadian Arctic has long been a source of morbid fascination. This should interest readers of this thread.His Ship Vanished in the Arctic 176 Years Ago. DNA Has Offered a Clue.
More than a few songs about this epic and unsuccessful voyage have been made famous. Stan Roger's Northwest Passage and Sir Franklin's lament are but a sampling of them.
It's a complicated mystery where new clues are being brought to light even now. Once they found where the wrecks of the ships were, they were able to bring up artifacts from them, which they have during the summer months when diving is possible.
I fell down the rabbit hole of the expedition a couple of years ago after watching the Terror mininseries. That's based off a book that embelishes things and adds supernatural elements, but it's quite good.
Yeah "The Terror" miniseries is very worthwhile to watch, although it included a fictional monster they otherwise got the historical aspect correct - the british command structure, the technology of the time, the captain and crew, etc. It touched on historical points such as spoiled cans of tinned food. At the time I did some detailed internet research on it, most of it forgotten. But one intriguing note - in the show at one surreal nightmarish point they found one of the sailor corpses with chains with jewelry piercing his face - that is actually historically accurate per innuit accounts.
I saw a good documentary on this on TV decades ago, and they played the Stan Rogers song.
The theory covered was that the survivors who left with silver candlesticks and other items that were worthless in a frozen wasteland were suffering from lead poisoning from their tinned food that was causing a mental imbalance. They also dug up the corpse of a crew member who had died on the trip and was buried in the tundra. One of the descendants of this man was on the expedition. He had high levels of lead in his tissues but it still wasn't determined that this had an impact on the failure of the expedition.
It was interesting, because they had to first photograph how the rocks on top of the grave were laid in order to put them back in the exact same place. Then when they examined the corpse, they realized he had been autopsied.
I saw a good documentary on this on TV decades ago, and they played the Stan Rogers song.
The theory covered was that the survivors who left with silver candlesticks and other items that were worthless in a frozen wasteland were suffering from lead poisoning from their tinned food that was causing a mental imbalance. They also dug up the corpse of a crew member who had died on the trip and was buried in the tundra. One of the descendants of this man was on the expedition. He had high levels of lead in his tissues but it still wasn't determined that this had an impact on the failure of the expedition.
It was interesting, because they had to first photograph how the rocks on top of the grave were laid in order to put them back in the exact same place. Then when they examined the corpse, they realized he had been autopsied.
Lead poisoning is a common theory of what contributed to their deaths, as is scurvy. The winters they were in the Arctic were very cold and there was most likely a shortage of game in the area for them to attempt to supplement their rations with. My assumption is that accidents, bad luck, and illness added up to the point that they all died.
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