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There's a fun Dan Simmons book "The Terror" that tells a (very) fictional account of what happened to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(novel)
Usually I don't read historical fiction, but that book about this ship is amazing. It was 2007's Amazon customer pick for #1 book.
Good thing this won't be a problem anymore.
Thanks to all of the hard work of the energy extraction industry, future generations will never have to deal with the lack of a Northwest Passage. They will, however, have to deal with a coral shortage.
I've always suspected that tuberculosis played a large role in the demise of the expedition. We're pretty sure that some crew members had it and in the close quarters of the ships it's very likely to have spread unchecked. Combined with the obvious lead poisoning and the possibility of scurvy the expedition had very little chance of success. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279489/
What's the source/cause of the lead poisoning?
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Thanks for the link. I love reading books about early adventurers who first explored our planet. My favourite so far has been Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage about Shakleton's semi-doomed voyage to Antarctica where they survived an entire winter after their boat got stranded in ice. Mostly by eating seals... and their sled dogs at one point. https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfr...
Or you can read South , and read Shackleton's own words https://www.amazon.com/South-ENDURANCE-Expedition-Ernest-Sha...
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I concur that the book is indeed a very entertaining read. It describes the ships (which btw were steam powered and had central heating) and the dreadful conditions that the sailors faced in great detail. Dan Simmons is a good storyteller.
Sea travel in general was apocalyptically bad for sailors until about 1910. I don't think people realize how dangerously shitty it was for people.
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In case anyone else was confused, those corpses retrieved and studied in the above article were bodies buried from the same expedition, not bodies recovered from the sunken ship. Thanks for sharing the clipping though, very fascinating.
Yes the dug up bodies were from men who died during the expeditions first season, which had actually gone pretty well. Unfortunately, they anchored the ships for the winter, shortly after those men died, in pretty much the worst place possible, on the western side of King William's Island.[1] This is a spot where all the pack ice from the north west flows to, forming a huge towering jumble of ice. They fully expected…
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In case anyone else was confused, those corpses retrieved and studied in the above article were bodies buried from the same expedition, not bodies recovered from the sunken ship. Thanks for sharing the clipping though, very fascinating.
Yes the dug up bodies were from men who died during the expeditions first season, which had actually gone pretty well. Unfortunately, they anchored the ships for the winter, shortly after those men died, in pretty much the worst place possible, on the western side of King William's Island.[1] This is a spot where all the pack ice from the north west flows to, forming a huge towering jumble of ice. They fully expected…
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Thanks to all of the hard work of the energy extraction industry, future generations will never have to deal with the lack of a Northwest Passage. They will, however, have to deal with a coral shortage.
So, how did this ship attempt to sail this route 168 years ago if there was no energy extraction industry?
However, when Roald Admunsden crossed for the first time the North West passage a few years after the Franklin expedition was lost, it was not by boat, but with sleds...
From my understanding, given the size of the Terror and Erebus, the Franklin expedition could not have crossed the NW passage anyway at that time.
There's a fun Dan Simmons book "The Terror" that tells a (very) fictional account of what happened to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(novel)
Very well researched, about 1/3 of the book is references/footnotes.