@@ephraimboateng5239 Keep in mind just how vast Canada is, and what time period this takes place in, as well as how far north they would have been sailing to find a way through.
What some people don’t realize is that getting stuck in ice while on a wooden ship doesn’t just mean you cannot move, the ice moves around you and freeze. This can wear down the wood like sandpapering wood. And when it does freeze, it puts immense inward pressure on the hull. So much that it could cause the hull to implode in on itself. Lastly as the hull stays under frozen water longer, the less habitable it becomes, the walls freeze and become covered with layers of ice and the air inside of the hull cannot trap heat as effectively. In older models that include steamers and steam engines, having ice touch your steam engine was extremely dangerous as it could cause the entire engine to explode, blowing the ship up outwards. Being stuck in ice back in the infant days of modern sailing was an extremely terrifying idea.
one interesting fact is that the vessels they chose were bombardment vessels, which were built heavier and sturdier than most other vessels. that could be in part why they weren't crushed by the ice.
In regards to the people who made the eventual uncovering of this story possible, a big shoutout is needed to a man named Louis Kamookak. He was a Gjoa Haven Inuit explorer, historian, and forensic archeologist who worked on the Franklin Expedition Discovery project here in Canada, and he was invaluable in his efforts speaking with Inuit elders on their passed down testimonies on the survivors, charting their locations by extrapolating the original Inuit geographical names with their Western equivalents, tracking down and collecting locations of found relics of the survivors' trek south, and his information was key in setting the search areas that eventually found the ships. So much of this story would've remained a mystery without him. He died in 2018.
Inuit oral history has been invaluable to exploration efforts in the northernmost parts of the Americas. I read a research paper in one of my anthropology classes about how eerily accurate their mapping and understanding of surrounding geography was without ever having to create a physical map. Directions were passed down to their children through complex mnemonics and songs. Many early English and French explorers/tradesmen based their own maps what the Inuits drew in the snow and dirt in front of them. It’s super fascinating.
@@mattuwu9978 Pretty much sums up the difference between Indigenous thinking and Western thinking. It's a completely different way of processing information. Just a theory -- I think an over-reliance on writing things down may eventually cause certain areas of the brain to atrophy out of disuse.
Thank you so much for mentioning Louis. His name is usually not mentioned but he is an *INTEGRAL* part of the Franklin story. There's a great video on TH-cam that shows a tv program from the 90's if you look called "Arctic Tomb", Louis is actually interviewed in it.
Walking for 12 years straight, alone, in the frigid cold year round, with barely a single change in scenery to denote progress sounds like the closest thing to a living Hell I have ever heard. With us keeping their names and story alive almost 200 years later, and the mysteries of their trip solved at last, may all their souls rest in peace. They deserve it.
The fact that this two man could have walked for 12 years sounds quite inconceivable and unbelievable to me but if that's true, personally, that sounds much more terrible and bleak than the cannibalism and the other deaths
Heros? Nay. Men sent to die. Due to hubress and arrogance of old men. Let their souls not rest but seek revenge towards those families who thrust them to their doom. As is the way of the sailor.
Wendigoon's "As always, thank you for watching" has the same energy as PBS "This program is made possible by viewers like you, thank you" and just adds to the comfort I have listening to him talk about things he is interested in.
“Lifeboat full of useless stuff”. Some see this as a sign of the crew were impaired by illness and malnutrition, BUT others make a pretty good case that the stuff only seemed useless at first, and each had a purpose….weird, obscure books could be brought to help kindle fires, silverware and curtain rods could be hoped to be traded to the Inuit for seal meat, as metal was rare and valuable in the Arctic, etc.
Good point, it's useless if used for its intended purpose but can be MacGyver'd into useful stuff in a pinch. Curtain rods could be traded but likewise could be used as part of makeshift shelters.
@@totallynotjevii574 its also possible they took some of each of the stuff because they wouldn't be able to hold every single piece of the stuff with them when they left the boat but only took as much as their pockets could hold so a lot of it would have to be left behind
i forgot the video but lindy beige did a video explaining why they would bring such useless things. basically your mind does stop working. a soldier in a foxhole may obsessively check their kit uselessly a million times "fidgeting". a sailor trying to escape a cold watery death may load the lifeboat with bullshit.
Recently falling on hard times, I constantly find myself watching documentaries on this expedition. Because no matter how bad of a day I’m having, nothing can be as bad as being stuck in ice for years without contact. Sick, cold, hungry, miserable, dark, and extremely windy and wet.
Even though she couldn't go out herself, I have to applaud Lady Franklin. She did so much to bring awareness to the situation and try to figure out what happened.
Wtf? Damn no wonder everyone thinks the navy is all gay dudes fuxkin each other if they genuinely thought and possibly still think women on board bring bad luck LMAO
"They forged the last link with their lives." What a *metal* quote. They literally ended the last chapter of marine exploration with the biggest sacrifice they could have ever given. The search for their bodies literally reads like an epilogue to an epic, with how the people tracing the footsteps of the doomed expedition found the path that the members gave their lives in braving themselves. They say dead men tell no tales, and I have to say, I agree. They don't tell tales. *_They let others tell theirs for them._*
Our technology today is incredibly impressive and amazing, but the comittment these people were willing to make back then to get where we are today, is even more amazing and impressive.
Lady Franklin was the MVP of this story, she was so proud of her husband’s accomplishment and I can’t stop thinking how horrible it must have been for him to never return, yet she never gave up on him even after he was long dead
@@JulithaRyanShe literally destroyed the reputation of a Franklin explorer just because he brought back what she didn’t want to hear, that her husband died and his men ate each other. She’s a horrible woman.
In addition Lady Franklin started a campaign to denigrate John Rae’s findings and the man himself. There’s a great account of his life (qualified surgeon) and his role with the Hudson Bay Company. He himself was responsible for mapping thousands of miles of coastline in the area.
It still amazes me how John Torrington's body was so well-preserved from the extreme cold. Today, you can find bodies in the Italian Alps from World War One, and they look so recent that the local police often get calls about possible murder victims.
I wonder what really happened to Sir John Franklin, and where they buried him. All we have as evidence that he died before any crew revolts or cannibalism were the notes left by officers while their ships were stranded in the ice.
@@semperk1482 As morbid as it is to say, I think that Franklin died early, and was given a proper burial. We just haven't found the sight yet. Crozier could be anywhere, but I expect that Franklin was buried somewhere on Beachy Island.
@@kyleclark4449 Judging by the date when Franklin died, they were already iced in off King William Island, but probably not yet starving or dying of scurvy. He was considered to be rather old to be leading an expedition of this kind, and might have had underlying health problems, like heart trouble. He also might have been more susceptable to illnesses like pneumonia. Or he could have died accidentally - there are plenty of chances for accidental death on an old sailing ship in hazardous conditions. There are a few theories about possible spots on King William Island where he might be buried, based on accounts from the local Inuit, who passed on lots of information about the strange white men in their giant boats. Since Inuit stories and guides finally led to the discovery of the ships themselves, I suspect that Franklin's gravesite is somewhere in those old stories as well.
@UCMDLw3uiCNaKOJvkOueLiSQ hindsight. We’ll do anything to stay alive, you included unless survival instinct is just absent from your brain. Edit: guy was talking about how the effort to stay alive was an “irresponsible glorification” of life and that he should’ve just shot himself instead of resorting to cannibalism.
i have never heard of a more bittersweet ending than crozier and a crewmate finding their goal after suffering for 12 whole years and seeing too many of their men die. this has to be the epitome of "we've won, but at what cost?"
Another thing about the Terror and Erebus' legacy, is that prior the the doomed expedition it took part in some of the important early Antarctic Expeditions. Two of the first named mountains in Antarctica are named after them, Mt Erebus and Mt Terror, meaning that the legacy of the ships continue to live on.
I feel so bad Lady Franklin. For the person you love to just disappear and for the government who sent them to their deaths to just do nothing, those years of not knowing must have been torture. She travelled for years until her own death to find his remains. She never once gave up on finding him and only death could stop her. They really were two of the most badass people I’ve learnt about
Never thought I'd say this, but I gotta defend the British Government in that regard. It was an extremly dangerous journey that you already wasted your *best* crew for that job on. Then you go on to loose another 2 ships and a bunch of men that were worse for the job than the crew you initially send. At some point, as bad as it sounds, you gotta write those ships off and not throw out more lives in order to confirm what is already most likely to have happened. I gotta give honors to Lady Franklin though, she invested a lot to know what happened to her husband.....
@OwlyBoi404 well, what about the wifes/relatives of the people who die trying to find a ship that has been missing for 5 years onward. Yea, it is tragic and sad that she didn't get closure fast, but is it worth risking the lives of even more men when its likely that you already know the outcome?
@@marmyeater I wasn't talking about the cannibalism, I was talking about the fact that they didn't keep sending in more rescue crews, which are already far less experienced than the crew they have to search for, to find a boat that was by any account already a lost cause. I mean it sounds harsh, but by sending in more and less experienced ships to find them, they would've lost many more men...
There used to be a documentary about this on Netflix that was like 3 hours long, followed them from camp to camp for the entirety of the journey. it was the saddest story I have ever heard.
Lady Franklin having the officers get their pictures taken, and buying her husband a monkey for the voyage is just fantastic. Glad to see humans haven't changed much.
Being trapped in the Arctic has to be one of the most terrifying experiences possible. You’re so boned, it’s just a matter of time before your mate across from you is tries to eat you or vice versa because you are so hungry. Truly chilling.
recently I read Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. story about a group of people who's plane crashed in the Andes, and 16 young men came out alive after enduring 72 grueling days of subzero temperatures and effects of being 12,000 feet above sea level, with nothing but snow and terrifyingly large mountains in all directions. amazing read, and incredible story. definitely reccomend it.
To be honest in this cases rarely they try to kill someone and eat, the first to die usually from the cold, illness or starvation is the one to be eaten. As stated in the video they were very overt to the ideia of cannibalism, and even in those dire circumstances it would not be enough to make than go ahead and kill the other men who were with them for years trying to survive with them.
@@ultraviolettas Northeast passage was discovered in 1878 by a Finnish Explorer Adolf Nordenskiöld. Although Franklin and the other expeditions sent after then kinda found the northwest passage, it wast first sailed through in 1906 by a norwegian explorer Roald amundsen. So basically northeast passage was discovered first.
It's a very tragic story, but the fact that after all this time people are still trying to find out everything they can about what happened is as you say a tragic victory. Hell ol boy walked for 12 freaking years, "I am getting the f up out of here and never going to the artic again. Peace." I also find it wonderful that Franklins wife was still alive to see her husband recognized for the discovery and receiving his medal. She obviously loved him a great deal considering the lengths she went to to find out what happened to him.
If you enjoy this story, I’d highly recommend reading on Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Endurance. One of the craziest stories of survival, as Shackleton got all of his men out alive after the sinking of the Endurance, due to sailing a fortified lifeboat through some of the fiercest winds in the world.
I actually just finished Endurance the other day, I'm still in shock that they all made it out alive. The Franklin Expedition really feels like the bad ending to Shackleton's Expedition.
Lead poisoning or "saturnism," was a big problem back then. The canning process made life a lot easier for sailors, and soldiers, but they really didn't understand the effects that lead ingestion would have on the brain. Really bad way to go.
I read something once that said they had new water heaters as well, but the pipes were lead so any water drank onboard was tainted with lead. Not that it drove them crazy, but it forced them off ship to find water as well as food.
@@CosmicFreedoms I wouldn't at all be surprised. Back in days of prohibition, thousands of people went blind from acute lead poisoning. Often when distilling the alcohol, old car radiators were used for condensers. The radiators where lead lined. I've heard that's where the term "drinking yourself blind," comes from.
@@dennismartin5821 i thought that was a consequence of drinking the methanol that's often produced along with ethanol, by not separating them properly? Although I'm sure both could be the case. I never knew about the old radiators
Whenever I hear stories like these, I'm always reminded of the single most underrated survival story: A. J. Barrington. Him and 2 other gold panners got lost in Fiordland New Zealand for 3 months in 1864, living off sparrows and rats, and discovered two of the most beautiful landmarks in the area that wouldn't be discovered again for 70 years. Barrington kept a journal the whole time, and all three men survived, so we know exactly what happened in their ordeal
"The British government hired the lowest bidder to make--" Some things never change. British and American military, both. Also, the lack of praise of Captain Crozier despite him living a lot longer is notable. Probably because he was Irish.
Frozen in ice since 1850's and you could not tell how old those bodies were by just looking at them, thats morbidly fascinating, wonder how many bodies of past times are just laying somewhere in the arctics not yet discovered
Many. I have lived in Northern Norway the vast majority of my life, and while we don't have permafrost, winters are the longest part of the year. ...At least they FEEL like it. And if a winter storm knocks out the power for a little bit, water and food preservation are NOT an issue lol. It is not a stretch for me to take that and apply it to permanent frozen ground, no thawing, very shiny fresh-lookin' corpses! If you're curious, I recommend looking up burial laws on Svalbard. It's 1am, so I apologize for not fact checking myself, but I am half asleep. But if I remember correctly, it's illegal to get buried at Svalbard. Because of the permafrost and the trouble that can cause.
I was 9 when they found the bodies in permafrost and I was OBSESSED with learning all about it. My mom was disturbed, her 9 year old daughter was mooning over 130 year old dead bodies LOL
bodies that don't decompose are pretty fascinating. they died centuries before you were even born but you can still look them in the face as if they died yesterday.
The Voyage of the Endurance and subsequent journey of one of it's lifeboats, the 'James Caird' is a similar chilling maritime story that I actually find more interesting than that of the Franklin expedition. Worth checking out if you have not ever heard of it and thought the story told here by Wendigoon was interesting.
Thank you so much for leaving this comment. I have just finished watching the documentary about it with tears in my eyes haha What an extraordinary story of survival!
It's insane that when he got back from this death-defying voyage, now in a weak and aged body, he still volunteered to enlist in the war effort and asked specifically to go to the front lines.
there is something so horrifying about a man walking through the wilderness for 12 years having gone through all of this and still failing to find sanctuary, just imagine how life would have been for him holy jeez
12 yrs he endured unimaginable suffering. There’s something so powerful about that determination. What would you or I walk 12 years through desolate frozen wasteland for?
i feel like so many people have said this before but i love how casually but carefully he explains these stories, especially when they get a bit too dark. his whole disposition in general is well suited for the topics he goes over
it's the cadence and the fact his voice seems, calm? idk he also has a very neutral accent, maybe a tiny Midwest twinge, and he looks like he actually enjoys what he is talking about. Him and nexpo both have that very chill vibe
@@thedoctorss69 You should rename yourself Nattie Than Hallen, learn some chops on the guitar and who knows, this time next week you could be a rock star.
This was also part of the inspiration for the song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers. I love that song, and all of Roger's music in general, but after learning about this in depth I finally realized he was making a specific reference in one of the lyrics... "Leaving weathered, broken bones and a long forgotten lonely cairn of stones" Man that's way more chilling knowing exactly what he's referring to.
I vividly recall bringing a book home from the library about this as a kid, because it had cool pictures of ships on the front of it, and I liked pirates at the time. My mom read through it with me, and I remember the horror and dread it filled me with because it was probably my first time hearing about terrible tragedy happening to a group of people. There was no heroic escape or anything that could make this a happy ending. It was just a slow awful way for everyone to die. This tragedy will always hold a special place in my memory because of that, and a surprising amount of emotion came up in me while I watched this
@@faultycracker7805 yeah, for sure. I'm glad someone saw it. I wasn't sure anyone would since the video isn't new. I really want to believe those 2 men the natives saw survived and lived out their days with the natives or something. However, the unfortunate reality is likely that they went through tremendous effort just to die in vain. It honestly makes me want to vomit. I don't feel like most people are grasping the magnitude of the tragedy
That's so cool!. In my case, I learnt about the expedition through a book I read back in elementary school. The book was about mummies, and despite being an educational one, every page was filled with very graphic pics of mummified bodies all the way from ancient Egypt to the dead sailors from the Franklin expedition. My younger self probably found it more fascinating than shocking, but it still amazes me that they had this kind of stuff on the school library. This was in the mid to late 00s btw. Kinda morbid.
Conspiracies, analog horror, grim history, and pleasant Sunday school religion. No wonder you got a million subscribers so quick, it's like having a cool dad tell you awesome stories.
Fun cannibalism fact (there's something I never thought I'd type): often by the time people have to resort to cannibalism in starvation situations, even eating a whole person would not actually help them at all. The human body needs fat to properly go through digestion and break down what we eat into nutrients to keep us alive. If there's not enough fat in the food you're eating, your body takes it from preexisting subcutaneous fat (the stuff that sits under your skin and that everyone gets so bent out of shape about). When you're starving, one of the first things to go are your subcutaneous fat cells, and once you get to the point where you're resorting to cannibalism, it's likely that the people you're eating also have lost their SubCu fat. This means that while human meat might fill your stomach, that's basically all that it does for you. Ironically, the one place in the body that continues to have fat cells even while starving is- wait for it- bone marrow! But as Wendigoon mentioned, eating human bone marrow is usually a last resort, so you don't have very much, if any, food (even human meat) remaining to take advantage of the fact that your body can now properly process what you're eating and help you survive. ✨️The More You Know✨️
Interesting fact: the Terror and Erebus actually a few years prior sailed to Antarctica to try and find the south pole(they didn’t) but because they lasted 4 years in the Antarctic the RNC thought they could handle anything. And even though it 99% didn’t happen the ending shot of The Terror is genuinely beautiful and really tied together the entire series
That's another thing, they made some incredibly important ecological discoveries while the Ross' were there, too. Their efforts contributed to the decline of the "Azoic theory" in which it was believed the deep ocean was totally devoid of life. Really crazy stuff
I first read about the Franklin Expedition in a book called "Into the Unknown", which covered human exploration from ancient times to the moon landings in the Apollo missions. I've been fascinated by it ever since, and one of the other theories for the lead poisoning of the crew is that their water supply, which was furnished by the same machine that purified ocean water for use in the ships' steam engines, also had the side effect of giving that water a very high lead content due to parts of the machine being made of lead.
@@heehoopeanut420 I actually still have my copy of the book, so here is the info on it. Rather than having a single author, it was actually a collaborative work by 18 different authors published in 1987 by the National Geographic Society. If you do a search for the book's full title "Into the Unknown: the Story of Exploration", it appears to be widely available for sale online from various sites and quite inexpensive (I saw several listings lower than $10). The book's cover art has a picture of a sailing ship atop an old-style globe.
I remember when your channel was so small and I knew that you'd hit one million one day, I know i'm just a stranger but I'm really proud of what you've accomplished on this platform.
I’ve hiked 15 and 20 mile days in my life.. well prepared and supplied, in favorable weather, and on pre-laid paths. I can only imagine the horrors of walking 600 miles over the course of 12 years through the brutality of the arctic with gear not meant for that purpose. Also, love the balloon and vids Mr. Goon forge on!
No way they only walked 50 miles a year. In the worst conditions imaginable, you’re still walking more than a mile a week. A lot more. A mile a day should be easily manageable. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t make 50 miles a month, if not 50 miles a week
@@StoutProper would love to see how your legs handled after literal years of walking. Especially in extreme harsh climates with the little gear they had.
@@StoutProper Well sure if you knew where you were going. These guys were lost, alone, and undergeared. It’s not like they were hiking trail B at your local national park. They didn’t have a nice clean cut path, they probably weren’t trying to go for distance, they had to survive. They probably camped in the same spot for weeks or months on end, it’s not like they were walking in a straight line non stop. They’d have to hunt, fish, forage, all of which take time and energy (that they’d already be low on). Try again.
@@mattshelton7423 ok but even in the worst conditions imaginable, averaging 1 mile a week for 12 years isn’t the best. Unless that’s as the cruise flies and they actually walked around in circles a lot further
If anyone hasn't seen it, I would highly recommend The Terror series. It manages to craft great characters and story around what little we know about the actual expedition alongside some of the best atmosphere I have seen on television. I'd just suggest going in with the understanding that it's a fictionalized version of the actual events. It's mostly really accurate, but if you're watching it as a pure retelling there's some stuff that would probably be really annoying.
It would have sent it from really good to brilliant if a real world animal who actively hunts humans, was the beast going after them. To the sailors it probably would be like a demon or what not but it didn't actually have to be. Is a little silly and lowers the experience not to mention actually detracts from the horror these men went through
What’s wild to me is that for a time, whether it was a moment, or multiple years, there was a final survivor who had nothing but their own thoughts, and a never ending wilderness to traverse and endure.
Your comment made me think of Otzi the iceman, as he was nicknamed. He was the incredibly well preserved man who lived around 3000 BC and was found in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps. He had been murdered. It has been determined he was traveling alone (although not completely alone obviously) in the mountains where there were no human settlements. What was he doing there? Was he attempting to elude the person or people who ultimately killed him. Had he been cast out of where ever he lived, which would have been an excellent punishment in those days. Was he on a spiritual journey, or seeking to trade? Were his people wiped out and he the only survivor? For most of human history we have been few in number and scattered in small settlements or living as hunter gatherers, I imagine this scenario of a lone human making their way across endless wilderness might once have been quite common, for better or for worse. The taming of the majority of the world by people is a very recent thing.
OMG when I was a kid I was fascinated with this voyage. There was a book in my local library with detailed pictures and everything. I mostly looked at the pictures of the corpses. People thought there was something really wrong with me.....
When I was a child I was super obsessed with mummies and I was gifted a book about this whole ordeal. It maybe the same one because it was highly detailed. Ah memories 😂
One of my ancestors, Joseph Dalton Hooker, was a good friend of Charles Darwin and was a botanist. One of his first expeditions was on board the Erebus and the Terror and it was the last major voyage of exploration made by sail. Cool stuff to hear about the Erebus and the Terror from you.
Check out casting lots, a survival cannibalism podcast (not affiliated, just obsessed with survival cannibalism) Most of the horrors are maritime, tundra, or some combination.
I'm Canadian and I remember being morbidly fascinated by the Franklin expedition, especially the photos of the preserved corpses in our history textbooks. I've also visited Churchill, Manitoba and saw, in a church there, a stained glass window that was gifted by Lady Franklin as thanks for the efforts to try and find the expedition.
Really hoping that Maritime Horrors gets a subscriber boost from having Wendigoon mention him. All of his videos are well researched and respectfully done, can’t get enough of them.
I love how Wendigoon puts his "thank you for watching" at the start of the video instead of the end. He wants you to know ASAP that he's grateful and I respect that.
Despite doing a degree in History in the UK, I've never heard this specific tale - you told it fabulously and it would be great to have more episodes like this
I live in Banbridge (home of Crozier) and I always wondered what it was he did to have a statue of him built in the town. Now I know, and I especially like the idea that the guy walked for 12 years across artic, refusing to give in to the elements
Not to mention he was Irish, and the British looked down on him for that. But I think its great he's still commemorated so many years later. Crozier was a badass. And of course all the other crew. They didn't deserve to die like that.
bloody hell I didn't expect to find someone from Banbridge here. I went to the Academy so I was used to hearing about him and never really thought much about his achievements (I guess you don't think twice about stuff you grow up with, it becomes your 'normal.') It's weird to think of our normal little town centre and how drastically different that alien landscape is. How bleak and distant it must've seemed. I'm sure you know yourself, NI can feel like such an insular place; growing up I really felt like the world outside of our little island might as well have been on another planet. That's with all of our access to international media and insights into the outside world.
"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage, To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea/ Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage, And make a Northwest Passage to the sea" This part of maritime history is one of my favorites!
Just finished “The Terror” by Dan Simmons (the show of the same name is based on the book but there are some pretty interesting differences) last night. Can’t recommend enough. Although, without giving too much away, it does incorporate some fantasy horror elements so it’s not a cut and dry retelling of what happened. Either way it’s a really good book. There is a book simply called “Erebus” that was recommend to me that is nonfiction to my knowledge. If that interests you more.
Yeah, I really loved the show (at least season 1 that's about this). I felt like the fantasy-horror threw me off a little bit, because IMO there was enough horror potential with the realistic aspects of their situation. Some of the shots in the first couple of episodes were terrifying.
What an amazing but horrifying story. At one point it is mentioned that someone may have gone back to the Terror to try and pilot it but failed. I just want to point out how scary that must've been. You know that feeling you get walking through a completely empty and quiet house? I imagine that was the same feeling for whoever came back to the ship. The only sound is the wind and maybe waves, meanwhile he's walking completely alone through a dark and abandoned ship that was filled with life not long before. RIP to all of those brave men.
For a ship that size it would have required way more than one person to even attempt to sail her. I'm guessing a minimum of six. But you're right - going back to their abandoned ship must have been spooky af.
@@neuralmutefunny you landed on the number 6, as the Norwegian fella who actually completed the expedition through the passage did it with a crew of 6 men.
This reminds me of the Terra Nova Expedition. It was a British expedition into Antarctica that tried to be the first to reach the South Pole. They all froze to death there, although some of them did reach the South Pole (only to find out that another expedition had beaten them to it by just a month).
I've always been fascinated with a similar story to this from the age of early Antarctic exploration which I'm not sure if you've made a video on, but it's the failed expedition to Antarctica by Robert Scott and his other English companions. Scott led two expeditions to the Antarctic, one of which he didn't return from. At the time of the second expedition, he was attempting to become the first man to reach the South Pole, but he was beaten by his rival Roald Amundsen - not least of which due to Scott's stubborn decisions to use items like wool to keep warm instead of furs, which became heavy and wet very quickly & wouldn't dry easily. He also used horses who struggled with the snow and ice rather than sled dogs, and I believe even tried powered snowsled ski things that stopped working early in the trip. Morale for the failed trip only fell further on their way back from the Pole thanks to deaths, including a self-sacrifice from one of the explorers, Oates, who knew he was holding the group back. After asking that he be left to die a few days before, one evening he allegedly said "I am just going outside and may be some time" before walking out into the snow never to be seen again. Scott and his two remaining men were found dead about 20km (~12.5 miles) from his next supply depot, stopped by a blizzard & exhaustion. It's believed part of the reason they were so sluggish is because Scott insisted on carrying with him extremely high-quality fossils that he found during the return trip, and Scott apparently wasted days examining and unearthing these fossils during the run back. The fossils that were found with him actually proved that Antarctica used to be connected to the other continents, and I actually got a chance to see a few of them while I was in university. Awesome video! Love your content
Just finished watching The Terror and I loved it! Even without the supernatural twist, the real story is just absolutely terrifying. Being trapped in the Arctic for years without any hope of rescue while hundreds of you are slowly dying off, starving and going mad. It's truly haunting and tragic.
I think Lady Franklin should get a statue, because she's the one who DID NOT GIVE UP in trying to find out what happened to her husband and his crew, and lead to the discovery of the proper path through the search parties, right?
A statue would have been a complete waste of money, time and effort. However, some crazy drunk chef did name a baked potato filling in honour of her, it's called the tuna and sweetcorn filling.
@@MikeMichaels1987 Not really, it was just honoring her perseverance and decision-making, overall in a time where women decisions were so limited and constantly left aside.
The first time I saw them they really creeped me out! Those guys have been frozen for around 175 years, and you can still see the stitching in their clothes, not to mention their eyelashes and fingernails.
Congrats on making it on trending man! Been here for awhile, so heartwarming to see your channel grow. You are a great content creator and deserve the wide audience you have accrued to hear your voice ❤️
I’ve been fixated on this story for weeks now. Watched The Terror, several documentaries, this video. I can’t get enough of this interesting expedition.
I've always said that "Low effort, highly informative" content is STILL infinitely better than "high effort, zero information". Not that your videos are low effort considering all of the research and time you put in these, it's just so much more casual and enjoyable to watch something that is not overedited and the person is overacting sometimes over nothing. These kind of videos feel like I'm just listening to a friend who explains things very, very clearly with bit of humor.
You mean high effort? Low effort makes me think of shittily done videos where the dude talks with a boring, drawl of a voice and has the most basic editing and script possible. Furthermore, idk if you know, but the myth of 'preferred learning style' is just that: a myth. Which is once again, why it doesn't matter how 'informative' the video is, but moreso how well done/the effort put in. Unless the subject is already interesting, how well it's delivered matters most with how well we, the viewers, not only pay attention but retain information. TL;DR Effort matters more than "information" as it correlates more heavily with information; It is easier to put little effort but a lot of info in a video, it is much harder to put high effort in yet little 'information,' as the effort usually goes into how said info is delivered. This is why the 'preferred learning style' is a myth. It's all about how well done it is.
By the way, both ships returned (in spirit/name) during the First and Second World War. The Navy built two Erebus-class monitors (light cruisers/heavy destroyers armed with a single massive battleship turret for shore bombardment) and named them Erebus and Terror.
If I die while stranded with a starving friend whose near death, I think I'd rather them eat my body than die themselves. I don't want that to happen, but I'd rather that than my friend die along with me. Now, if they KILL me to eat me, I'll haunt them forever.
It's an incredible story to be sure, I'm surprised you didn't mention the cursed painting by the way. It's called "Man proposes, god disposes" and depicts two polar bears eating human remains among the wreckage of a ship in the ice, draped in a union jack. It was an edgy af thing to paint and was hugely controversial at the time. After the fuss died down it ended up hanging in an exam hall, the students objected and believed the painting would bring bad luck, so before every exam it's concealed behind a union jack. Also, just a point on the steam engines. It's true they were small, but I'd argue that was a huge advantage: A larger engine would mean that every time they fired it up and got their boiler up to pressure it would mean a huge expenditure of resources. A smaller one could be quickly fired up in emergencies and it wouldn't be a huge waste to just run it for an hour or two. I don't think anyone thought it was going to turn the ship into an ice-breaker, the main utility for a square sailer would be the ability to sail upwind in emergencies. So if they were pinned into a bay for a couple of weeks by bad winds, they could power their way out. Or if they were being driven onto a lee shore by a storm they could potentially save themselves.
The idea of these men fighting through the cold and unknown is super captivating. The age of exploration is dope. I hope you do more vids like this. Reminds me of the song “No Quarter” by Led Zeppelin.
kind of obsessed with the term you used: "vicious poetry" i think the harsh landscape of the arctic very much fits that description. i've been fascinated with this story since the amc show the terror. also kind of find it crazy that people literally live in such a harsh climate and watched as these ships came and men explored and struggled to survive in their homelands lol, i know they obviously didn't have the supplies and resources to help them (or possibly the inclination) but it really must have been strange to witness for both parties!
What makes their story more tragic is that they died from improperly preserved food when they were going into a giant freezer. Having non-canned food that they could freeze out in the ice may have been better than eating the crap they had.
The wife got all her family and gathered her friends on asking for their help, even asked their small time writer friend *Charles Freaking Dickens* no one important just a historical figure in writing, and got him making missing posters. (Yeah did more than that, but that's pretty much what happened.)
This story is insane The whole image of the captain of the terror walking through the wilderness for 12 years is insane, I can't believe something like that happened Thanks for making these amazing videos man
I think there's a point in which logic can no longer fight off superstition, and that line was crossed when they decided to take a couple of ships named 'Erebus' and 'Terror' (i.e. darkness and fear) to one of the most dangerous and inhospitable places in the world.
I binged tiers 3-10 of the conspiracy theory iceberg today, come to find out he posted a video while I was watching. Can never get enough of this channel, keep up the amazing work, and I absolutely can’t wait for my Wendidude plush to arrive
Reading Wendigoon’s comments is so awesome. And I always learn something too. All the advice on lighting, filming, and editing is really amazing- people genuinely want to help Wendigoon succeed and put out beautiful videos. *THIS* is the reason YT is better than ALL the socials out there. It’s just not as mean.
The ocean terrifies me. Its so unforgiving and this story made me so sad I wanted to cry. These men stood no chance, such little hope. Yet they still made *something* .
I think the one thing that anyone of sound mind and reasoning would agree with is that, if humans are one thing, it's that we are fucking PERSISTENT. I mean, it's in our DNA, we evolved to have crazy levels of endurance. Really cool stuff.
Lived in Yukon as a kid, coldest town I know in Canada. Had some -80F ish (-62celcius) few decades ago. The belief that fish is an essential part of life in these beautiful desolate lands are part of every family that lives there. Massive respect to the Inuits.
@@tyroneeasy9804 it really aint, I live in a cold place although it's not the coldest in my country, however other people live for centuries in those colder regions and a lot of them don't leave (some do of course), theyre totally used and adjusted to it and it's very livable. they love ice cream too. i'd rather live in freezing cold than heat
Props to you, I recently moved from Ottawa to Sudbury, and even though it’s just barely what can be considered Northern Ontario, it feels like a rocky, desolate, frozen grey wasteland compared to down East. I can’t imagine what it feels like to live up in the true North. The Inuit people are slept on, those guys are friggin badasses.
nice touch with the pirate shanty "drunken sailor" at the end, and when we compare rome lead poisoning casued craze we could definetly say what should we do with the "drunken" sailor :S I once inhaled a bit of lead by mistake and instantly had urinate blood so i dont think it's a thing to mess around with :S cost they're they lives
I have no idea how true the "eating the leather off their own boots" tales are, but as a Canadian, I have heard about explorers lost in the arctic doing just that for my entire life, it's just part of the mythology around exploring the Canadian wilderness and how inhospitable the terrain can be. I was honestly caught off guard because I haven't heard it in many years, but yeah, we Canadians have all heard those stories as kids.
That's what the Donner Party did too. It's pretty common for anyone starving. Leather is kinda edible and I guess it relives hunger. There was a group of minors who ate their boots. So it is something that happens.
Hi, absolutely loved the story, I also have a suggestion for a video. There was a guy in 1945 called Clemens Forell, he was a German soldier who got captured by the Russians, he tried to escape and did make it back to Germany on foot (about 5400km if you connected them on a map, I don't know the exact distance he traveled) He got hunted by the Russians all the way back, and the great thing about it is it is very well documented, they even made a movie about it in 1959. His story is absolutely insane, I checked historical accuracy on the movie, and it seems to be pretty accurate, 100% would love you to make a video about it, and hey free content :) Edit: Grammar.
This is a very common story. I have a friend who’s great grandfather was shot in the head during the US civi war, survived, and walked from Pennsylvania to The Carolinas. Not only that, he did so by simply walking down the beach, which around the jagged coasts of Maryland probably added hundreds of miles.
@@SpencerFlood420 just because it is a common story doesn't make it less interesting in my opinion. Your friends grandfather's story must be a very interesting story as well.
Sometimes I start out a video completely uninterested in the subject matter but you do such an awesome job of telling the story with such enthusiasm and you sell it so well that I wind up loving it before we're even halfway in. You had me literally daydreaming longingly about taking a hike through Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, FFS!
My fave book I've read in the last 5 years was "Erebus" by Michael Palin (yes, of Monty Python. Dude's a huge maritime history buff). So I was so happy to see you make a video on these ships.
absolutely amazing how well preserved those bodies were, i am astonished by how the faces were so well preserved that you could've possibly obtained identification from them at the time, i agree completely about how horrifying yet astounding it is to see how these people were conserved almost perfectly by their circumstances of death
I have been obsessed with the Franklin expedition for years. I’m so glad I am around to see them find the ships it is mind blowing to see the video from inside the ship knowing some of what happened to it.
As a kid I adored mummies, I thought it was so cool how the Egyptians created them and wanted to be one myself but was too scared of the pain of getting my brain removed (I thought corpses felt pain so that kind of gives you an idea of how young I was), when I got old enough to read my grandparents got me a book on mummies and I discovered there were more types of mummies/preserved bodies than I realized. I remember reading about peat mummies, Incan mummies in high altitudes, there was even something about Rosaria Lombardo who died at the age of two due to the Spanish Flu, her father had her embalmed so well that she simply looked like she was sleeping (her body can still be visited by the public, she’s in a sealed glass chamber beneath an Italian church). Then I got to the section about the mummified bodies on this voyage and was absolutely terrified. I still loved the book but the pictures of those bodies were too much. I was fine with every other corpse in the book, just not them. It might have been a specific picture as well, I’m curious to see if this is the same voyage I’m thinking of and that traumatizing picture is there. I think in the end my mom cut out some paper and just taped them over the scary pictures so I didn’t have to avoid reading entire pages so I appreciate that. Edit: Yep, it was the first body shown that always got me as a kid.
ugh, I had a book about this voyage that had a photo of one of the corpses. I wasn't expecting it and it terrified me. I think it's something about their expressions, they look barely human yet still so recognisable. And their story makes it so much worse, to know the suffering they endured before they finally passed.
You’re thinking of Rosalia Lombardo. She died at age 2 in Sicily and her father found someone with secret/advanced embalming techniques. She’s in a glass display case and looks like she’s “sleeping.”
@@liyre4189 Omg I had a book the sounds similar. Do you remember the name of it? I always found it interesting but had like blu tacced those pages together because they actually gave me nightmares lmao
@@liyre4189 “barely human yet still so recognizable”, you really hit the nail on the head here at least in my opinion. When it comes to an unwrapped Egyptian mummy they tend to look way more deteriorated which helps cement just how old they are, in a way it’s almost like at that point they aren’t even corpses any more like how I’m normally squeamish with dead things but wouldn’t bat an eye holding the bones of a dinosaur. Then you have something like the Incan mummies, they’re usually much more well preserved to the point you could probably get finger prints off of some of them and they look rather peaceful (I don’t know if this is 100% true but the theory is these mummies were chosen as sacrifices and were given nice clothing, a drugged drink, and simply left to fall asleep and never wake up on the mountain peaks so most of them look like they could wake up at any moment). With these mummies however there wasn’t any special ritual that took place, no days of work to preserve them, they were simply given the best burial their their peers could offer them in this terrible situation. They weren’t supposed to be preserved and dug up on a later date, it was just humans trying to be human. I think that feeling is reflected in those images, sorry for the long post it was kind of hard to write everything down in a way that made sense!
the tv show "The Terror", introduced me to the story of the Franklin expedition, glad you cover it so others take an interest into this sad, tragic story
Man, you gotta credit Lady Franklin here, if it wasn't for her persistence of finding the love her life, the voyage wouldn't have been recorded, I can't imagine the pain she must have went through for her pleading to fall on deaf ears that she just had enough to used her own money to find her beloved.
The photos of the crew, they haunted my imagination as a kid. Theres something about this story thats more visceral than others. Its almost like they’re all still out there, waiting to be rescued. Thanks for the video, it scratched the content itch
i’m from canada, that first picture of the frozen dude was in my grade 8 social textbook. also been watching you for a long time, it’s great to see so much growth!!
Get AtlasVPN for just $1.99/mo using my discount: atlasv.pn/Wendigoon
FIRS T FISR
Ayyyy Wendi
dad you made another video this week :)
@@spimmed8666 sorry bro beat you to it
I did my science project back in October on the Franklin expedition!!
“As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket ship was supplied by the lowest bidder.”
― John Glenn
Great quote Slug!
The bill says otherwise
P
Oh fuck that puts RFPs in a new perspective.
@@marblemarble7113
That's the thing, that absurd bill was the lowest bidder at the time. It's just that space exploration is absurdly expensive.
TWELVE YEARS?! He walked for twelve years?! Oh my God I can't even imagine. Even if the journey wasn't a success, the man was a badass.
He never skipped leg day
@@marissahicks3529 Lmao
@@marissahicks3529 Legend has it, that every foe that he came across died in a single leg swipe...
he walked for 12 years and never reached civilisation, while never leaving Canada. Wtf
@@ephraimboateng5239 Keep in mind just how vast Canada is, and what time period this takes place in, as well as how far north they would have been sailing to find a way through.
What some people don’t realize is that getting stuck in ice while on a wooden ship doesn’t just mean you cannot move, the ice moves around you and freeze. This can wear down the wood like sandpapering wood. And when it does freeze, it puts immense inward pressure on the hull. So much that it could cause the hull to implode in on itself. Lastly as the hull stays under frozen water longer, the less habitable it becomes, the walls freeze and become covered with layers of ice and the air inside of the hull cannot trap heat as effectively. In older models that include steamers and steam engines, having ice touch your steam engine was extremely dangerous as it could cause the entire engine to explode, blowing the ship up outwards. Being stuck in ice back in the infant days of modern sailing was an extremely terrifying idea.
Wow 😮
Yike
Oh shit, yeah that makes sense.
Daaamn
one interesting fact is that the vessels they chose were bombardment vessels, which were built heavier and sturdier than most other vessels. that could be in part why they weren't crushed by the ice.
Wouldn't call the mid 18 hundreds the "infant days of sailing" sailing was on it's way out by that time
In regards to the people who made the eventual uncovering of this story possible, a big shoutout is needed to a man named Louis Kamookak.
He was a Gjoa Haven Inuit explorer, historian, and forensic archeologist who worked on the Franklin Expedition Discovery project here in Canada, and he was invaluable in his efforts speaking with Inuit elders on their passed down testimonies on the survivors, charting their locations by extrapolating the original Inuit geographical names with their Western equivalents, tracking down and collecting locations of found relics of the survivors' trek south, and his information was key in setting the search areas that eventually found the ships.
So much of this story would've remained a mystery without him. He died in 2018.
Inuit oral history has been invaluable to exploration efforts in the northernmost parts of the Americas. I read a research paper in one of my anthropology classes about how eerily accurate their mapping and understanding of surrounding geography was without ever having to create a physical map. Directions were passed down to their children through complex mnemonics and songs. Many early English and French explorers/tradesmen based their own maps what the Inuits drew in the snow and dirt in front of them. It’s super fascinating.
Thank you for sharing this ❤
This is why i read the comments, gems like this that give even more depth to the story; Thank you for your contribution :)
@@mattuwu9978 Pretty much sums up the difference between Indigenous thinking and Western thinking. It's a completely different way of processing information. Just a theory -- I think an over-reliance on writing things down may eventually cause certain areas of the brain to atrophy out of disuse.
Thank you so much for mentioning Louis. His name is usually not mentioned but he is an *INTEGRAL* part of the Franklin story. There's a great video on TH-cam that shows a tv program from the 90's if you look called "Arctic Tomb", Louis is actually interviewed in it.
Walking for 12 years straight, alone, in the frigid cold year round, with barely a single change in scenery to denote progress sounds like the closest thing to a living Hell I have ever heard. With us keeping their names and story alive almost 200 years later, and the mysteries of their trip solved at last, may all their souls rest in peace. They deserve it.
Not alone but with time......
That better not have been a spoiler lol
The fact that this two man could have walked for 12 years sounds quite inconceivable and unbelievable to me but if that's true, personally, that sounds much more terrible and bleak than the cannibalism and the other deaths
Heros? Nay. Men sent to die. Due to hubress and arrogance of old men. Let their souls not rest but seek revenge towards those families who thrust them to their doom. As is the way of the sailor.
@@uuncoolguy6 hubris*
Wendigoon's "As always, thank you for watching" has the same energy as PBS "This program is made possible by viewers like you, thank you" and just adds to the comfort I have listening to him talk about things he is interested in.
You did it you cracked the code of why he seems so nostalgic in that way
Hell yeah. Wendigoon has that comfy PBS/NPR feel while always being interesting.
truest comment ever
Indeed
Comment of the century
“Lifeboat full of useless stuff”. Some see this as a sign of the crew were impaired by illness and malnutrition, BUT others make a pretty good case that the stuff only seemed useless at first, and each had a purpose….weird, obscure books could be brought to help kindle fires, silverware and curtain rods could be hoped to be traded to the Inuit for seal meat, as metal was rare and valuable in the Arctic, etc.
Your right!😧
Good point, it's useless if used for its intended purpose but can be MacGyver'd into useful stuff in a pinch. Curtain rods could be traded but likewise could be used as part of makeshift shelters.
Also there’s the point that that’s what they clearly left behind in the lifeboat, if it was important in their eyes they wouldn’t have left it there
@@totallynotjevii574 its also possible they took some of each of the stuff because they wouldn't be able to hold every single piece of the stuff with them when they left the boat but only took as much as their pockets could hold so a lot of it would have to be left behind
i forgot the video but lindy beige did a video explaining why they would bring such useless things. basically your mind does stop working. a soldier in a foxhole may obsessively check their kit uselessly a million times "fidgeting". a sailor trying to escape a cold watery death may load the lifeboat with bullshit.
Recently falling on hard times, I constantly find myself watching documentaries on this expedition. Because no matter how bad of a day I’m having, nothing can be as bad as being stuck in ice for years without contact. Sick, cold, hungry, miserable, dark, and extremely windy and wet.
Other's pain does not cancel out your own. You are allowed to have a bad day, even if "others have had it worse". I hope you're feeling better!
I hope you're doing alright 👍
Get it together man! Jk jk hope you're doing good, remember there's always sun after the rain
TRUE. There are very few people in history I don't envy... but dying over years in the arctic... I'm glad that's not me.
@@sam-od7fu 100% but having some perspective on the severity of ones suffering can offer some reprieve at least in my experience
Even though she couldn't go out herself, I have to applaud Lady Franklin. She did so much to bring awareness to the situation and try to figure out what happened.
She was a real one till the end. That’s the type of love I want
I think women couldn't go to ships. And if they could.... the danger wasn't the cold.
Women in ships were seen as a tragedy to come.
@@leaguzzardi7565 yup sexist superstition stuff
Wtf? Damn no wonder everyone thinks the navy is all gay dudes fuxkin each other if they genuinely thought and possibly still think women on board bring bad luck LMAO
"They forged the last link with their lives." What a *metal* quote. They literally ended the last chapter of marine exploration with the biggest sacrifice they could have ever given. The search for their bodies literally reads like an epilogue to an epic, with how the people tracing the footsteps of the doomed expedition found the path that the members gave their lives in braving themselves.
They say dead men tell no tales, and I have to say, I agree. They don't tell tales. *_They let others tell theirs for them._*
I love metal as an adjective 🫶
“metal,” “forged”
Dead men tell no tales, they leave legends
That should be a lyric for some song
Dead men tell no tails.. They do but not always easily.
When I ever think about expeditions back then, the sheer logistical nightmare of supplies and navigation is enough to make my brain just melt.
Our technology today is incredibly impressive and amazing, but the comittment these people were willing to make back then to get where we are today, is even more amazing and impressive.
yes omg i never thought of this but 100%
@@Spencer-vq7se like the first chimp shot into space.
Where would the world be today without them
@@Angie-qp5ti in my case, probably not colonized lmaooo
Lady Franklin was the MVP of this story, she was so proud of her husband’s accomplishment and I can’t stop thinking how horrible it must have been for him to never return, yet she never gave up on him even after he was long dead
Yk what they say about great men… “behind every great man, there’s a great woman”
Yes indeed! And I feel she has been vilified by history as some kind of harridan attacking the Admiralty for years. A great woman, undoubtedly.
@@JulithaRyanShe literally destroyed the reputation of a Franklin explorer just because he brought back what she didn’t want to hear, that her husband died and his men ate each other. She’s a horrible woman.
John Rae was the only one to find the truth and he was desecrated for bringing it back to them first
In addition Lady Franklin started a campaign to denigrate John Rae’s findings and the man himself. There’s a great account of his life (qualified surgeon) and his role with the Hudson Bay Company. He himself was responsible for mapping thousands of miles of coastline in the area.
It still amazes me how John Torrington's body was so well-preserved from the extreme cold. Today, you can find bodies in the Italian Alps from World War One, and they look so recent that the local police often get calls about possible murder victims.
I wonder what really happened to Sir John Franklin, and where they buried him. All we have as evidence that he died before any crew revolts or cannibalism were the notes left by officers while their ships were stranded in the ice.
@@semperk1482 As morbid as it is to say, I think that Franklin died early, and was given a proper burial. We just haven't found the sight yet. Crozier could be anywhere, but I expect that Franklin was buried somewhere on Beachy Island.
@@kyleclark4449 Judging by the date when Franklin died, they were already iced in off King William Island, but probably not yet starving or dying of scurvy. He was considered to be rather old to be leading an expedition of this kind, and might have had underlying health problems, like heart trouble. He also might have been more susceptable to illnesses like pneumonia. Or he could have died accidentally - there are plenty of chances for accidental death on an old sailing ship in hazardous conditions.
There are a few theories about possible spots on King William Island where he might be buried, based on accounts from the local Inuit, who passed on lots of information about the strange white men in their giant boats. Since Inuit stories and guides finally led to the discovery of the ships themselves, I suspect that Franklin's gravesite is somewhere in those old stories as well.
@@neuralmute i wonder if they buried him with his monkey
The picture of the body terrified me when I first saw it when learning about the Expedition in 5th grade
My man walked 600 miles, was forced to eat his crew, and still kept walking, you have earned my respect. Rest in Peace
man's got the whole crews resolve in him
@@iambread2914 literally.
@UCMDLw3uiCNaKOJvkOueLiSQ hindsight. We’ll do anything to stay alive, you included unless survival instinct is just absent from your brain.
Edit: guy was talking about how the effort to stay alive was an “irresponsible glorification” of life and that he should’ve just shot himself instead of resorting to cannibalism.
huh, good to know
was going to ask what happened to the missing comment
well he was Irish. Irish could survive the heat death of the universe
i have never heard of a more bittersweet ending than crozier and a crewmate finding their goal after suffering for 12 whole years and seeing too many of their men die. this has to be the epitome of "we've won, but at what cost?"
I'd imagine that finding their goal gave them some comfort. At least they knew that all of their men's deaths weren't in vain.
I mean, technically many of the crew made it there with them, if only in part
I'll see myself out
@@JeepnHeel Some of the crew they carried with them, some they must have left on the way - that's biology for ya.
Another thing about the Terror and Erebus' legacy, is that prior the the doomed expedition it took part in some of the important early Antarctic Expeditions. Two of the first named mountains in Antarctica are named after them, Mt Erebus and Mt Terror, meaning that the legacy of the ships continue to live on.
The mountains are also mentioned in HP Lovecrafts At the Mountains of Madness :)
Other fun fact, Mt Erebus is a volcano featuring one of the 7 perpetual lava lakes known on the planet.
Sadly, Mt Erebus was the site of a 1979 plane crash that took the lives of 257 people, further connecting the name to tragedy.
@@likoplays.?!! H p Lovecraft have never recorded a song called at the mountains of madness.
@@lrwguitarIt’s a short story, about an expedition to Antarctica where people start disappearing.
I feel so bad Lady Franklin. For the person you love to just disappear and for the government who sent them to their deaths to just do nothing, those years of not knowing must have been torture. She travelled for years until her own death to find his remains. She never once gave up on finding him and only death could stop her. They really were two of the most badass people I’ve learnt about
Never thought I'd say this, but I gotta defend the British Government in that regard.
It was an extremly dangerous journey that you already wasted your *best* crew for that job on. Then you go on to loose another 2 ships and a bunch of men that were worse for the job than the crew you initially send.
At some point, as bad as it sounds, you gotta write those ships off and not throw out more lives in order to confirm what is already most likely to have happened.
I gotta give honors to Lady Franklin though, she invested a lot to know what happened to her husband.....
@OwlyBoi404 well, what about the wifes/relatives of the people who die trying to find a ship that has been missing for 5 years onward. Yea, it is tragic and sad that she didn't get closure fast, but is it worth risking the lives of even more men when its likely that you already know the outcome?
@OwlyBoi404 yeah basically. I take it you're not very worldly in your knowledge of governments and the things they have done.
@@NoFlu They also hired the cheapest canner. Yeah, they and the cannery are more to blame for the cannibalism than the crew.
@@marmyeater I wasn't talking about the cannibalism, I was talking about the fact that they didn't keep sending in more rescue crews, which are already far less experienced than the crew they have to search for, to find a boat that was by any account already a lost cause.
I mean it sounds harsh, but by sending in more and less experienced ships to find them, they would've lost many more men...
There used to be a documentary about this on Netflix that was like 3 hours long, followed them from camp to camp for the entirety of the journey. it was the saddest story I have ever heard.
If anyone knows the name of this documentary hook us up
DROP THE NAME DONT BE SHY
i only found The Terror (TV series) but not on netflix
The name?
@@Knight40k its not a documentary its like fiction but based on this story = The Terror ( tv series )
i just loved that "i'm awful with technology" at the end. It just solidified the "father who's talking about some weird stuff he found" energy
Lady Franklin having the officers get their pictures taken, and buying her husband a monkey for the voyage is just fantastic. Glad to see humans haven't changed much.
she really was the best wife 😅
Being trapped in the Arctic has to be one of the most terrifying experiences possible. You’re so boned, it’s just a matter of time before your mate across from you is tries to eat you or vice versa because you are so hungry. Truly chilling.
recently I read Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. story about a group of people who's plane crashed in the Andes, and 16 young men came out alive after enduring 72 grueling days of subzero temperatures and effects of being 12,000 feet above sea level, with nothing but snow and terrifyingly large mountains in all directions. amazing read, and incredible story. definitely reccomend it.
@@Joe-dp1cg there's a movie about it called Alive, they ate the pilot's ass meat
@@josmith213 I feel bad for laughing
To be honest in this cases rarely they try to kill someone and eat, the first to die usually from the cold, illness or starvation is the one to be eaten.
As stated in the video they were very overt to the ideia of cannibalism, and even in those dire circumstances it would not be enough to make than go ahead and kill the other men who were with them for years trying to survive with them.
@@carlitos5984 "chilling"
Huge shoutout to the northwest passage , gotta be one of the top 10 passages of all time
Ima let you finish but I'd like to say the Northeast Passage is the best passage of all time.
It's great when you want to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
@@PatrickWDunne tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
BIG dumb here, was the northeast passage discovered before the northwest?
@@ultraviolettas Northeast passage was discovered in 1878 by a Finnish Explorer Adolf Nordenskiöld. Although Franklin and the other expeditions sent after then kinda found the northwest passage, it wast first sailed through in 1906 by a norwegian explorer Roald amundsen. So basically northeast passage was discovered first.
As a canadian sailor who went in the arctic, going there in wooden ships is MENTAL!!! Even our icebreakers can struggle in its ice...
What’s a foot thick ice when you’ve got some pickaxes and elbow grease?
@@cryamistellimek9184 Actually rubber hammers so to ''save'' the paint job and avoid sparks ;) but yeah that's every morning
@Thungus TheBungus All summer long. But less and less due to climate change...
@@jaideuxmains I wonder what's causing that pesky climate change
As they say, "wooden ships and iron men"
It's a very tragic story, but the fact that after all this time people are still trying to find out everything they can about what happened is as you say a tragic victory. Hell ol boy walked for 12 freaking years, "I am getting the f up out of here and never going to the artic again. Peace." I also find it wonderful that Franklins wife was still alive to see her husband recognized for the discovery and receiving his medal. She obviously loved him a great deal considering the lengths she went to to find out what happened to him.
If you enjoy this story, I’d highly recommend reading on Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Endurance. One of the craziest stories of survival, as Shackleton got all of his men out alive after the sinking of the Endurance, due to sailing a fortified lifeboat through some of the fiercest winds in the world.
I actually just finished Endurance the other day, I'm still in shock that they all made it out alive. The Franklin Expedition really feels like the bad ending to Shackleton's Expedition.
When all else fails, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton
I just read a post where they are going to go down to find the endurance wreck soon. They said the ice is a nightmare for them as well.
Wonderful book
I think that's the guy who 'Shackleton's Cross' is based on. One of my favourite pieces of music
Lead poisoning or "saturnism," was a big problem back then. The canning process made life a lot easier for sailors, and soldiers, but they really didn't understand the effects that lead ingestion would have on the brain. Really bad way to go.
I read something once that said they had new water heaters as well, but the pipes were lead so any water drank onboard was tainted with lead. Not that it drove them crazy, but it forced them off ship to find water as well as food.
@@CosmicFreedoms I wouldn't at all be surprised. Back in days of prohibition, thousands of people went blind from acute lead poisoning. Often when distilling the alcohol, old car radiators were used for condensers. The radiators where lead lined. I've heard that's where the term "drinking yourself blind," comes from.
I’m learning a lot just from reading the comments !
@@Nephilim1717 make sure they are right before running off
@@dennismartin5821 i thought that was a consequence of drinking the methanol that's often produced along with ethanol, by not separating them properly? Although I'm sure both could be the case. I never knew about the old radiators
Whenever I hear stories like these, I'm always reminded of the single most underrated survival story: A. J. Barrington. Him and 2 other gold panners got lost in Fiordland New Zealand for 3 months in 1864, living off sparrows and rats, and discovered two of the most beautiful landmarks in the area that wouldn't be discovered again for 70 years. Barrington kept a journal the whole time, and all three men survived, so we know exactly what happened in their ordeal
There's also Poon Lin, who survived 133 days adrift and alone in the atlantic.
Underrated and unheard of, I'm a Kiwi and I've never heard of this wtf imma look this up
"The British government hired the lowest bidder to make--"
Some things never change. British and American military, both.
Also, the lack of praise of Captain Crozier despite him living a lot longer is notable. Probably because he was Irish.
“Military-grade” still means “barely passable and cheap.”
@@prestonb.f. this guy gets it
Name a single military that hires the highest bidder.
Ay but when it comes to the chairforce we go all out on quality
@@BreadSlayer The RAF are some of the most professional people I've had the pleasure of meeting
I like how this crazy macabre tale starts off so wholesomely. Pet monkey, group photo, little costumes for the monkey...
Wendigoon never misses with the most well researched and intriguing stories
hello
The video is probably very good, but it’s only been 5 minutes 🤨
I like the new pfp
You literally copy and pasted this. Clout chaser
his way of explaining things... he should be a professor
Frozen in ice since 1850's and you could not tell how old those bodies were by just looking at them, thats morbidly fascinating, wonder how many bodies of past times are just laying somewhere in the arctics not yet discovered
avatar type shit
Many. I have lived in Northern Norway the vast majority of my life, and while we don't have permafrost, winters are the longest part of the year. ...At least they FEEL like it. And if a winter storm knocks out the power for a little bit, water and food preservation are NOT an issue lol. It is not a stretch for me to take that and apply it to permanent frozen ground, no thawing, very shiny fresh-lookin' corpses!
If you're curious, I recommend looking up burial laws on Svalbard. It's 1am, so I apologize for not fact checking myself, but I am half asleep. But if I remember correctly, it's illegal to get buried at Svalbard. Because of the permafrost and the trouble that can cause.
I was 9 when they found the bodies in permafrost and I was OBSESSED with learning all about it. My mom was disturbed, her 9 year old daughter was mooning over 130 year old dead bodies LOL
How old are you now?
@@magicman3163 Sus
bodies that don't decompose are pretty fascinating. they died centuries before you were even born but you can still look them in the face as if they died yesterday.
@@magicman3163 Probably around 32.
@@shadoww767 nice
"They forged the last passage with their lives"
This is both an awesome, metal, beautifull and sad quote to be known by.
The Voyage of the Endurance and subsequent journey of one of it's lifeboats, the 'James Caird' is a similar chilling maritime story that I actually find more interesting than that of the Franklin expedition. Worth checking out if you have not ever heard of it and thought the story told here by Wendigoon was interesting.
Thank you so much for leaving this comment. I have just finished watching the documentary about it with tears in my eyes haha
What an extraordinary story of survival!
Shackleton was probably the best man to lead that expedition as well…and he did it all with a hole in his heart
Yeah, it was really a shame that Shackleton's story went more or less overlooked, due to the outbreak of WW1.
@@sightlessninja2456 Robert Shackelton was entirely a different breed of man. In my opinion he raised the bar for leadership ability incredibly high.
It's insane that when he got back from this death-defying voyage, now in a weak and aged body, he still volunteered to enlist in the war effort and asked specifically to go to the front lines.
there is something so horrifying about a man walking through the wilderness for 12 years having gone through all of this and still failing to find sanctuary, just imagine how life would have been for him holy jeez
12 yrs he endured unimaginable suffering. There’s something so powerful about that determination. What would you or I walk 12 years through desolate frozen wasteland for?
I swear you have one of the best voices for thrilling/mysterious storytelling, I just get sucked in everytime
i feel like so many people have said this before but i love how casually but carefully he explains these stories, especially when they get a bit too dark. his whole disposition in general is well suited for the topics he goes over
the cadence is everything
it's the cadence and the fact his voice seems, calm? idk he also has a very neutral accent, maybe a tiny Midwest twinge, and he looks like he actually enjoys what he is talking about. Him and nexpo both have that very chill vibe
Historians: How could these men have so tragically died?
Wendigoon: Their food was bad.
More like, “Which horrible means of likely death befell these particular sailors”
They should have ordered pizza then, can't go wrong with pizza
@@MikeMichaels1987 yeah but sadly the pizza delivery ship got trapped in the ice also and was never seen again
@@thedoctorss69 Then it looks like ice for dinner, again 😒
@@thedoctorss69 You should rename yourself Nattie Than Hallen, learn some chops on the guitar and who knows, this time next week you could be a rock star.
This was also part of the inspiration for the song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers. I love that song, and all of Roger's music in general, but after learning about this in depth I finally realized he was making a specific reference in one of the lyrics...
"Leaving weathered, broken bones and a long forgotten lonely cairn of stones"
Man that's way more chilling knowing exactly what he's referring to.
Dude. That's haunting af. I just listened to it.
The first version of that song I heard was a metal/rock cover by Unleash the Archers. The original, slower version took some getting used to xD
@@herpderp3916 there's also another metal cover by The Real McKenzies
Apparently the Dreadnaughts too.
There's also a much played folk song called "The Ballad of Sir John Franklin", it's well worth a listen.
i love that song. the chorus is so moody and sounds like an old sea shanty to me😂
I vividly recall bringing a book home from the library about this as a kid, because it had cool pictures of ships on the front of it, and I liked pirates at the time. My mom read through it with me, and I remember the horror and dread it filled me with because it was probably my first time hearing about terrible tragedy happening to a group of people. There was no heroic escape or anything that could make this a happy ending. It was just a slow awful way for everyone to die.
This tragedy will always hold a special place in my memory because of that, and a surprising amount of emotion came up in me while I watched this
Your comment hit me...in a good way. ..humans still exist, good to know. TY
@@faultycracker7805 yeah, for sure. I'm glad someone saw it. I wasn't sure anyone would since the video isn't new. I really want to believe those 2 men the natives saw survived and lived out their days with the natives or something. However, the unfortunate reality is likely that they went through tremendous effort just to die in vain. It honestly makes me want to vomit. I don't feel like most people are grasping the magnitude of the tragedy
@@gunner2225 no one ever dies in vain, ever.
That's so cool!. In my case, I learnt about the expedition through a book I read back in elementary school. The book was about mummies, and despite being an educational one, every page was filled with very graphic pics of mummified bodies all the way from ancient Egypt to the dead sailors from the Franklin expedition. My younger self probably found it more fascinating than shocking, but it still amazes me that they had this kind of stuff on the school library. This was in the mid to late 00s btw. Kinda morbid.
@@faultycracker7805 99 % of people die in vain. 🙄
Conspiracies, analog horror, grim history, and pleasant Sunday school religion. No wonder you got a million subscribers so quick, it's like having a cool dad tell you awesome stories.
Oh my god your right. there’s something so relaxing about the way he says the stories and it’s because he’s like a dad telling you a story.
I think I get cool uncle or that kinda stoner cousin vibes
A young dad lol
Perfect analogy!
@@liyre4189 stoners aren’t smart enough
Fun cannibalism fact (there's something I never thought I'd type): often by the time people have to resort to cannibalism in starvation situations, even eating a whole person would not actually help them at all. The human body needs fat to properly go through digestion and break down what we eat into nutrients to keep us alive. If there's not enough fat in the food you're eating, your body takes it from preexisting subcutaneous fat (the stuff that sits under your skin and that everyone gets so bent out of shape about).
When you're starving, one of the first things to go are your subcutaneous fat cells, and once you get to the point where you're resorting to cannibalism, it's likely that the people you're eating also have lost their SubCu fat. This means that while human meat might fill your stomach, that's basically all that it does for you.
Ironically, the one place in the body that continues to have fat cells even while starving is- wait for it- bone marrow! But as Wendigoon mentioned, eating human bone marrow is usually a last resort, so you don't have very much, if any, food (even human meat) remaining to take advantage of the fact that your body can now properly process what you're eating and help you survive. ✨️The More You Know✨️
Yeah, that’s called rabbit starvation when you get malnourished from only eating lean meat.
Yeah I’m not really looking forward to having to use that knowledge tbh
Got it. If I miss a meal, kill and eat the fat one.
Prioritize bone marrow consumption for all your last resort cannibalism needs
you are 100% wrong! The plane crash in the Andes mountains in the 1970's, those people lived off the dead for over a month.
Interesting fact: the Terror and Erebus actually a few years prior sailed to Antarctica to try and find the south pole(they didn’t) but because they lasted 4 years in the Antarctic the RNC thought they could handle anything.
And even though it 99% didn’t happen the ending shot of The Terror is genuinely beautiful and really tied together the entire series
That's another thing, they made some incredibly important ecological discoveries while the Ross' were there, too. Their efforts contributed to the decline of the "Azoic theory" in which it was believed the deep ocean was totally devoid of life. Really crazy stuff
they did not hear the warning
I first read about the Franklin Expedition in a book called "Into the Unknown", which covered human exploration from ancient times to the moon landings in the Apollo missions. I've been fascinated by it ever since, and one of the other theories for the lead poisoning of the crew is that their water supply, which was furnished by the same machine that purified ocean water for use in the ships' steam engines, also had the side effect of giving that water a very high lead content due to parts of the machine being made of lead.
That book sounds very interesting, do you happen to remember the auther?
@@heehoopeanut420 I actually still have my copy of the book, so here is the info on it. Rather than having a single author, it was actually a collaborative work by 18 different authors published in 1987 by the National Geographic Society. If you do a search for the book's full title "Into the Unknown: the Story of Exploration", it appears to be widely available for sale online from various sites and quite inexpensive (I saw several listings lower than $10). The book's cover art has a picture of a sailing ship atop an old-style globe.
@@DamonNomad82 definitely getting that book
I remember when your channel was so small and I knew that you'd hit one million one day, I know i'm just a stranger but I'm really proud of what you've accomplished on this platform.
It's crazy how videos from a year ago he was thanking people so much for 1k subs.. now he's at a million
@@sirllamaiii9708 Ikr
I’ve hiked 15 and 20 mile days in my life.. well prepared and supplied, in favorable weather, and on pre-laid paths. I can only imagine the horrors of walking 600 miles over the course of 12 years through the brutality of the arctic with gear not meant for that purpose.
Also, love the balloon and vids Mr. Goon forge on!
No way they only walked 50 miles a year. In the worst conditions imaginable, you’re still walking more than a mile a week. A lot more. A mile a day should be easily manageable. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t make 50 miles a month, if not 50 miles a week
@@StoutProper would love to see how your legs handled after literal years of walking. Especially in extreme harsh climates with the little gear they had.
@@mattshelton7423 a mile a week? I could crawl a mile a week
@@StoutProper Well sure if you knew where you were going. These guys were lost, alone, and undergeared. It’s not like they were hiking trail B at your local national park. They didn’t have a nice clean cut path, they probably weren’t trying to go for distance, they had to survive. They probably camped in the same spot for weeks or months on end, it’s not like they were walking in a straight line non stop. They’d have to hunt, fish, forage, all of which take time and energy (that they’d already be low on).
Try again.
@@mattshelton7423 ok but even in the worst conditions imaginable, averaging 1 mile a week for 12 years isn’t the best. Unless that’s as the cruise flies and they actually walked around in circles a lot further
If anyone hasn't seen it, I would highly recommend The Terror series. It manages to craft great characters and story around what little we know about the actual expedition alongside some of the best atmosphere I have seen on television. I'd just suggest going in with the understanding that it's a fictionalized version of the actual events. It's mostly really accurate, but if you're watching it as a pure retelling there's some stuff that would probably be really annoying.
It would have sent it from really good to brilliant if a real world animal who actively hunts humans, was the beast going after them. To the sailors it probably would be like a demon or what not but it didn't actually have to be. Is a little silly and lowers the experience not to mention actually detracts from the horror these men went through
@@joshuaockenden3650 agreed. The whole story was really terrifying enough.
@@yorkshirelass96 exactly. It dismisses the real experiences these men had to go through. Maybe studio interference or something is all I can think of
@@joshuaockenden3650 The Terror series was based on the book of the same name, which is why the creature is what it is.
The book The Terror by Dan Simmons is strikingly factual for a fantastical story of Inuit mythology. One of my all time favorites.
What’s wild to me is that for a time, whether it was a moment, or multiple years, there was a final survivor who had nothing but their own thoughts, and a never ending wilderness to traverse and endure.
Your comment made me think of Otzi the iceman, as he was nicknamed. He was the incredibly well preserved man who lived around 3000 BC and was found in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps. He had been murdered. It has been determined he was traveling alone (although not completely alone obviously) in the mountains where there were no human settlements. What was he doing there? Was he attempting to elude the person or people who ultimately killed him. Had he been cast out of where ever he lived, which would have been an excellent punishment in those days. Was he on a spiritual journey, or seeking to trade? Were his people wiped out and he the only survivor? For most of human history we have been few in number and scattered in small settlements or living as hunter gatherers, I imagine this scenario of a lone human making their way across endless wilderness might once have been quite common, for better or for worse. The taming of the majority of the world by people is a very recent thing.
OMG when I was a kid I was fascinated with this voyage. There was a book in my local library with detailed pictures and everything. I mostly looked at the pictures of the corpses. People thought there was something really wrong with me.....
Psychologically speaking it is concerning. Mostly because it shows early antisocial behaviour.
My class got to see the IMAX movie where they uncover the bodies in the wreck. Its a real trip.
Me too, reading about early exploration voyages is very interesting
When I was a child I was super obsessed with mummies and I was gifted a book about this whole ordeal. It maybe the same one because it was highly detailed.
Ah memories 😂
I love mummies and I don't know if I can tell people that lol
One of my ancestors, Joseph Dalton Hooker, was a good friend of Charles Darwin and was a botanist. One of his first expeditions was on board the Erebus and the Terror and it was the last major voyage of exploration made by sail. Cool stuff to hear about the Erebus and the Terror from you.
I too love Maritime Horrors, and I'm glad to see someone appreciates both history and horror at the same time.
Same!!
Check out casting lots, a survival cannibalism podcast (not affiliated, just obsessed with survival cannibalism) Most of the horrors are maritime, tundra, or some combination.
@@wickjezek1101 thanks I'll check it out.
me too!! i mentioned Maritime Horrors in a tweet about the video before i even saw he was mentioned! so cool
I'm Canadian and I remember being morbidly fascinated by the Franklin expedition, especially the photos of the preserved corpses in our history textbooks. I've also visited Churchill, Manitoba and saw, in a church there, a stained glass window that was gifted by Lady Franklin as thanks for the efforts to try and find the expedition.
Really hoping that Maritime Horrors gets a subscriber boost from having Wendigoon mention him. All of his videos are well researched and respectfully done, can’t get enough of them.
Yes they will but also from you reminding people about it like with me just now. Intriguing category.
I love how Wendigoon puts his "thank you for watching" at the start of the video instead of the end. He wants you to know ASAP that he's grateful and I respect that.
Despite doing a degree in History in the UK, I've never heard this specific tale - you told it fabulously and it would be great to have more episodes like this
I live in Banbridge (home of Crozier) and I always wondered what it was he did to have a statue of him built in the town. Now I know, and I especially like the idea that the guy walked for 12 years across artic, refusing to give in to the elements
It's also mad to take into account that Crozier would have been 62 years old when he was spotted by those Inuits
Not to mention he was Irish, and the British looked down on him for that. But I think its great he's still commemorated so many years later. Crozier was a badass. And of course all the other crew. They didn't deserve to die like that.
bloody hell I didn't expect to find someone from Banbridge here. I went to the Academy so I was used to hearing about him and never really thought much about his achievements (I guess you don't think twice about stuff you grow up with, it becomes your 'normal.') It's weird to think of our normal little town centre and how drastically different that alien landscape is. How bleak and distant it must've seemed. I'm sure you know yourself, NI can feel like such an insular place; growing up I really felt like the world outside of our little island might as well have been on another planet. That's with all of our access to international media and insights into the outside world.
"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage,
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea/
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage,
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea"
This part of maritime history is one of my favorites!
Legendary song was wondering if anyone was going to reference it
Have you heard the metal version by Unleash the Archers?
That takes me back to my first piano recital
Was hoping id see this comment.
@@bushmann6359 yeah not only is it a great metal song it also is in keeping with the spirit and cadence of the original. So good.
Just finished “The Terror” by Dan Simmons (the show of the same name is based on the book but there are some pretty interesting differences) last night. Can’t recommend enough. Although, without giving too much away, it does incorporate some fantasy horror elements so it’s not a cut and dry retelling of what happened. Either way it’s a really good book.
There is a book simply called “Erebus” that was recommend to me that is nonfiction to my knowledge. If that interests you more.
th-cam.com/video/MyFhsmJ5wzc/w-d-xo.html
Don't miss This
ㅤ
The book is soooooooo good, I liked the show as well but the book is on another level
That is one of my fave books.. I’ve read it several times over the years.
Yeah, I really loved the show (at least season 1 that's about this). I felt like the fantasy-horror threw me off a little bit, because IMO there was enough horror potential with the realistic aspects of their situation. Some of the shots in the first couple of episodes were terrifying.
AMAZING book! Can’t recommend it enough
What an amazing but horrifying story. At one point it is mentioned that someone may have gone back to the Terror to try and pilot it but failed. I just want to point out how scary that must've been. You know that feeling you get walking through a completely empty and quiet house? I imagine that was the same feeling for whoever came back to the ship. The only sound is the wind and maybe waves, meanwhile he's walking completely alone through a dark and abandoned ship that was filled with life not long before. RIP to all of those brave men.
For a ship that size it would have required way more than one person to even attempt to sail her. I'm guessing a minimum of six. But you're right - going back to their abandoned ship must have been spooky af.
@@neuralmutefunny you landed on the number 6, as the Norwegian fella who actually completed the expedition through the passage did it with a crew of 6 men.
This reminds me of the Terra Nova Expedition. It was a British expedition into Antarctica that tried to be the first to reach the South Pole. They all froze to death there, although some of them did reach the South Pole (only to find out that another expedition had beaten them to it by just a month).
This was Sir Walter Scott's team, wasn't it?
@@HadridarMatramen No, Robert Falcon Scott
@@masterspark9880 Aaah, of course!!! Knew it was A Scott XD
I'm so proud of him for getting one million subscribers. He really deserves it.
You would love the story of the voyage that inspired “Mody Dick.” The one mortician lady did a fantastic video about it and it is so fascinating.
I love her channel! It's called the whaling ship essex
There was also a BBC tv movie about it years ago called The Whale.
I've always been fascinated with a similar story to this from the age of early Antarctic exploration which I'm not sure if you've made a video on, but it's the failed expedition to Antarctica by Robert Scott and his other English companions. Scott led two expeditions to the Antarctic, one of which he didn't return from. At the time of the second expedition, he was attempting to become the first man to reach the South Pole, but he was beaten by his rival Roald Amundsen - not least of which due to Scott's stubborn decisions to use items like wool to keep warm instead of furs, which became heavy and wet very quickly & wouldn't dry easily. He also used horses who struggled with the snow and ice rather than sled dogs, and I believe even tried powered snowsled ski things that stopped working early in the trip. Morale for the failed trip only fell further on their way back from the Pole thanks to deaths, including a self-sacrifice from one of the explorers, Oates, who knew he was holding the group back. After asking that he be left to die a few days before, one evening he allegedly said "I am just going outside and may be some time" before walking out into the snow never to be seen again.
Scott and his two remaining men were found dead about 20km (~12.5 miles) from his next supply depot, stopped by a blizzard & exhaustion. It's believed part of the reason they were so sluggish is because Scott insisted on carrying with him extremely high-quality fossils that he found during the return trip, and Scott apparently wasted days examining and unearthing these fossils during the run back. The fossils that were found with him actually proved that Antarctica used to be connected to the other continents, and I actually got a chance to see a few of them while I was in university.
Awesome video! Love your content
Just finished watching The Terror and I loved it! Even without the supernatural twist, the real story is just absolutely terrifying. Being trapped in the Arctic for years without any hope of rescue while hundreds of you are slowly dying off, starving and going mad. It's truly haunting and tragic.
I think Lady Franklin should get a statue, because she's the one who DID NOT GIVE UP in trying to find out what happened to her husband and his crew, and lead to the discovery of the proper path through the search parties, right?
I say "amen" to this.
She should have had a statue with her husband
I agree
definitely.
A statue would have been a complete waste of money, time and effort. However, some crazy drunk chef did name a baked potato filling in honour of her, it's called the tuna and sweetcorn filling.
@@MikeMichaels1987 Not really, it was just honoring her perseverance and decision-making, overall in a time where women decisions were so limited and constantly left aside.
I know I was warned, but I still wasn't close to ready for how preserved those bodies were. Great video! No sleep for me tonight.
same
Literally thought i was gonna see some bones lol not actually skin
@@Tis1kay I'm definitely gonna see them in the dark corners of my room tonight
@@Tis1kay It was the eyes that got me. *shiver*
The first time I saw them they really creeped me out! Those guys have been frozen for around 175 years, and you can still see the stitching in their clothes, not to mention their eyelashes and fingernails.
Congrats on making it on trending man! Been here for awhile, so heartwarming to see your channel grow. You are a great content creator and deserve the wide audience you have accrued to hear your voice ❤️
I’ve been fixated on this story for weeks now. Watched The Terror, several documentaries, this video. I can’t get enough of this interesting expedition.
recommend the song "northwest passage" theres a few versions i like the dreadnoughts the most
I've always said that "Low effort, highly informative" content is STILL infinitely better than "high effort, zero information". Not that your videos are low effort considering all of the research and time you put in these, it's just so much more casual and enjoyable to watch something that is not overedited and the person is overacting sometimes over nothing. These kind of videos feel like I'm just listening to a friend who explains things very, very clearly with bit of humor.
It’s the human touch. No one likes watching an emotionless robot ramble about facts for 2 hrs straight. This is like story time w a good friend. 👈
@@indfnt5590 Agreed!
You mean high effort? Low effort makes me think of shittily done videos where the dude talks with a boring, drawl of a voice and has the most basic editing and script possible. Furthermore, idk if you know, but the myth of 'preferred learning style' is just that: a myth. Which is once again, why it doesn't matter how 'informative' the video is, but moreso how well done/the effort put in. Unless the subject is already interesting, how well it's delivered matters most with how well we, the viewers, not only pay attention but retain information.
TL;DR Effort matters more than "information" as it correlates more heavily with information; It is easier to put little effort but a lot of info in a video, it is much harder to put high effort in yet little 'information,' as the effort usually goes into how said info is delivered. This is why the 'preferred learning style' is a myth. It's all about how well done it is.
By the way, both ships returned (in spirit/name) during the First and Second World War. The Navy built two Erebus-class monitors (light cruisers/heavy destroyers armed with a single massive battleship turret for shore bombardment) and named them Erebus and Terror.
If I die while stranded with a starving friend whose near death, I think I'd rather them eat my body than die themselves. I don't want that to happen, but I'd rather that than my friend die along with me. Now, if they KILL me to eat me, I'll haunt them forever.
You never know how you react when put into the same situation. Don't try to say stuff when living in relative comfort.
@@johnnguyen9576You're totally getting eaten first
It's an incredible story to be sure, I'm surprised you didn't mention the cursed painting by the way. It's called "Man proposes, god disposes" and depicts two polar bears eating human remains among the wreckage of a ship in the ice, draped in a union jack. It was an edgy af thing to paint and was hugely controversial at the time. After the fuss died down it ended up hanging in an exam hall, the students objected and believed the painting would bring bad luck, so before every exam it's concealed behind a union jack.
Also, just a point on the steam engines. It's true they were small, but I'd argue that was a huge advantage: A larger engine would mean that every time they fired it up and got their boiler up to pressure it would mean a huge expenditure of resources. A smaller one could be quickly fired up in emergencies and it wouldn't be a huge waste to just run it for an hour or two. I don't think anyone thought it was going to turn the ship into an ice-breaker, the main utility for a square sailer would be the ability to sail upwind in emergencies. So if they were pinned into a bay for a couple of weeks by bad winds, they could power their way out. Or if they were being driven onto a lee shore by a storm they could potentially save themselves.
The idea of these men fighting through the cold and unknown is super captivating. The age of exploration is dope. I hope you do more vids like this. Reminds me of the song “No Quarter” by Led Zeppelin.
Listen to "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers, its about this expedition
kind of obsessed with the term you used: "vicious poetry" i think the harsh landscape of the arctic very much fits that description. i've been fascinated with this story since the amc show the terror. also kind of find it crazy that people literally live in such a harsh climate and watched as these ships came and men explored and struggled to survive in their homelands lol, i know they obviously didn't have the supplies and resources to help them (or possibly the inclination) but it really must have been strange to witness for both parties!
The Inuit did their best but had families to feed as it is
Both parties must have been like, “bro you live like this?”
That thought of the Terror and what remained of its crew trying to make it to land was heartbreaking.
What makes their story more tragic is that they died from improperly preserved food when they were going into a giant freezer. Having non-canned food that they could freeze out in the ice may have been better than eating the crap they had.
The wife got all her family and gathered her friends on asking for their help, even asked their small time writer friend *Charles Freaking Dickens* no one important just a historical figure in writing, and got him making missing posters.
(Yeah did more than that, but that's pretty much what happened.)
And then got pissed and shat on the guys who actually found the Franklin crew and gave them the news of the discovery.
@@teaspoonsofpeanutbutter6425 Kind of hard to be cool with people telling you that your loved ones turned into cannibals.
@@LordVader1094 if you’re gonna sh00t the messenger cause you can’t handle the truth then maybe live in ignorant bliss
This story is insane
The whole image of the captain of the terror walking through the wilderness for 12 years is insane, I can't believe something like that happened
Thanks for making these amazing videos man
I think there's a point in which logic can no longer fight off superstition, and that line was crossed when they decided to take a couple of ships named 'Erebus' and 'Terror' (i.e. darkness and fear) to one of the most dangerous and inhospitable places in the world.
I binged tiers 3-10 of the conspiracy theory iceberg today, come to find out he posted a video while I was watching.
Can never get enough of this channel, keep up the amazing work, and I absolutely can’t wait for my Wendidude plush to arrive
Reading Wendigoon’s comments is so awesome. And I always learn something too. All the advice on lighting, filming, and editing is really amazing- people genuinely want to help Wendigoon succeed and put out beautiful videos.
*THIS* is the reason YT is better than ALL the socials out there. It’s just not as mean.
The ocean terrifies me. Its so unforgiving and this story made me so sad I wanted to cry. These men stood no chance, such little hope. Yet they still made *something* .
I think the one thing that anyone of sound mind and reasoning would agree with is that, if humans are one thing, it's that we are fucking PERSISTENT. I mean, it's in our DNA, we evolved to have crazy levels of endurance. Really cool stuff.
Lived in Yukon as a kid, coldest town I know in Canada. Had some -80F ish (-62celcius) few decades ago.
The belief that fish is an essential part of life in these beautiful desolate lands are part of every family that lives there.
Massive respect to the Inuits.
im sorry but living in anything that cold sounds like hell to me
@@tyroneeasy9804 it really aint, I live in a cold place although it's not the coldest in my country, however other people live for centuries in those colder regions and a lot of them don't leave (some do of course), theyre totally used and adjusted to it and it's very livable. they love ice cream too. i'd rather live in freezing cold than heat
Props to you, I recently moved from Ottawa to Sudbury, and even though it’s just barely what can be considered Northern Ontario, it feels like a rocky, desolate, frozen grey wasteland compared to down East. I can’t imagine what it feels like to live up in the true North. The Inuit people are slept on, those guys are friggin badasses.
YUKON HAS CITIZENS? ALL MY CANADIAN FRIENDS SAY ITS JUST NORTHERN WYOMING
nice touch with the pirate shanty "drunken sailor" at the end, and when we compare rome lead poisoning casued craze we could definetly say what should we do with the "drunken" sailor :S I once inhaled a bit of lead by mistake and instantly had urinate blood so i dont think it's a thing to mess around with :S cost they're they lives
I have no idea how true the "eating the leather off their own boots" tales are, but as a Canadian, I have heard about explorers lost in the arctic doing just that for my entire life, it's just part of the mythology around exploring the Canadian wilderness and how inhospitable the terrain can be.
I was honestly caught off guard because I haven't heard it in many years, but yeah, we Canadians have all heard those stories as kids.
That's what the Donner Party did too. It's pretty common for anyone starving. Leather is kinda edible and I guess it relives hunger. There was a group of minors who ate their boots. So it is something that happens.
Hi, absolutely loved the story, I also have a suggestion for a video.
There was a guy in 1945 called Clemens Forell, he was a German soldier who got captured by the Russians, he tried to escape and did make it back to Germany on foot (about 5400km if you connected them on a map, I don't know the exact distance he traveled)
He got hunted by the Russians all the way back, and the great thing about it is it is very well documented, they even made a movie about it in 1959.
His story is absolutely insane, I checked historical accuracy on the movie, and it seems to be pretty accurate, 100% would love you to make a video about it, and hey free content :)
Edit: Grammar.
That sounds like a badass tale! What's the name of the movie?
@@jeffwoods4406 the name of the movie is: as far as my feet will carry me. Also there ia a movie made in 2001 and one in 1959
This is a very common story. I have a friend who’s great grandfather was shot in the head during the US civi war, survived, and walked from Pennsylvania to The Carolinas. Not only that, he did so by simply walking down the beach, which around the jagged coasts of Maryland probably added hundreds of miles.
@@SpencerFlood420 just because it is a common story doesn't make it less interesting in my opinion.
Your friends grandfather's story must be a very interesting story as well.
Heck yeah! Wendigoon please cover this story
Sometimes I start out a video completely uninterested in the subject matter but you do such an awesome job of telling the story with such enthusiasm and you sell it so well that I wind up loving it before we're even halfway in. You had me literally daydreaming longingly about taking a hike through Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, FFS!
Oh heck yeah! Wendigoon always delivers the quality vids when I need them most!
Perfect timing whenever you need to long video to listen to
@oh no are you a bot? I have seen 2 comments with the same wording
@@TKDFORCEART yes man that's a bot, I swear youtube has to implement a captcha or smth getting tired of seeing them
@@greazypozer fr but they're too busy trying to hop on the nft train instead actually improving shit
My fave book I've read in the last 5 years was "Erebus" by Michael Palin (yes, of Monty Python. Dude's a huge maritime history buff). So I was so happy to see you make a video on these ships.
absolutely amazing how well preserved those bodies were, i am astonished by how the faces were so well preserved that you could've possibly obtained identification from them at the time, i agree completely about how horrifying yet astounding it is to see how these people were conserved almost perfectly by their circumstances of death
I have been obsessed with the Franklin expedition for years. I’m so glad I am around to see them find the ships it is mind blowing to see the video from inside the ship knowing some of what happened to it.
As a kid I adored mummies, I thought it was so cool how the Egyptians created them and wanted to be one myself but was too scared of the pain of getting my brain removed (I thought corpses felt pain so that kind of gives you an idea of how young I was), when I got old enough to read my grandparents got me a book on mummies and I discovered there were more types of mummies/preserved bodies than I realized. I remember reading about peat mummies, Incan mummies in high altitudes, there was even something about Rosaria Lombardo who died at the age of two due to the Spanish Flu, her father had her embalmed so well that she simply looked like she was sleeping (her body can still be visited by the public, she’s in a sealed glass chamber beneath an Italian church). Then I got to the section about the mummified bodies on this voyage and was absolutely terrified. I still loved the book but the pictures of those bodies were too much. I was fine with every other corpse in the book, just not them. It might have been a specific picture as well, I’m curious to see if this is the same voyage I’m thinking of and that traumatizing picture is there. I think in the end my mom cut out some paper and just taped them over the scary pictures so I didn’t have to avoid reading entire pages so I appreciate that. Edit: Yep, it was the first body shown that always got me as a kid.
ugh, I had a book about this voyage that had a photo of one of the corpses. I wasn't expecting it and it terrified me. I think it's something about their expressions, they look barely human yet still so recognisable. And their story makes it so much worse, to know the suffering they endured before they finally passed.
You’re thinking of Rosalia Lombardo. She died at age 2 in Sicily and her father found someone with secret/advanced embalming techniques. She’s in a glass display case and looks like she’s “sleeping.”
@@liyre4189 Omg I had a book the sounds similar. Do you remember the name of it? I always found it interesting but had like blu tacced those pages together because they actually gave me nightmares lmao
@@PeachysMom Thank you, that’s exactly who I was thinking of, I’ll be editing my comment to include her name
@@liyre4189 “barely human yet still so recognizable”, you really hit the nail on the head here at least in my opinion.
When it comes to an unwrapped Egyptian mummy they tend to look way more deteriorated which helps cement just how old they are, in a way it’s almost like at that point they aren’t even corpses any more like how I’m normally squeamish with dead things but wouldn’t bat an eye holding the bones of a dinosaur. Then you have something like the Incan mummies, they’re usually much more well preserved to the point you could probably get finger prints off of some of them and they look rather peaceful (I don’t know if this is 100% true but the theory is these mummies were chosen as sacrifices and were given nice clothing, a drugged drink, and simply left to fall asleep and never wake up on the mountain peaks so most of them look like they could wake up at any moment).
With these mummies however there wasn’t any special ritual that took place, no days of work to preserve them, they were simply given the best burial their their peers could offer them in this terrible situation. They weren’t supposed to be preserved and dug up on a later date, it was just humans trying to be human. I think that feeling is reflected in those images, sorry for the long post it was kind of hard to write everything down in a way that made sense!
the tv show "The Terror", introduced me to the story of the Franklin expedition, glad you cover it so others take an interest into this sad, tragic story
Man, you gotta credit Lady Franklin here, if it wasn't for her persistence of finding the love her life, the voyage wouldn't have been recorded, I can't imagine the pain she must have went through for her pleading to fall on deaf ears that she just had enough to used her own money to find her beloved.
The photos of the crew, they haunted my imagination as a kid. Theres something about this story thats more visceral than others. Its almost like they’re all still out there, waiting to be rescued.
Thanks for the video, it scratched the content itch
Go watch the miniseries. Its absolutery spectacular. The acting of Jared Harris and Tobias Menzies was top notch.
I can’t believe this “Sir John Franklin” fellow had the nerve to completely direct rip off Dread Hunger, it even included the cannibalism!
The amount of information in these videos is insane. Who else would love to see a video on how he does his research! Keep up the great work man!
Man I love that little tidbit about the ship's wood being used for the desk in the oval office. I love little weird history facts like that.
i’m from canada, that first picture of the frozen dude was in my grade 8 social textbook. also been watching you for a long time, it’s great to see so much growth!!