Kind: captions
Language: en
you're watching a Nova Video
podcast in May of 1845 one of the
British Empire's most seasoned Naval
captains Sir John Franklin sailed from
London to Pioneer route through the icy
Northwest Passage he never
returned Russell Potter is an English
professor at rad Island College and an
expert on Franklin's lost
expedition you see a of the earth that
defeats this Imperial power I think
that's the underlying Fascination for me
you're seeing one of Earth's great
Empires at its peak facing a challenge
that it can't really ultimately overcome
during the Victorian era the Franklin
mystery was incredibly captivating and
the more so the longer Franklin remained
missing and because it was an ERA where
the Illustrated press and the
transatlantic Telegraph and so forth
were just coming into their own there
was a large media interest and the
possibility of of showing people what it
might look like trying to draw pictures
reproducing those pictures uh in some
ways it was sort of the first mass media
mystery this illustration appeared in
1849 in The Illustrated London news and
it gave people some sense of what the
Arctic regions must have looked like
some sense of what people there in the
Expedition might be seeing this is a
perfect capsule of polar romance I mean
you have all of the basic ingredients
you have Arctic mammals you have whales
you have the Aurora looking sort of like
some kind kind of rainbow uh the
threatening ice but it's really more
Scenic ice here so there's no sense in
this image of anything perilous at least
not
yet there's an idea especially among the
British that you know with
resourcefulness and Technology you could
live anywhere it's the sort of Robinson
cruso idea so when you see people
industriously building a snow house out
of blocks and fishing and hunting and
housing in the ships with canvas and so
on it gives a hopeful image of them surv
diving effectively and well through
their own inner resources even in a very
hostile and inhospitable region the
polar regions the Arctic in general just
exercised a tremendous pull on the
public imagination and this pull
increased as the fate of the Franklin
expedition was unresolved year after
year after
year this is an etching based on a
drawing that was actually done in around
1851 uh it shows the three Graves of the
Expedition members who died in the very
first winter of the Franklin Expedition
there on beachy Island this is the very
first place where any remains of
Franklin's Expedition were found by
Searchers people wanted to see this
scene of these three desolate Graves
there was something thrilling and
chilling about it uh I mean having been
there I can say that the cliffs are not
actually that tall or Grim looking and
the graves are are even a little bit
smaller and more isolated but I think
the big Cliffs the moon breaking through
the clouds this was a scene that
encapsulated the kind of fear and
anxiety that people felt when there was
still perhaps some hope that the rest of
the Expedition might be
found in 1854 Dr John Ray ran into a
bunch of Inuit and from them obtained a
number of relics included in that batch
of relics were broken watches and
chronometers utensils that had belonged
to some of the officers and had the
officers crests these were the first
substantial relics that were brought
back from the Expedition and people were
just stunned they were brought back to
England they were put on public display
and Greenwich people wanted to see these
things they wanted to see some kind of
proof that in fact this inconceivable
failure had
occurred this is an image from Harper's
Weekly from 1859 and it shows the
artist's depiction of what it must have
looked like to find these skeletons in
an abandoned whaleboat on King William
Island where the last survivors of the
Franklin Expedition had come ashore and
it's you know it's incredibly lurid I
mean it the skeletons the expression the
eyes are popping out on the Explorers
faces as they pull back the canvas and
see these skeletons
it's a very sensationalistic
illustration but at the same time I
think it captured that sense of you know
my God now we haven't just got relics we
have bodies discover the fate of
Franklin's Expedition on Nova's Arctic
Passage on PBS to see more of this audio
slideshow visit us online at
pbs.org
noova Arctic