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Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt
- ceejayoz 10y agoThere's a fun Dan Simmons book "The Terror" that tells a (very) fictional account of what happened to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(novel)
- ivanb 10y agoI concur that the book is indeed a very entertaining read. It describes the ships (which btw were steam powered and had central heating) and the dreadful conditions that the sailors faced in great detail. Dan Simmons is a good storyteller.
- astrodust 10y agoSea travel in general was apocalyptically bad for sailors until about 1910. I don't think people realize how dangerously shitty it was for people.
- lostlogin 10y agoReading about the ww2 Arctic convoys has the same feeling.
- arethuza 10y agoI can recommend Three Corvettes by Nicholas Monsarrat - the author of The Cruel Sea - it is his account of his experiences at sea during WW2. One of the few books that has moved me to tears.
- astrodust 10y agoIt's true. Getting shot at by German submarines and bombed by planes did bring the danger level up to what typical sea travel was like a hundred years earlier: "Ten men were thrown overboard, around fifty died of scurvy or starvation, and twenty were killed when a drunken brawl got out of hand." "So it was a good trip?"
- bduerst 10y agoI was hoping someone would mention this. Usually I don't read historical fiction, but that book about this ship is amazing. It was 2007's Amazon customer pick for #1 book.
- randlet 10y agoI picked this up after seeing it recommended on HN before. It was definitely not a genre I read very often, but for some reason I found it completely captivating. Loved it! edit: it also made me much more excited for this discovery than I would have been otherwise!
- divbyzer0 10y agoYou may also be interested in Batavia's Graveyard. Fascinating & gruesome account of a Dutch ship's voyage to Java. The descriptions of the personalities and motivations of those willing to undertake such a risky voyage, were in many cases like a gamblers last throw of the dice. Very well researched, about 1/3 of the book is references/footnotes. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0609807161 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0609807161
- unpixer 10y agoThere's also Mordechai Richler's 'Solomon Gursky Was Here', which recounts its eponymous protagonist's grim experience as a member of the expedition. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Gursky_Was_Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Gursky_Was_Here)
- arethuza 10y agoA years back I became fascinated with 19th century Artic exploration through reading Fergus Fleming's excellent book Barrow's Boys: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy. I was therefore rather surprised to find that one of the bodies from the Franklin expedition, of Lieutenant John Irving, is buried not far from where I live in central Edinburgh: http://edinburghwalks.com/2014/11/30/heroism-cannibalism-and-the-north-west-passage/ http://edinburghwalks.com/2014/11/30/heroism-cannibalism-and...
- dmix 10y agoThanks for the link. I love reading books about early adventurers who first explored our planet. My favourite so far has been Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage about Shakleton's semi-doomed voyage to Antarctica where they survived an entire winter after their boat got stranded in ice. Mostly by eating seals... and their sled dogs at one point. https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881/ https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfr...
- ar-jan 10y agoI can recommend this one: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (2009) by David Grann. "It tells the story of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared with his son in the Amazon while looking for an ancient lost city. For decades, explorers and scientists have tried to find evidence of his party and the Lost City of Z. Perhaps as many as 100 people perished or disappeared searching for Fawcett over the years. Grann made his own journey into the Amazon, revealing new evidence about how Fawcett died and showing that Z may have really existed right under his feet." [0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_(book)
- jackfoxy 10y agoOr you can read South, and read Shackleton's own words https://www.amazon.com/South-ENDURANCE-Expedition-Ernest-Shackleton/dp/0451198808/ https://www.amazon.com/South-ENDURANCE-Expedition-Ernest-Sha...
- felix_thursday 10y agoIsn't there a cruise ship trying to make the northwest passage next year?
- sliverstorm 10y agoIt's cleared dramatically as the Arctic sea ice is melting. The wiki has satellite pics, it's pretty dramatic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
- paavokoya 10y agoDespite the obvious CO2/warming reasons, wouldn't these research vessels/cruise ships cause more ice melt as well? (Breaking up the ice causing faster melt)
- roywiggins 10y agoThe Arctic is pretty big and there aren't many research boats. There are only a few dozen icebreakers in the world. https://news.usni.org/2013/07/23/u-s-coast-guards-2013-reivew-of-major-ice-breakers-of-the-world https://news.usni.org/2013/07/23/u-s-coast-guards-2013-reive...
- soperj 10y agoIt didn't clear at all last year though if i'm not mistaken. And based on this: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/ https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/ It's already closed up again.
- Thrymr 10y agoOne has already made it this year: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-crystal-serenity-northwest-passage-cruise https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-crystal-serenity-nor...
- jfb 10y agoThe best part is that a local hunter found the boat six years ago. That's awesome.
- protomyth 10y agoThat is one of the problems with hunting, you are more likely to find things that other people won't and sometimes its very unpleasant. Humans like to stash their sins in the wild.
- 13of40 10y ago"Given the location of the find [in Terror Bay]" I tried hunting around online to find out how Terror Bay got its name after I saw this article on another site last night, but I couldn't find anything. Makes you kind of wonder whether the location of the wreck was known at some point, but nobody bothered to write it down.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cwillu 10y agoIt was, it was just thought to be in a different part of the bay (if I understood things correctly), 96km north of where it actually was.
- Someone 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition#Loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition#L...: "Over the next 150 years, other expeditions, explorers, and scientists would piece together what happened next. Franklin's men wintered in 1845–46 on Beechey Island, where three crew members died and were buried. Terror and Erebus became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and never sailed again. According to a note dated 25 April 1848, and left on the island by Fitzjames and Crozier, Franklin had died on 11 June 1847; the crew had wintered on King William Island in 1846–47 and 1847–48, and the remaining crew had planned to begin walking on 26 April 1848 toward the Back River on the Canadian mainland. Nine officers and fifteen men had already died; the rest would die along the way, most on the island and another 30 or 40 on the northern coast of the mainland, hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization." So, the location were the ships were abandoned was roughly known.
- esaym 10y agoThere was an earlier excavation of some of the frozen corpses as well and they were taken to laboratories to be studied. After thawing some of the gut bacteria, some were still alive. One of the scientist was smart enough to experiment with how the old bacteria handled modern antibiotics. Strangely many already had resistance[1]. And this discovery was largely unreported. [1]http://tinyurl.com/z9sy2qn http://tinyurl.com/z9sy2qn
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eof 10y agoI wonder if you (or anyone) know where to find the study? I found the researcher herself, but none of her publications seem to be about this https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kinga_Kowalewska-Grochowska/publications https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kinga_Kowalewska-Grocho...
- Alex3917 10y ago> Strangely many already had resistance Keep in mind that modern antibiotics were created partly because at the time plants with antibiotic properties were being used so heavily that they were already becoming endangered. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenseal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenseal
- 2AF3 10y agoReminds me of when the military dug up corpses from the artic so they could get at the 1917 Spanish flu
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoLink?
- NoPiece 10y agoMalcolm Gladwell wrote an article about it for the New Yorker in 1997. http://gladwell.com/the-dead-zone/ http://gladwell.com/the-dead-zone/
- polynomial 10y agoGood thing this won't be a problem anymore.
- labster 10y agoThanks to all of the hard work of the energy extraction industry, future generations will never have to deal with the lack of a Northwest Passage. They will, however, have to deal with a coral shortage.
- contingencies 10y agos/shortage/extiction/
- labster 10y agos/extiction/extinction/
- contingencies 10y agoTrue that :)
- nylsaar 10y agoSo, how did this ship attempt to sail this route 168 years ago if there was no energy extraction industry?
- seren 10y agoThey suspected there was a free water passage because the coast was well known on both side. But the interior of the land was terra incognita, and that was the point of the expedition : finding the passage and going through it if it existed. However, when Roald Admunsden crossed for the first time the North West passage a few years after the Franklin expedition was lost, it was not by boat, but with sleds... From my understanding, given the size of the Terror and Erebus, the Franklin expedition could not have crossed the NW passage anyway at that time.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago"If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would probably float.” That is a fascinating possibility. btw title should be amended "found by European explorers". Or change the date to 162 years, since it was discovered by an Inuit gentleman six years earlier?
- lisper 10y agoThere is some precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) It is worth a trip to Stockholm to see the Vasa. The photos on Wikipedia do not do her justice.
- 4ad 10y agoI can confirm this. It's one of the most impressive museums I've ever been to.
- ptaipale 10y agoThe whole thing is also a living example of lessons about project and product management: how uncontrolled requirements made by the major stakeholder (in this case, king Gustaf Adolf) changed the project scope (so many guns were ordered to be fitted that the ship had to have two gun decks, with too high center of gravity) which then caused a major technical disaster (it capsized in wind). And then starts the hunt for a scapegoat.
- exabrial 10y agoDoes it have a pair of glasses that are the key plot device in a Michael Bay movie?
- c0achmcguirk 10y agoUnderrated comment.
- jsemrau 10y agoImagine there would be a sole frozen survivor. No cars, no trains, no airplanes, no phones, etc.
- labster 10y agoLord have mercy on the frozen man.
- etrevino 10y agoI've always suspected that tuberculosis played a large role in the demise of the expedition. We're pretty sure that some crew members had it and in the close quarters of the ships it's very likely to have spread unchecked. Combined with the obvious lead poisoning and the possibility of scurvy the expedition had very little chance of success. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279489/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279489/
- Implicated 10y agoWhat's the source/cause of the lead poisoning?
- mjklin 10y agoIf only Stan Rogers had lived to see it... "Ah for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage / to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea..." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage_(song) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage_(song)
- johncalvinyoung 10y agoMy father's comment, upon reading the article: "And if they had a barge lent by a friend, they could tie their cables fore and aft and gird her all around ... and hit the air and then take up the strain ... etc."
- drdeadringer 10y agoHis brother Garnet has. Great singer too.
- rualthan 10y agoHere's a documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLqU8HP8r1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLqU8HP8r1o [YouTube]