Franklin Expedition: 129 Men Vanished in the Arctic

In 1845, two ships sailed into the Arctic with 129 men, and not one came home.
In 2024, DNA from a jaw tooth put a name to one of them, and cut marks on that same jaw echo an Inuit account from 170 years earlier.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left Greenhithe in May 1845 to find the Northwest Passage. This video follows the expedition step by step.

- Late July 1845: whalers in Baffin Bay see both ships for the last time.
- Winter 1845-46: 3 crewmen die at Beechey Island. In August 1850, searchers find only 3 graves.
- September 12, 1846: both ships become trapped in the ice northwest of King William Island.
- June 11, 1847: Sir John Franklin dies.
- 1859: McClintock's party finds a record in a stone cairn. It says the ships were abandoned on April 22, 1848, and that 105 men landed.
- 1854: John Rae brings back Inuit testimony, and in December Charles Dickens writes that it cannot be believed. The account was long ignored.
- September 2014: Erebus is found. September 2016: Terror is found. Inuit memory guided both discoveries.
- 2024: DNA identifies James Fitzjames, captain of Erebus.

The cause of death and the fate of the last survivors are still unsettled. Some scenes are AI recreations, and no people or remains appear in them.