This disastrous voyage, now known as the lost Franklin expedition, ended in an arctic catastrophe with no survivors. Skeletons of crewmen like John Torrington, which were preserved in the ice for more than 140 years, make up the majority of the wreckage. Since the official discovery of these bodies in the 1980s, their frozen features have conveyed the horror of this fatal journey.

Analysis of these preserved carcasses also helped investigators determine that malnutrition, lead toxicity, and cannibalism contributed to the crew’s deaths. Furthermore, while John Torrington and the other corpses from the Franklin expedition were long the only remnants of the expedition, new discoveries have since shed more light on the subject.

The preserved corpse of John Torrington, one of the mummies from the Franklin expedition abandoned in the Canadian Arctic in 1845 after the crew went missing.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, two Franklin expedition ships, were discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Drones from a Canadian archeology team examined the interior of the Terror disaster for the first time in 2019, giving us another up-close look at the otherworldly remnants of this gruesome story.

The hands of John Hartnell, one of the Franklin Expedition bodies exhumed in 1986 and photographed by Hartnell’s great-grandnephew, Brian Spenceley.

Although the fate of John Torrington and the mummies of the Franklin expedition has become clearer recently, much of their history remains a mystery. But what we do know is a haunting tale of terror in the Arctic.

Where things went wrong with the Franklin Expedition

The unfortunate story of John Torrington and the Franklin Expedition begins with Sir John Franklin, an accomplished Arctic explorer and British Royal Navy officer. Having successfully completed three previous expeditions, two of which he had led, Franklin set out once more to traverse the Arctic in 1845.

In the early morning of May 19, 1845, John Torrington and 133 other men boarded the Erebus and the Terror and set out from Greenhithe, England. Equipped with the latest tools needed to complete their voyage, the iron-clad ships also came equipped with three years’ worth of provisions, including more than 32,289 pounds of corned beef, 1,008 pounds of raisins, and 580 gallons of pickles.

While we know of such preparations and know that five men were discharged and sent home in the first three months, most of what happened next remains a mystery. After they were last seen by a passing ship in Baffin Bay in northeastern Canada in July, the Terror and Erebus seemingly disappeared into the mists of history.

An engraving of HMS Terror, one of two ships lost during the Franklin Expedition.

Most experts agree that both ships eventually became stranded on ice in the Victoria Strait of the Arctic Ocean, located between Victoria Island and King William Island in northern Canada. Later discoveries helped researchers put together a possible map and timeline detailing where and when things went wrong before that point.

Perhaps most important, in 1850 American and British searchers found three graves dating to 1846 on an uninhabited speck of land west of Baffin Bay called Beechey Island. Although these bodies would not be exhumed by researchers for another 140 years, they would turn out to be the remains of John Torrington and the other mummies from the Franklin expedition.

Then, in 1854, Scottish explorer John Rae met with Inuit residents of Pelly Bay who possessed items belonging to the Franklin expedition crew and informed Rae of the piles of human bones that had been seen in the area, many of which were split in half, sparking rumors that the men of the Franklin expedition likely resorted to cannibalism in their last days alive.

Knife marks carved into skeletal remains found on King William Island in the 1980s and 1990s support these claims, confirming that the explorers were forced to break the bones of their fallen comrades, who had likely starved to death. , before cooking them to extract any remains.