The Franklin expedition had a gruesome and mysterious end National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Mystery still surrounds the infamous Franklin expedition, a British voyage that set out in 1845 to map the Northwest Passage. The crew went missing in the Canadian Artic and some of their remains show evidence of cannibalism. But a big question lingers: what would make those sailors leave the relative safety of their two icebound ships and trek into the unforgiving wilderness?
One theory posed by researchers in the 1980s suggested that lead from the ship’s pipes and the tinned food stores leeched out…
