All of the information stated in this article is based on reliable sources of information and is detailed at the end of the article
●—≺ Preface ≻—●
The desk used by the President of the United States is called the "Fortitude Desk", but the origin of this desk is related to a very terrifying ocean exploration event.
The expedition consisted of 129 people, but when they entered the Arctic Circle, they began to perform a series of strange actions as if they were possessed by evil spirits, and even appeared in a terrifying scene of devouring their own kind, and all of them were killed.
Is the truth behind the strange behavior the evil spirit or is there another hidden story? And why do these crew members want to eat each other?
●—≺ Missing Expedition ≻—●
In 1845, under the leadership of Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, the British embarked on an expedition to the Arctic Circle, including Franklin, which consisted of 24 officers and 105 sailors, a total of 129 men.
The expedition involved two ships, both of which were converted from old gunboats, and theoretically they could withstand the high intensity of the impact, with little fear of small reefs on the surface of the sea and glaciers in the Arctic.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of the expedition, the ship is also equipped with a distilled water treatment system and stores food that can be consumed by everyone for nearly 4 years, including 61,987 kilograms of flour, 15,100 kilograms of meat, 546 kilograms of beef jerky, 16,749 liters of beverages, 909 liters of wine, 4,287 kilograms of chocolate, 1,069 kilograms of tea, 2,000 kilograms of tobacco, 11,628 liters of soup, 4,037 kilograms of vegetables and some lemons.
In addition, the senior management has also prepared thousands of books in the cabin so that the crew can pass the time in the boring sailing.
Despite their advanced performance and abundant logistical reserves, these two ships were given unlucky names, namely the "Nether" and the "Terror".
No one could have predicted that the names of these two ships would be the personal experience of Franklin and the others, who would encounter a series of gruesome things afterwards.
According to the original plan, the Franklin expedition would depart from the British harbor, cross Baffin Bay on the west side of Greenland, pass through the Lancaster Channel, and then enter the mysterious North Pole, which would take more than two years to make a round trip.
But as time came to 1848, three years had passed since the expedition set out, but the "Ghost" and "Terror" had not returned, and the British had completely lost the news of these two ships.
After all, Franklin had a knighthood in England, and coupled with the strong demand of his wife Jane, the British government spent a lot of money to organize a number of search and rescue teams to try to find the whereabouts of the expedition from sea and land.
At first, the sea search and rescue team sailed smoothly, but not long after entering the Arctic Circle, the ships became immobile, and not only did there be a wide area of ice floe, but even the sea would freeze overnight.
Due to the poor navigation conditions, the search and rescue team sent by the British Navy not only failed to find the news of the expedition, but also many ships were trapped in the ice, and the search and rescue team became the target of rescue.
●—≺ Polar Evil Spirit "Tunbak" ≻—●
It took three years, and the British side still couldn't find out a little bit about Franklin and others, combined with the problems encountered by the search and rescue team in the Arctic Circle, people can basically judge that the expedition team was probably trapped somewhere in the polar region, but the food carried by the team was only enough to last for 4 years, and these people may have been more than lucky.
With these factors in mind, the British government felt that there was no point in continuing the search, so it reduced the number of search and rescue teams, but just when everyone felt that the mystery could never be solved, the strange legends in the mouths of the polar aborigines turned the situation around again.
In April 1854, nine years after the expedition had set sail, a searcher named John Ray, who was employed by the Hudson's Bay Company and had been operating in northern Canada for more than a decade, had extensive experience in polar exploration.
As Ray entered the Arctic Circle and chose a place to rest, he met several of the indigenous Eskimos who, according to them, had seen some uniformed people walking slowly on the ice a few years ago, and they were acting very strangely.
Eskimos recalled that the white men walking on the ice looked extremely abnormal, as if they were hiding from something strange, but they were killing each other like crazy, and their behavior was extremely horrific and bizarre.
There is a local legend that there is an evil spirit named "Tumbak", once an outsider enters the polar region, the evil spirit "Tumbak" will follow behind the outsider, first let him lose his mind and possess him, and then eat these people little by little, and the behavior of those white people is very similar to the performance of Tumbak's possession.
In addition, the Eskimos said that when the whites left, they went to the scene to inspect and found that some boots contained cooked human flesh, sawn severed limbs littered the floor, and some had their skulls lifted open and the flesh on the corpses was mutilated.
After telling what they had seen and heard, the residents took out the books, tableware and other daily necessities they found at the scene, and after comparison, they found that these things were the same items that the expedition team carried when it set off.
First the mysterious disappearance, then the cannibalism of each other, combined with the legend told by the Eskimos, all this took the events in a strange direction, what happened to the expedition after entering the Arctic Circle, to do such a strange act?
●—≺ Thriller Log ≻—●
In 1859, at the behest of Franklin's wife, the British government launched another search for Franklin, and this time, an important clue was finally found.
Searchers found an ancient journal in a sarcophagus on King William Island, and this log turned out to be the logbook of the Nether.
The journal is divided into two parts, the first of which was dated May 28, 1847, and records the events encountered by some of the expeditions after their travels.
In 1845, the expedition entered the Arctic Circle and spent the first winter on the nearest island, Beechcraft, until the beginning of the spring of the following year.
As the ship passed over the west coast of King William Island, it encountered widespread ice on the sea, and it was forced to spend the second winter on King William Island, deciding to continue the third year with plenty of food left.
That's all for the first part of the log, and from this part, despite the expedition's troubles, everything is still in order, and at least there is plenty of food left.
The second journal is dated April 25, 1848, but compared to the first part, the font on the date of this part is skewed and written in the margins of the same sheet.
The second part of the journal is roughly stated that on June 11, 1847, Commander Franklin died and was replaced by Captain Crozier of the Terror.
By April 22, a total of 24 people had died, and the new commander, Crozier, issued an urgent order to abandon the ship and move to the ship.
Subsequently, the search and rescue team found several aborigines on King William Island, according to the other party, there was indeed an abandoned warship on the ice, when they boarded the ship, they found that there were several people sitting in place, and when they walked in, they found that they were all dead, and there were strange smiles on their faces.
Although the relevant logs were found, only the news of the death of the crew members was obtained, and the mystery of why Crozier ordered the ship to be abandoned, the strange smiles of the dead crew, and cannibalism remained unsolved.
However, due to financial problems at the time, and the fact that Sir Franklin's death was already certain, the British government abandoned plans to continue exploring the mystery.
●—≺ The Truth of Horror ≻—●
In 1980, more than 120 years after the disappearance of the "Nether" and "Terror", a team of researchers from Canada found new clues, and they found 31 human bones on the south coast of King William Island.
After careful study, it was found that the bones came from the same person, aged between 22 and 25, and had three parallel knife marks on one leg bone, apparently caused by sharp weapons.
Soon after, a team of researchers exhumed three buried bodies on Beach Island, where the expedition had spent the first year of the winter, and found a large number of bone fragments on the west coast of King William Island, which were compared and confirmed to be from the expedition more than 100 years ago.
Through laboratory tests, researchers found a large amount of lead on these wreckage, the content of which reached more than 5 times that of normal people, and it seems that these crew members have severe lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning causes symptoms such as dizziness, fatigue, loss of appetite, drop in blood pressure, loss of consciousness, and hallucinations, and the strange smiling faces of the dead crew members in the cabin, as well as the strange behavior of the Eskimos, are all hallucinations caused by lead poisoning, which is the incomprehensible behavior of the crew members.
But hallucinations are not the most terrifying experience, what really makes the hairs stand on end is eating their companions who get along with each other day and night, and death that comes at an unknown time.
In 2014, the expedition team discovered the wreck of the "Ghost" on the seabed near Nunavut, Canada, and two years later, the expedition team found the wreck of the "Terror" near the waters of King William Island, and after 170 years, the two ships finally reappeared in the world.
On two wrecked ships, food left behind by the expedition was found, including cans and containers that sealed the food, and large amounts of lead were found in the welds of the cans and in the ship's throats, which explains why the crew suffered from lead poisoning.
With the discovery of the Netherworld and the Terror, combined with the containers on the wreck, researchers have deduced the horrific encounters that the expedition experienced a hundred years ago.
A few months before the Franklin Expedition departed, food vendors suddenly received orders, and due to the rush of time, the workers were shoddy and shoddy in the outer packaging of the food, resulting in poor welding.
At that time, people were not aware of the concept of lead poisoning, so many food packaging, water pipes, cups were added to lead, and even the distilled water pipes for drinking water also contained a large amount of lead.
The food packaging eaten by the expedition team must be processed in accordance with military standards, and it can be stored at room temperature for at least 4 years, and at least 10 years in a cold environment such as the Arctic Circle, but due to poor welding, the food begins to rot after more than two years.
In addition, all the members of the expedition had to consume food and water containing a large amount of lead poison every day for nearly three years, and after years of accumulation, the symptoms of lead poisoning eventually began to break out in the team, and the medical conditions on the ship could not deal with the disease, which eventually caused a large number of deaths, and Franklin was one of them.
Soon after, the ship's food also showed signs of decay due to poor sealing, and the new commander, Crozier, felt that it was unsafe to put on it, so he ordered all the men to abandon the ship, land with a small amount of food, and seek rescue on foot.
Unfortunately, in the absence of a reference, these people were slow to find a place inhabited by humans, and during this time, due to the lack of healthy food, many crew members contracted sepsis and eventually died on the road.
Later, due to the attack of lead poisoning, many crew members hallucinated and began to attack their companions frantically, and what was even more deadly was that the little food they carried was quickly eaten, so they had to eat their dead companions.
At first, people only ate the dead, but in the face of hunger, these people still let go of their human reason, coupled with the effect of lead poisoning, these crew members began to kill each other, killing their own people for food.
In order to reduce the guilt in their hearts, they will cut the bones of their dead companions when they eat them, making the "food" look less like human flesh.
When the crew killed each other, the Eskimos saw their every move, but at that time, the actions of the crew were both ferocious and strange, coupled with the legend of the evil spirit "Tumbuk", the Eskimos naturally did not dare to come forward to help.
In this way, the original expeditionary team of 129 people finally died one by one in the desperate environment of ice and snow, and many people did not even leave their entire corpses.
●—≺ U.S. President's "Perseverance Table" ≻—●
After the disappearance of the expedition, the British government sent a number of ships out to search, including a ship named "Perseverance", which entered the Arctic Circle in 1852, was frozen in the sea, and was later found by an American whaling ship and transported back to the United Kingdom.
In order to express her gratitude to the United States, the Queen of England asked the "Perseverance" to be dismantled and made three tables out of the ship's wooden planks, one of which was given to the United States, and was put into the White House President's office by the United States, named the "Perseverance Table", which is still used by the President of the United States today.
In order to let more people know about this appalling tragedy, the encounter of the Franklin expedition was made into a TV series and named it "Polar Evil Spirit".
To this day, people have not given up the investigation into this 100-year-old maritime accident, and although the scientific researchers have deduced the truth, it is believed that there may be more hidden secrets in the mysterious Arctic Circle.
Key sources of information:
1. The original article was published on The Paper on February 28, 2024: "The Unknown and Cruel History of Arctic Exploration, Behind the Heroic Legend Is a Lie? 》
2. The original article was published on The Paper on March 28, 2018: "The Mystery of the Terror - Historical Unsolved Cases on the Deadly Route"
3. The original article was published on the Chinese website of China Daily on September 14, 2016: "Researchers found the "Terror" expedition ship that sank in Arctic waters in 1846
4. The original article was published by Christina Gelman and published by Guangxi Normal University Press: "Franklin Polar Expedition Trilogy Part 2: Ice Trapped in the North Pole"