Lost in the Arctic (2023) - full transcript

Sir John Franklin set off from England in 1845 with two ships and 129 men. Franklin's ships vanished without a trace. Now, a team of explorers attempt to solve the mystery by retracing Franklin's route.

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MARK: To me, the definition

of adventure is to be

facing an uncertain future,

where you have a strong hand

in guiding your own fate.

And I just love that idea.

That's why I love adventure

and that's why I love stories

like the Franklin mystery.

Arctic explorer John Franklin

set off from England in 1845

with two ships and 128 men.

Trying to be the first

to make it through

the Northwest Passage.

A new trade route up over

the top of the world and

they disappeared,

without a trace.

129 guys,

vanished into the ether.

And in the years since,

more than 100 expeditions

have gone to the Arctic to try

to figure out what happened.

And nobody has been

able to figure it out.

There are clues

about what happened,

and I think I have

figured out a way

to solve this mystery

once and for all.

♪ ♪

(theme music plays)

♪ ♪

The Franklin expedition

spent their first winter

at a place called

Beechey Island,

which is sort of the entrance

to the Northwest Passage.

In 1984, a team went up there

to investigate three graves,

for three of Franklin's men.

MAN (over film): Oh, look at

the discoloration in there.

Careful.

There is something else,

look at that.

MARK: And they

exhumed the three bodies.

MAN (over film): Meltwater next.

Lot of ice in there.

MARK: They were

frozen solid into ice.

MAN (over film): You could see

how his face was desiccated,

and the mummified,

the soft tissues have

diminished in volume.

MARK: For me, the most

compelling thing about

that story is the images

of Franklin's men,

and they're haunting.

MAN (over film): Oh,

look at that hand.

That is really well preserved.

Now this sort of thing

has never been seen before.

This is absolutely unique.

MARK: I don't think there's

anybody who could see those

pictures and not be moved by it,

and to be thinking about

what that must have been

like to die that first winter

up in the Arctic.

Sub-zero, there's polar bears.

The level of suffering and

like how grim and scary

it must have gotten.

129 guys.

So not a single one of them

made it out to tell the tale

of what happened.

Imagine if someone that you

cared about deeply disappeared.

You know, imagine like, if

your son or your daughter or

your brother or your

sister disappeared.

Would you be okay with that?

Or would you become

consumed with wanting

to know what happened?

And there's people out

there who are still trying to

figure it out and

trying to solve it.

TOM: The Franklin

mystery is a puzzle.

You know, it it's a puzzle

with the pieces missing.

So we've got to try and not only

put together what we've got,

but we've got to try and

recreate some of those pieces

and fit them together.

MARK: Tom has dedicated the

better part of his adult life

to trying to solve

the Franklin mystery.

In particular, he has

focused on trying to find

the tomb of John Franklin.

He considers that to be the holy

grail of the Franklin mystery,

because Franklin would have

been buried with his papers,

the ship's papers,

the ship's log.

You know, a commander

in the British Royal Navy,

every day he's going

to be keeping a diary.

And those papers could

potentially solve the mystery

as to what happened to

Franklin and his men.

TOM: In 2014, I thought,

well there's still

one more chance of

maybe finding it.

And that is doing an aerial

survey with the airplane.

I was looking down

at the ground,

I saw what looked like

large rocks, very large rocks.

And it was a perfect engineered,

rectangle shaped structure.

So I circled around to try

and get a better look at it.

And we never found it again.

It just sort of vanished.

And we've been

looking for it ever since.

MARK: Tom has seen

the tomb from the air.

And he's been closing

in on it ever since.

He didn't get GPS

coordinates at the time.

And he's been

eliminating territory.

And now we're down to

less than 30 square miles.

So all that's left now, is to

go to King William Island,

to meet up with Tom and see

if we can find the tomb.

♪ ♪

RENAN: Feels surprisingly chill

today for like, pre-launch.

MARK: The reason why it feels

surprisingly chill is because

I put a year of my life into

making sure that today

felt surprisingly chill.

(laughs).

My investigative process is to

immerse myself in the story

as much as I possibly can.

And, in this case, to do that,

I want to follow in the wake

of Franklin's two ships,

the Erebus and the Terror.

And so I want to sail

there in my own boat.

I want to intersect

with Franklin's route.

I want to go to the same

places that they went.

And I want to see it with my own

eyes and I want to feel it.

BEN: He called me

and he's like,

"Hey, man, what do

you think about?",

you know, he talks so slow.

"What would you think

about going up to the

Northwest Passage on a boat?"

(laughs).

I was like, "Yeah man, if

you're on the trip I'll go"

because if anyone can

get it done, it's Mark.

♪ ♪

RENAN: First sail,

getting her up!

♪ ♪

BEN: One for Renan here.

RENAN: Thank you, sir.

BEN: Sorry about the tin plate

but we're on an expedition.

RENAN: I've been doing

adventures with Mark for

over 15 years now, and,

I grew up sailing but

if I'm too seasick,

I'm probably just going to be

curled up in fetal position

and be relying on, on

Rudy to get everything.

MARK: There's no one out here,

no other ships.

It's all about this ship, it's

all about the Polar Sun

taking care of us.

She's a good vessel.

I care deeply about adventure

and exploration and history.

That's been kind of the

compass bearing leading me

through life since

I was a little kid.

And I've turned that

into my livelihood.

I led an expedition on

Mount Everest to search

for the body of lost

explorer, Sandy Irvine.

I climbed these crazy cliffs

in the Amazon to search for

new species of animals.

One, two, three!

And if you're

part of this world,

you eventually have friends

that go out on expeditions

and they never come home.

And when that happens,

when people disappear,

it's just our human nature to

want to know what happened.

And that's kind of what this

project is all about for me,

to potentially add like a

final chapter to the story.

Sir John Franklin was a

seasoned Arctic explorer.

At age 59, he bid farewell

to his wife and daughter and

set sail for the Arctic.

In the Spring of 1845,

Franklin's ships were last seen

off the coast of Greenland.

When the ships disappeared, a

trail of clues was discovered

on the remote

King William Island,

including a written

record found in 1859.

The Victory Point document

states that Franklin's ships

had become

completely trapped in ice.

The men has abandoned

ship and set out on

King William Island.

A second entry made

almost a year later,

tells us that 24 crew had died,

including Captain Franklin.

Franklin's two ships were

finally discovered off the

coast of King William Island

in 2014 and 2016.

But the lost tomb of Franklin

himself is still out there,

waiting to be found.

Our first task is crossing the

Labrador sea to link up with

Franklin's route at a place

called the Whale Fish Islands.

BEN: Woo hoo!

MARK: So grim!

Oh wow this is not...

this is not inviting,

this is not exactly paradise.

(ship creaking)

RENAN: What is up

with that house?

BEN: Oh, that's cool!

Someone's hunting,

hunting lodge.

Oh there's several, you see?

MARK: So cool, so cool.

The Whale Fish Islands.

It's taken us 2,200 miles of

sailing from Maine just to get

to the beginning

of this journey.

This is where Franklin set off

for the Northwest Passage

in 1845.

This was a town.

Some kind of a

whaling station.

Totally abandoned now.

Look at this.

This is what I've been

looking for right here.

An iron bollard in the shore,

where Franklin tied

up their ships.

And this was the last anchorage

for the Franklin expedition

before they set off into

the Northwest Passage.

At that time, sailing over the

top of the world wouldn't have

been too different from the

idea of going to the moon.

You know, in terms of the

history of exploration,

there's nothing more epic.

You know, almost like a

Knights of the Round table

kind of thing to try to

make it through there.

It's wild to realize that

Franklin and his men were

walking all around here and

preparing for their voyage

into the Northwest Passage.

From here, the

ice gauntlet begins.

We just sailed

into a fog bank.

This is really really thick.

So I can see about a boat

length and the water is

filled with chunks of ice.

The radar shows the big stuff,

it shows the bergs,

but it doesn't show

the small stuff.

It doesn't show the growlers,

and the growlers could

tear the boat in half.

Crossing the maze of ice bergs

in Baffin Bay was the first

real test Franklin and his

men faced on their voyage

into the unknown.

This is part of the reason

why I wanted to sail to

King William Island, to be

faced with some of the same

decision points that

Franklin was 175 years ago.

It was the most modern, the

most well-equipped expedition

in the history of the

world at that point.

And they

disappeared without a trace.

The best way to describe kind

of what it's like out there is

I would call it a

savage wilderness.

Oh!

BEN: There it goes!

Oh man, look at it bouncing!

♪ ♪

MARK: We can see land!

Woo hoo!

I have to say, I really

like the place where

the land and sea meet.

Especially when there's

mountains involved.

♪ ♪

After crossing Baffin Bay

in the fall of 1845,

Franklin's ships anchored for

the winter at a tiny island

in the middle of nowhere

called Beechey Island.

When the expedition

went missing,

some of the first clues

were discovered

on Beechey Island

as well as the bodies of

three of Franklin's crew.

The autopsy showed I think,

that all three of them

died from tuberculosis,

maybe a combination

of that and pneumonia.

But no new answers

were discovered about

what happened to the

rest of Franklin's men.

If we find Franklin's tomb,

not only do we find the remains

of a legendary lost explorer

but we probably also

find his papers.

TOM: There's going to be all

sorts of information in there.

There'll be photographs.

We're going to maybe have

letters that are written from

the crew members to

be sent back home.

It provides their

story to the world.

MARK: Polar Sun is really

in her element right now,

moving fast, just absolutely

perfect conditions.

We were sailing full speed

toward King William Island

and then we got news

about a brewing storm.

(thunder)

A southeast gale

that was building and

we're heading southeast.

BEN: Well, what we're faced

with is we can either go into

a really good bailout option

where we can hole up for a

couple days while all the

weather blows overhead,

or we can carry on into some

dicey ice, and then hope that

we make it somewhere safe

before the weather descends.

The thing is, we have to make

our decision within the next

two or three hours

whether we turn into

Pasley Bay or carry on,

because we're getting to we're

getting to decision point.

MARK: The ice is down here.

People speculate that's

what happened to Franklin.

Franklin came right down to

here, got to the decision point.

Didn't think he could go

this way, so we went here

into Victoria Strait which,

it doomed them.

They got caught in the

ice and they never got out.

BEN: Do we go left?

We go right?

Do we wait?

It's the tension of

Arctic navigation that

we have to deal with.

20 feet ahead, so

we should get ready.

MARK: What do

you got for depth?

BEN: 25 feet.

MARK: It made sense,

to go into Pasley and to

ride out the storm.

We've done well, now it's

just a waiting game to

sit and wait and

see what happens.

♪ ♪

The storm came in overnight.

Ice had come in

and had encircled the

entrance to the bay.

A giant crescent of ice,

capping the whole thing off.

♪ ♪

We are officially trapped within

an impenetrable wall of ice.

BEN: We've found a little

spot where there might be some

shelter but we can't get much

closer to shore because

we only have 19 feet of

water at this point.

MARK: Watch out!

Don't go into

that little nook.

RUDY: Alright Ben,

we're good to go back.

You got a piece drifting.

RENAN: We just barely escaped

that little narrow gap that

was closing in on us.

Really close call.

MARK: Getting trapped in

the ice was the thing that

I had always been

the most afraid of.

I mean I've read all these

stories about this happening

to explorers and having their

boats being crushed in the ice.

It's really a bad

situation to be in.

I'm gonna rely on my gut

a little bit more

than I have been,

and my gut is telling me

that we need to conserve

every type of fuel that we have.

BEN: Even if we're in

this bay for two weeks,

we're getting to Gjoa.

There's no way we're not.

MARK: I mean, well, there

is a way that we're not

which is that that plug of ice

there never leaves the bay.

It could happen, and it's 35

degrees out there right now.

Strangely enough we have now

gotten ourselves stranded

not far from where Franklin

did and 175 years later

and it's like still a

pretty serious situation.

We know from the Victory Point

record that Franklin's ships,

the Erebus and the Terror,

became completely

frozen into the ice.

The note gave exact coordinates

for where they were abandoned,

but the ships continued drifting

and then disappeared.

In the years that followed,

eyewitness testimony was

gathered from local Inuit

hunters about sightings

of the abandoned ships

and Franklin's men.

I think the most interesting

part of the story is that

the Inuit knew all along

where the ships were,

and it wasn't until they

finally listened to the Inuit

that they found the ships,

175 years later.

MAN (over film): Here we are,

at the stern of the ship.

MARK: Researchers

discovered a trove of

perfectly preserved artifacts

but no human remains

have been found.

The Inuit sightings also

match up perfectly with where

Tom Gross believes he saw

Franklin's tomb in 2015.

TOM: I'm pretty positive that

that's what we saw that day.

And if it is what I saw,

we are going to have records

that are in pristine condition

because they're going to be

frozen along with a

frozen-in-time John Franklin.

MARK: We've been in

Pasley Bay for eight days,

it would be kind of enjoyable

if it wasn't just high stress

all day every day.

Okay starboard!

You're going over a big chunk!

Okay get me an ice screw.

Ooh boy, they're not

gonna go in that well.

We started anchoring to the

floating chunks of ice

to try to avoid getting the

anchor trapped under the ice.

RENAN: I don't know why it

feels like the end of the

expedition, but

it's only the middle.

It's because we were

supposed to be 1,000 miles

from here right now.

Let's keep

fighting the good fight.

BEN: Back up, right into it.

MARK: Okay take

this back real quick.

Go back.

Just go, yep, go hard back.

Get a line ready, toss me a

line and get me an ice screw!

It's extremely demoralizing

when I see that this is the

only place in this entire area,

in this whole Gulf of Boothia

where there's ice right now,

and so I'm feeling like

we made some bad decisions.

♪ ♪

RENAN: After being stuck

here for eight days,

the ice is slowly starting

to break apart.

The pieces are crumbling,

and there's a chance

we might break free.

MARK: It was like,

"Start the engine.

We're going to do this.

Let's see what happens."

RUDY: Go 20-30 feet and then

you're gonna turn to starboard.

BEN: Got it!

RUDY: Good on that course,

keep that heading.

BEN: We have 16 feet

under the keel right now!

(scraping)

MARK: Ooh, that was

a (bleep) hard one.

RUDY: More!

More to port, more!

MARK: Yep, slower Ben.

BEN: I see clear water man!

It's like no ice in the water

just a quarter mile ahead.

We just have to get

through this last little crux.

RENAN: Just go straight.

There's this concentrated

chunk around the point,

and then, seems like

we might be home free.

BEN: Renan's at the masthead

parting the ice like Moses

so we can get through!

RENAN: Nice.

MARK: Holy (bleep).

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I cannot (bleep) believe it.

We're in open water, boys.

Full sail, sun,

Gjoa Haven here we come!

Polar Sun is pulling in.

This is incredible.

I can't believe

we're finally here.

Today is day 87, we've

sailed 3600 nautical miles.

We've seen ice, we've seen fog,

we've seen graves of people who

didn't make it out of here.

We've been through a lot.

Woo!

Holy (bleep).

This is a very

strange feeling.

Civilization.

Wow, we've got the

Northwest Passage right there

and then a cell

tower right there.

(laughs).

When we finally arrived,

Tom Gross was right there

waiting for us, ready to go.

(laughs).

RENAN: It's been a

long, long journey.

TOM: I thought we were gonna

have to leave without ya!

(laughs).

MARK: Wow, can't

believe I'm finally here.

TOM: Yeah, this bedroom here,

it kind of converted into

my Franklin research room.

MARK: This is the

command center.

TOM: There's something with

this mystery I mean,

every time I am ready to give

up on it, which has been a

few times in 28 years,

something happens.

Something happens that

sucks me right back in where

I've got to go back

out and look for it.

This picture is 1994, March.

This is a friend of mine who

passed away Louie Kamookak,

and when I first was

introduced to him, they said,

"This is Louie Kamookak and uh,

Louie's got the same interests

that you have, Tom,"

and so we hit it off right away.

We started talking about

different theories,

different ideas.

He told me about things that

were found around the island.

Louie's dream was always

to find that place,

the Franklin site.

And it looks a lot like

what I've drawn here for you.

MARK: You saw

this from the air?

TOM: And then we saw it.

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

MARK: But you didn't

get the GPS coordinates?

TOM: No, we

didn't get the GPS.

MARK: That's why we're

down to 30 square miles.

TOM: That's right.

MARK: That we're

going to cover?

TOM: Yeah.

If we can find the stone

structure that we saw

from the air, I'm sure we're

going to have the burial tomb

of Sir John Franklin.

MARK: I'm honored that I have

the opportunity to go there

and do this with you.

I can't even believe

this is happening.

Like, just the chance to

possibly find something that

could solve this mystery is,

that's a once in a

lifetime opportunity.

We're going to pack up and

we're going to head out in the

morning first thing on the

four-wheelers to try to

find Franklin's tomb.

TOM: You know, I've been doing

this for such a long time.

I have a really good feeling

we're going to find it.

And I've never had

this feeling the way

I've got it on this trip.

There's only one hill where

it can be, and I am almost

positive that it's there.

You know, it's always

the last minute stuff.

You don't want to be

forgetting anything now.

Because once we're out there,

if we don't have it,

we don't have it.

MARK: It's a rugged, 80 mile

journey from the port in

Gjoa Haven to our search zone.

Tom had all the bikes lined

up outside the house where

we were staying, and I realized,

"Wow, you know what?

I don't think I've

actually ridden

one of these things before".

TOM: Just follow

where we're going.

Cause we're going to be going

through and finding a good path,

and then where we

go through, you follow us.

MARK: Okay.

TOM: And you're gonna want

to be cautious all the time.

MARK: Jacob, stay

close to me please.

JACOB: Yes.

(laughs).

♪ ♪

MARK: The overland expedition

is going to be our chance to

solve this mystery

once and for all.

TOM: Traveling up to

the search area is

really incredibly difficult.

It's long, it's rough.

There's a lot of bog

you have to cross.

RENAN: This is normal?

TOM: Yeah.

(laughs).

It's fairly risky

going out there.

There's probably nobody

better than Jacob

that knows this island.

JACOB: My role on the

expedition is to make sure

that we all come back home

safely at the end of the trip.

MARK: I think I

should go back.

Not Jacob's first rodeo.

♪ ♪

What in the (bleep)?

You've gotta be...

come on!

Not off the most

auspicious start here.

♪ ♪

TOM: The tundra has something

that nowhere else

in the world has.

It's hard to really describe.

You can see for miles

and miles all around you.

MARK: There's no one out

here taking care of you

other than yourself.

It hits home in a sort of a

sobering way, what it must

have been like for Franklin

and his men to be out here,

because you're in

the middle of nowhere.

Over the years, human remains

from the Franklin expedition

have been discovered

across King William Island.

In 1854, an Inuit hunter

reported finding the bones of

30 men piled together, some

with signs of cannibalism.

JIMMY: I really believe that,

you know, if Franklin and

his men had help from the Inuit

people around this area,

with their traditional clothing,

and with the hunting,

and the skills that they had,

I think they would've made it

through the Northwest Passage.

I always thought that Franklin

himself didn't want any

assistance, cause I really

believe that he wanted to do it

on his own without the

help of the Inuit people.

Their nomadic life would

have shown them that yes,

these areas are

safe to travel by.

TOM: This is it.

MARK: Wow.

TOM: Boot camp.

This is Collinson River,

and Collinson Inlet.

MARK: Wow.

TOM: We made it.

MARK: Really cool.

Tom targeted Collinson Inlet

based on Inuit testimony

about a Franklin

campsite in this area.

TOM: The first winter

when they arrived,

I think that they ended

up down in here.

So hopefully, what we can do

is prove that they did and

that we'll find a camp

out here somewhere,

and if that's correct, we should

be able to find the tomb of

Sir John Franklin in

this area as well.

MARK: Wow.

(speaking native language)

JACOB: Let the day

have good weather.

RENAN: We're about to

launch the fixed wing drone.

This has been a long term dream

to get this thing in the air.

They use these drones to,

to map the tundra,

to look at changes in the

climate, but we're using it

to map a high resolution area

to try to find the tomb.

RUDY: Look at that, shows

the airplane on the map.

We've got greens.

RENAN: Yeah!

(laughs).

TOM: This area right here.

This is what I want to see.

MARK: Right

around there, right?

TOM: Yeah.

MARK: So let's get the drone

up in the air and let's get

you pretending that the

drone is in you in the plane,

seven years ago.

We could recreate like how

it was for you that day,

back in 2015.

TOM: Perfect.

Let's try it.

MARK: We're going to very

carefully document this ridge,

because this really is

like trying to find a

needle in a haystack.

If Rudy wasn't here,

do you think you could

get this all set up?

TOM: No.

(laughs).

I couldn't even

open up the computer.

MARK: You basically just

create sort of a grid over

what you want to search, and

then the plane just shoots

sequential photographs

that are designed so that

they all interlink.

RENAN: So we're

at 600 feet now.

You just direct

me where to go.

TOM: This hill.

Can you go right to there?

RENAN: Yeah.

Want me to go down into it?

TOM: Yep.

Go right down into.

RENAN: I'm going down in.

TOM: You see that

island right there?

There's an island.

RENAN: Way out there?

TOM: Way out there.

So I saw that, I was

looking right at that.

MARK: You bring the plane back,

you download the imagery,

and then the software

stitches them all together

in one of these

gigapan giant photos.

RUDY: Ooh.

File is done.

Look, the quality of

the stitch is incredible.

I mean, you can zoom in.

RENAN: This is the zone.

RUDY: Each white block

represents a separate photo

of what we covered.

MARK: That's amazing.

RUDY: About 1300

photos went into that.

TOM: You see that?

This is the area.

There's no

question in my mind.

This is the area.

MARK: Tom's adamant

about what he saw in 2015.

He has seen the

tomb from the air.

Finding it again is all about,

"Where did Franklin land

when they left the ships?

Where was that camp?"

You find that camp,

you find Franklin's tomb.

♪ ♪

We just hauled

across that flood plain.

Heading to the area

that Tom identified.

I parked the bike.

I got off.

There were these

interesting looking rocks

arranged in an unnatural way.

Look at the size

of these rocks.

What the hell.

Come on.

Holy (bleep).

What the hell is that?

Hey Tom!

This is a camp.

That's incredible.

TOM: That's a tent peg.

MARK: Come on.

You've got to be kidding me.

TOM: Tent peg.

MARK: Is that something they

would have had on the ships...

TOM: Yeah.

MARK: Or something

they would have made?

TOM: Well they would

have made them probably.

It was really, really exciting

in a sense that I was looking

for a camp and what did

we find, but a tent peg.

You know, I think we found it

within the first 40 minutes of,

of going out,

which was incredible.

You know, like that

just doesn't happen.

MARK: I think we should look

around here a little bit more.

And this? Come on!

TOM: Oh wow, eh?

Look at that.

Look at this.

RENAN: That's not

Inuit is it, Jacob?

JACOB: This one?

Not it's not.

There were some items there that

our ancestors cannot make,

such as the brass

rod and the tent peg.

It could have been a camp at

one time from the expedition.

MARK: We have Inuit testimony

saying that there's a

stone house and a

camp in this area.

Now, we have found artifacts

that support the idea that

these stories are true.

And we have Tom seeing a stone

house that perfectly fits the

description in 2015.

So we felt like we were close.

I mean, it was just like right

there, we're going to find it.

Okay, so, the weather's perfect.

We're getting close.

Let's keep going.

TOM: Let's keep going.

That's a nice hill.

Yeah, straight there.

I don't know how far away

it is but that looks

really, really good.

MARK: This is our window

to find the tomb,

before the weather turns.

The idea is to search ridge

lines that match the one

Tom saw from the

plane back in 2015.

I mean imagine

finding Franklin's diary.

We might be able

to change history.

TOM: Oh I think we're close,

this is the area.

I think that hill over there,

you know, it's just,

it's just the lighting,

throws things off.

There's one more hill up

here that I've marked,

and we should go to that one.

For me, like until I find

that stone thing that I saw,

I'm not going to

be able to rest.

You know I need to see that,

I need to see what it was and

put that to rest.

MARK: Keep going down.

TOM: Yeah, I know, yeah.

MARK: There's all these big,

black, pointy rocks on that one.

I guess today is

day five or six.

We've covered I think

about 400 miles so far.

But we haven't found any

new signs of Franklin's men.

Did it not have little

lakes on the side Tom?

TOM: No, there's

no lakes on it.

MARK: It would be on

this side, right Tom?

TOM: Yeah.

RENAN: Yeah, cut out.

It's like transmission lost.

It cut out again!

TOM: How are you

feeling Jacob?

Are you feeling good

about finding it still?

JACOB: I never lose hope

until we start heading home.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MARK: What the heck?

The drain plug on the oil

pan had just fallen off.

RENAN: Do you want me to

take this bag off too?

Jacob to the rescue.

Took Jacob 20 minutes to

find a piece of driftwood.

And it's, it's holding all the

oil on the bike right now,

but I don't know how

many miles we have.

(engine rumbling).

MARK: We spent eight days

driving up and down

these gravel eskers.

I mean, just going around

in circles and up and down.

And we went from this really

high running optimism,

like we are close, like,

we are right on the trail.

And then it was just...

Day after day of frustration,

of driving through this

incredibly rugged terrain

that was destroying the bikes.

And we were spending half of

every day fixing the bikes.

♪ ♪

We got to a certain point where,

you know, a week into searching,

there was

nowhere else to look.

♪ ♪

We were in Erebus Bay

which is the spot where

23 of Franklin crew died.

There were signs of

cannibalism and bones

that had these cut marks.

And that's the spot where

we know things got

really desperate.

There may be some Inuit who

know where Franklin is buried,

but they don't want to mess

with it because there's a

very strong taboo in

their culture against

messing around with the dead.

JIMMY: We, as Inuit people,

still believe that

there are spirits

that are out there.

They're lost, and still

trying to find their way home.

But for me, we should

study these things

to understand what happened.

And we can pass this story

on to our next generation.

MARK: We did the best

that we could to document

some of the main search areas.

I mean, we have that data now.

We've been looking at it.

We can continue to look at it.

I could see that

being the future of

finding Franklin's tomb.

TOM: I know what

I saw in 2015.

I think that we're very,

very close to finding it.

I think that it's going to be

found probably within the

next year or two.

And not just not just Franklin,

who will basically

be frozen in time,

but maybe a couple other

officers with him.

And also it's going to

be where the records

are buried as well.

So I think it's all together,

it's once we find one thing,

we're going to have

it all and it's just,

just a matter of time

and it'll be there.

♪ ♪

MARK: I know that the mystery

of the Franklin expedition is

gonna continue to suck

people into it's vortex.

His grave is somewhere

out there right now.

Somebody's gonna

find it someday.

And solve the Franklin

mystery once and for all.