Museum Secrets (2011–…): Season 3, Episode 21 - Inside the Royal Museums Greenwich - full transcript

- [Narrator] Greenwich, England.

The heart of a nation built on sea power

and home to museum with
secrets dark and strange.

The mark of Horatio
Nelson's deadly assassin.

The magical bullet of
Captain William Bligh.

The final hours of Sir John
Franklin's Arctic expedition

and a deadly device that foiled an empire.

Secrets hidden in plain sight inside

the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

(eerie music)

Just east of central London,
on the banks of the Thames



river is Greenwich, home to
the National Maritime Museum.

The museum's collection
celebrates Great Britain's

proud seafaring heritage which
dates back almost 1000 years.

Through exploration,
innovation and conflict,

the Royal Navy led
Britain's conquest of the seas

and became a breeding ground for heroes

from the famous to the infamous.

From Sir John Franklin to William Bligh,

Captain of the ill-fated Bounty

but none was greater than this
man, Admiral Horatio Nelson.

- Horatio Nelson was born in 1758.

He joined the navy when
he was a 12 year old boy.

- [Narrator] Nelson rose through the ranks

to Vice Admiral and wore this uniform



during his finest hour, the
battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

One of Britain's most
legendary naval victories.

- Nelson wasn't just a British celebrity

during his lifetime, he
actually enjoyed enormous

European fame because he
was seen to be one of the most

potent adversaries of Napoleon
that Europe had to offer.

- [Narrator] But Nelson's
jacket clearly shows

that his finest hour was also his last.

On the left shoulder is the
entry point of a fatal bullet

that killed Britain's great hero.

(dramatic music)

Naval historian Sam Willis takes us

onto the deck of HMS Victory,
Admiral Nelson's flagship

from the battle of Trafalgar
and the scene of his death.

- Nelson would've been
down here on the quarter deck

during the battle, absolutely
in the thick of things,

with smoke clouding the
view, with cannons roaring,

splinters would've been flying everywhere.

Very dangerous place to be.

(cannon firing)

- [Narrator] The charge toward the center

of Napoleon's fleet brought the Victory

into close contact with the
French ship, Redoutable.

- This is where the
Redoutable was and her rigging

was locked together
with the Victory's rigging.

Her guns were so
close to the Victory's hull

that they were actually touching the hull

and as well as these masked
men on the Redoutable's decks

there were snipers in her rigging.

And it was at that moment, at this spot,

that Nelson was struck.

He immediately knew that
he'd been hit very badly.

He said, "I think they've broken my back."

- [Narrator] He was carried
four decks below to the surgery.

- It was very dark, it was very grim.

There would've been sounds
of screaming and dying men

and the bullet had gone
in through his shoulder,

it had broken two ribs,
it had punctured a lung

and then it had lodged itself in his spine

and as he lay there
he said he felt a pulsing

in his chest and the bullet
had cut one of his arteries.

- [Narrator] Surrounded by his loyal crew,

Nelson died three hours later.

Who fired the fatal shot?

For decades, many stories
arose about who the man

behind the bullet could have been

including one report from
a Frenchman who claimed

it was his shot that killed Nelson,

fired from the rigging of the Redoutable.

He took four bullets with him and he said,

"If I don't kill Nelson
with three of these bullets,

"I'm gonna use the
last one to kill myself."

When you hear that account the first thing

that strikes you is
it's not possible really.

It's like someone trying to
grab their own piece of fame,

trying to put their own stamp on history.

- [Narrator] So are we to
believe this French account?

Was Britain's greatest war hero

the target of a skilled marksman?

Or was he simply the
victim of a random gunshot?

This is our museum secret.

- Hi Ian.

- Hiya Sam.

- Thank you very much for coming along.

- [Narrator] Sam Willis
had enlisted the help

of artillery expert Ian Hen who has brought

a replica French musket with him.

Unlike the rifles of later
decades this musket is not

the ideal weapon for
precise target shooting.

- The balls are not exactly spherical,

they didn't always come out the center

of the barrel of the musket.

They may have come
out of the top or the bottom

or one side and that would've affected

whether they would've ended up on target.

- Well I think the first thing we should do

is test the accuracy of these muskets.

What do we need?

- If I grab the musket, if
you grab the tape measure,

we'll measure out and see
what we can get on with.

- Well, here's our Nelson dummy.

We know he was a bit shorter than this

but it'll do for our purposes.

- It will do, yes.

- He won't feel a thing.

- (laughs) Let's measure it out

and see how far away we can do it.

- [Narrator] Ian will
try a close range shot

at just 10 meters from the target.

- So what we need to
do now is to pull the gun

back to full cock and it's ready to fire.

- Right.

(gun cocking)

(gun firing)

- [Sam] Think you got him?

- [Ian] I think we got him, yes.

- [Sam] There.

- There we go look.

- We're you aiming for the main chest area?

- Well I was aiming for the main torso.

- Yep.

- You see, with the smoothbore musket

you do have accuracy problems,

you don't where it's
gonna come out of the bore.

- [Narrator] Even at close range

the musket isn't that accurate

and on the day of the battle the shot

would've been considerably
more complicated.

It's been calculated
that Nelson was standing

16 meters away from the
base of the mizzen-mast

at the French ship at
the moment he was shot.

- 15, 16 meters there

in your hand. - 16 meters so that's here.

Let's wave the truck back.

- [Narrator] And the shooter
was 15 meters up the mast.

- That's much higher than I thought.

- [Ian] OK!

- How you doing?

That is 15 meters off the ground.

That's the height of the
Redoutable's mizzen-mast.

From down there it looked incredibly high

but from here it's surprisingly close,

bearing in mind that that's an enemy ship.

That's gonna be rigging
full of enemy soldiers.

- [Narrator] In the chaos of battle,

canons would be firing and gun powder smoke

would be wafting across the ship's decks.

Sam wants to factor
that into the equation too.

(distant shouting)

(dramatic music)

(fuse fizzling)

(canon firing)

(musket firing)

- I think he hit the mannequin.

Unbelievably he shot
him in the left shoulder.

That's absolutely amazing.

So even with the noise and the smoke

of the cannon, he's managed to shoot him

on the left shoulder,
just below the epaulet,

exactly where Nelson was shot
which is an extraordinary shot

and it's completely not
what I expected to happen.

- [Narrator] Ian's bullet has
gone right through the dummy,

penetrating the center of the
back where the spine would be.

- It's extraordinarily similar,
what's happened here.

If you compare what happened with Nelson

with what we've managed to recreate

from the angles, from the
distance and from the height.

We need to re-think that
moment of Nelson's death

and to consider the fact
that he was deliberately

targeted by a French marksman.

- [Narrator] The French shot
was heard around the world

and with the death of a
national hero a legend was born.

Admiral Nelson was
immortalized in British memory

and continues to command from his pedestal

on high over Trafalgar Square.

Next on Museum Secrets,
a deadly Infernal Machine.

(dramatic music)

Hidden away in the storerooms

of the National Maritime Museum

lies surprising mementos
of Britain's fighting past.

These are the naval weapons that helped

Britain rule the waves
but in the 19th century

the Royal Navy faced a new kind of weapon.

A hidden threat that lurked

beneath the surface of the ocean.

- This is the Russian Infernal Machine.

It's a sea mine from the
time of the Crimean war

and as you can see, this one has been taken

by the British as a war trophy
and has been painted up,

Russian Infernal Machine, Baltic, 1855.

- [Narrator] Sea mines have been a threat

to warships going back to
the Chinese in the 14th century

and they continue to represent
a significant threat today.

Marine mines filled with
TNT are now computerized

and fitted with electronic fuses

for remote or automatic detonation.

(mine exploding)

They are capable of colossal explosions.

(mine exploding)

Naval mines present such a danger

that there are entire fleets devoted

to finding and defusing them.

This is HMS Chiddingfold,
one of 15 Royal Navy

mine hunter vessels.

All mine hunters carry ROVs,
Remote Operated Vehicles,

equipped with cameras
that allow mine hunters

to get a good look at the
mine from a safe distance

and diffuse it or destroy
it. (mine explodes)

In the 19th century, naval
mines and the methods

used to deal with them were
considerably less sophisticated.

If they were identified and fished

out of the water intact, these
new weapons were treated

with equal parts caution and curiosity.

But as one newspaper
report from the time illustrates,

this curiosity got the better
of one man in particular.

Royal Naval Admiral Seymour.

- Seymour, with his officers,
was extremely interested

in the device so he
whacked the side of the mine

and it blew up knocking back the officers,

burning off their mustaches
and their eyebrows

and poor Admiral Seymour
was blinded in one eye as result.

(explosion) (men screaming)

- [Narrator] Back in the
1850s, mines were armed

with gunpowder that had to be ignited

without the use of
electronics or batteries.

So how did the Russian
Infernal Machine work

and why did these men survive its blast?

This is our museum secret.

(quirky music)

The investigation begins in Whiltshire

with chemist and explosives
engineer, Doctor Sydney Alfred.

Today he's going to
try to build a functioning

Russian Infernal
Machine for the first time.

- There is something singularly bizarre

about this mine and
it is it's general shape.

It is a cone; it is conical.

Where it came from, I don't know.

- [Narrator] No functioning
Infernal Machine exists today.

Sydney has only a few crude sketches

from the period to work with.

- My guess is that the
gunpowder was introduced

in the bottom through this fitting here.

This serves, of course you
can see, to attach the rope.

So the thing was designed to float

and by attaching this line where it is,

it would automatically float vertically,

go something like this in the sea.

- [Narrator] So, bobbing
just under the water

how was the Russian Infernal
Machine designed to detonate?

- If I were to hit it here,
so this goes upwards...

- [Narrator] Sydney might have the answer.

- What is in this hole is the tube,

which would have been almost certainly

thin board metal, probably steel.

- [Narrator] Inside this tube

is a glass vial containing sulfuric acid.

When the mine is struck
my a ship, the vial breaks,

releasing the acid into a
chemical mixture just below it.

This interaction creates a
flame, igniting the gunpowder.

Believing he's worked out the mechanics,

Sydney has built a scale
model to test his design.

- [Man] Whoa!

- [Narrator] This shallow pool
represents a Russian harbor.

This wooden dingy, a British warship.

- [Sydney] Right, electrical
connection coming up.

- [Narrator] In the interest of safety,

Sydney is going to attempt to detonate

the mine from several meters away.

- [Sydney] That will cause the mine

to dangle at the right...

- [Narrator] Placed
just under the ship's hull

it will be in the same
position as the original

Infernal Machines that detonated

on contact with ships passing over them.

- I'm ready to fire.

Firing, five, four, three, two, one.

(mine exploding)

(water splashing) (dramatic music)

(boat crashing)

- (laughs) Had I been a Russian,

I would've been delighted with that result.

Just hope it wasn't my own ships.

Let's see what it's done to the boat.

It has almost certainly perforated it.

It's listing heavily.

There's some material which is burning,

on fire, projected upwards.

That was the top of
the mine which blew off,

not surprisingly and that is
pretty catastrophic damage.

Had it been a naval vessel

and the magazine were there where they keep

their powder and shot and
so on, or anywhere near,

the whole thing I think would
have quite disintegrated.

- [Narrator] So why
didn't the Infernal Machine

that blew up in the face of Admiral Seymour

and his men do more damage?

Sydney thinks he knows why.

- I would expect that
much powder, this close,

almost certainly to kill someone.

And the thought occurred to me,

I wonder whether it was
a mine that was primed

but had not yet had explosive in.

- Seymour's mine may have been primed

with the chemical initiating substances

but not charged with gunpowder,

an oversight by the Russians,

(mine exploding)

a lucky escape for the
British Admiral and his men.

Up next, the secret of
Captain Bligh's bullet.

(dramatic music)

The National Maritime
museum is full of grand objects

with towering stories to tell

but sometimes it's the
smallest and simplest objects

that tell the most epic stories.

- These three objects
belonged to Captain William Bligh

who is, of course, famous
as the captain of the Bounty,

the ship involved in that
infamous mutiny in 1789.

- [Narrator] On the
night of April 28th, 1789

the crew of HMS Bounty
mutinied against their iron willed

and controlling captain, William Bligh.

- And then an oar, Mr Christian!

- [Narrator] They seized
the ship and set Bligh adrift

in an open boat along
with 18 loyal followers.

Bligh and his men were
faced with a treacherous

open boat voyage across the South Pacific.

- 47 days is an extraordinarily long time.

Over 3600 miles.

His men faced hunger, they faced thirst,

they faced towering
waves, they faced storms,

they faced rain and then they faced

the real problem of
all open boat survivors,

they had to cope with each other as well.

- Being sat in a tiny
boat in a massive ocean

that's in storm conditions
is absolutely terrifying.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Chris Martin
is a long distance rower

who has crossed both the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans

in boats the same size as Bligh's.

- 19 men in a boat the same size as ours,

no cabin, no watertight compartment

to go and hide in when
the weather gets rough.

I can't imagine what that would be like.

(indistinct shouting)

- [Narrator] So how did Bligh
deliver his men to safety?

With the help of a musket ball,

a coconut shell and a horn beaker.

This is our museum secret.

(boat engine humming)

The investigation begins in Portsmouth.

To understand Bligh's ordeal

we must first get aboard his boat.

- This is the Blue Launch.

She's a replica of frigate's
launch from the period.

So she's exactly the same size as the boat

that Bligh would've
been put in, that's 23 feet.

She would've been used for shipping crew

and stores to and from a ship

so she's certainly not
designed for a voyage

of any significant length

and certainly not for a lot of people.

So I think the first thing we need to do

is see what it looks like
with 19 men on board.

Come on then boys, let's get on!

On you go first.

That's one, two, three, four, five.

OK, number 17 and our
own Captain Bligh, number 18

and we know there were 19 people on board

so I'm gonna get on as well.

It's starting to look and
feel pretty cramped already.

You can feel us settling
down quite low to the water

and the idea of going on
a 3600 mile voyage in this

is pretty horrific.

- Give way together.

- The problem we've got is space.

We've got the mast here and boom

and the bowsprit here for the rigging.

So the poor people in the middle

keep getting poked in the ribs by the oars

so for them it's quite uncomfortable.

(seagulls cawing)

- [Narrator] The flat
waters of Portsmouth harbor

are nothing compared to
the giant swells of the Pacific.

- We saw some really
crazy weather conditions

out in the Pacific, some
60 foot high waves,

really aggressive storms blowing past.

- One of the problems, of
course, is shipping water

from seas coming along, the swell breaking

over the side of the boat and we know

that at one stage in his
voyage Bligh had to have

two men constantly bailing, 24 hours a day.

- [Narrator] And in an
open boat the threats

come from both the sea and the sun.

- In the Pacific the
ozone layer is quite thin

so the crew will have been
exposed to extreme temperatures

during the day and an
extreme risk of heatstroke.

Now this would have had various effects

on them in the form of hyperthermia.

These will have included
things like dizziness,

confusion, nausea and vomiting

and just a general state
of unease and agitation.

- [Narrator] And adding to their agitation

was their pitiful food supply.

So this is what Bligh
was given to take with him.

We've got 150 pounds of biscuits,

28 gallons of water, 20
pounds of salted pork,

six coconuts, three bottles of red wine,

five quarts of rum and that was it.

That was what they had
to survive 47 days at sea.

- [Narrator] This works out to
400 calories a day, per man.

- [Sam] So can I have every person...

- [Narrator] On his Pacific row in 2009

Chris budgeted 5000 calories a day

but after four months he discovered

that some of his food had become
contaminated with seawater.

- As the food ran out and
became more contaminated

we then had to eat less and less.

At the end, our last day,
we had 200 calories of food.

It's absolutely exhausting to be putting

that much effort in to physical exertion

and not getting any food in
to replace those lost calories.

- [Narrator] Bligh and his men tried

to supplement their
supplies by stopping off

on the island of Tonga
but they were quickly

beaten off the island by the locals.

One of the crewmen was
stoned to death in the escape.

Fearing further casualties, Bligh knew

he had to control his men
from turning on each other.

And this brings us back to the musket ball

which holds the secret to their survival,

serving not as a weapon but as a weight.

- So, knowing the
weight of the musket ball,

Bligh was able to use this to
measure out the bread ration

that each man would receive twice a day.

- [Narrator] The musket ball
weighs less than an ounce.

- So what we imagine is that Bligh

would use a makeshift weighing scales,

probably using coconut
shells, similar to this,

the bullet in one and the
meager bread ration in the other.

What they would do is to make up

a terribly weak stew,
perhaps of some shellfish

or the tiny amount of dried
pork that they've got on.

They would mash their bread into it

and add a little bit of
seawater just to act as a sauce.

So it is little wonder that Bligh

writes around the rim of his cup,

"This is the cup I eat my
miserable ration out of."

This is not cordon bleu
cookery on the open waves.

- [Narrator] Battling dehydration,

Bligh also controlled the fresh water,

giving his men an eighth of a pint,

rationed from this
beaker, three times a day.

This way their only food
and drink for over a month.

47 days after they were kicked

off the Bounty by it's mutineering crew,

Bligh and 17 of his men reached
the British colony of Timor.

So how did Bligh manage
to keep control of his crew

under such extreme circumstances?

- He's managed it by his seamanship,

he managed it by his leadership.

He kept everyone together
and there are so many accounts

of survivors in open boats
absolutely falling apart

in situations like this.

- I think that the main
reason that the crew survived

was because of the discipline
of Captain Bligh in rationing

out the food and water so carefully.

I think without that they
probably won't have survived.

- [Narrator] It was Bligh's
obsessive, controlling

personality that turned
his ship's crew to mutiny

but in the end it was
this same tough discipline

that saved them all from certain death.

Up next, the secret of fighting pirates.

(dramatic music)

Britain's National Maritime Museum

is filled with reminders
of naval conflicts.

From the American revolutionary
war to the Second World War.

But one war would outlast them all.

It began centuries ago and remarkably,

it's still going on today.

- This is a presentation
sword that was awarded

to Lieutenant Robert Gore
of the gunboat Andromache

and it was awarded to him in 1837

for action against the
pirates in the Malacca Straits.

- [Narrator] By the 1830s
the Straits of Malacca,

a major trading route
between India and China,

had become a notorious hotspot for pirates.

Robert Gore was part
of a Royal Navy taskforce

created to eradicate this menace.

- Man the guns!

(cannons firing)

- [Narrator] The word pirates
most often brings to mind

images of swashbuckling
villains from centuries past

but the truth is pirates
are still very much with us.

In the past few years
Somali pirates have hijacked

hundreds of ships from sail
boats and fishing trawlers,

to 1000 foot long super tankers.

(machine gun firing)

Piracy is as lucrative and serious

a threat today as it ever was.

(ominous music) (coins tinkling)

So how do you wage war on piracy?

This is our museum secret.

The investigation begins
on the waters of the Gair Loch

in Scotland, home to her
majesties naval base, Clyde.

These Royal Marines are
the latest in a long tradition

of Royal Navy counter piracy task forces.

- [Man] Go, clear!

- The intelligence picture so far,

they've seen four crew
members on the upper deck.

No weapons have been sighted,

brief your orders Rob, at 10:00.

Any other issues, we'll
update you on the...

- [Narrator] Captain Chris
Vigors is the second in command

of S Squadron 43 Commando
Fleet Protection Services.

His men are training for
deployment to the Gulf of Aden

where their job is to
combat today's pirates.

(boat roaring)

(hose spraying)

His squadron is performing an exercise

in chasing and boarding
a suspected pirate vessel.

- Right, get back.

- [Man] No hands low!

- Put it down!

- [In Unison] No hands low!

- A few years ago they used to just work

very close to their coast.

They didn't really have
the vessels to go out there

but since then piracy has increased

and they've now got big mother ships

which are capable of doing long distances.

(cannons firing)

- [Narrator] In the 19th century

the best way to evade
pirates was to out run them

but no ship could sail
at full speed all the time.

19th century pirates knew
this and would patiently wait

for the right opportunity to strike.

- They would wait until
the ship was becalmed

or maybe even temporarily run aground

and then they would dart out from cover,

from hiding in their proas and cluster

around the bow and the stern of the ship.

(oars splashing)

- [Narrator] Being overtaken by pirates

pretty much always meant death.

- When they captured a
ship they either killed the crew

or held them prisoner
but if there was any sign

of resistance in no uncertain terms

they made it very clear
that they would just carve

everyone up and throw them overboard.

- [Narrator] By the
1830s piracy was causing

such a disruption to trade
in the Straits of Malacca

that the Royal Navy were called in

to eradicate pirates from the area.

Among the officers was Robert Gore.

- The gun boat on which
Robert Gore was serving,

in the course of six months,
from May to September,

burnt down three so-called pirate villages,

killed upwards of 200 pirates

and they lost only one man and 17 wounded.

(intense music)

- [Narrator] Today many modern
pirates use captured tankers

or cargo vessels as their home base.

This presents new challenges

for Chris Vigors and S Squadron.

- We use flashbangs.

(flashbangs exploding)

Basically that's just a
big shock for the entry.

(flashbangs exploding)

So they'll throw a flashbang
in which has six loud bangs

which just takes the
enemies mind off anything

that we might be doing
or shocks them a little.

- [Narrator] For vulnerable
ships on the high seas

the same rules apply today
that have held for centuries.

If you can't outrun the pirates,

and you can't cut them off at their source,

then you have only two options left.

- Tryna prevent them from boarding you

and obviously fighting back
if they come against you.

If you fire any shots at them,

they'll normally just turn and run.

- [Narrator] And if that
fails, then just hope

that there's a counter piracy
unit working in your area.

After all, they've got centuries
of experience behind them.

- [Man] Get down!

- [Man] Get down, get down!

Next on museum secrets, the secret

to controlling a million
volts of lightning.

(lightning zapping)

(dramatic music)

The tall ships designed for
trade, war and exploration

faced many dangers from both sea and land

but with main masts
reaching as high as 60 meters

they also faced a threat from the sky.

- This is one of the mast heads

of the great French flagship, the L'Orient

that was destroyed by British warships

at the battle of the Nile in August 1798.

At the top you can see a lightning rod

that would've conducted a bolt of lightning

right the way down the mast,

down through the hull
of the ship, to the keel,

which was several hundred feet below

and then the charge would
disperse into the ocean.

(shelf sliding)

- [Narrator] The L'Orient
was Napoleon's flagship

during the French invasion of Egypt.

His fleet was confronted one night

by Britain's Admiral Nelson.

This painting depicts
the climax of the battle

when the L'Orient caught fire.

- There was a colossal explosion

which sent a gout of
flame high up into the air

and also carried chunks of the ship

and pieces of wreckage right
up into the heavens as well.

- [Narrator] This rod was
one of the only remnants

of the ship to survive the explosion.

It was fished out of the water

and presented to Admiral Nelson.

- We know that Nelson
was very fond of this object.

His house was completely full of artifacts

from battles; it was full
of portraits of himself.

It was full of paintings of battles

but he kept his lightning
conductor by the front door.

It was the first thing that you'd see.

Now, because it looks curious,

I think it was a conversation starter.

People said, "what is
that, why have you got it?"

- [Narrator] And the conversation

continues among scientists today.

- I've never seen one which is so blunt.

I can't see there's any reason

that could've happened in an accident,

it looks like somebody
has bent it in that fashion.

Maybe they had a good
reason for it; I don't know.

- [Narrator] Modern
lightning rods are sharper

so just how effective was this
unusually shaped antique one?

That is our museum secret.

(lift whirring) (light clicking)

Our investigation begins at the University

of Manchester's high voltage lab.

- Lightning is likely to hit anything

that's tall and anything that's sharp.

So if you have, say, a
tree, if you have yourself

holding an umbrella, if
you have a tall building,

(lightning crackling)

all of those things could be hit.

- [Narrator] The
electrical field around tall

and sharp objects is intensified

and attracts lightning strikes,

including, of course, a mast at sea.

- Lightning can be 200,000 amps

which is a huge amount of current.

It's about the same as
20,000 electric kettles.

It's only there for a very very short time

but it can blow things apart
and cause massive damage.

- [Narrator] And for the wooden ships

of Nelson's era the threat was even worse.

- There's obviously a
huge problem with warships

because they were made of wood

but also because they
were full of gunpowder.

If you think about HMS Victory

when she was first
commissioned in the 1770s

she had 42,000 pounds of gunpowder on her

which is the equivalent to
25 and a half tonnes of TNT.

Now that gets a bit messy
if you get struck by lightning.

- [Narrator] In 1752 the experiments

of American inventor Benjamin Franklin

proved that a sharp, pointed rod

could be used to attract lightning

but 50 years after Franklin's experiment

the French were still using
their own blunt tipped design

which brings us back to our museum secret.

How did the blunt lightning rod

compare to the sharp lightning rod?

Today Ian will test
this for the first time.

This generator will send 1.1 million volts

to a hanging electrode,
which represents a cloud.

Ian is placing the rods at an
equal distance from the cloud.

- I think what will happen is we'll see

that the sharp lightning
rod attracts more lightning

than the blunt one and I think we'll show

that the French were probably wrong

but they didn't have the
knowledge that we have today,

that the sharp lightning rod intensifies

this electric field around the tip.

(door closing)

(lightning crashing)

- [Narrator] That's two
strikes to the blunt rod.

The rods are swapped around
to make sure the test is fair.

(lightning crashing)

And one strike to the sharp rod.

Ian is surprised by the results.

(lightning crashing)

- And the blunt one again.

Before the tests I would've assumed

that every single lightning strike we saw

would've gone to this
rod compared with this rod

where there's no real sharpness to it

but obviously this one must work

(lightning crashing)

otherwise you wouldn't see the results

that we just saw in the lab.

- [Narrator] So the French
were onto something

with their unconventional
design but one question remains,

why was Nelson so fond
of this particular piece?

- Nelson may have appreciated
that lightning conductor

because it was a reminder
of the shockingly violent

and merciless assault that
he launched on the French

at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.

You see they had this
piece of maritime technology

which would protect
them from nature's wrath

but they didn't have anything

to protect them from the British.

(canons firing) (boats crashing)

- [Narrator] Up next, a harrowing secret

of the Franklin expedition, frozen in ice.

(dramatic music)

The National Maritime Museum
is home to many artifacts

celebrating Britain's
greatest maritime explorations

but in the 19th century
there was one region

that the British Navy hadn't charted.

The Arctic.

Determined to discover the
elusive northwest passage

through the Arctic,
the British Admiral team

mount their most well
equipped expedition to date.

The ships are outfitted with steam engines,

water filtration systems,
extensive libraries

and a recent invention,
food preserved in tins.

They appoint this man
to lead the expedition,

Sir John Franklin.

- Franklin was an Arctic veteran.

He was a survivor.

He was someone who had
been entrusted with leadership

on two separate Arctic
expeditions in the past

and he was famously
an explorer who had eaten

his own boots to survive
and this is a testament

to his skills in surviving, his skills

in getting a job done
and in coming back safely.

- [Narrator] But Franklin
doesn't come back safely.

He and his 128 men
disappear into the Arctic abyss.

After three years with no
word from the expedition

Britain launches the
largest manhunt in history.

Finding Franklin becomes
a national obsession.

Desperate to cover the vast Arctic expanses

in their search, the
Victorians are inspired

by a popular means of
travel at the time, the balloon.

- This is a communication balloon

and it's made from animal gut and paper,

kind of patchwork-ed together.

It's stained with what we
think is blackberry juice

to make it very visible
against the Arctic landscape.

- [Narrator] Released from rescue vessels,

these hydrogen balloons
carried hundreds of messages

on burning fuses, scattering
them over a wide area.

- These are messages of
hope, these are messages

telling them that there
are people out there

looking for them, that there
are provisions there for them,

that there is hope of survival.

- [Narrator] The Victorians dreamed up

other creative ways for
distributing these messages of hope.

These collars were
stamped with the coordinates

of rescue parties and
attached to Arctic foxes

in the hope that Franklin's
men would discover them.

- We also have examples of badges

which would be given to Inuit men

who traveled through the Arctic

and these badges contained
details of the exact location

where Franklin's men could find rescue.

- [Narrator] But every
attempt to make contact

with the expedition is
met with absolute silence.

What happened to Franklin and his men?

This is our museum secret.

A clue is discovered five years

into the search with the discovery

of Franklin's first camp on Beechey Island.

- There was a coal pile,
there was a tin can dump

and there were three
graves and these were really

the first pieces of
evidence of the expedition

and also the first sign that things

had gone terribly awry very
early on in the expedition.

- [Narrator] More clues
to the expedition's trail

surfaced farther south
on King William Island.

Here, Inuit natives are
discovered carrying buttons

and other objects from the expedition.

The Inuit claimed to
have acquired the objects

from a large group of white men.

Motivated by the Inuit testimony

the British send out one
last search party in 1859.

They strike gold.

A can with a report inside filled out

by one of Franklin's officers
two years into the expedition.

- The form was filled
out saying that everything

was going well on the
expedition up until May 1847

and then squeezed around the edge

in tiny, desperate handwriting is the tale

that John Franklin had
died and that the men

that were remaining, stuck in the ice

decided to head
southwards for the Fish River

to see if they could
find provisions to help.

- [Narrator] And so Britain had her answer.

Franklin was dead.

The fate of the rest of
his men was a mystery,

lost in the ice.

The search was called off.

But great mysteries
never die and in the 1980s

Canadian forensic
anthropologist Owen Beattie

resurrected the old obsession,
relocating the human remains.

- I don't think he was prepared

for what he encountered on Beech Island

which was a level of
preservation that as astonishing.

It looked like these men had just died.

The men had died of
pneumonia and their tissue

and bone showed dramatically high levels

of lead poisoning which brings us back

to that recent invention, canned food.

- I've held some of those tin cans

and the lead is on the inside of the seams

and it drips like candle wax.

- [Narrator] After three years of consuming

the lead poisoned food Franklin's men

would've been in terrible
mental and physical shape.

Desperate to seek food and rescue,

the men left their ships and headed south.

Owen Beattie followed the
men's trail on King William Island

and here he made a grisly discovery.

- That's where a tent circle was located

and around the outside of that tent circle

was a scatter of human remains.

- [Narrator] Among the
remains were a smashed in skull

and a femur with unusual cut marks.

- They were marks that had
been cut using a metal knife

and they're really evidence of de-fleshing.

They're butcher marks.

So whoever was doing
this was literally cutting off

the muscle, trying to
get access to the flesh.

The skull was smashed
in, there were fracture lines

and so the teeth and the face were missing.

So clearly there was an
effort to access the brain,

likely as a food source.

- [Narrator] But the
skeleton wasn't complete.

It appeared that the bones of the heavier

part of the body, the torso,
had been left somewhere else.

- The portable parts,
the easily portable parts

of the body, the legs,
the arms and the skull,

were carried along
almost like takeaway food,

to put it crudely and
these surviving crewmen

then reached this point,
built the camp and had a meal.

- [Narrator] The fate of
the Franklin expedition

marked the end of Britain's great legacy

of conquest over the seas.

The Arctic had become the last

and most unforgiving frontier.

In this place where Empire
and exploration meet,

for every mystery we reveal,
far more must remain unspoken.

Tales of high seas triumph
and ice bound tragedy.

Secrets hidden in plain sight

inside the National Maritime Museum.

(dramatic music)