‘Explorer: Lost in the Arctic’: Nat Geo Doc Tries to Uncover Centuries-Old Mystery
“What would you do? If your friend died and you were starving, would you eat him?” National Geographic Explorer Mark Synnott mulled the unthinkable while trying to solve one of history’s greatest seafaring mysteries in Explorer: Lost in the Arctic: what happened to the 129 men of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition whose ships got trapped in the Arctic ice while the sailors were trying to be the first to navigate the Northwest Passage.
“We know they all died,” Synnott says. “I’m curious what people do when it’s pure survival.” This need for answers has fueled multiple searchers from 1848 until the present day, and even inspired the horror novel The Terror, adapted in 2018 to launch an AMC anthology series.
(Credit: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/RENAN OZTURK)
This suspenseful documentary chronicles the four-month quest of Synnott and a team of explorers who think answers will be found in Franklin’s tomb, which Inuit witnesses reported was on Canada’s remote King William Island. The searchers hope the grave will hold logbooks and crew letters. “We’d be able to fill in the blanks and have stories told in their own words,” Synnott says.
Prepare to grip your sofa arm: To reach the island, the modern-day crew’s survival skills are tested as they sail Synnott’s 47-foot Polar Sun sailboat through fog and storms along the route of Franklin’s ill-fated ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. (Their wrecks were discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively.)
“I set the whole trip up so that I could try to feel what it was like for Franklin and his guys: sail in the same waters, anchor in the same bays, weather the same storms, connect with their spirits,” Synnott says.
History repeats itself a little too closely and terrifyingly when ice closes in and traps the Polar Sun in a bay for 10 days. Once the men finally reach King William Island, you’ll be on the edge of your seat hoping they unearth something less gruesome than an Inuit hunter did in 1854: the bones of 30 of Franklin’s men piled together — and bearing signs of cannibalism.
Explorer: Lost in the Arctic, Thursday, Aug. 24, 10/9c, National Geographic
