Is this the ship whose sailors were poisoned by canned food and died horrible deaths? One was perfectly preserved in the ice...
I remember a NatGeo special on that crew. I think they were American. The crew, all 129, of this expedition were never found.
Those were Shackelton’s crew that died of lead poisoning.
Hello. As I mentioned in my post below, the book I recently read by McGoogan actually discusses this. There is the theory that the lead poisoning (contracted from the food) may not have directly killed the men, but lead to disorientation and irritability that caused the men to be lost after escaping the boats that were stopped in the ice. Scurvy also played an important factor in the death toll as well as cannibalism (this shocked proper British society at the time when John Rae suggested this).
I know one expedition, forget which one, in which men ate rabbits for some time. There were lots, but died because rabbits don’t have salt or something like that. I’d have to search for it, but I remember that from being a kid.
These men going off into the unknown, into a frozen hell on earth, is a good glimpse into the bravery of the times.
Compare the men then to now and then we see how things got as bad as they are.