The Franklin Expedition Left a Note That Said "All Well." Then Someone Wrote Around It

In May 1847, two officers of Sir John Franklin's expedition left a printed Admiralty form under a pile of stones on King William Island, in the Canadian Arctic. In the middle they wrote: "All well." Eleven months later, someone took it out again and wrote all the way around the edges: the ships Erebus and Terror had been deserted, Franklin was dead, and 105 men were about to start walking south. This video reads that note line by line, follows what the searchers of the 1850s found along the route (John Rae's report, McClintock's boat on a sledge, the skeleton on the south shore), the discovery of the two ships in 2014 and 2016, and the DNA work that in May 2026 named the man McClintock found in 1859: Harry Peglar, captain of the foretop of HMS Terror. 00:00 The note 01:10 Greenhithe · May 1845 02:26 Beechey Island 03:20 Beset · 1846 03:48 All well · May 1847 05:21 The margin · April 1848 06:55 The march · Rae, 1854 07:53 The Fox · 1859 08:50 The boat 09:44 The south shore 10:58 The ships · 2014 and 2016 12:31 The name · 2026 14:15 What the note doesn't say 15:00 Some very hard ground Primary sources: F. L. M'Clintock, The Voyage of the 'Fox' in the Arctic Seas (John Murray, 1859), including the facsimile of the Victory Point record; The Nautical Magazine (1845; 1854, John Rae's report to the Admiralty); Parks Canada pages on the discovery of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror; University of Waterloo (2024); D. R. Stenton, S. Fratpietro, K. Gorsalitz and R. W. Park, "Some very hard ground to heave": DNA identification of Harry Peglar, Captain of the Foretop, HMS Terror, Polar Record 62 (2026), e17; T. Swanston et al., PLOS ONE 13(8) (2018). Daguerreotypes of the officers: studio of Richard Beard, May 1845 (public domain). Photographs: Beechey Island by Gordon Leggett (CC BY-SA 4.0), Carina Gsottbauer (CC BY-SA 4.0) and LawrieM (CC BY-SA 4.0); King William Island by Stephen Trafton (CC BY-SA 4.0); the bell and model of HMS Erebus and the archaeology barge, Gjoa Haven, by Kerry Raymond (CC BY 4.0); Franklin relics at the National Maritime Museum by Geni (CC BY-SA 4.0); paintings, engravings and maps from 1845–1907, including Le Tour du Monde (1860) and Die Gartenlaube (1860) (public domain).