Disaster in the Canadian Arctic: Painting a sextant from the Franklin expedition

Today's video features a painting of a sextant recovered from the wreck of HMS Erebus, one of the two ships of the doomed Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage. We discuss the fate of the expedition, Charles Dickens being a bad influence, and how Inuit knowledge resolved 170 years of mystery.

Photo references

Erebus sextant
Parks Canada
https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/archeologie-archeology/artefacts-artifacts/2024

Victory Point note
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1172345

Reference List

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Parks Canada. "Finding HMS Erebus — Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site." parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/archeologie-archeology/decouvertes-discoveries/erebus.

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PMC / National Institutes of Health. "Sir John Franklin's Last Arctic Expedition: A Medical Disaster." pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1279489/.

Royal Museums Greenwich. "HMS Terror and Erebus — The Story of Franklin's Lost Expedition." www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/hms-terror-erebus-history-franklin-lost-expedition.

Royal Museums Greenwich. "How Inuit Oral History Helped Locate Erebus and Terror." www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/how-inuit-oral-history-helped-locate-erebus-terror.

Smithsonian Magazine. "The Shipwrecks From John Franklin's Doomed Arctic Expedition Were Exactly Where the Inuit Said They Would Be." May 19, 2025. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shipwrecks-from-john-franklins-doomed-arctic-expedition-were-exactly-where-the-inuit-said-they-would-be-180986627/.

Woodman, David C. Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991.

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