On the night of February 1-2, 1959, in the Northern Urals, at the pass between Mount Kholatchakhl and the nameless height of 905, a tourist group led by Igor Dyatlov disappeared. In memory of the lost tourists, we tell about other expeditions that disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Buried in ice
At the age of 59, English navigator John Franklin embarked on his fourth expedition to explore the Arctic.
For sailing, the ships of the Royal Navy have been re-equipped with the latest technology. The 378-ton "Erebus" and the 331-ton "Terror" entered the Arctic. There was enough provisions for three years, the ship had a steam locomotive engine, and many books, and even a small tame monkey.
On May 19, 1845, the expedition was opened, its goal was to pass through the Northwest Passage. During the summer, the sailors' wives received several letters. The latter arrived in August, they were all detailed and optimistic, and one of the expedition members, the housekeeper from Erebus, Osmer, wrote that they should be expected home in 1846.
However, neither in 1846 nor in 1847 there was any news from the expedition. Only in 1848, the first three ships went in search. Jane Franklin, the wife of a brave seafarer, begged them to check the mouth of the Big Pisces, but no one heeded her requests. However, she was the only one who felt the approaching disaster.
Shortly after the departure of the expedition, Jane sewed a flag for the ship, while John fell asleep next to him on the sofa. Jane thought that her husband was cold, and she threw a flag on his feet. When he woke up, he exclaimed, “Why was I covered with a flag? This is done only with the dead! From that moment on, the woman did not know peace. Through her efforts, the search for the missing continued right up to 1857.
Promotional video:
In 1859, a McClintock expedition, fully paid for by Jane Franklin, found a cairn on King William Island with a detailed note from 1847 and 1848 underneath. A skeleton was also found, and with it a notebook with notes. Strange, but they were made backwards and ended in words, contained many spelling errors, there were no punctuation marks at all. One of the sheets ended with the words "O Death, where is your sting", on the next sheet, notes were made in a circle, inside which was written "The Terror (Horror) Camp is empty".
A boat with two skeletons was also found. For some reason, the boat was on a sleigh, which was dragged with a rope. The sentry guns were cocked. The first one killed was the one who was sitting on the bow, the second was ready for defense, but died of exhaustion. Tea and 18 kilograms of chocolate were found among the provisions, among the vital items: silk scarves, scented soap, boots, large quantities of books, sewing needles, 26 table forks made of silver spoons and much more, which was not at all suitable for survival.
The remains that were found at the sites of the expedition were gnawed, which speaks of cannibalism; scientists also found that the sailors died of tuberculosis, pneumonia and scurvy. In addition, a huge amount of lead was found in the bones, but where it came from is not known.
Franklin's body was not found, although the last search operations took place in the middle of the 20th century.
Unfinished expedition "St. Anne"
Probably, the adage "a woman on a ship - to trouble" has real roots. 20-year-old Yerminiya Zhdanko, daughter of a famous hydrographer, was going to “ride” on the schooner “Saint Anna” around the Scandinavian Peninsula to Aleksandrovsk in the Kola Bay together with a family friend Barentsov. After that, the girl planned to return home to her papa, but this was not destined to come true.
In Aleksandrovka, the expedition found out that several people were not enough for swimming, there was also no doctor. Yerminia, who, during the Russo-Japanese War, trained as a sister of mercy and dreamed of getting to the front, said that she would not leave the ship and was ready to sail: “I feel that I did what I had to, and then - come what may,” she wrote to her father …
In the winter of 1912, the schooner "rooted" into the ice; in the spring of 1913, the frozen ship was carried into the Arctic Ocean. Even in summer, when the openings appeared, the ice floe did not melt. The second wintering began. By that time, navigator Valerian Albanov and captain Georgy Brusilov had a falling out, and Albanov did not fulfill his duties. In January 1914, he asked permission to get off and announced that he would get to civilization himself. Suddenly, 13 more people joined him (by the way, there were only 24 sailors on the schooner).
Two people reached Cape Flora - navigator Valerian Albanov and sailor Alexander Kondar. A miracle happened and they were picked up by a passing ship. The remaining 11 travelers died in the ice. In Russia, Valerian sent Brusilov's report and an extract from the ship's log, along with all the documents of the sailors on the St. Anna, to the Hydrographic Department. By the way, in his book Albanov wrote about the letters that were passed with him by those who remained on "St. Anna", but for some reason the letters never reached the addressees.
After the expedition, Albanov and Kondar never spoke to each other. Albanov tried for many years to organize a search and rescue operation, but in vain. Kondar abruptly changed his life, changed his job and tried not to remember swimming. He refused to speak with the relatives of the expedition members and only once dined with Georgy Brusilov's brother Sergei, who came to him in Arkhangelsk in the mid-thirties. Seeing off the guest in the dark, he suddenly looked intently into his face and shouted: “But I didn't shoot you! Didn't shoot !! It was not possible to find out what he was talking about.
Brusilov's ship was never found.
The death of Scott's expedition
The expedition of Robert F. Scott studied the southern continent for three years - from 1901 to 1904. The Englishman came to the shores of Antarctica, explored the sea and the Ross glacier, collected extensive material on geology, flora, fauna and minerals. And then he made an attempt to penetrate into the interior of the mainland. It is believed that to no avail. But it is not so.
During a toboggan crossing in the interior of the mainland - 40-50 km from the coast - Scott discovered a rock, at the top of which there was a well-equipped manhole, carefully masked by carved thick plates of ice. Struck by what he saw, Scott and his companions managed to push back several slabs, and their gaze appeared a steel ladder of pipes leading down. The amazed English did not dare to descend for a long time, but finally took a chance.
At a depth of more than 40 meters, they found premises in which a food base of meat products was equipped. Insulated clothing was neatly folded in special containers. Moreover, such styles and of such quality that neither Scott nor his assistants had ever met before, although they themselves were very thoroughly preparing for a long and unsafe expedition.
After examining all the clothes, Scott realized that the labels on them had been carefully cut to keep the owners incognito. And only on one of the jackets was a label left, apparently due to someone's negligence: "Yekaterinburg sewing artel of Elisei Matveyev." Scott carefully transferred this label, and most importantly, the inscription from it, to his papers, although, of course, at that moment the travelers did not understand what this Russian script meant. They were generally uncomfortable in this strange haven, and therefore they hastened to leave it.
Having passed half the way to the base camp, one of the travelers caught himself - it was necessary to take at least something from the products, theirs were running out … Another suggested returning, but Scott considered it dishonorable: someone was preparing for himself, not counting uninvited guests will take advantage. But, most likely, his decision was influenced by fear, bordering on horror.
Arriving on the mainland, the travelers hesitated for a long time to tell the public about the mysterious cellar set up in the icy desert; but in his report on the work of the expedition, Scott spoke in great detail about the find. However, soon the materials he submitted to the British Geographical Society mysteriously disappeared.
Hallucination?
A few years later, another English explorer, E. Shackleton, went to the South Pole. However, he did not find any storage with food and warm clothes: either he did not find it using the coordinates that Scott personally told him, or the owners of the warehouse changed the place of their "deployment" … However, Antarctica asked a riddle for Shackleton's expeditions. In his diaries, the Englishman left a record of a strange incident that happened to one of his companions, a certain Jerly.
During a violent snowstorm that suddenly began, he got lost, but a week later … he caught up with his comrades. At the same time, he “did not look emaciated at all and talked about some deep hollow, where hot springs gushed out of the ground. Birds live there, herbs and trees grow. He came across this hollow by chance and spent the whole day there, recuperating his strength. None of us particularly believed him - most likely, the poor fellow had a hallucination ….
To storm
Shackleton did not reach the Pole 178 km. The "summit" remained unconquered, and it still attracted travelers. Among those who went to storm the South Pole was Robert F. Scott again. But - alas! - He was overtaken by the Norwegian R. Amundsen: he reached the final goal on December 14, 1911. A little later, on January 18, 1912, a group headed by R. Scott also ended up at the South Pole. However, on the way back - 18 kilometers from the base camp - the travelers died.
The bodies, records and diaries of the victims were found eight months later. And while the search was going on, a note in English was found (!) In the base camp, informing: Scott and his companions fell off the glacier, their equipment, which contained food, fell into a deep crevice. And if the polar explorers are not provided with assistance in the next week, they may die. For some unknown reason, no one attached importance to this document: either it was considered an inappropriate rally, or a provocation of a comrade who lost his nerves … Or maybe it was written off as hallucinations ?!
Meanwhile, the note indicated exactly where the victims were. In the diary left after the expedition, a very curious entry was found: “We were left without food, we feel bad, we took refuge in the snow cave we had created. When they woke up, they found a decent supply of canned meat, a knife, crackers and, surprisingly, some of the briquettes contained frozen apricots."
Where it all came from, Scott and his comrades did not know. Unfortunately, the breadcrumbs and apricots did not last long … The products ran out in a few days. Surely those who wanted to help them thought that compatriots would come after the polar explorers who found themselves in a difficult situation, as soon as they read the note. But…