Glory to them, who were not afraid to leave warm and cozy dwellings, hospitable tables and went into the unknown, risking their lives, with only one goal - to know the secret or bring others closer to unraveling it.
However, not all campaigns ended successfully. Many expeditions were inexplicably lost. Some were never found, the found remains of others do not shed light on the causes of their death, giving more riddles than answers to questions.
Many missing expeditions are still the object of investigation today, as inquisitive minds are haunted by the strange circumstances of their disappearance.
Following the Lost Arctic Expedition
One of the first in the sad list of the missing is the Franklin expedition. The exploration of the Arctic was the primary reason for equipping this expedition in 1845. It was supposed to explore the unknown section of the Northwest Passage, which lies between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the zone of temperate latitudes, with a length of approximately 1670 km and complete the discovery of unknown Arctic regions. The expedition was led by an officer of the English fleet - 59-year-old John Franklin. ToBy this time, he had already been a member of three expeditions to the Arctic, two of which he led. John Franklin, whose expedition was carefully prepared, already had experience as a polar explorer. Together with the crew, he left the English port of Greenheight on May 19 on the ships Erebus and Terror (with a displacement of approximately 378 tons and 331 tons, respectively)
The story of the missing Franklin expedition
Both ships were well equipped and adapted for navigation in ice, much was provided for the convenience and comfort of the crew. A large supply of provisions, designed for three years, was loaded into the holds. Biscuits, flour, s alted pork and beef, canned meats, supplies of lemon juice against scurvy - all this was measured in tons. But, as it turned out later, canned food, which was cheaply supplied to the expedition by unscrupulous manufacturer Stephen Goldner, turned out to be of poor quality and, according to some researchers, served as one of the reasons for the death of many sailors from the Franklin expedition.
In the summer of 1845, relatives of crew members received a few letters. A letter sent by Osmer, the steward of the Erebus, said that they were expected to return to their homeland in 1846. In 1845, whaling captains Robert Martin and Dunnett recounted meeting two of the expedition's ships waiting for the right conditions to cross Lancaster Sound. The captains were the last Europeans to see John Franklin and his expedition alive. In the following years, 1846 and 1847, no more news from the expedition.not reported, 129 of its members disappeared forever.
Search
The first search party on the trail of the missing ships was sent at the insistence of John Franklin's wife only in 1848. In addition to the ships of the Admir alty, thirteen third-party ships joined the search for the famous navigator in 1850: eleven of them belonged to Britain and two to America.
As a result of a long persistent search, the detachments managed to find some traces of the expedition: three graves of dead sailors, tin cans with the Goldner brand. Later, in 1854, John Re, an English physician and traveler, discovered traces of the expedition's presence in what is now the province of Canada, Nunavut. According to the Eskimos, people who came to the mouth of the Bak River were dying of hunger, and among them there were cases of cannibalism.
In 1857, Franklin's widow, after trying in vain to persuade the government to send another search team, sends an expedition herself to find at least some trace of her missing husband. In total, 39 polar expeditions participated in the search for John Franklin and his team, some of them were funded by his wife. In 1859, members of another expedition, led by officer William Hobson, find a written message about the death of John Franklin on June 11, 1847 in a pyramid made of stones.
Causes of the death of the Franklin expedition
For a long 150 years it remained unknown that the Erebus and Terror were covered with ice, and the crew, forced to leave the ships,tried to reach the Canadian coast, but the harsh Arctic nature did not leave anyone a chance to survive.
Today, the courageous John Franklin and his expedition inspire artists, writers, screenwriters to create works that tell about the lives of heroes.
Mysteries of the Siberian taiga
The secrets of the missing expeditions do not cease to stir the minds of our contemporaries. In today's progressive time, when man stepped into space, looked into the depths of the sea, revealed the secret of the atomic nucleus, many mysterious events that happen to man on earth remain unexplained. Such secrets include some of the missing expeditions to the USSR, the most mysterious of which remains the Dyatlov tourist group.
The vast territory of our country with its mysterious Siberian taiga, the ancient Ural Mountains dividing the mainland into two parts of the world, stories about numerous treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, has always attracted the inquisitive minds of researchers. Missing expeditions in the taiga are a tragic part of our history. No matter how hard the Soviet authorities tried to hide and hush up the tragedies, information about the perished entire teams, acquiring rumors and implausible legends, reached people.
Unexplained circumstances of the death of Igor Dyatlov and his expedition
There is one unsolved mystery related to the missingexpeditions to the USSR. It was not for nothing that the Mansi peoples living in these places gave the ridge such an ominous name: here many times people or groups of people (usually consisting of 9 people) disappeared without a trace or died for unknown reasons. An inexplicable tragedy happened on this mountain on the night of February 1-2, 1959.
And this story began with the fact that on January 23, a detachment of nine Sverdlovsk tourists, led by Igor Dyatlov, went to the planned ski crossing, the complexity of which was of the highest category, and the length was 330 kilometers. Nine again! What is it: a coincidence or a fatal inevitability? After all, 11 people were originally supposed to go on a 22-day trip, but one of them refused at the very beginning for good reasons, and the other, Yuri Yudin, went on a hike, but fell ill on the way and was forced to return home. It saved his life.
The final composition of the group: five students, three graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, instructor of the camp site. Of the nine members, two are girls. All tourists of the expedition were experienced skiers and had experience of living in extreme conditions.
The goal of the skiers was the Otorten Range, which is translated from the Mansi language as a warning “do not go there”. On the ill-fated February night, the detachment set up a camp on one of the slopes of Kholat-Syahyl; the top of the mountain was at a distance of three hundred meters from him, and Mount Otorten was 10 km away. In the evening, when the group was preparing for dinner and was engaged in the design of the newspaper EveningOtorten”, something inexplicable and terrible happened. What could scare the guys so much and why they fled in panic from the tent they cut from the inside is not clear to this day. During the investigation, it was found that the tourists left the tent in a hurry, some did not even have time to put on shoes.
What happened to the Dyatlov expedition?
At the appointed time, the group of skiers did not return and did not make themselves felt. The family members sounded the alarm. They began to apply to educational institutions, to the camp site and to the police, demanding to start search work.
On February 20, when all the waiting periods had expired, the leadership of the Polytechnic Institute sent the first detachment in search of the missing Dyatlov expedition. Soon other detachments will follow him, police and military structures will be involved. Only the twenty-fifth day of the search brought any results: a tent was found, cut along the side, in it - untouched things, and not far from the place of spending the night - the corpses of five people, whose death was due to hypothermia. All tourists were in poses writhing in the cold, one of them had a head injury. Two have traces of nosebleeds. Why were people who ran out of the tent barefoot and half-dressed unable or unwilling to return to it? This question remains a mystery to this day.
After several months of searching on the snow-covered banks of the Lozva River, four more corpses of the expedition members were found. Each of them had fractured limbs and damage to internal organs, the skin was orange and purpleshade. The corpse of the girl was found in a strange position - she was kneeling in the water and she had no tongue.
Subsequently, the entire group was buried in Sverdlovsk at the Mikhailovsky cemetery in a mass grave, and the place of their death was marked with a memorial plaque with the names of the dead and with the screaming inscription "There were nine of them." The pass, unconquered by the group, has since become known as the Dyatlov Pass.
Unanswered questions
What happened to the Dyatlov expedition? Until now, there are only numerous versions and assumptions. Some researchers blame the death of the UFO detachment and, as evidence, they cite the words of eyewitnesses about the appearance of yellow fireballs that night at the Mountain of the Dead. The state weather station also recorded unknown "spherical objects" in the area where the small detachment died.
According to another version, the guys went to the ancient Aryan underground treasury, for which they were killed by its keepers.
There are versions according to which the missing expedition of Dyatlov died in connection with the testing of various types of weapons (from atomic to vacuum), with alcohol poisoning, with ball lightning, with an attack by a bear and Bigfoot, with an avalanche.
Official version
In May 1959, an official conclusion was made about the death of the Dyatlov expedition. It indicated its cause: a certain elemental force that the guys could not overcome. The perpetrators of the tragedy were not found. By decision of the first secretary Kirilenko, the case was closed, strictly classified and transferred to the archive withorder not to destroy it until further notice.
After 25 years of storage, all closed criminal cases were destroyed. However, after the statute of limitations expired, the "Dyatlov Case" remained lying on dusty shelves.
Missing schooner "Saint Anna"
In 1912, the schooner "St. Anna" set sail around the Scandinavian Peninsula and disappeared. Only 2 years later, navigator V. Albanov and sailor A. Kondar returned to the mainland on foot. The latter withdrew into himself, abruptly changed the type of activity and never once wanted to discuss with anyone what happened to the schooner. Albanov, on the contrary, said that in the winter of 1912 the "Saint Anna" froze into ice and was carried to the Arctic Ocean. In January 1914, 14 people from the team received permission from Captain Brusilov to go ashore and get to civilization on their own. 12 died on the way. Albanov developed a stormy activity, trying to organize a search for a schooner that was worn out by ice. However, Brusilov's ship was never found.
Other missing expeditions
The Arctic swallowed up many: aeronauts led by the Swedish scientist Salomon Andre, the Kars expedition led by V. Rusanov, Scott's team.
Other missing expeditions of the 20th century are connected with the tragic and mysterious circumstances of the death of the seekers of the Golden City of Paititi in the endless jungle of the Amazon. To unravel this mystery, 3 scientific expeditions were organized: in 1925 - underby the British military and topographer Forset, in 1972 by the Franco-British team of Bob Nichols, and in 1997 by the expedition of the Norwegian anthropologist Hawkshall. They all disappeared without a trace. Particularly striking was the disappearance in 1997, when the technical equipment of the expedition was at the highest level. They couldn't be found! Locals claim that anyone who seeks the Golden City will be destroyed by the Wachipairy Indians who guard the secret of the city.
Missing expeditions… Something mysterious and sinister lies in these words. These expeditions were equipped and sent in order to solve some problem or explain some riddle to the world, but their very disappearance became an incomprehensible mystery for contemporaries and descendants.
