Listen to a text which explains the mystery of the Franklin Expedition. Complete the sentences with the information from the audio. Don’t worry if you have to listen to the text a couple of times to get the information.

• Dr. Owen Beattie was a scientist …

•  The sailors who died were …

• He considered those deaths were very ….    and there was only one way to ….

• In Baffin Bay, he opened…

• The bodies were in prefect condition because of…

• He took samples…

• From the hair and skin he found they had died from…

• They had more than ….. more lead in their bodies than normal.

• In the past, tins were closed with lead, but the food tins of the Franklin expeditions were…

• It was not the … that killed the men, it was the 8,000 …. that did it.

• Lead also affect the brain…

• This was why John Franklin made…

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The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition, final part

Mystery Solved

1984, One hundred and forty years later

Dr. Owen Beattie was a scientist at a university in Canada. He wanted to know why so many men died in the Franklin Expedition.

Dr. Beattie began to think about the first men who died on the expedition. They were all young and they died after only six months at sea. Twenty more men died the next year. There was something very strange about this and there was only one way to discover what it is. IN 1984, Dr. Beattie went to Baffin Bay with a team of scientists. There, they opened the graves of the three Franklin sailors. Because of the extreme cold and ice, the bodies were in perfect condition. Beattie tool small samples of hair and skin and then put the bodies back into the graves.

Back at the university, Beattie made an incredible discovery. From the hair and skin, he found that the three men died from lead poisoning. They had nearly 100 times more lead in their bodies than normal.

But where did the lead come from? Beattie looked closely at some of Franklin’s food tins and found the answer. In those days, tins were closed with lead. Usually, this was not a big problem. But these tins were not made correctly. Lead was inside the tins. It was not the ice and cold that killed the men. It was the 8,000 tins of food that they were eatin.

Lead also affects the brain. It makes it difficult to think clearly. Up in the Arctic, we can now understand why John Franklin made so many wrong decisions.