While I was away on my three-week break from radio, I did get some messages in. Malcolm, regular listener Malcolm, Terror fan Malcolm* messaged me about— So basically, for those of you who don't know, I did a TV show called The Terror, and it was about the Franklin Expedition in 1845, which was a very doomed expedition. True story. The TV show that I did was a kind of supernatural twist to the true story of that expedition.
But they found, last week (I think it was last week), they found some of the bodies of the missing crew. And so, who did we find? They didn't find— My character is Hodgson. They didn't find Hodgson, unfortunately. Hodgson is still lost. But Peglar, Bridgens, Orren, and Young were found. And they tested— They found the remains and then traced the family DNA to, I think, relatives of those people who are still living now.
I'm sure this is all old news for the Terror fans who I know listen in, but I thought I'd give it a shoutout on the radio, since it's such amazing news. They were all members of the Erebus, because there's HMS Terror, which was a war ship, or originally a war ship, and then it became an expedition ship. And then there's HMS Erebus which was another ship. And these are the crew from Erebus. And I think they were found in Erebus Bay. So there you go, a bit of Terror information from the Franklin Expedition. Now let's carry on with some more music...
[Later on in the radio program]
But we have had a message in. I'm afraid it's a correction. I've made a mistake. I knew I shouldn't have got into this... Any details of The Terror, I'm gonna be a bit wrong, aren't I? So I got a message in from Aeriann [ @aeriann ]. Thanks for listening, Aeriann!
So, actually, Pelgar—Peglar, sorry! [laughs] I'm dyslexic, please don't judge me, Terror people! Um, he was on the same boat as me. [sighs] Oh no. he was on HMS Terror. He wasn't on Erebus. So I retract that. I'm very sorry.
And he is the first one to be identified on HMS Terror, god, really? I didn't know that! I suppose Terror was the— Bizarrely, they found the ship, HMS Terror, when we started filming. It was like the first couple of weeks, I think, we were filming.
Before we actually started filming— When was this? Might be wrong. I'm thinking October. We did these kind of like, exercises to sort of bond us all together. And there were these people who came to teach us what it was like to be on the boats, and we learned how to tie knots on the ship, and [laughs] craft things out of like, wicker and tie knots and do lots of things like that, and how to hold rifles. All the marines had a different sort of gang and they were taught how to shoot weapons.
But yeah, we had this sort of team bonding week to learn what it was like to be a sailor then. And that's sort of when they found HMS Terror, which was sort of weird really. It was strange.
