For nearly 170 years, there have been many searches for the lost ships from Sir John Franklin’s 1845 Expedition, and Canadian Geographic has been following along, even in its early years of publication.

In the November 1930 issue of Canadian Geographic Journal, L.T. Burwash, who had recently returned from an airplane flight in the area where the expedition was lost, recounted how the missing crews of the lost ships may have spent the last stages of their ill-fated journey. Read Burwash’s story and decide for yourself what happened to the crews.