The Journal of Jens Munk 1619-1620

By April 1848, 24 men of the Franklin expedition had died–37 percent of officers and 14 percent of crewmen. Why were some dying onshore in a large hospital tent? What galvanized the remaining 105 to abandon the ships? Flashback to 1619, when at Churchill, the Danish explorer Jens Munk lost 61 of 64 men to a “rare and extraordinary” disease. Munk’s journal gave rise to a 1973 article by historian Delbert Young, who argued that those men died of trichinosis after eating infected polar bear meat.

It pointed to the 1897 Andree expedition, whose principals died of the same disease,… show more.