Anyone catch the story of the Greely Expedition on ETV last night?

[raccoon]

I'd never heard of this before last night.


The Greely Expedition


In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world’s surface that had been described as a "sheer blank."

Three years later, only six survivors returned, with a daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism. The film reveals how poor planning, personality clashes, questionable decisions and pure bad luck conspired to turn a noble scientific mission into a human tragedy.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/greely/

[monmouth]

1. I was so annoyed with myself for falling asleep but woke up in time

to catch "Harry's Law"...best new show on TV. I can catch this American Experience I think on a re-run around Thursday.

[ejpoeta]

2. harry's law is friggin funny!! love it. glad to see a decent new show on.

the other show sounds interesting too. love stuff about history. we were remarking last night about how we miss watching history stuff on the history channel since it turned into the ufo armageddon channel.

[monmouth]

3. history channel has become a joke. They should change the name...n/t

[ejpoeta]

5. like TLC that used to actually be the learning channel before it became

reality show for families with multiples. History could change their name to H channel I guess.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I've read about it; it's a fascinating and horrifying story

A great book on this and other Arctic exploration is The Arctic Grail, by Pierre Berton.

http://www.amazon.com/Arctic-Grail-Quest-Passage-1818-1909/dp/0385658451

[GoCubsGo]

6. Sounds similar to "The Ice Master" by Jennifer Niven

I heard the story on "Radio Reader" years ago. It was abut a Canadian scientific expedition that got stranded up in the Arctic. This expedition had more survivors, including the ship's cat, probably because they had several Inuits on board. But, there were some of the same horrific conditions and poor planning as happened in the Greely expedition.

http://explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa120800a.htm

I'll have to catch the re-run. I'm so glad ETV shows their programming multiple times during the week.