Autor: Mark Aitchison | Publicado: 2012-05-18T18:55:00-07:00



Cold Cases


Mysteries are nothing without people. After all you can’t have a mystery
unless someone is mystified.&nbsp;And people themselves can also be mysteries. “He’s
a mystery to me”, we sometimes say, don’t we? Today I want to talk to you specifically
about people whose disappearances are considered mysteries.




Last week we talked about Antarctica and the Arctic, and the explorers
who raced to reach the North and South Poles. Long before the United States was
created European explorers sought out a way to travel by ship around the North American continent. Once again
led by the British, they wished to find a shorter trade route around North
America without having to sail south around the dangerous and distant Cape Horn
at the bottom of South America. Long before the Panama Canal was constructed to
cross quickly and safely from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans navigators
were searching for a passage above North America through the Arctic Sea from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. After all, global trade circulated between the
more developed nations of the north… between Europe, North America and Asia. So
why did travel always have to be around the south then, below South America,
Africa and India? There had to be a better way.






&nbsp;John Franklin 


&nbsp;Long before the geographic and political races for the Poles explorers
were seeking what was called The
Northwest Passage, a route from the northwest Atlantic Ocean, around
Greenland and through the usually frozen Arctic Sea to the Bering Sea and Asia.
Countless expeditions were mounted over the centuries before, guess who, Roald Amundsen finally found a way in
1906 between the oceans through the maze of ice and islands of the Arctic,
albeit in a boat barely 70 feet in length called the Gjoa. But it was Amundsen
who did it before anyone else.







·&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Amundsen
was first to find the Northwest passage and first to the South Pole. He later
died in a balloon accident trying to be first to cross over the Arctic by air.
What a life, huh?





In 1845 a great expedition was mounted by the British and led by Captain Sir
John Franklin, a popular British
naval commander and experienced arctic explorer. As on three previous
expeditions to the Arctic Franklin expected his ship to get stuck in the ice
pack at some point and his crew to pass at least one winter locked in the
Arctic as they explored channel after channel in search of the ones that would
add up to the Northwest Passage.









Unfortunately Franklin’s two ships, the
Terror and Erubus, once frozen
in that first winter, could not withstand the incredible force of the
ever-shifting icepack and was eventually crushed. Franklin had no choice but to
abandon ship and seek an overland
(or over-ice) escape southwards to populated whaling stations and Inuit Indian villages
he knew off. He never made it. And neither did any of his men. Franklin and his
crew of 128 disappeared. Only years later was it determined they had died one
by one on the frozen arctic sea. They died of starvation, cold and most oddly
of all, perhaps of food poisoning from the canned food they had brought with
them to eat.











Numerous rescue expeditions were mounted to find Franklin and his men.
Some of these expeditions disappeared as well. Finally several graves were found and some information
about Franklin’s fate was revealed. Autopsies performed in the 1980s on the
bodies of three sailors who died early on and were given a Christian burial
revealed unusually high levels of lead in the bodies. The source was the lead
used to seal the thousands of cans of preserved food they had prepared for them
in England before departing. A bad job of soldering, or closing the tin cans
with a lead bead, had resulted in lead leaking into and spoiling the food. In
an effort to survive Franklin and his men had only killed themselves. Perhaps
the cold and starvation killed some; perhaps it would have killed them all
eventually, so far from safety were they after all. But there is certainly a
strong argument to say the majority were weakened considerably by lead poisoning
and this contributed more than anything else to their premature deaths in the
arctic cold.


&nbsp;Mallory &amp; Irvine






Mount Everest is often called the third pole, the
other two being of course the North and South Poles. It is the highest mountain
in the world. Located in the Himalayan Mountains north of India on the Chinese
border this colossal mountain has obsessed and horrified climbers and explorers
since it was first sighted and mapped in the early 19th century. Its
western name is taken from Sir George Everest, British Surveyor-General of the
India, charged with mapping the borders
between India and China between 1829 and 1843. Its local name is Chomolungma, “Goddess, Mother of the
Earth”, and it is the sacred mountain of the Tibetan and Nepalese people who
live in the valleys surrounding her. We have already spoken about the legend of
the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, a mystical man-monster said to dwell in caves
amongst the nearby mountains and who protects the mountains against those who
would defile them. To this day ascetics,
or holy men, from local monasteries are also said to live and pray amongst the
frozen mountain peaks. Foreign visitors and climbing parties are encouraged to
seek blessings from the local monks
before venturing up toward the heavens, a place the locals evade, a place supposedly
for the Gods only.





The first serious expeditions to explore and perhaps climb Mount Everest
took place in the years following the First World War. Britain in particular
saw the conquest of the mountain as part of the healing process after the
senseless slaughter of a generation of young men in the trenches and fields of
Western Europe between 1914 and 1918.





George Mallory was the finest climber of his
generation and had honed his skills amongst the hills and crags of Wales and
the Alps Mountains of Switzerland. When asked why he wished to climb Everest,
his famous answer was, “because it is
there.” In 1924 he was in his early 40s. It was his third expedition to
Everest and likely to be his last chance at the mountain before middle age
caught up with him. At least that’s what he told his young wife, Ruth, and their
children back home in England. On this last expedition his climbing team
included a young Cambridge College athlete named Andrew Irvine, nicknamed “Sandy”. After weeks trekking,
scouting, climbing and camping the day finally arrived when these two men were
finally high on the mountain and ready to make their final push for the summit
through what is called the Death Zone, the level of altitude where the oxygen
is so thin a human can only last a short period of time before succumbing to
altitude sickness and certain death.









Through a telescope Mallory and Irvine were last seen at about 1pm on
June 8, 1924 “going strong for the
summit” before a cloud enveloped them and they disappeared forever. Mallory
and Irvine were never seen again, and to this day the question remains, were
these two men the first to summit Everest 30 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay in 1953? The question may never be answered for certain but there is
evidence to support both sides of the claim.









The climbers were seen above the final hump before the summit peak, fellow
climber Noel Odell claimed. If that were true the final walk to the summit is
fairly level and straightforward. They would not have failed then. On the other
hand if they were actually below this final hump (now called the Hillary Step)
it has been shown by the modern climber Conrad Anker that this little bit of
climbing is the most difficult bit on the mountain to overcome. Anker has
claimed that it took his supreme effort to overcome this particular pitch
unaided by ladders or rope, as would have been the case with Mallory and
Irvine. Anker judges that Mallory and Irvine would simply not have had the
technical, or physical, strength to complete this part of the climb and would
have been turned back there if not earlier by altitude, sickness or injury.&nbsp;







Incredibly in the early 1990s the body
of George Mallory was found by Ankar hundreds of feet below the probable
point where he apparently fell from below the summit and died. But was he
heading up to or down from the summit when he fell? His broken body remains to
this day on the mountain. And somewhere else nearby is the body of Sandy Irvine,
his partner. Curiously the pocket camera
Mallory is reported to have carried with him to photograph the summit was not
found on his body. Nor was a letter to his wife he promised to leave at the
summit if he made it. This is one mystery that may never be solved
conclusively.&nbsp;






Amelia Earhart


One of the most enduring missing persons
cases ever is the mystery of female aviator, Amelia Earhart. Born on July 24,
1898 in Atchison, Kansas she was inspired to fly by the exploits of Charles
Lindberg who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in May
1927. Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the United States
in August 1928, and then first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in May
1932 Her red Lockheed Vega plane
hangs at the National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Museums, in
Washington. The character of Amelia Earhart has a prominent role in the 2009 film,
Night
in a Museum II, alongside Ben Stiller. 









Besides her flying records was also an
activist in support of women’s rights and health care. She was teacher, social
worker and best-selling author. But she is best known for her flying and
support of flying. She was spokesperson alongside Lindberg for the commercial
airline company TWA. And she was also a stunt and racing pilot and sponsored by
Beech-nut Gum Earhart was only the
16th woman in the United States to receive her pilot’s license. She
was married to G.P.Putnam owner of the publishing company though she insisted
on always being addressed by her maiden name and never as Mrs. Putnam.











&nbsp;&nbsp;

For many Amelia Earhart is remembered
more for who she died than how she lived. June 1st of his year will be the 75th
anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s departure from the U.S. on her ill-fated round-the-world
flight.&nbsp;No one had ever done that before
and Earhart was joined by navigator Fred
Noonan in the Lockheed Electra
plane.




After
flying successfully across the United States from California to Florida the
pair flew without problem to South America, Africa, India and Asia before the
last, long leg across the Pacific Ocean lost in the Pacific Ocean. Somewhere&nbsp; beyond New Guinea on the morning of July 2,
1937, and near a tiny America territory called Howland Island where they were
heading, radio contact with Earhart’s plane was lost.


Evidence
suggests there were problems or misunderstandings with the plane’s radio
navigation system and they probably ran out of gas and crash-landed in the sea.
But were Earhart and Noonan killed immediately, or did they survive for some
time on some deserted island without ever being found? Despite extensive
searches over the years no conclusive evidence as to how they crashed or died
has ever been found. The remains of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, and the
wreck of their Lockheed Electra, still lie somewhere in the Pacific waiting to
be found. As Tom Crouch, curator of the National Air and Space Museum says,
“the mystery is what keeps it interesting. Amelia Earhart is our favorite
missing person.”






The Titanic


On the moonless night of April 14, 1912, 100 years ago, during her maiden
voyage from Southampton, England to New York City, the luxury ocean liner H.M.S.
Titanic, City struck an iceberg at
full speed 400 miles from Newfoundland, Canada, In less than 3 hours she began
to sink 2and1/2 miles into the freezing North Atlantic Ocean where her wreck
lies today. Of some 2200 people aboard 1500 died that night.










When the first distress signals were sent out using the Morse code telegraph
system invented by Gugliermo Marconi the new distress signal SOS was used for
the first time by assistant wireless operator Harold McBride. Save Our Ship- 3 dots-3 dashes-3 dots- is a message
anyone could be taught to remember. Officer McBride survived the sinking of the
Titanic. The elegant, white-bearded captain, Edward Smith, did not.





The mighty Titanic was the greatest ship ever built, and her owners
claimed she was unsinkable. Her
builder, Thomas Andrews, was less sure. “Let the Truth be
known,” he said while the ship was being constructed. “No ship is unsinkable.
The bigger the ship, the easier it is to sink her.” He too did not survive the
sinking while the owner‘s son, J. Bruce Ismay, did.





But how exactly did the unsinkable Titanic sink? After all, Andrews had
constructed her to withstand even a head-on collision with another boat. Perhaps
if she had hit the iceberg that sunk her head-on she would not have sunk. However,
after the iceberg was sighted, the Titanic had not been able to steer clear of
it altogether because of her speed. The iceberg struck the ship on her side and
tragically ripped a 300 foot hole across no less than six of her forward
airtight compartments that served to float the ship. Andrews, never imagining
such a scenario, had designed the Titanic to withstand the flooding of only
five compartments. Once the sixth was ruptured there was no stopping her from flooding
and sinking. The only thing that could be done was attempt to save her passengers.






The closest ship that received her
distress signals that night was the USS Carpathia which only managed to reach
the lost ship an hour and a half later at 4am on April 15. Only 705 survivors were found alive in lifeboats. The rest had died
quickly- tragically though mercifully- in the 28 degree water because there had
not been enough lifeboats for them.&nbsp;&nbsp;