When Jørgen Brønlund traveled across Greenland in the early 1900s, he was unknowingly embarking on a trip from which he would never return. Authorities eventually discovered his body, but no one knew how the explorer spent the final moments of his life until nearly a century later. As it turned out, the last page in his travel diary revealed the selfless way he spent his final moments…and not through his written words.
Cold and Alone
“No food, no footgear, and several hundred miles to the ship,” Brønlund wrote in one of his final diary entries. Exhausted, freezing, and alone, things were looking bleak for the intrepid explorer. He was the last living member of the three-man team of Danish explorers who mounted an expedition to Greenland in 1907.
First Expedition
Though this trip ended terribly for Brønlund, this wasn’t his first time exploring the vast, cold country. In 1906, he traveled across northeast Greenland to map the area. His current trip, though, was for an even more important reason: to determine if Peary Land, located on the northern tip, was an island or peninsula.
Ours or Theirs?
This was important because if it was a peninsula, the Dutch could claim it, but if it was an island, it would be claimed by Americans. The fate of Peary Land was in the hands of Brønlund and his two fellow explorers, and according to one historian, Greenland was a hot commodity back in the early 1900s.
Legendary Tale
“This story is something every Greenlander knows about,” chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen said. “This was the terra incognita at the time. It became the Moon and Mars later, but back then it was the polar expeditions that people were waiting to hear about.” And as it turned out, exploring Greenland was as dangerous as exploring the moon.
Finding the Men
When Brønlund’s team didn’t return from their treacherous journey, another group of explorers searched for them. They discovered Brønlund’s corpse in a cave, along with his personal items. Reading his diary, they learned more about his untimely demise.
A Rough End
Brønlund’s final journal entry was bleak: “I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on, because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fjord.” The trio were trapped at their basecamp in Danmarkshavn when their troubles started.
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Crippled by Weather
Due to warm weather, Brønlund, along with his companions Niels Peter Høeg Hagen and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, were forced to shelter in a fjord. Their dog sleds needed snow and ice to move. To make matters worse, they were running short on food and other supplies.
Losing Their Lives
The men were famished and exhausted when they finally started traveling in the fall. They didn’t stand a chance: Hagan and Mylius-Erichsen died that November, only days apart. Brønlund survived for a bit longer than the others, walking another 15 miles to Lambert’s Land, another surveyed section of Greenland.
Discovering his Tomb
The weary traveler crawled into a cave for shelter. This cave became his final resting place. When the search party sent out after the three explorers eventually found Brønlund’s body, they used his diary and Hagan’s drawings to learn about the men’s disastrous trip.
A Bright Side?
Though the men didn’t make it home, their trip was successful. Brønlund’s diary and Hagan’s cartography proved that Peary Land was actually a peninsula and belonged to Denmark. And when Brønlund’s diary was examined further, scientists discovered even more written between the lines.
Mysterious Stain
Brønlund’s diary was safely held at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. It wasn’t until decades after it was collected that the museum curator noticed something odd on the final page: a tiny black stain, located just below Brønlund’s signature. They’d always thought it was an ink stain, but what if it wasn’t?
Curiosity Wins Out
The general consensus was to simply leave the stain alone. The diary was only a few years away from being a century old, after all, and tampering with the delicate page could do more harm than good. But in 1993, an employee — without permission — pulled out his pocket knife.
What is it?
He cut out the stain and sent it in for analysis. Researchers at the National Museum of Denmark tried to analyze the spot, but to no avail. “We couldn’t figure out what it was — we didn’t have the technology to do it then,” Rasmussen said. Luckily, Rasmussen has a good memory.
Developing Technology
What wasn’t possible in 1993 became possible in 2018 thanks to technological improvements. Rasmussen decided to reexamine the grain-sized stain that remained in a Swiss laboratory to see if he could learn anything about Brønlund’s last moments alive.
Unraveling the Clues
When under a microscope, the stain told quite the story. Along with the diary and Hagan’s drawings, Brønlund had a few other items with him in the cave: a LUX petroleum burner, matches, and some petroleum. What he didn’t have was metabolized alcohol for the burner.
Another Option
Normally, the petroleum would be fine, but the temperatures had dropped so low that the petroleum solidified into an unburnable gel. In his desperation to turn on the burner, Brønlund had to get creative. “He had to find something else to get the burner going,” Rasmussen said.
Traces of Oils
That’s where the black stain came into the picture. “We think he tried [to get the burner to work] with the oils available because the black spot contains traces of vegetable oil and oils that may come from fish, animals, or wax candles,” Rasmussen said. The black spot was revealed to be a “fine fibrous and twined structure.” There was another substance, too.
Anything for Comfort
The stain also contained rubber. The rubber could have originated from a gasket in the burner or a piece of waterproof fabric that Brønlund shoved into the burner. There were also traces of feces. In the end, he tried anything he could think of for a bit of warmth…except for the most obvious material.
Bravery in the Cave
Though he had paper from his diary and the sketches, Brønlund never burned it. “I think the diary was something he knew other people would read, so he would preserve that by all means,” Rasmussen said. Brønlund went cold in order to preserve the only known proof that Peary Land belonged to Denmark.
Leaving Something
“The acts of Brønlund meant the expedition was fulfilled in a way because the information got back,” Rasmussen said. If not for Brønlund’s diary and that little black stain, we never would’ve known how the explorer spent his final moments. In those days, people relied on diaries and logs to fill in the blanks left by a lost explorer…
Flannan Isles Lighthouse
And an eerie diary was the only clue anyone had years earlier when a mystery unfolded at sea. When the Flannan Isles Lighthouse finally came into view, the crew of the Hesperus immediately knew that something was wrong. Their trip to the lighthouse had been nothing but disastrous, anyway.
Three Lighthouse Keepers
The Hesperus carried vital cargo: the relief lighthouse keepers who were supposed to take over for Ducat, Marshall, and MacArthur. But they’d been delayed by poor weather, leaving the three isolated men all alone on the isle for an extra seven days.
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Something’s Wrong
Hesperus Captain Jim Harvie wasn’t one to panic, but as he peered through the gloom surrounding the lighthouse, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Even from afar, they could see that the flagstaff had no flag. Worst of all, the lighthouse was completely dark.
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Deserted Isle
Harvie blew the whistle, hoping to alert the lighthouse keepers to his arrival — nothing. He fired a flare into the sky — nothing. All that stirred was the waves, and it alarmed Harvie enough that he sent Joseph Moore, the relief keeper, to shore to investigate.
“A dreadful accident”
What Moore found on shore continues to baffle historians today. “The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall, and [MacArthur] have disappeared from the island,” Moore and Harvie concluded in a telegram. “A dreadful accident has happened at the Flannans.”
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However, due to the particularly confusing nature of the ship’s disappearance, the mystery surrounding the SS Cotopaxi became a staple of popular culture. Movies, shows, and myths all tackled the enigma throughout the years.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
In fact, the Cotopaxi became so infamous that it was even featured in the classic Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In this film, the ship is shown resurfacing in an unlikely place — in the middle of the Gobi Desert.
Debunked
Over the years, the mystery of the vanished ship deepened when rampant rumors surfaced that the vessel had been found empty, floating along near the St. Augustine coast where it had first set sail. These reports were quickly debunked.
Researchers
However, 95 whole years after the boat’s initial disappearance, a group of daring researchers finally discovered the real truth about the dark fate of the SS Cotopaxi. They risked everything to find the answer.
Shipwreck Secrets
A team of divers and scientists, including Shipwreck Secrets host Michael Barnette, combed through all the evidence they could, searching documents to uncover the reality of what went down all those years ago.
While scanning these piles of documents, the researchers suddenly came upon papers provided by the boat’s insurer. This quickly led them down the path to a startling discovery.
They found that a distress call had been sent from the Cotopaxi on December 1st, a couple days after it left shore. Apparently, passengers and sailors were caught up in a tropical storm, and the ship was taking on water. That wasn’t all.
Other info included in the logs, such as the ship’s exact route and the location that the fruitless distress signal had come from, led them directly to the site where the lost ship last made contact with the outside world. What they learned next shook them to their core.
The coordinates of the distress call led the researchers straight to a ship wreck that lay beneath the watery depths. However, this was no newly discovered wreck. It was found 30 years earlier and left unidentified, simply named the “Bear Wreck.”
With the help of professional divers, scientists used corroborating information such as the ship’s dimensions, orientation of its machinery, and even the size of its boiler to confirm that the wreck was in fact the SS Cotopaxi! The experts’ minds jumped to one theory.
While many conspiracy nuts associated this mystery with the supposedly supernatural legacy of the Bermuda Triangle, where many vehicles went missing without a trace. But the Bear Wreck was technically located outside of it.
Regardless of how close the wreck was to the Triangle, Barnette refused to indulge in what he saw as a big myth. “Personally, I believe it’s all folklore,” he argued.
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For what it’s worth, the Coast Guard doesn’t believe in the otherworldliness of the Bermuda Triangle either. They officially stated, “There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean.”
However, one academic does think that this region could be more dangerous than others. His study, though, focused on a possible scientific explanation for the accidents, rather than a supernatural one.
Yes, oceanographer Simon Boxall believes that northern and southern storms meet in the Bermuda Triangle, leading to monster waves that can reach up to a hundred feet in height, causing the proliferation of deadly accidents. Still, he couldn’t explain shipwreck, particularly a famous disaster that happened further north.
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Constructed in 1813, the Terror was a British naval ship that specialized in destruction. Armed with two heavy mortars and ten cannons, the bombing vessel was jam-packed with kind of firepower that truly gave meaning to its name. It wasn’t long for the world.
The Terror played a key role in the War of 1812, taking part in the bombardment of Stonington, Connecticut, in 1814. A year later, the ship provided support during the Battle of Fort Peter as well as the attack on St. Marys, Georgia.
After the war, the Terror was decommissioned until 1828 when it was called to serve in the Mediterranean. The vessel suffered damage near Lisbon, Portugal, shortly after beginning its patrol and was removed from service thereafter.
But the Terror found new life in the mid-1830s when it was recommissioned as a polar exploration vessel. With its sturdy frame and powerful engine, the Terror seemed capable of traversing even the most treacherous of arctic terrains.
This confidence was put to the test in 1836 when Captain George Back helmed the Terror on an expedition to Hudson Bay. Despite being well-equipped for the journey, the vessel wound up trapped in sea ice for ten months before returning to port.
The Terror‘s second expedition in 1840 under James Clark Ross proved more fruitful, as the ship and its companion vessel, the HMS Erebus, completed a three-year journey to Antarctica. Mount Terror, a dormant volcano on Ross Island, was even named in the ship’s honor.
In May 1845, Sir John Franklin led the Terror and the Erebus on an expedition across the Northwest Passage, a feat that’d never been accomplished before. The journey looked promising at the start, though after being spotted in Baffin Bay in August, the ships vanished without a trace.
A series of search efforts were launched to locate the missing ships, though neither the vessels nor Franklin and his crew were ever found. Then, in 1859, a note was discovered in a stack of rocks on King William Island that revealed the startling fate of the expedition.
Dated April 1848, the note explained that both the Terror and the Erebus had become trapped in ice in the Victoria Strait, forcing the crews to abandon ship. The survivors attempted to trek to a fur-trading post some 600 miles away though quickly perished from starvation and exposure.
More than 100 years after the note’s discovery, the remains of a number of crewmen were located on King William Island. Autopsies of the bodies showed that, in addition to hypothermia and lack of food, the men also suffered from lead poisoning and botulism, likely a result of tainted rations.
