Sir Michael Palin visits Kent for pub plaque unveiling

KentOnline / KMTV

Sir Michael Palin was in Kent today (January 23) to unveil a plaque to the 1845 Franklin Expedition at the Sir John Franklin pub in High Street, Greenhithe

Transcript

00:00 Well I think it reminds people of what happened here the day in 1845 that Erebus and Terror

00:07 set out for the North West Passage which no one had ever got through before. And also

00:13 these were ships that had already had a great career, they'd been down to the Antarctic,

00:18 people thought they were infallible, you know, that whoever got on board these ships would

00:22 be successful. And of course in the end it was a failure, it was a disaster and all the

00:29 people who left here and waved goodbye to their loved ones from here would never see

00:34 their homeland again. And so it's laden with kind of emotion really, the pathos of what

00:44 happened. Great hopes were held here and as we know now they didn't turn into anything

00:54 but at the time it must have been a great moment for the country, for the Navy, for

01:00 British reputation around the world. It must have been a great, great day the day they

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