![]() “There’s no obvious reason for Terror to have sunk,” says Ryan. Why the ships ended up so far apart, which one went down first, and why and how the ships sank are questions archaeologists hope to answer. But in recent years the two biggest pieces of the puzzle-the ships themselves-were discovered: Erebus in 2014, lying in 36 feet of water off King William Island, and Terror two years later, found in a bay about 45 miles away, in 80 feet of water and largely intact. What caused such a well-equipped expedition to go so badly wrong remains a mystery. ![]() Dated April 1848 and signed by Francis Crozier-captain of the Terror, who by then had taken command of the expedition-it stated that the ships had been locked in ice for a year and a half, that 24 of the men were already dead-including Franklin-and that Crozier and the other survivors planned to attempt to walk overland to a remote fur-trading outpost hundreds of miles away on the Canadian mainland. But how and why has remained a mystery.Ī brief note found under a cairn gives a bit of the story. Over time the discovery of skeletons and discarded equipment-as well as disturbing evidence of cannibalism-made clear that the expedition had met with disaster. After that they were never seen or heard from again.Īs years passed with no word of the expedition, search parties were sent out. The last European eyes to see the ships were the crews of two whaling vessels who encountered Erebus and Terror in late July 1845, on the crossing from Greenland to Canada’s remote Baffin Island. It was one of the best equipped and best prepared expeditions ever to leave Britain’s shores.Īfter brief stops in Scotland’s Orkney Islands and Greenland, the two ships set off for Arctic Canada in hopes of picking their way through its labyrinth of straits and bays and islands and eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean. Unauthorized use is prohibited.įranklin was given command of two state-of-the-art ships, Erebus and Terror, both equipped with stout, iron-sheathed hulls and steam engines, as well as the finest scientific equipment and enough food and supplies for three years in the high Arctic. ( Here's the mysterious clue that led to the discovery of the H.M.S. Working swiftly in the frigid water, divers inserted miniature ROVs through openings in the main hatchway and skylights in the crew’s cabins, officers’ mess, and captain’s stateroom. ![]() Taking advantage of unusually calm seas and good underwater visibility, a team from Parks Canada, in partnership with Inuit, earlier this month made a series of seven dives on the fabled wreck. ![]() You just don’t see this kind of thing very often.”ĭiscovered in 2016 in icy waters off King William Island in Canada’s far north, the shipwreck hadn’t been thoroughly studied until now. “You look at it and find it hard to believe this is a 170-year-old shipwreck. “The ship is amazingly intact,” says Ryan Harris, the lead archaeologist on the project. Terror, one of the long lost ships from Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, is astonishingly well preserved, say Parks Canada archaeologists, who recently used small remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) to peer deep inside the historic vessel’s interior.
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