Recent video of the extremely well-preserved wreck of Franklin’s ship Terror may shed new light on the many mysteries of Franklin’s lost expedition.
In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin departed England in command of two specially outfitted ships, Erebus and Terror. He was leading an Arctic expedition, intending to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage. Instead, the expedition of 139 simply disappeared. Numerous attempts were made to find and rescue Franklin and his party, but to no avail.
The wrecks of the Erebus and Terror were not located until almost 170 years later. The Erebus was found in 2014, south of King William Island in northern Canada. The Terror was found two years later close-by in, appropriately and coincidentally enough, Terror Bay.
Recently, Parks Canada archaeologists used small remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) to peer deep inside the interior of the wreck of the Terror. National Geographic quotes Ryan Harris, the lead archaeologist on the project saying, “The ship is amazingly intact. You look at it and find it hard to believe this is a 170-year-old shipwreck. You just don’t see this kind of thing very often.”
“There’s no obvious reason for Terror to have sunk,” says Ryan. “It wasn’t crushed by ice, and there’s no breach in the hull. Yet it appears to have sunk swiftly and suddenly and settled gently to the bottom. What happened?”
Teasing out the answers won’t be easy, even with such a bounty of artifacts. There are plans to excavate both wrecks, but it will be a slow process requiring years.
“Diving up here is extremely difficult,” says Ryan. “The water is extremely cold, making it impossible to stay down for very long, and the diving season is short—a few weeks if you’re lucky, a few days if you’re not.”
Terror was delivered in 1813 as a Vesuvius-class bomb vessel designed to carry large mortars. As HMS Terror, she participated in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814. Bomb ships were heavily built and well suited to serve as expedition vessels in the Arctic. Franklin’s other ship, the Erebus also began her career as a bomb ship.
Here is a Parks Canada guided tour inside Franklin’s Terror:
Shipwreck in Far North sheds new light on Franklin Expedition mystery
Thanks to Alaric Bond and Karen Lorentz for contributing to this post.
The only reason that they where “lost” is the fact that the Rae-Richardson didn’t listen to the Inuk peoples stories because they didn’t think that a savage’s story had any validity and James Anderson didn’t listen to the Inuit and had the same response.
This video is amazing and that is such a small boat doing the research for these waters! Bravo to the crew! I would love to see the Terror raised, restored, and put in a museum! The cost is probably prohibitive but there’s so much to be learned. I sailed these waters in 1998 aboard the CCGS Des Groseilliers returning from “Ice Station SHEBA” to Quebec. Thought a lot about Franklin will listening to Lady Franklin’s Lament and Stan Rogers Northwest Passage.
Amazing! Rick, please keep up with this story.