HMS Terror

History is full of strange connections.   This week an almost 200-year-old copy of “The Star Spangled Banner” is to be sold at auction house at Christie’s auction house in Manhattan.   The sheet music is currently valued at between $200,000 and $300,000.   The Star Spangled Banner, which became the national anthem of the United States, is known for the vivid lyrics, “by the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, we knew through the night that our flag was still there.”

The song describes the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, in which a fleet of Royal Navy ships bombarded the harbor fortress of Fort McHenry with Congreve rockets and exploding mortar shells from five “bomb” ships.  The bomb ships were anchored just outside of the range of the American cannons and bombarded the fort with some 1,500 to 1,800 shells, but did little damage.  The next morning the British gave up and sailed away.

One of the bomb ships used to attack Fort McHenry was HMS Terror, a ship that was later converted for use by the Franklin expedition of 1845 and was subsequently lost in the Arctic ice.  The Canadian government is launching its third expedition to search for the wreckage of  HMS Terror and her companion ship HMS Erebus. By coincidence, the ship that attacked Fort McHenry with Congreve rockets on the night when HMS Terror pounded it with mortar shells was indeed HMS Erebus. It was not, however, the same HMS Erebus used on the Franklin expedition.

Canadians closing in on lost wreckage of HMS Terror

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the article along.