TERROR & EREBUS – TRAPPED IN ICE SEPTEMBER 1846
Royal Navy ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus set off from England in May 1845 to search for a route around the top of North America into the Pacific – the ‘Northwest Passage’ through the Arctic.
In July they visited the Whale Fish Islands off Greenland, and were spotted by some whaling ships near there. It was the last time the 129 explorers, led by Sir John Franklin, were ever seen by Westerners.
More than 30 expeditions hunted for them, but few found any trace. The clues uncovered, from deserted campsites, cairns and graves, showed the ships became stuck, frozen into the ice, in September 1846. They were eventually abandoned when their surviving crew set off to find help. They never made it.
In recent years, searchers used modern technology to survey large areas, focusing on locations suggested in local Inuit oral histories. HMS Erebus was finally found in September 2014, HMS Terror two years later.
Both ships are remarkably intact, but weather and ice only allow a short five-to-six-week window each year for researchers to visit. There are still many mysteries about what happened to the ships and their crews; the search for answers continues.
The barge deploys divers above Erebus. Photo by Thierry Boyer, Parks Canada