The first message, written in May 1847 on the prescribed lines, described everything as “all well” following the expedition’s wintering in 1846:Ģ8 of May 1847 H.M.S.hips Erebus and Terror Wintered in the Ice in Lat. Searchers in the northern reaches of King William Island found a rock cairn with a tin canister inside, which held a note with two messages in different hands. Charles Dickens, in his weekly magazine Household Words, dismissed it as the “vague babble wild tales of a herd of savages,” and even went so far as to suggest that the indigenous people had killed the sailors.īut in 1859, more evidence emerged that something had gone very, very wrong with Franklin’s expedition. The British public, upon receiving this report from the admiralty, predictably freaked out. Rae dutifully transmitted the news to the British admiralty, complete with gruesome details: “From the mutilated state of many of the bodies and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched Countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative - cannibalism - as a means of prolonging existence.” More disturbing, they also reported that the Englishmen had fed on each other before dying. As evidence of their tale, the Inuit showed Rae a collection of artifacts, including a telescope. In 1850, a few rescuers arrived at Beechey Island, where they found the graves (marked ‘1846’) and little else.Ī few years later, in 1854, explorer John Rae encountered some Inuit people in Pelly Bay who told him about a group of Englishmen - as many as 40, potentially - who had perished of starvation and disease near the mouth of the Back River, which is nearly due south of King William Island. By 1848, the lack of word from Franklin or his crew led the British admiralty to launch a rescue expedition via land and sea. As a result, panic over the expedition’s fate didn’t begin for nearly three years after the ships set sail. A Rescue Attempt, and Two Messagesĭuring this era, any information not carried by telegraph or semaphore line could only move at the speed of a railroad or ship it wasn’t unusual to wait years for a message from the other side of the world. Summer arrived, and the ships managed to make it south, to King William Island, before the ice encroached again. It seems that Terror and Erebus wintered at Beechey through 1846. Later, searchers would find the graves of three crewmen on the island the bodies, remarkably well-preserved by the harsh elements, would one day yield a vital clue as to the fate of the expedition. Franklin made the decision to winter off Beechey Island, an inhospitable bit of rock and ice between Lancaster Sound and Wellington Channel. From there, the historical record becomes spotty. The ships left England in May, sailing for Greenland and then Canada they made it to Lancaster Sound, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, by the end of July. The expedition had provisions for three years, the bulk of it in lead-lined tins, along with top-of-the-line navigation instruments. That steam also powered an internal heating system. In addition to bows reinforced with iron (in order to resist the crush of the ice pack), each had a steam-driven propeller capable of roughly four knots. In any case, the expedition’s leaders felt they had the ships to match the challenge: Both the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were considered extraordinarily advanced for their day. Hubristic? Potentially but the British empire spent the 19th century launching a number of dangerous adventures. The mission: figure out how to sail above Canada to the Pacific, past uncharted islands and tons of ice. ![]() By the time of the expedition, he was 59 years old, but evidently felt capable of leading more than 130 men into the harsh conditions of the Arctic. Leading the expedition was Sir John Franklin (born in 1786), a Royal Navy officer who enjoyed an illustrious career in addition to being present at the epic Battle of Trafalgar, he had also served as lieutenant governor of present-day Tasmania for roughly six years. That expedition did not end well, although it’s difficult to say exactly what befell the unfortunate crew, because none of them made it back to England alive. ![]() The show is based on a 2007 novel by Dan Simmons, which itself is based on the real-life expedition of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus in 1845.
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