For more than 170 years, the HMS Terror rested beneath the frigid waters of the Canadian Arctic Ocean holding the secrets to an infamously fatal expedition — until a sunny day earlier this month, when a little robot plunged into the sea to try to find them, says an article published in The Washington Post.
Researchers Guide the Robot for Inspection
The report further illustrates Canadian and Inuit researchers guided the robot on a cable to the shipwreck and below the deck, eager to see what the remote-controlled vehicle might find. It would mark the first major exploration of the doomed ship since dozens of men abandoned it after it became trapped in ice during a dangerous 1845 mission to chart the Northwest Passage.
What happened to the ships?
There were no survivors, and both the Terror and its sister ship, the HMS Erebus, disappeared beneath the icy surface, where they would stay until 2014 and 2016, when each ship was discovered.
An article published in The Sun chronicles how HMS Terror had set sail from England – along with the support vessel HMS Erebus – in 1845.
- She was captained by Sir John Franklin, 59, a failed politician who already had a worrying reputation for barbarity.
- Franklin, a military veteran and wannabe explorer, was leading the expedition despite being the third choice for the role.
- He had returned from an earlier trip to Canada with just nine of his 20 men – amid rumours of murder and cannibalism among the survivors.
- The Terror was dispatched to try to find a northwest passage dubbed the “Open Polar Sea” – a supposed shortcut through to the Pacific.
- But the passage was non-existent – with the perpetually frozen polar seas allowing no possible way through.
- To make matters worse, it would later emerge that the expedition’s ration tins hadn’t been properly sealed.
- It meant poisonous lead had contaminated the festering food – making it fatally inedible.
£20,000 Reward Announced in 1850
Having not seen or heard anything of the expedition for years since its departure, the government suspected that something was awry.
- A reward of £20,000 – worth around £2million today – was offered to anyone who could find the missing crew.
- A flotilla of five rescue boats set sail for the pole in 1850 – including the HMS Resolute.
- Resolute was later one of four rescue vessels to become lodged in ice – leading its crew to abandon ship and the mission to be cancelled.
- From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource – cannibalism
John RaeExplorer Came Across Chilling Evidence
Meanwhile another explorer, John Rae, had come across chilling evidence that the crew of the Terror would never be seen again.
Rae had spent a decade exploring northern Canada and its Arctic Archipelago where he had befriended some Inuit natives.
In 1854, Rae heard of a trader who had sold a seal to a group of starving Europeans, only to return to find 30 frozen corpses.
Rae investigated the claims and confirmed that the frigid bodies were those of the Terror crew.
In a horrifying letter to the admiralty revealing his discovery, Rae wrote: “From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource – cannibalism.”
Chilling Note
Rescuers also found an eye-catching stack of small rocks nearby with a rusted tin can perched next to it.
In the can was the expedition’s final record, complete with a hand-written message: “28th of May, 1847. HM ships Erebus and Terror wintered in the ice. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well.”
But around the edge of the note was a second message, scrawled in faded pencil a year later, in April 1948.
It stated that the ships had been lodged in place for a year and a half already by the time that second note was written, and what few rations remained had been contaminated by deadly lead.
Captain Died in the Ice
That later message explained that Franklin had died within the first year of the ships becoming stuck, along with 23 of the men.
It added that the expedition’s 105 survivors were now preparing to trek for hundreds of miles across the ice.
The note read: “April 25, 1848. HM ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April… having been beset since 12th September, 1846.”
“Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss of deaths in the expedition has been to this date nine officers and 15 men.”
All the others would die on the journey towards civilisation.
Unraveling the mystery
Now, the Inuit and Canadian governments announced Wednesday, researchers are a step closer to unraveling the enduring mystery of the disasters: Inside the HMS Terror, the underwater explorer found a ship so well preserved that its artifacts seemed to be “essentially frozen in time,” Parks Canada said.
What they saw in the wreck?
“The impression we witnessed when exploring the HMS Terror is of a ship only recently deserted by its crew, seemingly forgotten by the passage of time,” Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada archaeologist who piloted the remote-controlled vehicle, said in a statement.
- Inside the ship, glass plates were still stacked neatly on shelves. Wine bottles and jugs encased in silt stood upright in wooden niches, and rifles hung on the walls, encased in rust.
- In the ship’s 20 rooms, drawers in the dressers and desks were still tightly shut — the most tantalizing discovery in the eyes of the archaeologists.
- That’s where they believe they’ll find any surviving journals, logs and maps, possibly illuminating the entire expedition.
- Harris said they anticipate that the coveted documents could be preserved beneath heaps of protective sediment, fixed in place thanks to the frigid temperatures.
Are Legible History Still Buried there?
“Those blankets of sediment, together with the cold water and darkness, create a near perfect anaerobic environment that’s ideal for preserving delicate organics such as textiles or paper,” Harris told National Geographic. “There is a very high probability of finding clothing or documents, some of them possibly even still legible. Rolled or folded charts in the captain’s map cupboard, for example, could well have survived.”
Previous Discoveries from the Shipwreck?
Until the Erebus was discovered in 2014 and the Terror two years later, explorers and indigenous people spent generations trying to piece together the catastrophe. The Inuit had passed down a trail of disturbing oral histories about the ailing white men who came ashore like Arctic refugees, succumbing to exposure, starvation and even, possibly, cannibalism. Numerous Western-led expeditions ultimately recovered some crew members’ remains, but never the ships.
For decades, the only record ever found from the expedition was a single succinct note dated April 1848, scrawled in a shaky hand on a scrap of paper. Capt. Francis Crozier left it behind inside a stony cairn on King William Island before all the crew members perished. He said 105 souls had deserted the Terror and Erebus and that 24 were already dead, including the expedition’s previous leader, Sir John Franklin. They abandoned their belongings in the cairn, headed toward a river and were never heard from again.
Oral History of the ship?
“A sad tale was never told in fewer words,” wrote the British explorer who discovered the note in 1859.
The details were left to history. The Inuit knowledge — or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, the culture’s oral histories — was perhaps the most complete collection of firsthand accounts to survive over the decades, some of which was recorded in the 1850s and 1860s. And so when Parks Canada set out again in search of the shipwrecks in the late 2000s, Inuit researchers led the way.
How it was accurately discovered?
In 2014, the Erebus was found in almost the exact spot that Inuit testimony placed it, National Geographic reported. Two years later, an Inuit hunter from a settlement on King William Island led archaeologists to the Terror. It was aptly discovered in Terror Bay, which had been named in memory of the lost ship.
The hunter, Sammy Kogvik, told a remarkable story to lead them there, as The Washington Post previously reported. Several years before finding the ship, he said, he and a friend were riding snowmobiles on their way to go fishing when they saw a large wooden pole jutting out of the ice over Terror Bay — a ship mast. Kogvik snapped a picture but lost the camera on his way home. He didn’t go looking for the site again until he boarded a vessel with the Arctic Research Foundation in 2016, assisting in the search. When the crew heard his story, they headed straight for Terror Bay.
“The tall mast could have been sitting meters out of the water for the past 150 years,” the chief executive of the Arctic Research Foundation, Adrian Schimnowski, told National Geographic in 2016.
How will the researchers deal with the artifacts?
As part of a recent agreement, the Inuit and Canadian governments will share ownership of the artifacts. They’ll move forward as partners during future excavations — but it could be awhile, given the dives require just the right conditions.
How did they do it?
Parks Canada said the archaeological team was fortunate to find “exceptional conditions” this month. The water was calm and clear, ideal for the remote-controlled underwater vehicle, or ROV, and the team’s 3-D mapmaking technology. On Aug. 7, a team of divers guided the ROV to the Terror, now home to colonies of sea anemones and marine life. They explored for seven days, diving into the bitingly cold water for short periods at a time.
Harris said that the only area on the lower deck that was inaccessible to the ROV was the captain’s quarters. Divers peered through the window from outside the ship, shining a flashlight. Inside, they saw an intact desk and an arm chair buried in two feet of sediment. A tripod rested on the shelf, along with a pair of thermometers. Map cabinets were shut tight.
Of all 20 rooms on the ship, Harris said, Crozier’s door was the only one that was closed.
“I’d love to know what’s in there,” he told Nat Geo.
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Source: TheSun
