Ice.
That’s basically the beginning and the end of the story for Sir John Franklin and his 129 men. But honestly, it’s the 170-odd years in between—the years of silence, the gruesome Inuit testimonies, and the high-tech underwater discoveries—that actually make the saga of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror the most enduring mystery in maritime history. We’re talking about two of the sturdiest ships of the Victorian age, packed with enough canned soup to feed a small city and scientific equipment that was basically the 1845 version of NASA tech.
They vanished.
You’ve probably seen the TV shows or read the novels that lean into the supernatural or the "cursed" nature of the expedition. But the real story is arguably much weirder and more tragic. It wasn't just a "wrong turn." It was a series of tiny, catastrophic failures that piled up until the Arctic simply swallowed them whole.
The High-Tech Deathtraps of 1845
When people think of 19th-century wooden ships, they think of fragile things. That’s a mistake. HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were built like tanks. Originally "bomb vessels" designed to withstand the massive recoil of heavy mortars, they had internal beams the size of tree trunks. For the Franklin Expedition, they went even further. They reinforced the bows with heavy iron plating to shove through the pack ice. They even installed internal heating systems—basically giant radiators—and repurposed railway locomotive engines to turn screw propellers.
It was overkill. Or it should have been.
Sir John Franklin was 59 years old when he took command. Some said he was too old, too "portly," and had spent too much time behind a desk as the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. But he was a hero of the Napoleonic Wars and had survived two previous Arctic trips. He was the safe choice. The mission was simple: find the final link in the Northwest Passage.
The ships sailed from Greenhithe on May 19, 1845. They stopped at Disko Bay in Greenland to offload some final letters and take on fresh meat. Whalers saw them in Baffin Bay in late July, waiting for the ice to clear so they could cross into Lancaster Sound.
That was the last time any European saw them alive.
What Actually Happened in the Peel Sound?
For years, the British Admiralty just... waited. Then they panicked. Between 1848 and 1859, dozens of search parties scoured the ice. What they found was a trail of breadcrumbs that led to a nightmare.
Beechey Island was the first real clue. In 1850, searchers found three graves there: John Torrington, William Braine, and John Hartnell. They died early, during the first winter of 1845-1846. Modern autopsies on these perfectly preserved "ice mummies" in the 1980s, led by anthropologist Owen Beattie, revealed something terrifying. Lead. Lots of it.
The theory was that the 8,000 tins of food they carried were poorly soldered. The men were essentially being poisoned by their own rations. While some historians now argue that the lead might have come from the ships' internal water pipes rather than just the cans, the result was the same. Lead poisoning causes fatigue, paranoia, and poor judgment. Not exactly what you want when you’re navigating a labyrinth of moving ice.
Then there’s the Victory Point Note. This is the only written record of their demise. Found in 1859 by William Hobson, it’s a standard Admiralty form with scribbled updates in the margins. The first part, dated May 1847, says everything is fine. The second part, written a year later in April 1848, is frantic. Franklin was dead. Nine officers and 15 men were dead. The ships had been trapped in the ice for 19 months. The survivors were abandoning ship and heading south toward Back’s Great Fish River.
They were walking into a death trap. 105 men dragging heavy sledges filled with useless luxuries—silver forks, button polish, writing desks—across hundreds of miles of frozen rock.
The Inuit Testimony and the Taboo of Cannibalism
In 1854, explorer John Rae met Inuit hunters near Pelly Bay. They told him a story that made Victorian London lose its mind. They described "Kabloonas" (white men) who were starving and dying. Some of the bodies found later showed signs of "pot-boiling."
Basically, they had resorted to cannibalism.
Charles Dickens was outraged. He wrote scathing articles claiming the Inuit were lying or that "savage" animals had scavenged the bodies. He couldn't accept that British naval officers would eat each other. But the Inuit were right. Every piece of physical evidence found since—including bones with definitive knife marks found at King William Island—confirms the absolute desperation of those final months.
The Inuit also saw the ships. They reported that one ship sank in deep water, while the other was crushed by ice closer to shore. For over a century, western explorers ignored these accounts, thinking they knew better.
They didn't.
Finding the Ghosts: 2014 and 2016
The discovery of the wrecks changed everything. In 2014, a Parks Canada team using side-scan sonar found HMS Erebus in the shallow waters of Wilmot and Crampton Bay. It was exactly where the Inuit said it would be.
Two years later, HMS Terror was found in Terror Bay. This discovery was even weirder. It was found miles further north than anyone expected, sitting upright in 80 feet of water. The glass in the windows was still intact. It looked like a ghost ship ready to set sail.
Why was it there? If the crew abandoned the ships in 1848, how did one ship end up 60 miles south and the other stay so well-preserved in a completely different bay?
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The prevailing theory now is that the ships weren't just "abandoned." Some of the men might have returned to them. They might have tried to sail them again as the ice shifted. This suggests a much longer, more organized struggle for survival than the "long march to death" we previously imagined.
Why We Still Care About These Two Ships
There’s something about the hubris of the Franklin Expedition that resonates today. It was the peak of 19th-century technology failing against the raw power of nature.
Parks Canada divers are still exploring the wrecks. They’ve recovered hundreds of artifacts: ceramic plates, a hairbrush, even a seaman’s chest. The cold, dark, silt-heavy water of the Arctic has acted like a time capsule. Because there’s very little oxygen and no wood-boring worms in those temperatures, the wood is in incredible shape.
Recent dives into HMS Erebus have focused on the officers' cabins. They found a lieutenant's suitcase and a pantry filled with dishes. Every object pulled up is a silent witness to the confusion and fear those men must have felt as the sun disappeared for months at a time.
But it’s not just about the past. The search for the ships actually helped Canada map the Northwest Passage and assert its sovereignty over the Arctic. It turned a historical tragedy into a modern geopolitical tool.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs and Travelers
If you’re fascinated by the mystery of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, you don't just have to watch documentaries. You can actually engage with the history in a few specific ways:
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- Visit the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich: They hold the "Franklin Gallery," which contains the actual Victory Point Note and many of the haunting relics recovered from the ice in the 1850s.
- Explore the Nattilik Heritage Centre: Located in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, this is where the story is told from the Inuit perspective. It’s a trek to get there, but it’s the most authentic way to understand how the "search" looked to the people who actually lived there.
- Study the Parks Canada Digital Archives: They frequently release high-resolution sonar imagery and 3D models of the wrecks. It’s as close as you can get to diving the ships without a drysuit and a permit.
- Read the primary sources: Instead of the fiction, look for The Frozen Ship by Owen Beattie or the logs of Captain Francis Crozier. The reality is far more gripping than the "ice monsters" of television.
The wrecks are protected as a National Historic Site, and you can't just go diving there. But as the ice continues to melt due to climate change, the ships are becoming more vulnerable. The race is on to document everything before the shifting currents and thinning ice cover damage these wooden monuments forever.
The Arctic hasn't finished telling this story yet. Every summer thaw brings the possibility of finding the "Great Vault"—a rumored collection of logs and journals that Franklin might have secured in a waterproof container. Until those are found, the final days of the 129 men remain a matter of whispers in the wind and shadows under the ice.