The Terror

During the Age of Exploration, European powers sought to find more efficient trade routes to Asia. The southern route around Africa proved successful, and a passage around South America, the Strait of Magellan, was identified in 1520. In the following centuries, attention turned to the possibility of a “Northwest Passage,” or a northern maritime shortcut connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By the end of the 1700s, early expeditions had found many dead ends, but not a continuous navigable waterway. Nevertheless, the allure of the Passage persisted and became a matter of national pride, especially for Britain, to find it. The British Admiralty in the early 19th century, led by figures like Sir John Barrow, pushed to chart a complete route through the Arctic.

By the 1840s, the search for the Northwest Passage began to focus on a relatively unexplored region of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Sir John Franklin, a British naval officer and explorer, was chosen to lead what was hoped to be the expedition to navigate the remaining segment of the passage. The ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, had recently returned from Antarctic exploration and were outfitted with the latest technology. They featured reinforced hulls to withstand pack ice and were equipped with auxiliary steam engines and screw propellers to propel them when winds were calm or ice conditions required extra power. The ships carried enough provisions for three years in thousands of cans of preserved meat and vegetables. The Erebus and Terror together carried 129 men, including officers and crew. Franklin’s second-in-command was Captain Francis Crozier, commanding HMS Terror, and Captain James Fitzjames served as Franklin’s executive officer aboard HMS Erebus.

The expedition set sail from England in 1845 and traveled across the Atlantic to Greenland, where they made a last stop at Disko Bay to take on fresh supplies. Whaling ships in Baffin Bay made the last recorded contact with Franklin’s party by Europeans. Based on subsequent evidence, the ships sailed west through Lancaster Sound as planned, navigating through Barrow Strait and then turning south into Peel Sound. As the Arctic winter approached, the expedition sheltered at Beechey Island for the 1845-1846 winter. However, three sailors died during that first winter—the expedition’s first casualties—and were buried on the island.

When the summer of 1846 arrived, the expedition sailed southward. In September 1846, the sea ice closed in around the ships, rendering them icebound in Victoria Strait just northwest of King William Island. The men hunted what little game could be found, such as seal or polar bear, to supplement their dwindling supplies, which were running out faster than they should have due to improper soldering on the cans, leading to rot. Sir John Franklin himself died during this time. Leadership passed to Captain Francis Crozier, with James Fitzjames as next in command.

The ships remained ice-locked throughout 1847 and into a third winter. By early 1848, nearly two dozen crew members had perished from illness or the conditions. With no sign of release by the spring of 1848, the survivors realized they could wait no longer. On April 22nd, 1848, the officers and remaining crew abandoned Erebus and Terror. They loaded boats and sledges with supplies, journals, and a few treasured belongings, and set off southward over the ice and tundra. They aimed to reach the Canadian mainland, hundreds of miles away, where there might be a chance of rescue. They left behind the “Victory Point Note” in a cairn on King William Island, which provided the only written testimony of what happened. Unfortunately, none of them made it to safety.

By 1848, the British Admiralty launched search missions to find the expedition. Sir James Clark Ross sailed with two ships into Lancaster Sound, retracing part of Franklin’s route, while on land, Sir John Richardson and Dr. John Rae trekked along the Arctic coast from the Canadian mainland. These initial efforts found no trace of Franklin’s party. In 1850, several search expeditions converged around Beechey Island, where the graves were discovered. In 1854, Dr. John Rae, while surveying the Boothia Peninsula for the Hudson’s Bay Company, met Inuit hunters who told him about a starving group of European men who had died to the west. They showed Rae objects that were unmistakably Franklin’s and described evidence of cannibalism among the final survivors. Rae’s report back in Britain was met with horror and denial by Victorian society, and subsequently discounted. In searching for the expedition, however, mapping of the Canadian Arctic was finally completed.

The scant evidence of the expedition’s final days comes from the testimony of the Indigenous Inuit living in the area and the sparse physical evidence left behind by the officers and sailors. Later search parties discovered campsites and human remains along the route the men likely took. In September 2014, a Canadian search team led by Parks Canada archaeologists discovered the wreck of Erebus. It was found in the eastern Queen Maud Gulf, near where Inuit oral histories suggested the ship was. Two years later, in 2016, Terror was located in Terror Bay, off the south coast of King William Island. In 2024, DNA evidence led to the identification of the remains of James Fitzjames, whose bones showed evidence of cannibalism. Starvation, exposure, and scurvy were the primary killers, and the extreme cold and lack of food made the journey almost impossible.