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One of the ships of Sir John Franklin's last expedition
History
United Kingdom
Name:	Erebus
Builder:	Pembroke dockyard, Wales
Launched:	1826
Fate:	Abandoned in Victoria Strait, Canada, 22 April 1848[1]
General characteristics
Class and type:	Hecla-class bomb vessel
Displacement:	715.3 long tons (726.8 t; 801.1 short tons)[2]
Tons burthen:	372 tons (bm)
Length:	105 ft (32 m)
Beam:	29 ft (8.84 m)
Installed power:	30 kW (40 hp) nhp[3]
Propulsion:	Sails steam engine
Complement:	67
Armament:	1 × 13 in (330 mm) mortar, 1 × 10 in (254 mm) mortar, 8 × 24 pdr (10.9 kg) guns, 2 × 6 pdr (2.7 kg) guns
National Historic Site of Canada
Official name	Erebus and Terror National Historic Site of Canada
Designated	1992

HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was named after the dark region in Hades of Greek mythology, called Erebus. The 372-ton ship was armed with two mortars – one 13 in (330 mm) and one 10 in (254 mm) – and 10 guns. The ship took part in the Ross expedition of 1839 to 1843 and was abandoned during the third Franklin Expedition. The sunken wreck was discovered in September 2014 after a long search.^[4]

Ross expedition

After two years' service in the Mediterranean Sea, Erebus was refitted as an exploration vessel for Antarctic service, and on 21 November 1840 – captained by James Clark Ross – she departed from Van Diemen's Land for Antarctica in company with Terror. In January 1841, the crews of both ships landed on Victoria Land, and proceeded to name areas of the landscape after British politicians, scientists, and acquaintances. Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, was named after one ship and Mount Terror after the other.

The crew then discovered the Ross Ice Shelf, which they were unable to penetrate, and followed it eastward until the lateness of the season compelled them to return to Van Diemen's Land. The following season, 1842, Ross continued to survey the "Great Ice Barrier", as it was called, continuing to follow it eastward. Both ships returned to the Falkland Islands before returning to the Antarctic in the 1842–1843 season. They conducted studies in magnetism, and returned with oceanographic data and collections of botanical and ornithological specimens. The plants were described in the resulting The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross.

Birds collected on the first expedition were described and illustrated by George Robert Gray and Richard Bowdler Sharpe in The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus & HMS Terror. Birds of New Zealand, 1875. The revised edition of Gray (1846) (1875). The future botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, then aged 23, was assistant-surgeon to Robert McCormick.^[5]

Franklin expedition

'Erebus' and the 'Terror' in New Zealand, August 1841, by John Wilson Carmichael.

For their next voyage to the Arctic under Sir John Franklin, both Erebus and Terror were outfitted with steam engines from the London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives. That of Erebus was rated at 25 horsepower (19 kW) and could propel the ship at 4 knots (7.4 km/h). The ships carried 12 days' supply of coal.^[6] The ships had iron plating added to their hulls. Sir John Franklin sailed in Erebus, in overall command of the expedition, and Terror was again commanded by Francis Crozier. The expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and to complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been partly charted from both the east and west but had never been entirely navigated.

The ships were last seen entering Baffin Bay in August 1845. The disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic. The broad circumstances of the expedition's fate were first revealed when Hudson's Bay Company doctor John Rae collected artifacts and testimony from local Inuit in 1853. Later expeditions up to 1866 confirmed these reports.

Both ships had become icebound and had been abandoned by their crews, totaling about 130 men, all of whom died from a variety of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy, and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south. Subsequent expeditions until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, also revealed that Erebus and Terror's shoddily canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century.^[7]

A British transport ship, Renovation, spotted two ships on a large ice floe off the coast of Newfoundland in April 1851. The identities of the ships were not confirmed. It was suggested over the years that these might have been Erebus and Terror, though it is now certain they could not have been and were most likely abandoned whaling ships.^[8]

Discovery of the wreckage

Side-scan sonar images of the wreck of Erebus

On 15 August 2008, Parks Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada, announced a Can$ 75,000 six-week search deploying the icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with the goals of finding the ships and reinforcing Canada's claims regarding sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic.^[9][10] The search was headed by underwater archeologist Robert Grenier, of Parks Canada, and local historian Louie Kamookak, who had collected Inuit oral histories related to the wreck, as well working with the written records.^[11][12][13]

The wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 2 September 2014 by a Parks Canada team led by Ryan Harris and Marc-André Bernier.^[14][4] On 1 October 2014, it was announced that the remains were those of Erebus.^[15] Recovery of the ship's bell was announced on 6 November 2014.^[16] On 4 March 2015, a winter diving expedition on Erebus, consisting of Parks Canada and Royal Canadian Navy divers, was announced to commence in April.^[17]

On 12 September 2016, it was announced that the wreck of HMS Terror had been found submerged in Terror Bay, off the south-west coast of King William Island.^[18] The wrecks are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the precise location of the designation in abeyance.^[19][20][21]

On 23 October 2017, it was announced by the UK's defence minister, Sir Michael Fallon, that his government would be giving HMS Erebus and its sister ship HMS Terror to Canada, retaining only a few relics and any gold, along with the right to repatriate any human remains.^[22]

Legacy

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appearing at a gala to celebrate the discovery of HMS Erebus, one of two ships wrecked during John Franklin's lost expedition, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto

In art, entertainment, and media

HMS Erebus is featured, often alongside HMS Terror, in fictional works that use the Franklin expedition in their backstories, such as:

• 
  Captain Nemo mentions Erebus and Terror, in the context of Captain Ross' expedition, in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), as background to establish the difficulty of reaching the South Pole, while Captain Nemo stands upon its fictional summit.^[23]
  


• 
  Erebus and Terror are mentioned in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899).


• 
  Terror and Erebus (1965) is a verse radio play for CBC Radio by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, subsequently published in her collection Afterworlds (1987).


• 
  Terror and Erebus (A Lament for Franklin) (1997) is an oratorio for solo baritone and chamber ensemble by Canadian composer Henry Kucharzyk, adapted from MacEwen's verse drama and crediting her for its libretto.^[24]
  


• 
  Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (2001), by Scott Cookman, offers a journalistic account of Franklin's expedition.


• 
  Erebus and Terror appear in Dan Simmons' novel The Terror (2007), which is a fictional account of the expedition's fate.
  
  • 
    The Terror is a 2018 American television series based on Simmons' book.
  
  


• 
  Clive Cussler's novel, Arctic Drift (2008), uses Erebus and Terror as part of the plot as well as the establishing backstory of the ill-fated expedition.


• "Erebus" (2012) is a radio play for BBC Radio 4, based on the Franklin expedition, by British poet Jo Shapcott.


• 
  Erebus: The Story of a Ship (2018, published by Cornerstone, a division of Random House), by Michael Palin, is a biography of the ship, covering its loss in the Arctic, Antarctic exploration, and back to its construction in Milford Haven. The book was serialized on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.


• 
  Erebus and Terror is the sixth track on the 2016 album, Further Than Rust by Canadian folk band, Nickeltree.

In namesakes

• 
  Mount Erebus, located on Ross Island adjacent to the volcanically inactive Mount Terror, is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth.


• 
  Erebus Bay lies between Cape Evans and Hut Point Peninsula, on the west side of Ross Island.


• 
  Erebus and Terror Gulf, in Antarctica. Named for the vessels used by Royal Navy Captain Sir James Clark Ross in exploring the area in 1842–43.^[25][26]
  


• 
  Erebus crystal is a type of feldspar found in the immediate area surrounding Mount Erebus; the crystals grow in the magma beneath Mount Erebus and are ejected out of the mountain encased in glassy volcanic bombs.


• 
  Erebus (crater) is a geological feature on the planet Mars, named for HMS Erebus, and visited by the Opportunity rover on the way to the much larger crater Victoria.

See also

• European and American voyages of scientific exploration

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to HMS Erebus (ship, 1826).

• 
  "Erebus and Terror". CoolAntartica.com.
  


• 
  "The Wreck of HMS Erebus: How A Landmark Discovery Triggered A Fight For Canada's History". Buzzfeed.
  


• 
  "Collection of artifacts" related to HMS Terror and HMS Erebus at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, UK