HMS Terror (1848)
HMS Terror (1848)
This page contains additional material and images for Chapter 11 of my book A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks.
In 2004 I was fortunate to visit Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic, the place where Sir John Franklin’s expedition overwintered in 1845-6 before sailing south towards King William Island – and their fate – in the ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. All around me on the bleak foreshore lay evidence of the expedition and its aftermath – the graves of three of the men who died that winter, ruined buildings, parts of boats and numerous rusty food cans, some from Franklin’s expedition and others from the many who came afterwards to try to discover the whereabouts of the men and their ships. Many artefacts from Beechey Island and from King William Island were taken back to England, where they fed a Victorian fascination with relics of heroic failure - a good example of how archaeological finds can have meaning far beyond their information value. The largest collection today is in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, whose website contains a rich gallery of images – from scraps of clothing and rope to telescopes, guns and ammunition, food containers, cutlery and, most fascinating for me, several of the books that the men had been reading in their final days.
Many of those artefacts had originally been collected by the Inuit, who also knew the location of the two wrecks off King William Island. The rediscovery of those wrecks in 2014-16 and their investigation by Parks Canada has been one of the great achievements of maritime archaeology, bringing the story to world attention as never before and producing many remarkable images of the ships as well as the artefacts that they contain – with the potential for many more discoveries and insights as the investigations continue. The Parks Canada website contains an excellent account of the project and its historical backdrop, as well as images of the artefacts that have been recovered and conserved. A news release on 22 January 2024 summarising their 12-day exploration of Erebus in 2023 can be seen here, listing another collection of amazing finds from within the hull.
The exhumation in 1984 of the three bodies of the Franklin expedition members at Beechey Island has led to a better understanding of the health issues that beset the men, with all three probably dying as a result of tuberculosis and pneumonia but also showing high levels of lead, whether from lead piping in England at the time or from the solder used in tins taken by Franklin – the latter part of a long-standing theory that lead poisoning might account for the failure of the expedition. The question is still debated, and meanwhile the same team has also studied human bones found on King William Island and found clear evidence for cannibalism – see Simon Mays and Owen Beattie, ‘Evidence for end-stage cannibalism on Sir John Franklin’s Last Expedition to the Arctic, 1845.’ International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26.5: 778-86, summarised in the Smithsonian Magazine here.
I am very grateful to Jonathan Moore of the Parks Canada underwater archaeology team for his comments on my chapter and for permission to publish the two photographs from the project reproduced in the book.
Plate VI from the second volume of Charles Darwin’s A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species (1854), showing specimens of Balanus porcatus (4a-4d) - the species provided for him by Sir John Richardson from Lancaster Sound while searching for the Franklin expedition.
The Darwin connection
In my chapter I point out how narrowly Franklin and his men missed reading Charles Darwin’s first published thoughts on natural selection, included very briefly in the second edition of his volume in Captain Fitzroy’s The Narrative of the Voyages of H.M. Ships Adventure and Beagle. The first edition, published in 1839, may well have been in the library on Erebus and Terror – it would have been consistent with what we know of the wide reading interests of Franklin and his officers – but the second edition, with the title modified to Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world’, was first published by John Murray in three instalments beginning in July 1845, two months after the Franklin expedition had left England.
Direct contact between Darwin and Franklin might have taken place had Darwin not waited almost ten years after returning from Beagle to reawaken an interest in barnacles, which he took up in earnest again in October 1846 and made the subject of a two-volume monograph published in 1854. In my book I quote a letter that he wrote to Sir John Ross on 31 December 1847 – knowing that Ross was planning a search expedition to the Arctic to try to find Franklin – asking whether Ross might collect barnacles for him: ‘I do not suppose that your expedition, considering its noble object, will afford you much opportunity for collecting, but Barnacles are so easily scraped off the rocks and put into spirits, that it would cause you but little trouble.’
There is no evidence that Ross was able to oblige, but in his monograph Darwin thanks several others on search expeditions with whom he had also been in touch and who were able to provide specimens – including Balanus porcatus from Lancaster Sound which ‘I owe to Sir J. Richardson,’ and whom he thanked in a letter of 30 December 1851. In this indirect way, by spurring more exploration of the Arctic and knowledge of its natural history through the search expeditions, the Franklin expedition contributed significantly to Darwin’s thinking – by 1852 he professed to be ‘wonderfully tired’ of barnacles in a letter to his cousin William Darwin Fox, but they provided him with an important example of variation within a species that appeared to represent adaptation to different environments and ways of life.
Click on the images below to enlarge:
The Franklin memorial in Westminster Abbey (photo: David Gibbins). The inscription on the sides reads:
TO THE MEMORY OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, BORN APRIL16. 1786, AT SPILSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE, DIED JUNE 11. 1847, OFF POINT VICTORY IN THE FROZEN OCEAN. THE BELOVED CHIEF OF THE GALLANT CREWS WHO PERISHED WITH HIM IN COMPLETING THE DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.
THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY JANE, HIS WIDOW, WHO, AFTER LONG WAITING, AND SENDING MANY IN SEARCH OF HIM, HERSELF DEPARTED, TO SEEK AND FIND HIM IN THE REALMS OF LIGHT, JULY 18. 1875, AGED 83 YEARS.
The sculpture in white marble on the Franklin memorial would have been approved by Lady Franklin, who paid to have the memorial erected in 1875 shortly before her own death. By then, any hope of discovering survivors had long passed but expeditions continued to go to the Arctic to seek definitive evidence of the final days of Franklin and his men (photo: David Gibbins).
The relief depiction of the ship on the Franklin memorial may be based on sketches made of HMS Terror when she was beset by ice near the Hudson Strait in 1837 (see below). The lines above and below are from the Benedicite, and the verse below - written specially for the memorial - is by Lord Tennyson, who married Franklin’s niece Emily (photo: David Gibbins).
Plan of HMS Terror as converted for Arctic service in the 1830s, with green ink showing alterations for the Franklin expedition in 1845 including the addition of a screw propeller and reinforced steel at the bow for ice-breaking (ZAZ5672, © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
The earliest known representation of HMS Terror, as one of the British ships bombarding Fort McHenry near Baltimore during the War of 1812 (Library of Congress).
Sketch by Lieutenant Owen Stanley of HMS Terror beset by ice to the east of Hudson Strait during Captain George Back’s expedition to Hudson Bay in 1836-7. This image, drawn on the spot, gives an idea of how HMS Terror may have looked a decade later when she was again caught in ice, off King William Island (PAF0265, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
This image from Lieutenant Owen Stanley’s sketchbook shows HMS Terror on 15 March 1837 as ice pushed by the sea closed in on the ship, which only survived because of the strength of its build as a bomb vessel. This and a painting showing the same scene by the ship’s First Lieutenant, William Henry Smyth, may have been the inspiration for the ship depiction on the Franklin memorial in Westminster Abbey (PAF0268, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
‘Departure of the “Erebus” and “Terror” on the Arctic expedition.’ Illustrated London News, 25 May 1845.
View in August 2004 of the four burials at Beechey Island - three from the Franklin expedition in 1846 and the fourth from one of the search expeditions. The three Franklin burial were exhumed in 1984 for analysis and then reburied. This image gives a good idea of the landscape experienced by Franklin and his men here and on King William Island (photo: David Gibbins).
Photo of me examining a ruined building on Beechey Island with our ship MV Akademik Ioffe in the background, in much the same position as Terror and Erebus when they anchored here during the winter of 1845-6. The building post-dates the expedition, but a number of the artefacts strewn around - including barrel hoops and cans - are likely to be of 19th century date, including material from the Franklin expedition and the search parties (photo: Ann Gibbins).
A small relic showing that the search expeditions scoured the ground at the campsite at Beechey Island for worthwhile artefacts, leaving the tin cans and other metal fragments that remain today (AAA4274. On loan to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, from the Hopton Hall Derbyshire Collection).
The search expeditions also bartered with the Inuit for tools that had been made from material salvaged from the Franklin expedition. This Inuit knife acquired in 1859 has a blade made from steel marked with a broad arrow, indicating British government ownership (AAA2104, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
Daguerreotype taken shortly before the Franklin expedition set out from England of Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme, whose letters to his father from the expedition’s final point of contact with the outside world off Greenland reveal a lively intellect and interest in the ships’ library. He is shown with the epaulettes of a Commander as he was wearing the jacket of the ship’s commanding officer, Commander (later Captain) Fitzjames, to save him fetching his own - causing him to joke with his father that Lady Franklin said it made him look too old, but that it would serve him well when he really was promoted. Two of the most remarkable finds in the Parks Canada investigation of Erebus in 2019 are a pair of Lieutenant’s epaulettes in a cabin identified as Fairholme’s (shown here at the Parks Canada website).
A spoon bartered with the Inuit on or near King William Island in 1859 bearing the family crest of Lieutenant Fairholme, including the motto Spero Meliora - ‘I hope for better things’. A number of other artefacts were named to individual officers, including Franklin (AAA2481, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
An edition of The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith, found in the boat on King William Island by the McClintock expedition in 1859 (AAA2154, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
Two leaves of a book acquired from the Inuit in 1854, and said by them to have come from a camp near the mouth of the Back River on the mainland south of King William Island where the final group of expedition survivors died of starvation. It was folded in such a way that the lines in the middle of the second leaf paraphrasing the Book of Isaiah stood out: ‘Are you not afraid to die? … Fear not; when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee …’ (AAA2055, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection).
The note attached to this book explains its history and how it was found in 1859 next to the bodies in the ship’s boat on King William Island (AAA2199, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection).
One of two double-barreled percussion shotguns found in 1859 by the McClintock search expedition leaning against the ship’s boat on King William Island (AAA2532, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
The final message from the Franklin expedition, deposited in a metal canister at Victory Point on King William Island by Lieutenant G.M. Gore on 28 May 1847, and then added to on 26 April 1848 by Captains Crozier and Fitzjames after they had abandoned Terror and Erebus in the ice. Franklin was still alive at the time of the first message, but he had died by the time of the second along with 24 other men (HSR/C/9/1, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
Page from the Illustrated London News of 4 November 1854 showing relics from the Franklin expedition, many of which survive in the National Maritime Museum. All of these were collected on King William Island and nearby by the search expeditions or acquired from the local Inuit.
Painting by William Thomas Smith entitled ‘They forged the last link with their lives: HMS Erebus and Terror, 1849-50’, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1895 on the 50th anniversary of the departure of the Franklin expedition. The image of the boat with the dying men is based on the find of the boat with human remains by Francis Leopold McClintock during his search expedition in 1849. it was known from the message in the cairn that Franklin was already dead by that point, so the men in the boat are portrayed as anonymous by the painter. ‘The last link’ refers to the idea promulgated by Lady Franklin that the expedition had indeed found the North-West Passage (BHC1273, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).