HMS Erebus and HMS Terror sailed into the Arctic in 1845 and never returned. The truth of what happened was frozen in ice for 170 years.

On May 19, 1845, two of the most advanced ships in the world — HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — sailed from Greenhithe, England, bound for the Northwest Passage, the fabled sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the frozen archipelago of the Canadian Arctic. Commanded by Sir John Franklin, a veteran Arctic explorer then fifty-nine years old, the expedition carried 129 officers and men, three years' worth of provisions, early steam engines retrofitted from railway locomotives, and the confident expectations of an empire at the height of its power. The Royal Navy had been probing the Arctic for decades. The Northwest Passage was the last great prize of maritime exploration, and Franklin's expedition — the best-equipped, best-supplied, and most technologically advanced ever sent into the ice — was expected to succeed where others had failed. Instead, it became the worst disaster in the history of Arctic exploration. Not a single man returned. The ships vanished. For a decade and a half, the fate of the Franklin expedition was the most compelling mystery in the English-speaking world — a mystery that was only truly beginning to be solved in the twenty-first century, when the wrecks of Erebus and Terror were finally found on the Arctic seabed, exactly where Inuit oral tradition had said they were all along.

The story of the Franklin expedition is a tragedy of hubris, a detective story spanning two centuries, and a powerful reminder that indigenous knowledge, long dismissed by European science, held truths that decades of official search parties could not uncover. It is also one of the most remarkable cold-case investigations in history — one that combined Inuit testimony, Victorian scandal, modern forensics, and underwater archaeology to piece together, bit by agonizing bit, what happened to 129 men in the most unforgiving environment on Earth.

Into the Ice: The Best-Prepared Expedition That Ever Failed

Sir John Franklin was not the Admiralty's first choice to lead the expedition. He was fifty-nine, overweight, and had not been to the Arctic in nearly twenty years. His previous overland expedition to map the Arctic coast of Canada (1819–1822) had ended in disaster — eleven of his twenty men had died of starvation, and Franklin himself had narrowly survived. But the first choice, Sir James Clark Ross, declined, and other candidates were unavailable. Franklin got the command, perhaps because his wife, the formidable Jane, Lady Franklin, lobbied tirelessly on his behalf.

The ships themselves were extraordinary. HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were both bomb vessels — heavily built warships designed to withstand the recoil of massive mortars — and had been extensively modified for Arctic service. Their hulls were reinforced with thick oak planking and iron sheathing. Each was fitted with a steam engine cannibalized from a railway locomotive, capable of propelling the ship at about four knots — a crucial advantage in tight ice. They carried hot-water heating systems piped throughout the interior, desalination apparatus for making fresh water from seawater, and an enormous library including everything from medieval manuscripts to natural history treatises. The food supply was vast: over 120,000 pounds of flour, nearly 34,000 pounds of preserved meat, and — critically — 8,000 tins of canned food, sealed with solder containing a high proportion of lead.

The expedition sailed first to the Orkney Islands, then across the Atlantic to Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland, where it anchored in late June 1845. Here, five men were discharged to England as unfit, reducing the expedition's complement to 129. On July 26, 1845, two whaling ships — the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise — sighted Erebus and Terror moored to an iceberg in Baffin Bay, waiting for ice to clear in Lancaster Sound. The whaling captains spoke briefly with Franklin's officers. Then the two ships sailed west into Lancaster Sound, the gateway to the Arctic archipelago. No European ever saw any member of the Franklin expedition alive again.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror trapped in the Arctic ice. The ships were state-of-the-art, but the frozen north was merciless.

The Victory Point Note: Two Messages, One Grave

For three years after the last sighting, nothing was heard from the expedition. The Admiralty, unconcerned at first — Franklin carried three years' provisions and had been instructed to prepare for the possibility of being frozen in — began organizing search parties in 1847. Over the next decade, more than thirty expeditions would be sent to find Franklin and his men, making it the largest search-and-rescue operation in history.

The first solid clue came in August 1850, when searchers discovered the ruins of the expedition's first wintering camp at Beechey Island, at the entrance to Wellington Channel. They found the graves of three crew members — John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine — who had died during the first winter of 1845–1846. The bodies, preserved in the permafrost, would later be exhumed and examined in the 1980s, revealing high lead levels and signs of tuberculosis. But Beechey Island told searchers only where the expedition had been, not where it had gone or what had happened next.

The most important single document in the entire Franklin mystery was found on May 6, 1859, by a search party led by Francis Leopold McClintock, acting on instructions from Lady Franklin. In a cairn at Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island, McClintock's second-in-command, William Hobson, discovered a standard Admiralty form with two messages written a year apart:

• First message (May 28, 1847): Written by Franklin's officers, it reported that Erebus and Terror had wintered in the ice off Beechey Island in 1845–1846, then sailed south through Wellington Channel and Cornwallis Island. "Sir John Franklin commanding the Expedition. All Well." The ships were beset in the ice at latitude 70°5'N, longitude 98°23'W. The message was optimistic.
• Second message (April 25, 1848): Written in the margins of the same form by Captain Fitzjames of Erebus, it told a dramatically different story. Sir John Franklin had died on June 11, 1847 — just two weeks after the first message was written. By April 1848, a total of nine officers and fifteen men (twenty-four in all) had perished. The ships had been beset in the ice since September 12, 1846 — trapped for nineteen months. The surviving officers had decided to abandon the ships and attempt to march south to the Great Fish River (now the Back River) on the Canadian mainland. The note was signed by Captain Crozier, who had assumed command after Franklin's death.

The Victory Point note was the expedition's last written testament. After April 1848, the historical record goes dark once more — and the men entered the final, terrible chapter of their ordeal.

John Rae and the Cannibalism Controversy

In 1854, the Scottish explorer Dr. John Rae, surveying the Arctic coast for the Hudson's Bay Company, encountered a group of Inuit near Pelly Bay who possessed a remarkable collection of objects: a silver fork bearing the Franklin family crest, a medal belonging to one of Franklin's officers, buttons, telescopes, and other items clearly from the expedition. The Inuit told Rae a chilling story: they had encountered a large party of white men, perhaps forty in number, pulling a boat on a sledge south along the west coast of King William Island. Later, they had found the bodies of perhaps thirty men. Many had been mutilated — their flesh had been cut from their bones. The Inuit testimony was clear: the men had resorted to cannibalism in their final desperate days.

Rae reported his findings to the Admiralty and the London Times published the story. The reaction was explosive. Victorian England refused to believe that officers and gentlemen of the Royal Navy could have resorted to such barbarism. Charles Dickens, the most influential writer in the English language, wrote a furious two-part essay in his magazine Household Words denouncing Rae's report and casting doubt on the reliability of Inuit testimony. Lady Franklin was equally appalled — not by the cannibalism itself, but by the suggestion that her husband's men had died anything other than heroic deaths. Rae was effectively vilified for telling the truth. It would take over a century for forensic evidence to vindicate him completely.

Parks Canada divers explore the remarkably preserved wreck of HMS Erebus, found in 2014 after 170 years beneath the Arctic waters.

Rising From the Ice: The Wrecks and What They Reveal

The discovery of HMS Erebus on September 7, 2014, was the culmination of years of collaborative effort by Parks Canada, the Government of Nunavut, and the Inuit community. The wreck was located by a side-scan sonar operated from the research vessel Martin Bergmann — itself named after a Canadian Arctic researcher who had died in 2011. Erebus lay in remarkably good condition in shallow water, her hull largely intact, her masts still standing. Two years later, on September 3, 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation's vessel Endeavor located HMS Terror in Terror Bay, twenty-four meters down, in even better condition — virtually intact, with her hatches closed, her glass windows unbroken, and her interior potentially preserved as a time capsule of Victorian Arctic exploration.

Underwater archaeological investigation of the wrecks, conducted in brief summer windows by Parks Canada's team, has yielded extraordinary finds. Divers have entered the captain's cabin of Erebus and recovered hundreds of artifacts: navigation instruments, ceramic tableware, personal items bearing officers' initials, medicine bottles, and scientific equipment. The preservation is astonishing — leather boots, brass buttons, and even fragments of paper have survived in the cold Arctic water. On Terror, the closed hatches suggest the ship may have been deliberately sealed before abandonment, raising the tantalizing possibility that the interior may contain logbooks, maps, photographs, and written records that could finally answer the outstanding questions about the expedition's fate.

What Killed the Men of the Franklin Expedition?

Modern forensic science, applied to skeletal remains scattered across King William Island and to the Beechey Island burials, has painted a picture of cumulative, overlapping catastrophes:

• Lead poisoning — Owen Beattie's 1980s analysis of bones from Beechey Island and King William Island revealed lead levels up to 220 parts per million, compared to a normal baseline of about 10–20 ppm. Lead causes neurological damage, impaired judgment, fatigue, and digestive problems.
• Scurvy — Despite carrying lemon juice, the expedition may have exhausted its antiscorbutic supplies or had the vitamin C destroyed by cooking. Scurvy causes weakness, bleeding gums, reopening of old wounds, and eventual death.
• Tuberculosis — Evidence of TB was found in the Beechey Island remains, and the crowded conditions aboard ship would have facilitated transmission.
• Botulism — Some researchers have proposed that improperly sterilized canned food could have caused botulism, which would have caused rapid paralysis and death.
• Starvation and exposure — The final killer. After abandoning the ships in April 1848, the surviving men faced a march of hundreds of miles across barren, frozen terrain with inadequate supplies and no knowledge of Inuit survival techniques.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Franklin Expedition?

The Franklin Expedition was a British naval expedition led by Sir John Franklin that set out in May 1845 to discover and chart the Northwest Passage — a navigable sea route through the Canadian Arctic connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The expedition's two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, carried 129 officers and men. Both ships became trapped in ice, and every member of the expedition perished, making it the worst disaster in the history of Arctic exploration.

When were the wrecks of Erebus and Terror found?

HMS Erebus was discovered on September 7, 2014, by a Parks Canada-led expedition in Wilmot and Crampton Bay off the Adelaide Peninsula, in about eleven meters of water. HMS Terror was found on September 3, 2016, by the Arctic Research Foundation in Terror Bay on the south coast of King William Island, in about twenty-four meters of water. Both discoveries were guided in part by Inuit oral history that had described the ships' locations for generations.

What caused the Franklin Expedition to fail?

There was no single cause. Modern research points to a combination of factors: lead poisoning from poorly soldered canned food (causing neurological impairment), scurvy from vitamin C deficiency, tuberculosis, possible botulism from contaminated provisions, and ultimately starvation and exposure after the ships were abandoned. The expedition was also trapped in unusually persistent ice conditions that prevented progress or escape for years.

Did the Franklin Expedition resort to cannibalism?

Yes. First reported by Dr. John Rae in 1854 based on Inuit testimony — and fiercely denied by Victorian England — cannibalism was conclusively confirmed by modern forensic analysis of skeletal remains found across King William Island. Bones examined by researchers showed cut marks and marrow-extraction patterns consistent with survival cannibalism, not ritual practice. The men were starving and resorted to the most desperate measures to stay alive.

Related Stories

The Mary Celeste The Roanoke Colony The Dyatlov Pass Incident The Amber Room