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Wreckage of lost vessel HMS Erebus found 169 years later

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M

More_Badass

Member
If you're familiar with Dan Simmons' novel The Terror, you know all about the story of the Terror and Erebus. Pretty amazing that we finally found one of the ships after all this time.

From September:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/british-ship-1845-franklin-expedition-found-canada
The grisly and mysterious tale of two British ships that disappeared in the Arctic in 1845 has baffled generations and sparked one of history's longest rescue searches. But now, more than 160 years later, Canadian divers have finally found the remains of one of the doomed Navy vessels.
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From last week:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29457728
A shipwreck uncovered beneath the icy wastes of northern Canada has been identified as long-lost HMS Erebus.

The Victorian-era vessel became part of nautical folklore after it vanished in the mid-19th Century.

Its captain, Sir John Franklin, had been searching for the fabled Northwest Passage.

Experts on Thursday confirmed that the wreck, discovered last month, was indeed the celebrated Royal Navy vessel.

"It is in astonishing condition,'' said search team member John Geiger, president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. "We're over the moon."

The ship set sail from England in 1845 under Sir John's command.

He was accompanied by a second ship, HMS Terror, captained by Francis Crozier.

Alongside Sir John were 128 officers, all of them aiming to find the elusive sea route linking the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Arctic seas off northern Canada.

The two vessels were last seen in the summer of that year bypassing whaling boats in Baffin Bay, off the coast of Greenland.

But soon afterwards, the ships vanished.

Inuit hunters told tales of starving white men who had been seen in the freezing wilderness over the following months and years.

Historians speculated that the ships had become trapped in the vast ice floes of the Canadian Arctic.

But until Thursday the exact fate of HMS Erebus had not been known.
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Didn't see a thread for this, so lock if old
 
B

BloodMoney

Banned
Heard about this last month. Very fascinating. Bring on the submersibles with HD cameras and/or Indiana Jones.

The NPR thing I listened to indicated this was a more significant shipwreck find than the Titantic considering the fate of the ships was entirely unknown.
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
It needs to be stated that the British were the best at naming ships. Terror is awesome.

They are still pretty good today as well:

Iron Duke
Puncher
Smiter
Biter
Vengeance
Victorious
Triumph
Dauntless
Dragon


I mean, come on! Iron Duke? That's awesome!
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
I think I saw a show about the men on PBS. They think they all died of scurvy and tin can poisoning if I remember right. Though they survived by using the lifeboats as sleds to move their food and whatnot.
 
NekoFever

NekoFever

Member
I heard about them discovering the ship but didn't realise they'd identified it now. Pretty cool how, after all these searches over the centuries, it was the testimony of natives that turned out to be right.

RileyLewis said:
It needs to be stated that the British were the best at naming ships. Terror is awesome.

They are still pretty good today as well:

Iron Duke
Puncher
Smiter
Biter
Vengeance
Victorious
Triumph
Dauntless
Dragon


I mean, come on! Iron Duke? That's awesome!
Click to expand...
The Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarines are called Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance. I always thought those were badass.
 
I

iamblades

Member
RileyLewis said:
It needs to be stated that the British were the best at naming ships. Terror is awesome.

They are still pretty good today as well:

Iron Duke
Puncher
Smiter
Biter
Vengeance
Victorious
Triumph
Dauntless
Dragon


I mean, come on! Iron Duke? That's awesome!
Click to expand...

The US navy has cool names for the small ships like Avenger and Devastator, but all the big stuff gets named after politicians and states these days.

We got the most famous ship name ever though, the goddamn USS Enterprise.
 
S

Sesha

Member
With that name no wonder it sank. They might as well named it HMS Hades or HMS Styx. But cool that they found it. I love hearing about long-lost objects getting discovered.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
B_Spooky13 said:
Not sure if it's been talked about but they also found traces of cannbalism on the remains
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Some more details on the expedition and cannibalism from here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...rted-to-cannibalism-found-in-canadian-arctic/
Led by Sir John Franklin, the expedition set out from England to seek the elusive Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic. The Erebus — which shares a name with a part of Hades in Greek mythology — and another unfortunately-named ship, the HMS Terror, made it to Baffin Bay near Greenland. In 1846, they got stranded in ice near King William Island, about 1,200 miles northwest of Toronto.

They stayed there for two years, dying slowly. In 1848, the crew, reduced from 129 to 105, deserted the ship, according to a note later found in a mound of stones. Franklin, the note said, was already dead.

Once off the ship, the men likely died faster. Inuit reports from the 19th century said the men “fell down and died as they walked along.” They may have succumbed to scurvy. They may have succumbed to lead poisoning inflicted by canned food.
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According to one 1869 account, “one man’s body when found by the Innuits [sic] flesh all on and not mutilated except the hands sawed off at the wrists — the rest a great many had their flesh cut off as if some one or other had cut it off to eat.”

This isn’t just Inuit legend reported secondhand when Ulysses S. Grant was president. In 1997, researchers evaluated cannibalism claims in “The Final Days of the Franklin Expedition: New Skeletal Evidence.”

“Evidence for decapitation is suggestive, but not conclusive,” the paper said. And: “The location of the cut marks is also consistent with defleshing.”

The conclusion: “The presence of cut marks on approximately one-quarter of the remains supports 19th-century Inuit accounts of cannibalism on the expedition.”
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