HMS Terror (1813)

HMS ''Terror'' was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry (as mentioned in The Star-Spangled Banner: "And the Rockets' red glare, the Bombs bursting in air"). She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with .

On 12 September 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation announced that the wreck of ''Terror'' had been found in Nunavut's Terror Bay, off the southwest coast of King William Island. The wreck was discovered south of the location where the ship was reported abandoned, and some from the wreck of HMS ''Erebus'', discovered in September 2014.

Early history and military service

HMS ''Terror'' was a bomb ship built over two years at the Davy shipyard in Topsham in south Devon, for the Royal Navy. Her deck was long, and the ship measured 325 tons burthen. The vessel was armed with two heavy mortars and ten cannon, and was launched in June 1813.

''Terror'' saw service in the War of 1812 against the United States, during which the ships of the North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy blockaded the Atlantic ports of the United States and launched amphibious raids from its base in Bermuda, leading up to the 1814 Chesapeake campaign, a punitive expedition that included the Raid on Alexandria, the Battle of Bladensburg, and the Burning of Washington. Under the command of John Sheridan, she took part in the bombardment of Stonington, Connecticut, on 9–12 August 1814. She also fought in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814 and participated in the bombardment of Fort McHenry; the latter attack inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner". In January 1815, still under Sheridan's command, ''Terror'' was involved in the Battle of Fort Peter and the attack on St. Marys, Georgia.

After the war, ''Terror'' was laid up until March 1828, when she was recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean Sea. She was removed from active service when she underwent repairs for damage suffered near Lisbon, Portugal.

Early polar exploration service

In the mid-1830s, ''Terror'' was refitted as a polar exploration vessel. Her design as a bomb ship meant she had an unusually strong framework to resist the recoil of her heavy mortars; thus it was presumed she could withstand the pressure of polar sea ice, as well.

Back expedition

In 1836, command of ''Terror'' was given to Captain George Back for an Arctic expedition to Hudson Bay. The expedition aimed to enter Repulse Bay, where it would send out landing parties to ascertain whether the Boothia Peninsula was an island or a peninsula. ''Terror'' was trapped by ice near Southampton Island, and did not reach Repulse Bay. At one point, the ice forced her up the face of a cliff. She was trapped in the ice for ten months. In the spring of 1837, an encounter with an iceberg further damaged the ship. She nearly sank on her return journey across the Atlantic, and was in a sinking condition by the time Back sailed her into Lough Swilly, before beaching her at Rathmullan, Co. Donegal, Ireland on 21 September.

The admiralty dispatched the shipwright, William McPherson Rice, to refloat and repair ''Terror'' sufficiently to enable her to sail to the naval shipyard at Chatham in Kent, where full repairs were carried out. Correspondence describing the repairs and the crew's sojourn in Rathmullan are held in the Royal Museums Greenwich collection. Back subsequently published a complete account of this voyage right up to the decommissioning of ''Terror'' in Chatham.

Ross expedition

In 1839 ''Terror'' was assigned to a voyage to the Antarctic along with ''Erebus'' under the overall command of James Clark Ross. Francis Crozier was commander of ''Terror'' on this expedition, as well as second-in-command to Ross. The expedition spanned three seasons from 1840 to 1843 during which ''Terror'' and ''Erebus'' made three forays into Antarctic waters, traversing the Ross Sea twice, and sailing through the Weddell Sea southeast of the Falkland Islands. The extinct volcano Mount Terror on Ross Island was named after the ship by the expedition commander.

Franklin expedition

Before leaving on the Franklin expedition, both ''Erebus'' and ''Terror'' underwent heavy modifications for the journey. They were both outfitted with steam engines, consisting of former London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives. Rated at , each could propel its ship at . The pair of ships were among the first Royal Navy ships to have steam-powered engines and screw propellers. Twelve days' supply of coal was carried. Iron plating was added fore and aft on the ships' hulls to make them more resistant to pack ice, and their decks were cross-planked to distribute impact forces. Along with ''Erebus'', ''Terror'' was stocked with supplies for their expedition, which included among other items: two tons of tobacco, 8,000 tins of preserves, and of liquor. ''Terror''s library had 1,200 books, and the ship's berths were heated via ducts that connected them to the stove.

Their voyage to the Arctic was with Sir John Franklin in overall command of the expedition in ''Erebus'', and ''Terror'' again under the command of Captain Francis Crozier. The expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Arctic Archipelago and complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been charted from both the east and west, but never entirely navigated. It was planned to last three years.

The expedition sailed from Greenhithe, Kent, on 19 May 1845, and 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 and the broad circumstances of the expedition's fate were revealed during a series of expeditions between 1848 and 1866. Both ships had become icebound and were abandoned by their crews, all of whom died of exposure and starvation while trying to trek overland to Fort Resolution, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost to the southwest. Subsequent expeditions up until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, revealed that their 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 are supported by evidence of cut marks and pot polish on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century.

Discovery of the wreckage

On 15 August 2008, Parks Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada, announced a CAD$75,000 six-week search, deploying the icebreaker with the goal of finding the two ships. The search was also intended to strengthen Canada's claims of sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic. Attempts were also undertaken in 2010, 2011, and 2012, all of which failed to locate the ships' remains.

On 8 September 2014, it was announced that the wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 7 September using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. On 1 October 2014, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the remains were that of ''Erebus''.

On 12 September 2016, a team from the Arctic Research Foundation announced that a wreck close to ''Terror''s description had been located on the southern coast of King William Island in the middle of Terror Bay (), at a depth of . The remains of the ships are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the exact location withheld to preserve the wrecks and prevent looting.

Sammy Kogvik, an Inuk hunter and member of the Canadian Rangers who joined the crew of the Arctic Research Foundation's ''Martin Bergmann'', recalled an incident from seven years earlier in which he encountered what appeared to be a mast jutting from the ice. With this information, the ship's destination was changed from Cambridge Bay to Terror Bay, where researchers located the wreck in just 2.5 hours. According to Louie Kamookak, a resident of nearby Gjoa Haven and a historian on the Franklin expedition, Parks Canada had ignored the stories of locals that suggested that the wreck of ''Terror'' was in her namesake bay, despite many modern stories of sightings by hunters and from airplanes.

The wreck was found in excellent condition, her decks and interior spaces largely intact. A wide exhaust pipe that rose from the outer deck was pivotal in identifying the ship; it was located in the same location where the smokestack from ''Terror''s locomotive engine had been installed. The wreck was nearly south of where historians thought her final resting place was, calling into question the previously accepted account of the fate of the sailors, that they died while trying to walk out of the Arctic to the nearest Hudson's Bay Company trading post.

The location of the wreckage, and evidence in the wreckage of anchor usage, indicates continued use, raising the possibility that some of the sailors had attempted to re-man the ship and sail her home (or elsewhere), possibly on orders from Crozier.

On 23 October 2017 it was announced by British Defence Minister Sir Michael Fallon that the British government would be giving ''Terror'' and ''Erebus'' to Canada, retaining only a few relics and any gold, along with the right to repatriate any human remains.

In 2018, ''Terror'' and ''Erebus'' were gifted to Canada and the Inuit, in care of the Inuit Heritage Trust, by the government of the United Kingdom. This includes all the remaining artifacts.

Although the exact location has not been released, Nancy Anilniliak, the Field Unit Superintendent of the Nunavut Field Unit, has restricted access to an approximately rectangular area in Terror Bay. The area runs from Point E () to Point F () to Point G () to Point H ().

In August 2019, taking advantage of "exceptionally co-operative" weather conditions, Parks Canada conducted 48 dives over the course of seven days to ''Terror'', 3D-mapping the wreck and searching the interior with ROVs. The team was able to map out ninety per cent of ''Terror''s lower deck, but were unable to access Crozier's cabin due to the buildup of sediment. Despite this, Crozier's cabin was considered the best preserved space in the lower deck, and Parks Canada has expressed the hope that written materials may be found there. The planned exploration of the wreck sites in 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team returned to the wrecks in May 2022, after a two-year postponement caused by the pandemic.

Legacy

In art, entertainment, and media

HMS ''Terror'' is featured, often alongside HMS ''Erebus'', in fictional works that involve or allude to the Franklin expedition, such as:
* "Northwest Passage" is a 1981 song by Canadian musician Stan Rogers about the Franklin expedition and its fate.
* ''Terror and Erebus'' (1965) is a verse play for CBC Radio by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, subsequently published in her collection ''Afterworlds'' (1987).
* Mordecai Richler's novel '' Solomon Gursky Was Here'' (1989), in which Ephraim Gursky survives the expedition and lives to pass on his Judaism and Yiddish to some of the local Inuit.
* Dan Simmons' novel '' The Terror'' (2007), a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of HMS ''Erebus'' and HMS ''Terror'' to the Arctic, in 1845–1848, to force the Northwest Passage. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and illness, and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, they are stalked across the bleak Arctic landscape by a monster. The novel has been adapted as an eponymous 2018 television series by cable TV channel AMC.
* "The Erebus and the Terror," an instrumental piece composed by Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, is the third track on the 1987 album '' Something of Time'' by Nightnoise.
*''Erebus: The Story of a Ship'' (2018, published by Hutchinson, a division of Random House), by Michael Palin, is a historical account of the ships ''Erebus'' and ''Terror''. The book was serialized on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.

In namesakes

* Mount Terror on Ross Island, near Antarctica, was named after the ship by Captain Ross, who also named a nearby and slightly taller peak to the west, Mount Erebus.
* Erebus and Terror Gulf, in Antarctica. Named after the vessels used by Royal Navy Captain Sir James Clark Ross in exploring the area in 1842–43.
* Terror Bay on King William Island was named in 1910, long before the discovery of the wreck there.
* Terror Rupes, an escarpment on Mercury.
*Terror Street in the suburb of Keilor Park in Melbourne, Australia.

Books

*

See also

* European and American voyages of scientific exploration
* List of bomb vessels of the Royal Navy

References

*Beardsly, Martyn: ''Deadly Winter: The Life of Sir John Franklin''. .
*Beattie, Owen: ''Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition''. .
*Berton, Pierre: ''The Arctic Grail''. .
*Cookman, Scott: ''Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition''. .
*James, William (1827). ''The Naval History of Great Britain'', Volume 6, 1811 – 1827. Conway Maritime Press. .
*McGregor, Elizabeth: ''The Ice Child''.
*Ronchetti L, Clement D, William-Hawkes E:''HMS Terror: a Topsham Ship'' - Published by Topsham Museum Society .
*Simmons, Dan: ''The Terror'' (Fictionalized account of the Franklin expedition). (UK H/C).
*Smith, Michael: ''Captain Francis Crozier: The Last Man Standing?''. .

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Terror, HMS
1813 ships
Arctic exploration vessels
Bomb vessels of the Royal Navy
Exploration ships of the United Kingdom
Franklin's lost expedition
History of Antarctica
Maritime incidents in 1828
Maritime incidents in April 1845
Maritime incidents in September 1837
National Historic Sites in Nunavut
Ships built on the River Exe
Shipwrecks of the Canadian Arctic coast
War of 1812 ships of the United Kingdom
History of the Ross Dependency