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Before the expedition's final departure, five men were discharged and sent home on Rattler and Barretto Junior, reducing the ships' final crew size to 129. Letters written on board told how Franklin banned swearing and drunkenness. At the Whalefish Islands in Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, 10 oxen carried by the transport ship were slaughtered for fresh meat supplies were transferred to Erebus and Terror, and crew members wrote their last letters home. The ships stopped briefly in Stromness Harbour in the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, and from there they sailed to Greenland with HMS Rattler and a transport ship, Barretto Junior.

The expedition set sail from Greenhithe, England, on the morning of, with a crew of 24 officers and 110 men. HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on its last voyage Other advanced technology included bows reinforced with heavy beams and plates of iron, an internal steam heating device for the comfort of the crew, screw propellers and iron rudders that could be withdrawn into iron wells to protect them from damage, ships' libraries of more than 1,000 books, and three years' worth of conventionally preserved or tinned preserved food supplies. They enabled the ships to make 7.4 km/h (4 kn) on their own power. Steam engines were fitted in to drive a single screw in each vessel these engines were former locomotives from the London & Croydon Railway. By 1845, the combined discoveries of all of these expeditions had reduced the relevant unknown parts of the Canadian Arctic to a quadrilateral area of about 181,300 km2 (70,000 sq mi).Įrebus at 378 tons (bm) and Terror at 331 tons (bm) were sturdily built, and were outfitted with recent inventions. Over the next four decades, explorers made productive trips to the Canadian Arctic.

In 1804, Sir John Barrow became Second Secretary of the Admiralty, and began a push by the Royal Navy to complete the Northwest Passage over the top of Canada and to navigate toward the North Pole.

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The search by Europeans for a western shortcut by sea from Europe to Asia began with the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and continued through the mid-19th century with a long series of exploratory expeditions originating mainly in England. The entire expedition, comprising 129 men including Franklin, was lost. After a few early fatalities, the two ships became icebound in Victoria Strait, near King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. His fourth and last, was meant to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage. A Royal Navy officer and experienced explorer, Franklin had served on three previous Arctic expeditions.

MS Erebus and HMS Terror ships, participants of Franklin's mysterious expeditionįranklin's lost expedition was a British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

Erebus and terror