I can’t shake the image of those two wooden ships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—lying silent beneath Arctic ice, their timbers splintered by pressure, their names whispered by moss and drift. In 1845, Sir John Franklin set out from England with 129 men, chasing a dream older than any living mariner: a navigable Northwest Passage linking Atlantic to Pacific, a shortcut around the top of the world. They vanished into ice fields and gale‐slashed seas; for more than a century, their fate became legend. Ghostly tales spoke of ships trapped in pack ice, of parties trekking over white waste, of whispers ripping through ice floes. The answer came only in our own time—when explorers and scientists in 2014 discovered the Erebus first, then the Terror, their hulls adorned with barnacles and breathing—and with them, the final heartbreaking clues to why every last man died.
I. Setting Sail for Immortality
It was May 19, 1845, when Franklin, then sixty‐two and already lauded for Arctic surveys, climbed aboard the Erebus at Greenhithe, followed by the Terror. Steam engines hissed as they pulled away from the dock, coal smoke drifting up to a sky mottled with clouds. Franklin wore the Arctic uniform of glazed cotton and fur‐lined boots, his white beard stiff with wax. Around him stood James Fitzjames, the Erebus’s second‐in‐command, and Francis Crozier of the Terror. Young officers adjusted their greatcoats and pocketed daguerreotype cameras, eager to record landscapes no European eyes had yet photographed. The ships carried stores for three years: barrels of salted beef, potatoes canned in tin, biscuit stiff as crust. They carried clothing stamped with Franklin’s crest—”F.G.S.” for Fellow of the Geological Society—and they carried hope: that the Northwest Passage would be theirs, that Britain’s flag would fly in Arctic glory, that science and empire would claim another frontier.
Celebratory bells tolled as they steamed down the Thames. Families crowded quaysides to wave farewell, their hearts buoyed by Franklin’s calm promise of success. A year earlier, Franklin had toured London drawing rooms, charming both peer and commoner with tales of mapping polar seas, of charting new lands for science. He brought with him Inuit sleds, dog harnesses, and accounts of native survival methods. He pledged to combine tradition and technology: wood‐hulled ships reinforced with iron, hammocks instead of bunks to mitigate scurvy, stores of lime juice to fight deficiency.
Few realized how great the gamble. Few understood that this venture, meant to crown Franklin’s storied career, might instead become a frozen tomb.
II. Into the White Labyrinth
By July 1845, the expedition reached Baffin Bay. Ice floes drifted like jellyfish skeletons; bergs jutted into the sky like opalescent towers. The ships steamed north until in August they threaded through the pack into Lancaster Sound. Franklin’s last written note—found later on Beechey Island—dated August 25: “All well. Proceeding.” His words seemed both authoritative and hauntingly ordinary. No one suspected that beyond those icy ridges lay the expedition’s unraveling.
Winter overtook them soon after. The Terror and Erebus found shelter in an inlet they’d name Erebus Bay but leave forever unnamed in human memory. They lashed sails, battened hatches, and prepared for four months of darkness. They lit lamps of seal oil, put up telescopes for celestial observations, and experimented with diets: potatoes boiled from the hold, pemmican laced with suet, Turnpack biscuits soaked in hot water to soften them. Crozier, a resolute commander, drilled crews in musk‐and‐dagger routines to stave off cabin fever. He recorded temperature drops to –40°F, keeping charts that we’d unearth later, ink frozen into hard lines.
The men kept spirits up with concerts. Fitzjames played pianoforte in the wardroom; officers recited Byron’s verses; sailors slapped their boots in dance. One varnished violin—brought for warmth of music—took on the smell of brine and coal smoke, strings rattling in the cold. They published an onboard newspaper called The North‐West Gazette, with playful verses and satirical sketches mocking shore leave. They told jokes about Mrs. Franklin, waiting in London, writing letters they’d never receive. They kept diaries brimming with jokes and weather reports, maps scratched on whale rib and chart paper.
And then came the ice.
III. The Grip of Frost
In September 1846, the pack closed behind them. The ships shuddered as floes slammed the hulls, the crackle of ice like shot. The captains ordered the engines idled; they relied on sail and winter’s slow drift. Yet the ice held them fast, locking them in for the ninth winter. Crewmen began to notice lumps on knuckles and gums bleeding; rations, though copious, had turned rancid. Canned meat was stained with corrosion, the seals compromised by lead solder used in manufacturing. They ate it anyway, stirring copper‐green juices back into stew.
In the wardrooms, the officers wrote letters. They spoke of frost‐formed jungles on deck railings, of iceberg silhouettes rising under twilight. But the men below decks whispered about cankered tins and the metallic tang in water barrels. When storms raged, water froze in the boilers, mangling pipes. Yet the captains insisted bark‐and‐iron sheathing would hold.
Come spring, messages left in cairns by Franklin were found by search parties: one on Beechey Island, dated 1845, announced the death of three men from fever or exhaustion. The world sighed relief that perhaps Franklin had safe harbored again—but no one heard from him again.
IV. Echoes of Desperation
By April 1848, Franklin had been missing two winters. Ships lingered, hatches sealed, crewmen huddled in wool blankets. Scurvy—once held at bay—returned in force: bleeding gums, fevers, swollen limbs. Franklin’s second‐in‐command left a chilling note during the final spring: “Our numbers are fast decreasing… The deceased have been buried in small graves…” The tone was clipped, resigned. They abandoned both ships, loading what they could onto sledges headed south toward Back’s Fish River, some 600 miles away.
Imagine that trek: men in fur‐lined greatcoats, dragging sledges of supplies—earthenware, rifles, dried peas—over hummock ice and sastrugi ridges. Their boots cracked, snow seeped into mittens, frostbite stole fingers. They carried medicine chests, journals, sextants—and perhaps a dying hope of rescue. When they camped, they cut blocks of ice for tea and wrote frantic letters in notebooks: “We hope to reach… if… perishing…” But those fragments remained locked in the cold.
Rumors reached home: tales of starvation, cannibalism whispered by Inuit hunters long before the wrecks were found. Inuit told Royal Navy emissaries of skeletal white men nursing hideous wounds, of reindeer antlers fashioned into tools and chairs, of bodies strewn across ice plates like driftwood.
V. Discovery Beneath the Waves
Searches in the mid‐19th century turned up few traces. Scattered artifacts—clothes buttons, a telescope, an anchor piece—muddied the truth. Franklin’s journals and the Gazette were lost. For a century, the Erebus and Terror lay hidden beneath shifting ice and water, their final stories untold.
It wasn’t until 2014 that Parks Canada, using underwater sonar and remotely operated vehicles, located the Erebus in Wilmot and Crampton Bay. The ship rested upright, its iron hull surprisingly intact. Within months, they found the Terror in Terror Bay—bow down in sediment, lifeboats and dream stores preserved in darkness. Beneath blankets of peat and silt, they retrieved jars of tinned meat, stoves, navigational instruments, dinnerware about to be served. They found lead pipes and test lots of preserved vegetables. They uncovered the last few pages of a carpenter’s notebook, the woodworm tracks almost invisible under algae.
VI. The Quietest of Throats: Lead and Starvation
Laboratory tests on recovered bone samples and preserved tissue revealed telling truths: lead concentrations far beyond lethal levels. The solder used to seal cans—and brine pots—leached into the food and water. Chronic lead poisoning attacks the nervous system: tremors, confusion, anemia. Survivors might have staggered across the ice uncertain of their feet, their minds dulling as hunger gnawed. In that state, frostbite claws deeper; hope falters. When sledge parties paused, they might have removed frozen toes to relieve pain, or eaten the flesh of fallen companions to stay alive—an act as ancient as famine, as human as despair.
Archaeologists found butcher marks on human bones and triangular cuts indicating meat removal from joints. Inuit traditions spoke of desperate men roasting tails and portions of flesh amidst snowstorms. In their haste, they discarded clothing and journals. Their deaths, likely in spring 1848, left them too weak to build proper graves. They lay among empty tins and splintered sledges, staring up at drifted snow.
VII. Memory in the Ice
What remains of the Franklin expedition is both tragedy and testament. The ships themselves sit enveloped by Arctic eternity, joints creaking under weight so great no human step could break. Each recovered spoon, each overturned deckchair, each wooden plank etched by ice crystals whispers of lives lived in hope and ended in horror.
Inuit oral histories—long dismissed as myth—proved vital. They spoke of men passing through hunting camps, of men mixtape frozen in mid‐step, of bones bleaching under midnight suns. Modern knowledge merged with their stories: lead tests confirmed what hunters observed. The Northwest Passage, so often a siren song, claimed its own victims.
Today, Franklin’s name adorns bays and straits, ghosts of Arctic charts. Historians debate his choices: the decision to bring so much canned food rather than fresh seal meat; to rely on European tents instead of Inuit igloos; to accommodate steam engines that iced up, rather than simply dog sledges. If Franklin had followed Inuit routes—living lightly, hunting seals for fresh meat—the fate might have differed. Yet he embodied an age of confidence in science and technology—a confidence that shattered on the ice.
VIII. Lessons Etched in Frost
When I stand before a photograph of the Erebus’s stern—barnacled with Arctic life—I feel the weight of human ambition. The Franklin men believed they charted the last great barrier. They deserved respect for venturing into a place whose dangers dwarfed even their careful plans. Yet their story reminds us that knowledge is forever incomplete, that native wisdom can outweigh European learning, that survival demands more than stout ships and canned meat.
In those silent wrecks, I see the faces of men: Franklin’s white‐bearded steadiness, Crozier’s quiet determination, the green‐horn midshipmen writing sonnets in wardrooms. I imagine them lighting lamps on stormswept decks, laughing at jokes in the Gazette, bravely facing months of polar night. They were explorers, yes—but also fathers and sons, bound by duty and companionship. They walked into nightmares because they believed in human progress.
IX. A Passage Still Calling
The Northwest Passage today is no longer a myth, but a melting corridor opened by climate crisis. Ships glide through ice‐scarred waters once choked with floes. Cruise liners bring tourists to Inuit villages, oil tankers slip beneath northern lights. Yet every hull that passes echoes Franklin’s fate: that to traverse the top of the world is to court forces beyond control. The ice that tormented Franklin’s men now retreats, but the lessons remain: respect the land. Honor native knowledge. Admit that some frontiers are meant not to be tamed, but to remind us of our limits.
In England, statues of Franklin gaze northward from Victorian plinths; universities debate his legacy; museums display artifacts with solemn reverence. But true tribute lies in listening—to Inuit tales, to scientists’ warnings, to the voices of men who once clung to hope under Arctic skies.
X. The Final Word
Sir John Franklin’s expedition disappeared into ice in 1845; its remnants reemerged only in our lifetimes, rusted beneath centuries of snow. We know now that lead‐poisoned stew, freezing cold, and the unimaginable choice to survive drove men to ghastly ends in a land indifferent to their plight. And yet, I choose to remember their laughter as much as their fate: the music from the wardroom, the dancing on deck, the proud hoisting of sails.
They navigated worlds unseen by most of us. They believed that a pass around the North could shrink our globe. In seeking to bind oceans, they bound themselves to the ice. Now, when night falls and northern lights shimmer across the Arctic, I feel their presence in the hush. I hear creaks as ice shifts. I think of men whose names lie buried in driftwood cairns, whose stories survived in tins and timber.
And I understand: to chase a dream across the most forbidding waters is to risk everything—life, reason, dignity. Yet it is also what binds us to exploration’s quiet promise: that beyond every ridge of white, another secret waits. The Franklin expedition taught us the price of knowing, and the price of forgetting. May we remember both.