![]() ![]() When Ross visited him in Tasmania, it must have been hard on Franklin. Both men had experience exploring the Arctic, but Franklin had accepted a position as governor of the new British penal colony in Hobart, Tasmania, so was not available to lead this expedition. Though Ross played no further role in future expeditions, he beat Franklin to this assignment. Before venturing North, Erebus and Terror first embarked on a four-year expedition led by the same James Clark Ross, approaching Antarctica three times and retreating to Tasmania and the Falkland Islands in between. It was to be one of the two ships on Franklin’s fateful expedition (the other went by the equally cheerful name of HMS Terror).”įocusing his book on the ships allows Palin to tell two connected stories. ![]() “The book starts with the completion of the HMS Erebus in a Welsh boatyard in 1826. Attention subsequently shifted to locating the magnetic South Pole and the decision was taken to convert Erebus from a warship into a reinforced ice-ship. While Erebus lay idle in a dockyard, James Clark Ross led an expedition that successfully located the magnetic North Pole in 1831. Used as a warship patrolling the Mediterranean during years of relative peace, Erebus was quickly mothballed and lay anchored for almost a decade.Īs mentioned in my review of The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World – and Could Destroy It, this era of exploration was also when precise navigation became vital, spurring a race to study the Earth’s magnetic field (see also Earth’s Magnetism in the Age of Sail and The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of the Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time). It was to be one of the two ships on Franklin’s fateful expedition (the other went by the equally cheerful name of HMS Terror). The book starts with the completion of the HMS Erebus in a Welsh boatyard in 1826. It stands out both for the sheer loss of life (129 men) and the mysterious fate of the expedition. One remarkable episode in this period was the Arctic expedition led by English Royal Navy officer Sir John Franklin. ![]() The 1800s and early 1900s were a golden age of polar exploration, and small libraries of history books have been written analysing or celebrating expeditions by famous explorers such as Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton or Robert Falcon Scott – their brave, perhaps foolhardy journeys often ending in tragedy. "That's interesting in itself, because if they can, it bodes very well for any future discoveries," McGoogan said.“ Erebus: The Story of a Ship“, written by Michael Palin, published by Hutchinson in September 2018 (hardback, 350 pages) McGoogan said no matter what's written in the book, if researchers can decipher it, that would be win on its own. Ryan Harris, who was part of the 2022 field season on the wreck of HMS Erebus, said the book, which he thinks is one of the top finds, is currently at a lab being analyzed. "It might just be, you know, 'last week we ate 14 cans of beef,' for example," he said.įor McGoogan, one the first questions is whether contemporary conservators can decipher what's in the book after all that time it sat in the ocean. McGoogan thinks the information gleaned from the folio, which was found in Erebus' pantry during a diving expedition by Parks Canada archaeologists this past year, might be limited, but still valuable. Since 2014, when Erebus was finally found (and Terror, two years later) with a combination of Inuit oral history and systematic, high-tech surveys, Parks Canada has been working to understand what is down there and what light it could shed on a story that has become part of Canadian lore. ![]() Commander Sir John Franklin and his 129 men never returned. Even deeper is the other ship, HMS Terror.Įrebus and Terror set out from England in 1845. The wreck lies 11 metres below the surface of the Northwest Passage. The other items include things such as a feather quill pen, stoneware plates, platters and serving dishes. The folio - a book or diary of sorts - is among the total of 275 artifacts recovered last year from HMS Erebus, one of two ships that went missing in the 1800s in the Arctic. John Franklin's doomed ships might just show how recoverable other documents might be in future searches, according to Canadian historian Ken McGoogan. A leather-bound folio found in one of Capt. ![]()
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