HMS Erebus (1826)
| Hecla class | |
|---|---|
 HMS Erebus and HMS Terror 1845 |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Bombard |
| Shipyard | |
| Launch | 1826 |
| Namesake | Erebus , Greco-Roman god of darkness |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Whereabouts | In position 68 ° 15 ' N , 98 ° 45' W sunk |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
372 t |
| length |
32 m |
| width |
8.7 m |
| Draft |
4.2 m |
| crew |
67 |
| drive |
3-mast sailing ship, from 1844 an additional 25 HP steam engine with propeller |
| Armament |
1 13-inch mortar, 1 10-inch mortar, 2 6-pounders, 8 24-pounders |
The HMS Erebus was a war and research ship of the Royal Navy in the 19th century. The Erebus was part of Hecla class of bombards ( bomb vessels on). These were ships used to bombard the coast with heavy mortars . It was named after Erebos ( Latinized Erebus ), the god of darkness in Greek mythology .
The ship became known for its participation in the expeditions of James Clark Ross in the Antarctic and the last expedition of John Franklin in the Canadian Arctic . It was previously thought that the ship was abandoned by his crew there in 1848 . The suspected sinking site of the ship and the other ship of the expedition, the HMS Terror , off King William Island was declared a place of national importance by Canada as early as 1992, a National Historic Site of Canada . The wreck of the ship was found more than 100 km south in Wilmot and Crampton Bay off the Adelaide Peninsula in September 2014 .
From war ship to research ship
The Erebus was designed by Sir Henry Peake and completed in the docks at Pembroke , Wales in 1826 . For their war task of the wandering of heavy mortar shells, required heavy and strong construction and its relatively low draft that made Erebus in time of relative peace, which for Britain after the Napoleonic Wars and the American British war ensued, to the study of Polar seas interesting. Therefore it was with two major polar expeditions as flagship used: they explored 1839-1843 under James Clark Ross along with a smaller bombard the Fury class , HMS Terror , Antarctica and later the Arctic.
The Franklin Expedition
In 1844 it was further modernized for the later Franklin expedition and adapted to the requirements of the Arctic polar seas. So it was the bow , their internal structure and the deck with wood and copper plates reinforced, she received a coal-fired central heating system , and in addition to their sailing was steam engine locomotive of Greenwich Railway Company built that 25 horsepower to a nearly seven-foot propellers gave ; this should enable the Erebus to take advantage of every gap in the pack ice , regardless of the wind situation . Despite these modern equipment features, the expedition led by John Franklin failed. For a long time it was assumed that the ship was abandoned by the crew in the course of the unfortunate Franklin expedition in the spring of 1848 in the pack ice off King William Island and sank there together with the expedition's sister ship, the Terror .
Finding the wreck
Only by observing the oral Inuit tradition, which tells of a ship floating in a completely different place, it was possible in September 2014 to find the well-preserved remains of the HMS Erebus in Wilmot and Crampton Bay off the Adelaide Peninsula at position 68 ° 15 ' N , 98 ° 45' W , more than 100 kilometers south of the long suspected sinking point. The wreck lies at a depth of only 11 m, as a sonar image shows. So the ship had not been abandoned by the entire crew after all, but had passed Victoria Strait and King William Island under the control of a few men who had not taken part in the attempt to save their lives by walking south had reached mainland Canada. Since this area was already known at that time, these seafarers had found the Northwest Passage and achieved the actual purpose of the expedition, which was certainly irrelevant for them in their emergency. According to Inuit lore, smoke continued to rise from the ship for some time, and a plank had been pushed from the deck onto the pack ice. The men on board probably stayed until the supplies that were plentifully bunkered on departure ran out. When the Inuit could no longer detect any signs of life on board, they searched the Erebus. Below deck they found a lot of disorder and one dead. The Inuit took a variety of items of interest to them; some were later found with them and some came to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich . As footprints in the snow showed the Inuit, the other men had left the ship. They were never seen again. It is no longer possible to determine when the abandoned ship finally sank. The Canadian authorities have set up a restricted area in the area of the site that cannot be entered without written permission.
aftermath
After Erebus some are geographic objects named in the Arctic and Antarctica, including Erebus Bay before Beechey Island in the province of Nunavut in northern Canada and Mount Erebus on Ross Island in Antarctica. Here a bomb served as the namesake for a volcano ; at the time, the reverse was the rule. The Martian crater Erebus is named after her.
painting
The British ship painter and Admiral Richard Brydges Beechey depicted HMS Erebus in the oil painting HMS Erebus Passing Through the Chain of Bergs in 1842 .
Television series
The HMS Erebus appears in the television series The Terror , which thematizes the historical Franklin expedition of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror , supplemented by fantastic elements.
Television documentary
- HMS Erebus: The arctic death ship appears. 100-minute television documentary by Ben Finney (Arte, United Kingdom 2015)
exhibition
National Maritime Museum Greenwich: Death in the Ice . July 14, 2017 to January 7, 2018, catalog.
literature
- Russell A. Potter: Finding Franklin: the untold story of a 165-year search. Montreal; Kingston; London; Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7735-4784-1 .
-
Michael Palin : Erebus: The Story of a Ship. Random House, 2018, ISBN 978-1847948120 .
- German: Erebus: One ship, two journeys and the world's greatest mystery at sea. Mare Verlag, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-86648-374-3 .
Web links
- "Erebus" and "Terror" on www.coolantarctica.com
- Death in the ice , Tilman Spreckelsen in: FAZ-Kultur , February 27, 2020
Individual evidence
- ^ Erebus and Terror National Historic Site of Canada. In: Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved September 10, 2014 .
- ↑ Tilma Spreckelsen: Hope ran aground in the Arctic Ocean. In: FAZ.net . December 5, 2017, accessed December 6, 2017 .
- ↑ Franklin expedition wreck identified. In: FAZ.net . October 2, 2014, accessed December 16, 2014 .
- ↑ HMS Erebus - The arctic death ship reappears - ARTE, first broadcast on January 9, 2016
- ↑ NAVINICS http://webapp.navionics.com/?lang=de#@10&key=yqo_LlnryQ , accessed on January 10, 2016
- ↑ "The Terror": The ice is alive, brrr! In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on August 15, 2018]).
Coordinates: 68 ° 15 ′ 0 ″ N , 98 ° 45 ′ 0 ″ W.