HMS Terror (1813)
| Vesuvius class | |
|---|---|
 HMS Erebus and HMS Terror 1845 |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Bombard |
| Shipyard |
Davy shipyard, Topsham |
| Keel laying | September 1812 |
| Launch | June 19, 1813 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Whereabouts | Evacuated on April 22, 1848 in Viktoria-Straße , wreck is at position 68 ° 54 ′ N , 98 ° 56 ′ W |
| Technical specifications | |
| length |
31 m |
| width |
8.2 m |
| Draft |
3.8 m |
| crew |
67 |
| drive |
Sails, 20 hp steam engine |
| Armament |
1 × 13-inch mortar, |
The HMS Terror was one of Henry Peake designed and from the Royal Navy in the Davy shipyard in Topsham built Bombarde . The ship of either 326 or 340 tons carried two mortars that were 13 and 10 inches in caliber, respectively.
After being decommissioned as a warship, the Terror was rebuilt and used as a research ship in the Arctic and Antarctic. Most recently she took part in the Franklin expedition together with the HMS Erebus . After the ships were stuck in the ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago for years , they were probably abandoned by their crew in 1848 .
In 1992, Canada declared the presumed sinking site of the two ships to be a site of national importance, a National Historic Site of Canada .
The wreck of the ship was found in September 2016 almost 100 km south of this suspected sinking site in Terror Bay , a bay on King William Island .
Military service
The Terror was used in the British-American War . Under the command of John Sheridan , she took part in the bombing of Stonington from August 9-12, 1814, and that of Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore from September 13-14, 1814; the second attack inspired Francis Scott Key , The Star-Spangled Banner to write. In January 1815, the Terror was involved in the attack on St. Marys .
After the end of the war, the Terror was decommissioned. In 1828 she was made afloat again for service in the Mediterranean. On February 18, 1828, she ran aground on a Lee coast near Lisbon ; their repairs were followed by decommissioning.
Use in the Arctic
Bombards were sturdily built to withstand the enormous recoil of the mortar. This fact qualified these ships for service in the polar regions . In 1836, command of the Terror went to George Back , who was to undertake an expedition to the northern part of Hudson Bay and reach Repulse Bay , from where landing groups were to determine whether Boothia was an island or a peninsula. The Terror could not reach Repulse Bay, however, and only barely survived the winter off Southampton Island after being lifted over 13 meters on a cliff by the ice. In the spring of 1837 the ship was further damaged by an iceberg until Back was able to strand it on the coast of Ireland at Lough Swilly .
Ross expedition to Antarctica
The Terror was repaired and dispatched to a trip to Antarctica, which she undertook together with the HMS Erebus under the command of James Clark Ross . Francis Crozier was the commandant of the terror during this voyage, which spanned three seasons between 1840 and 1843. The Terror and the Erebus penetrated three times into Antarctic waters and reached the Ross Sea twice and the Weddell Sea once . Mount Terror volcano and Terror Glacier on Ross Island are named after the ship.
Disappeared on the Franklin expedition
The Erebus and the Terror were both equipped with 20 hp steam engines, seawater desalination systems to supply the machines and crews with fresh water, and iron plates on the hull in order to be prepared for the journey to the Arctic under John Franklin's command - the Terror went under again Francis Crozier. The expedition was supposed to collect magnetological data in the Canadian Arctic and to carry out the first complete traverse of the Northwest Passage , which could already be mapped from both east and west, but could never be traveled along its entire length.
The expedition started on May 19, 1845 in Greenhithe ; the ships were last seen by a whaler in August 1845 as they entered Baffin Bay .
search
After the expedition had not reached the west of North America - as planned - even after three years, this triggered massive search activities in the Arctic. The fate of the men was revealed by a series of expeditions between 1848 and 1866. Both ships were frozen in the ice and abandoned by their crews trying to cross the frozen sea to Fort Resolution , an outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company , 970 kilometers to the southwest. Everyone died of hunger and exhaustion. Until the late 1980s, further expeditions were sent to clarify the disaster. The autopsies of the bodies of the expedition members found showed that some of the men died of food poisoning. The canned food and probably also the drinking water (through the soldering material in the cans or through the lead pipes of the ship's desalination plants) had been poisoned by lead or possibly spoiled by botulinum toxin . Oral reports by local Inuit that some crew members practiced cannibalism were proven, at least in part, by the discovery of cuts in skeletal remains found on King William Island at the end of the 20th century - caused by steel blades that struck the Inuit did not own at that time.
On August 15, 2008, Parks Canada , a government agency of Canada , announced that it would undertake a six-week search for $ 75,000. A fleet consisting of the icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier , the Akademik Sergey Vavilov and several dinghies started in 2014 with the aim of finding the two ships.
The remains of the Erebus were discovered in early September 2014, but the Terror wreck could not be found at the time.
Find
In September 2016 - almost 170 years after her sinking - the very well-preserved wreck of the HMS Terror was found in Terror Bay , a bay in the south of King William Island - far from the previously suspected location. It was discovered about 60 miles north of the position of the HMS Erebus in 24 m water depth at the position 68 ° 54 ' N , 98 ° 56' W . The find led to a clue that two men from Gjoa Haven had seen a large piece of wood sticking out of the ice during a hunting trip in Terror Bay, which looked like a mast. One of the men, Sammy Kogvik, was hired six years later on a research vessel for the Arctic Research Foundation , which was looking for the HMS Terror . Based on his report, it was decided to search Terror Bay on the way to the north end of Victoria Strait - the place where the Terror allegedly abandoned and where the main search for her wreck has since been made. There the wreck could be localized using sonar and partially explored with a diving robot.
Television series
After the HMS Terror , the television series The Terror named which the historic Franklin expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror , complemented by fantastic elements discussed. In addition to the name of the ship, the "Terror" (horror) of the expedition also gave the television series its name.
literature
- Martyn Beardsly: Deadly Winter. The Life of Sir John Franklin. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 2002, ISBN 1-55750-179-3 .
- Owen Beattie, John Geiger: Frozen in Time. The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. Revised and enlarged edition. Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre Publishing, Berkeley CA 2004, ISBN 1-55365-060-3 .
- Pierre Berton : The Arctic Grail. The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909. Viking, New York NY 1988, ISBN 0-670-82491-7 .
- Scott Cookman: Ice Blink. The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition. Wiley, New York NY 2000, ISBN 0-471-37790-2 .
Web links
- Erebus and Terror at Coolantarctica
- Central Park Still Awaits the British . In: New York Press ; about the bombing of Stonington
Individual evidence
- ^ Erebus and Terror National Historic Site of Canada. In: Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved September 10, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt. The Guardian , September 12, 2016, accessed September 12, 2016 .
- ^ A b Lincoln P. Paine: Ships of Discovery and Exploration . Houghton Mifflin, Boston MA et al. a. 2000, ISBN 0-395-98415-7 , pp. 139-140.
- ^ Paul Watson: Search for Franklin's ships just part of High Arctic juggling act . thestar.com, August 31, 2014 (English). Retrieved September 20, 2016.
- ↑ Mystery of the century: wreckage of legendary Franklin expedition discovered. In: Spiegel Online . September 9, 2014, accessed September 10, 2014 .
- ↑ Jörg Michel: Legendary research ship discovered . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , September 14, 2016, p. 28
- ↑ Second Franklin ship found. In: Yacht-online , September 13, 2016, accessed on September 14, 2016.
- ↑ Clemens Höges: Archeology - The ghost ship . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 2016, p. 112-115 ( online ).
- ↑ "The Terror": The ice is alive, brrr! In: Zeit Online . Retrieved August 15, 2018 .
Coordinates: 68 ° 54 ′ 0 ″ N , 98 ° 56 ′ 0 ″ W.