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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 12, 2016 - 05:08pm PT
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The wreck of HMS Terror has been found by Canadian scientists, southwest of King William Island in the Arctic. She was the second of Sir John Franklin's vessels to be found, after 170 years - the wreck of Erebus was found two years ago. Neither vessel, especially Terror, was where they thought it would be. It may take some years for the wrecks to be fully surveyed, as the area has sea ice for 10 - 11 months/year. But it will undoubtedly add nuance to the history of the period. The Franklin expedition was rather peripheral to Canadian history, then and even now, but is still of much interest.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/franklin-expedition-ship-found-in-arctic-id-d-as-hms-erebus-1.2784268
Fans of history will no doubt remember Erebus and Terror, not just as pioneering vessels in the Arctic and Antarctic, but also for bombarding Fort McHenry in 1812. "The rockets' red glare" refers to rockets launched from them.
All this, plus the wreck of McClure's HMS Investigator was found at Mercy Bay on the north side of Banks Island in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Investigator_(1848);
And now the Norwegians have raised Amundsen's Maud, and plan to return her to Norway: http://www.maudreturnshome.no/
Speaking of Norwegians, the update on the possible Viking ruins in Newfoundland, about 600 km southwest of L'Anse aux Meadows: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/viking-dig-point-rosee-newfoundland-2016-1.3751129
OK, so only a few of us are interested in this stuff. Still, the age of exploration is closely tied to the development of mountaineering.
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jonnyrig
climber
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Sep 12, 2016 - 05:28pm PT
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If for nothing else, the development of cordage and knots. ABK?
Neat stuff.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Sep 12, 2016 - 05:53pm PT
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MH! Since we are all interested in "sufferfests" ----- we should all enjoy your post on the "super-uber" "sufferfests" of 19th century Artic exploration.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Sep 12, 2016 - 06:35pm PT
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The Franklin story is fascinating. No word had been heard from those ships for 4-5 years before they decided to go looking for them.
The story of the hunt for the Northwest Passage is mindboggling.
That they managed to starve to death in a region of fat Eskimos is a story in itself.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2016 - 08:16pm PT
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If the Trumperati knew that Canadians had discovered the remains of a ship named Terror, which burnt down their president's house 200 years ago, they'd flip out.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 12, 2016 - 08:29pm PT
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Cool stuff, Mighty! Takk takk!
That they managed to starve to death in a region of fat Eskimos is a story in itself.
That's not a fair criticism. The art of seal hunting is so arcane that an analogy could be that
somebody who had done a couple of paint by numbers could suddenly get off something
like The Last Supper on their first effort at free hand painting.
Og tusen takk for the Viking news! Two of my fave subjects!
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Sep 12, 2016 - 09:04pm PT
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Fans of history will no doubt remember Erebus and Terror, not just as pioneering vessels in the Arctic and Antarctic, but also for bombarding Fort McHenry in 1812. "The rockets' red glare" refers to rockets launched from them.
HMS Terror was involved in the bombardment of Ft Mchenry.
HMS Erebus was not. The ship that took part in the Franklin expedition was built in 1826.
In addition to sails, it had a steam engine.
(terror was retrofitted with one)
The boat of that name involved in the Ft Mchenry bombardment was built in 1807 and broken up in 1819 after being laid up 3 years.
Neat stuff, though - all of it.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2016 - 09:23pm PT
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Well, the Department of Homeland Insecurity would no doubt lock up Erebus anyway, not just because of her name, but for aiding and abetting Terror. Off to Guantanamo with the both of them!
King William Island is a desolate environment, and its natural resources never supported more than a few nomadic Inuit families. Not 129 sailors. You can't blame the Inuit of the time for leaving them to their own devices, as there was little they could do for them. Maybe a few of the sailors adapted reasonably well, and lasted 1848. But they were fish out of water.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Sep 12, 2016 - 09:23pm PT
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Brennan..You forgot that it was also a prison during the civil war whose inmates included the Mayor of Baltimore and Francis Scott Keys Grandson for being southern sympathizers. The Key family still owned slaves.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 12, 2016 - 09:33pm PT
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Tami, I wasn't addressing the possible interaction between the Inuit and the Brits, just the
difficulty of the Brits attempting to fend for themselves. Even with the best Inuit hunters I aver
it would have been impossible to find enough seal for that large a group. Without Inuit help
it would have been impossible.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Sep 12, 2016 - 11:27pm PT
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One theory is that the lead solder used to close the lids on their tinned provisions gave some of the men who died in the first couple of years lead poisoning.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Sep 13, 2016 - 05:26am PT
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They talked to natives who reported seeing English trudging by their villages pulling sledges.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Sep 13, 2016 - 08:04am PT
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Oddly enough, Lady Franklin, Sir John's widow, just made a cameo appearance in the story I'm working on these days... She was quite a remarkable woman in her own right, raising money and organizing the various relief efforts.
She visited California in 1861, and in October of that year, she made a visit to the bottom of the Ophir Mine in Virginia City. 200 feet down a mine shaft wasn't a bad effort for a 75-year old Victorian lady...
(Red Bluff Independent, December 5, 1861)
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Sep 13, 2016 - 08:11am PT
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WOW! Thanks for that Anders! What an incredible find.
The ship is said to be in nearly perfect condition. One wonders what they will be able to salvage?
So .... all you explorers here - cavers and first ascensionists .... you think YOU have experienced an epic??
All of our epics pale in comparison to Franklin's.
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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Sep 13, 2016 - 08:23am PT
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All of our epics pale in comparison to Franklin's.
or Shackelton's
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couchmaster
climber
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Sep 13, 2016 - 08:34am PT
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Great thread.
Greg, shake the forum when you get that work finished and published, your writing is so damned good.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Sep 13, 2016 - 09:13am PT
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Thanks, Couchmaster. It's kicking my ass right now. Basically trying to do for John Mackay and the Comstock Lode 1860-1880 what I did for William Langhorne Bond and CNAC 1929-1949 with China's Wings. It's proving difficult to sort out "what actually happened" from lots of unreliable witnesses. Most of the book sources were written 20-30 years after the fact, and therefore unreliable, and I suspect that many (perhaps most) of the newspaper correspondents writing about the mines on a daily or weekly basis had "skin in the game," meaning that they owned stock in the mines they were writing about, which renders their testimony suspect, to say the least.
Relevant to this thread, I also recently saw disheveled prospectors dashing off to the sites of suspected mineral strikes in the Great Basin in 1860 described as "searchers after Sir John Franklin." Without further explanation or elaboration, which leads me to suspect that as a cultural reference the Franklin expedition was quite common in the middle 19th Century.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Sep 13, 2016 - 01:30pm PT
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No way, Spider. That dude has it all over me.
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Tony
Trad climber
Pt. Richmond, CA
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Sep 13, 2016 - 02:06pm PT
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It's noteworthy that John Rae, an Arctic explorer from Orkney who did engage the "savages", became expert at survival and travel in cold climates. He closed the gap in the Northwest Passage and uncovered the fate of the Franklin expedition, including evidence of cannibalism. For this he was shunned by the British establishment led by Lady Franklin, along with Charles Dickens. No knighthood, etc.
A consolation is this wonderful memorial in St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney.
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