page_title: HMS Erebus (1826)
section_title: Franklin expedition
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Erebus (1826) / Franklin expedition
caption_attribution_description: English: Model of the HMS Erebus (1826) trapped in the ice, Nattilik Heritage Centre, Gjoa Haven, September 2019
context_page_description: HMS Erebus is a Hecla-class bomb vessel constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales, in 1826. The vessel was the second in the Royal Navy named after Erebus, the dark region of Hades in Greek mythology.
  The 372-ton ship was armed with two mortars—one 13 in and one 10 in — and 10 guns. The ship took part in the Ross expedition of 1839–1843, and was abandoned in 1848 during the third Franklin expedition. The sunken wreck was discovered by the Canadian Victoria Strait expedition in September 2014.
context_section_description: In 1845 HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left England on a voyage of exploration to the Canadian Arctic, under Sir John Franklin. Both ships were outfitted with steam engines from the London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives. That of Erebus was rated at 25 horsepower (19 kW) and could propel the ship at 4 knots (7.4 km/h). The ships carried 12 days' supply of coal. The ships had iron plating added to their hulls.
  Sir John Franklin sailed in Erebus, in overall command of the expedition, and Terror was again commanded by Francis Crozier. The expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and to complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been partly charted from both the east and west but had never been entirely navigated.
  The ships were last seen by Europeans entering Baffin Bay in August 1845. The disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic. The broad circumstances of the expedition's fate were first revealed when Hudson's Bay Company doctor John Rae collected artefacts and testimony from local Inuit in 1853. Later expeditions up to 1866 confirmed these reports.
  Both ships had become icebound and had been abandoned by their crews, totalling about 130 men, all of whom died from a variety of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south. Subsequent expeditions until the late 1980s, and autopsies of crew members, also revealed that Erebus and Terror's shoddily canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century.
  In April 1851 the British transport ship Renovation spotted two ships on a large ice floe off the coast of Newfoundland. The identities of the ships were not confirmed. It was suggested over the years that these might have been Erebus and Terror, though it is now certain they could not have been and were most likely abandoned whaling ships.
caption: Model of Erebus trapped in the ice, Nattilik Heritage Centre, Gjoa Haven, September 2019
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