Researchers Probe HMS Terror, Frozen In Time In Arctic Waters, Amazingly Well-Preserved

[hatrack]

?pubId=3921507366001&videoId=6078740600001

For more than 170 years, the HMS Terror rested beneath the frigid waters of the Canadian Arctic Ocean holding the secrets to an infamously fatal expedition - until a sunny day earlier this month, when a little robot plunged into the sea to try to find them.

On a cable, Canadian and Inuit researchers guided it to the shipwreck and below the deck, eager to see what the remote-controlled underwater vehicle might find. It would mark the first major exploration of the doomed ship since dozens of men abandoned it after it became trapped in ice during a dangerous 1845 mission to chart the Northwest Passage. There were no survivors, and both the Terror and its sister ship, the HMS Erebus, disappeared beneath the icy surface, where they would stay until 2014 and 2016, when each ship was discovered.

Now, the Inuit and Canadian governments announced Wednesday, researchers are a step closer to unravelling the enduring mystery of the disasters: Inside the HMS Terror, the robot-like underwater explorer found a ship so well preserved that its artifacts seemed to be "essentially frozen in time," Parks Canada said.

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Inside the ship, glass plates were still stacked neatly on shelves. Wine bottles and jugs encased in silt still stood upright in wooden niches and rifles still hung on the walls, encased in rust. In the ship's 20 separate rooms, drawers in the dressers and desks were still tightly shut - the most tantalizing discovery in the eyes of the archaeologists. That's where they believe they'll find any surviving journals, logs and maps, possibly illuminating the entire expedition.

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https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/115370613/underwater-video-of-hms-terror-1845-shipwreck-could-reveal-clues

[leftstreet]

1. DURec

Thanks for posting this

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Were I a sailor, I would not crew a ship named "Terror". As a passenger, I would not board.

Crikey.

But that's really cool! Amazing the amount of preservation.

I really hope the journals are in condition to be read.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. It was initially a 10-gun "bomb warship", an appropriate name for such a vessel. . . . nt

[Pepsidog]

3. Wow that's incredible. There is a horror series out now about the expedition.

[Mendocino]

5. I've been an

armchair scholar of the history of polar exploration for years. I recommend The Search for Franklin by Leslie Neatby and Fatal Passage by Ken McGoogan about Dr. John Rae.

[hatrack]

9. The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton is also wonderful, though you've likely read it

The condition of the wreck is astounding - it's like one of those plastic sunken pirate ships at the bottom of an aquarium. Most wooden shipwrecks just look like piles of rubble, occasionally with an amphora sticking out.

[Mendocino]

12. The cold clear waters

with a lack of biologics preserves the wooden hulls.

[hatrack]

16. Like old-growth timber at the bottom of Superior . . .

From shipwrecks in the distant past, it's been sitting down there in low-oxygen water near freezing for a century or more.

It's of such quality that there are companies that make money going down and salvaging it for high-end woodworking and musical instruments. Trim off the edges, and you're good to go.

https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/underwater-logging-zmaz98onzraw

[Mendocino]

17. Like Birdseye Maple

I knew a luthier who made an exquisite custom "Les Paul" standard from the Kenweenaw Peninsula.

[central scrutinizer]

10. At the other pole...

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard is a harrowing first person account of the British expedition to reach the South Pole. Damn, those guys were tough.

[Mendocino]

15. Another was Douglas Mawson.

He and two companions set out on an expedition. The first one fell into a crevasse losing his life and most of their supplies. The second succumbed to unbalanced avitaminois from excessive diet of vitamin A from dog livers. Mawson struggled for 300 miles barely finding the base. He had to spend another season before finally reaching home.

Iron men in wooden ships!

[k55f]

6. Dan Simmons wrote a novel about the expedition.

Good and scary.

[Mendocino]

7. Well it's a novel,

with a hybrid bear/pig/human apparition. Surprised they didn't have sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.

[ck4829]

8. A ship named "Terror"? Didn't they know words matter?

[hunter]

11. Man Proposes, God Disposes

Man Proposes, God Disposes is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Edwin Landseer. The work was inspired by the search for Franklin's lost expedition which disappeared in the Arctic after 1845. The painting is in the collection of Royal Holloway, University of London, and is the subject of superstitious urban myth that the painting is haunted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Proposes,_God_Disposes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition

[ecstatic]

13. I learned about the ships through AMC's The Terror series (season 1). nt

[Tommy_Carcetti]

14. The miniseries last year on the shipwreck was excellent

It starred Jared Harris, who was equally great in the Chernobyl miniseries.