Cover#121 Canada, HMS Erebus cover,

Sent: 22/8/2015

Arrived: 7/9/2015

Thanks Juvet!

Name:	HMS Erebus
Builder:	Pembroke dockyard, Wales
Launched:	1826
Fate:	Abandoned in Victoria Strait, Canada, 22 April 1848[1]
General characteristics
Class & type:	Hecla class bomb vessel
Displacement:	715.3 long tons (726.8 t)[2]
Tons burthen:	372 tons (bm)
Length:	105 ft (32 m)
Beam:	29 ft (8.8 m)
Installed power:	30 nhp [3]
Propulsion:	Sails steam engine
Complement:	67
Armament:	1 × 13 in (330 mm) mortar, 1 × 10 in (250 mm) mortar, 8 × 24 pdr (11 kg) guns, 2 × 6 pdr (2.7 kg) guns

HMS Erebus (1826)

HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was named after the dark region in Hades of Greek mythology called Erebus. The 372-ton ship was armed with two mortars – one 13 in (330 mm) and one 10 in (250 mm) – and 10 guns. The ship was abandoned during the Franklin Expedition in 1848 and rediscovered in a submerged state in September 2014 after a long search.

Ross expedition

After two years service in the Mediterranean Sea, the Erebus was refitted as an exploration vessel for Antarctic service, and on 21 November 1840 – captained by James Clark Ross – she departed from Tasmania for Antarctica in company with the Terror. In January 1841, the crew of both ships landed on Victoria Land, and proceeded to name areas of the landscape after British politicians, scientists, and acquaintances. Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, was named after one ship and Mount Terror after the other.

They then discovered the Ross Ice Shelf, which they were unable to penetrate, and followed it eastward until the lateness of the season compelled them to return to Tasmania. The following season, 1842, Ross continued to survey the "Great Ice Barrier", as it was called, continuing to follow it eastward. Both ships returned to the Falkland Islands before returning to the Antarctic in the 1842–1843 season. They conducted studies in magnetism, and returned with oceanographic data and collections of botanical and ornithological specimens. Birds collected on the first expedition were described and illustrated by George Robert Gray and Richard Bowdler Sharpe in The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus & HMS Terror. Birds of New Zealand, 1875. The revised edition of Gray (1846) (1875). The future renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, then aged 23, was assistant-surgeon to Robert McCormick.

Franklin expedition

Main article: Franklin's lost expedition

For their next voyage, to the Arctic under Sir John Franklin, both the Erebus and Terror were outfitted with steam engines from the London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives. That of the 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 the Erebus, in overall command of the expedition, and the 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 charted from both the east and west but had never been entirely navigated.

The ships were last seen 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 artifacts 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, totaling about 130 men, all of whom subsequently 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, including autopsies of crew members, also revealed that their 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.

A British transport ship, the Renovation, spotted two ships on a large ice floe off the coast of Newfoundland in April 1851. The identities of the ships were not confirmed. It was suggested over the years that these might have been the Erebus and Terror, though it is now certain they could not have been, and were most likely abandoned whaling ships.

On 15 August 2008, Parks Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada announced a CDN$75,000 six-week search, deploying the icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier with the goal of finding the ships and also to reinforce Canada's claims regarding sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic.

PM Stephen Harper appearing at a gala to celebrate the discovery of HMS Erebus, one of two ships wrecked during John Franklin's lost expedition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto

The wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 2 September 2014 by a Parks Canada team led by Ryan Harris and Marc-André Bernier . On 1 October 2014 the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that the remains were that of Erebus. The recovery of the ship's bell was announced on 6 November 2014.

On 4 March 2015 a winter diving expedition on the Erebus, consisting of Parks Canada and Royal Canadian Navy divers, was announced to commence in April.

The wrecks are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the precise location of the designation in abeyance

Source: Wiki