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 and one 10 in - and 10 guns.

Ross expedition
After two years service in the Mediterranean Sea, 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 HMS Terror (1813). 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 for the ship itself.

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. The two ships returned to the Falkland Islands before returning to the Antarctic in the 1842-1843 season. The ships 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
For their next voyage, to the Arctic under Sir John Franklin, Erebus and Terror were outfitted with steam engines (converted from railway locomotive engines), and had iron plating added to their hulls. Sir John Franklin sailed in Erebus, in overall command of the expedition, and Terror was again under the command of 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, in total about 130 men, all of whom subsequently died from a number of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy, and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south. Subsequent expeditions up 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 two ships were not confirmed. It has been suggested that these ships may have been the Erebus and the Terror, though it is more likely that they were abandoned whaling ships.

The remains of the ships have yet to be found, but are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the precise location of the designation in abeyance until the remains are found.

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 two ships and also to reinforce Canada's claims regarding sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic.

In fiction
(Alphabetical, by author's last name) The Erebus and the Terror are mentioned in numerous fictional works, such as:

In literature
The Erebus and Terror are the subject of the ill fated expedition to find the Northwest passage in Dan Simmons book, entitled, "The Terror"
 * The Erebus and the Terror are mentioned in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899).
 * Clive Cussler's 2008 novel, Arctic Drift (2008), which uses the Erebus and Terror as part of the plot as well as the establishing backstory
 * The Erebus appears in Dan Simmons' novel, The Terror (2007)
 * Captain Nemo mentions the Erebus and the Terror, in the context of Captain Ross’ expedition, in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), as background to establish the difficulty reaching the South Pole, while Captain Nemo stands upon its fictional summit.

In television, radio, and film

 * In the Doctor Who Audio Dramas story Terror of the Arctic, the Erebus appears alongside its fellow ship, the Terror