A Vanished Voyage
In May 1845, two British ships — HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — set sail from Greenhithe, England, with 134 men on board. Their mission was to chart the fabled Northwest Passage.
Outfitted with modern technology, iron-reinforced hulls, and three years’ worth of supplies, the expedition vanished after being last seen in Baffin Bay that July. For over a century, their fate remained unknown until graves and frozen bodies began to reveal the story piece by piece.
Clues on Beechey Island
In 1850, searchers discovered three graves on Beechey Island dating to 1846. These were the first confirmed traces of the expedition. It wasn’t until the 1980s that anthropologist Owen Beattie exhumed the bodies, preserved in Arctic permafrost for nearly 140 years.
One belonged to John Torrington, a 20-year-old stoker. His coffin contained a hand-written plaque marking his death on January 1, 1846. His body, weighing just 88 pounds at 5’4″, showed no external injuries but tissue analysis revealed fatal lead levels, likely from canned food.
Signs of Desperation
Further evidence emerged through Inuit accounts collected by explorer John Rae in 1854, describing piles of human bones with signs of breakage.
In the 1980s and 1990s, knife marks on remains found on King William Island confirmed that crew members resorted to cannibalism in their final days, cracking bones to extract marrow as starvation set in. By then, the two ships had been trapped in ice near Victoria Strait, leaving the men stranded in brutal Arctic conditions.
Rediscovering the Wrecks
Nearly 170 years after the ships disappeared, archaeologists found Erebus in 2014 in 11 m of water off King William Island, followed by Terror in 2016, resting 45 m down and astonishingly intact.
In 2019, underwater drones entered Terror through hatches and skylights, capturing clear footage of glass bottles and cabins preserved since the 1840s. DNA from 39 recovered samples has since helped identify some crew members, but major questions remain — including how the ships sank so far apart.
Today, the bodies of John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine rest again on Beechey Island. Their preserved faces, photographed by Hartnell’s descendant Brian Spenceley during the 1986 exhumation, continue to offer rare physical evidence of a journey that ended in ice, starvation, and silence.
In 1845 the Franklin expedition sailed from England on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men to seek the Northwest Passage.
They vanished after a last sighting in Baffin Bay.
Graves, ice mummies, and records would later show the path of an Arctic journey…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/0B5lTam4vD
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) October 13, 2025