Racehorse leads Carcass towards the North Pole! The bomb vessels of the 1773 Phipps Arctic Expedition

On June 4th, 1773, HM Ships, Racehorse and Carcass set off from the Royal Navy’s Nore anchorage, in the Thames Estuary. While observers on nearby ships might have quipped about the unusual names of these vessels, what was most incredible was the mission the crews were being sent on: Commander Constantine John Phipps (the future Baron Mulgrave) was ordered to “proceed up to the North Pole, or as far towards it as possible…”1 In the words of crew member Olaudah Equiano, a self-emancipated former African slave: “I was roused by the sound of fame, to seek new adventures, and to find, towards the North Pole, what our Creator never intended we should, a passage to India.”2 The Phipps Expedition members would indeed have many Arctic adventures, and these were especially remarkable because – in spite of what sounds like an insane plan – the crews made it home!3

Racehorse leads Carcass through leads in the ice on 31 July 1773. This depiction faithfully records many of the unique details of the ships that are described in this post. Credit: Benjamin Thomas Pouncy (engraver); John Cleveley, the Younger (artist), Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Caird Fund. PAF7943

This post will continue our series exploring the design and service of polar-modified bomb vessels. For a description of their general design and an account of how they wound up serving as polar exploration ships, starting with HMS Furnace’s 1741 conversion, see our recent post. The Phipps Expedition is mostly mentioned today because of the presence onboard the junior ship, Carcass, of a young midshipman fated for great things: Horatio Nelson.4 This incredible Arctic journey has several interesting connections to the disastrous events of the 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition.

Thirty years after the 1741-42 Christopher Middleton Northwest Passage Expedition reached the high latitudes of Hudson’s Bay, the next major Admiralty polar exploration mission, the 1773 Constantine Phipps Expedition, saw two ships depart England towards a radically different destination: The North Pole.5 The mission benefitted from the patronage of King George the Third and had the enthusiastic support of the Royal Society (RS). Royal Navy Commander and RS member Constantine John Phipps was appointed to lead the expedition from Racehorse, while Skeffington Lutwidge continued his earlier command of the junior ship, Carcass. RS Vice President Daines Barrington hoped the crews would discover an open polar sea to lead towards the “South Sea” (Pacific Ocean).6 The rationale for this mission tied in to eighteenth century speculation about easily-navigable shortcuts to the Orient over the Pole, or through Northwest or Northeast Passages.7 In his published journal -an important source for this blog- Phipps tapped into the wellspring of speculative geography by summarizing more than two centuries of exploration history to the Arctic regions, and the “North Passage.”8

Admiralty officials had learned valuable lessons from previous discovery missions. The Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, also took a keen interest in the preparations. Peter Goodwin’s invaluable account of the Expedition includes a chapter of biographical information on the officers and crews.9 His research shows that the Phipps expedition personnel were a carefully selected group, led by exceptional officers, accompanied by civilians with wide-ranging scientific expertise. The “young gentlemen” – Midshipmen on the journey – included Horatio Nelson and Philippe d’Auvergne. Nelson became the coxswain of one of Carcass’s boats, while d’Auvergne worked up a fine visual record of events of the expedition.10 The crews were of a higher professional standard than in 1741, when – in the midst of war – Middleton had had to resort to impressment to fill his manning requirements.11 One notable Able Seaman, whose skill led him to serve as one of the coxswains of the boats, was Nicholas Biddle. Biddle went on to become one of the early captains of the Continental (United States) Navy, serving with distinction, like his fellow coxswain Nelson, dying at the height of a naval battle.12

The scientific establishment on the Expedition included the Ship’s Surgeon, Dr. Charles Irving. The ships were equipped with a desalination machine he had invented. Phipps, Irving and his assistant, Olaudah Equiano, worked diligently to ensure the machine produced a supply of potable water.13 . The board charged with questions of longitude selected Dr. Israel Lyons to proceed in Racehorse. Lyons excelled as both a mathematician and botanist.14 Phipps had also sought out the advice of naturalist Dr. Joseph Banks, who had furnished him with instructions about what types of natural specimens to collect.15

To mitigate the risk that the destruction of one ship would result in the loss of the entire expedition, two bomb vessels were prepared. The ships received significant modifications for northern service, in an incredibly short period of time in early 1773.16 The Admiralty’s original intention was to equip, crew, and provision the ships identically. Given that they did not share a common design origin, this appears to have left Carcass dangerously overloaded. In late May, Lutwidge was permitted to land six cannon and reduce his establishment of crew by ten members.17 Even so, the disparity between the hull types and rig meant that Racehorse lived up to her name, by surging far ahead of Carcass. The entries in Phipps’ journal and from other primary sources are remarkably similar to reports of Terror struggling to keep pace with Erebus on Sir James Clark Ross’s Antarctic Expedition of 1839-1843, and the reason is also similar: these ships did not have the same hull lines.18

HMS Carcass, 1759. Showing the original design as a bomb vessel, deck arrangements over a simplified internal arrangement. This original plan shows the two heavy mortar beds and almost double-ended appearance of the rounded stem and stern areas. © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (ZAZ5629)

The expedition members were issued with proper cold weather gear (in contrast to the general sailing slops that had been allotted to Middleton’s personnel). Another first was the hiring on of a pair of Greenland pilots for each ship.19 These were experienced merchant ship’s masters, who had navigated “Greenlander” ships in northern waters.20 They would assist the officers and regular ships’ masters to help navigate local conditions in this unusual environment. Officers were equipped with a wide variety of updated navigational instruments and scientific devices. Like James Cook’s contemporary exploration of the Pacific, the ships carried updated timekeeping instruments, which employed John Harrison’s principles. These Larcum Kendall designs would allow for more accurate calculations of longitude than had previously been possible.

Larcum Kendall’s K2 marine chronometer. This was a simplified version of John Harrison’s design. This specific timepiece went with Phipps in Racehorse, then to the Pacific, and then with William Bligh in HMAV Bounty. It survived the famous events of the mutiny at Pitcairn Island, to ultimately be preserved at the National Maritime Museum. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Royal United Service Institution Collection (ZAA0078)

The Expedition vessels’ conversion for polar service have a basic similarity to the 1741 modification to HMS Furnace. The hulls were double-planked for reinforcement. Vessels received capstans amidships, instead of the windlass in the bows.21 Smaller-sized vessels of the Royal Navy now were provided with (steering) wheels, unlike Furnace at the beginning of the 1741 journey. In contrast to later conversions, the gunports were not planked over. One important new modification was that the bows were reinforced internally with heavy buttressing timbers, to better withstand the force of collisions with ice or the strain of being beset in it. From surviving illustrations, the bow areas also appear to have received some external wooden sheathing, much like contemporary whaling ships. Both vessels received a varied complement of boats, intended to be able to accommodate the entire crew should their vessel be destroyed (we had mentioned the modification to the boats for over-ice hauling in a previous post). As events would show, this was a sensible precaution.

HMS Racehorse as converted for the 1773 Expedition, showing reinforced bows, and removal of forward mortar bed. © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (ZAZ6569)

The open waist area of the ships was not enclosed (merging the quarterdeck and foc’sl deck into one unified weather deck). The Admiralty had partially decked in this space on Furnace, on Middleton’s advice. They should have repeated this modification.22 A unified weather deck protects ships’ stores and important equipment, and also enhances crew comforts in Arctic conditions. This would have greatly improved conditions on the journey home, when both vessels almost foundered in a terrible gale. Close interpretation of surviving artistic depictions also suggest that the channels (where the masts’ shrouds attach to the hull) were not fortified or chocked (filled-in) as they had been in Furnace, leaving these projecting channels vulnerable to ice damage.23

The northwards-bound vessels encountered ice starting on July 7th.24 The expedition charted the islands of the Svalbard Archipelago, and recorded various observations (astronomical, magnetic, depth sounding) as they went. No easy path towards – much less over – the Pole was discovered. The officers and scientists described what flora and fauna they encountered on the islands, or could dredge up from the depths. Phipps’ journal records the first scientifically-based descriptions of polar bears, which were shot and brought aboard for study. The expedition reached its highest northern latitude of 80°48′ on July 27th. The vessels and crew were severely tested in early August, when the ships could find no more open water leads to advance to the northwards, and were beset in thickening ice. This experience – while mercifully brief – was terrifying. It is one of the most relevant polar precedents for when Sir John Franklin’s crews of HMS Erebus and Terror had to abandon their iced-in vessels in late April, 1848.

Racehorse leads Carcass in pack ice. Boats have been swung out and fitted for hauling over ice, starting with the launches. Credit: Lodge, John (engraver), Public domain, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich London, Caird Fund. PAD5964 via Wikimedia Commons

On August 6th – with the ships trapped – Phipps took stock of his remaining provisions, and estimated that the health of the crews would decline rapidly if they were forced to overwinter out on the ice in this unprepared spot. The carpenters were instructed to modify the boats in order to have crew haul them across the ice in an effort to try to reach open water. They would then put to sea to locate Dutch whaling ships that were known to be anchored nearby at Smeerenburg, an abandoned settlement on Amsterdam Island. The next day, with the water shoaling, and the ice carrying the ships inexorably towards some rocks to the northwest, Phipps left Racehorse to lead a crew hauling the launch (the largest size of boat brought along) westwards over the ice. Crew also remained on the ships, which made slow progress westwards behind the boats. All parties remained in contact. As the crew hauled the boats along the broken, treacherous ice, favourable winds sprung up and the ships started to advance. Soon the exhausted crews returned aboard and the boats were swung back on deck. By the 10th the ships had driven through the remaining ice (with what sounds like some actual precedent-setting icebreaking), and were able to safely anchor at Smeerenburg (where there were indeed Dutch ships preparing to depart for the year). A mobile observatory was installed ashore. The officers described a nearby glacier, while Philippe D’Auvergne worked up another of his well-executed sketches of the scene.25 When the ships raised anchor, a few other attempts to make more northing came to nothing, as the season advanced and the ships came across a wall of ice. Phipps decided to turn for home on August 22nd.

In common with other polar expedition accounts, the voyage home was horrendous. By the second week of September, both crews were fighting for their lives in a series of terrible storms. The ships damaged in the gales that started the second week of September, and lost sight of each other. Each crew believed the other ship had likely been foundered. The open waist area of the ships became a liability at this point.26 The vessels sighted each other again on the 25th of September off the coast of Suffolk.

In the years after Phipps and his crews returned, the Admiralty had to shelve further plans for Arctic discovery missions as it found itself embroiled in a series of wars that expanded to include the majority of the World’s oceans. It took until the final defeat of Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte, in 1815, for the polar exploration program to be revived (with Second Secretary of the Admiralty, John Barrow, taking a leading role). In contrast to the divisive legacy of the Middleton Expedition, Constantine Phipps’ Expedition was seen as a precedent-setting success. The modification of Racehorse and Carcass set many precedents for the next two bomb vessels to go north to the Arctic: Hecla and then Fury. Please consult the “Design Dossier” below for more technical information about Racehorse and Carcass.

Click for HM Ships Racehorse and Carcass Design Dossier and Endnotes

Christopher Middleton – the First Royal Navy Arctic Explorer – Crosses the Line in 1742

Traditionally, the Royal Navy’s program of Arctic exploration is represented as having commenced with the Constantine Phipps Expedition towards the North Pole in 1773.1 Phipps and his crews pushed north to above 80° latitude near Spitzbergen, before having to turn for home. Though the Phipps Expedition set many precedents for later polar exploration missions, it is Captain Christopher Middleton who deserves wider recognition for his trailblazing 1741-1742 Hudson’s Bay Expedition .2 This was the first Admiralty mission to search for a Northwest Passage.3 I will argue that Middleton also deserves credit for commanding the first Royal Navy expedition to explore an area north of the Arctic Circle.4 He had reached this far north in the first bomb vessel modified for northern exploration (which set the precedent for a century of discovery missions).5 During his time in Hudson’s Bay, he conducted a program of scientific research spanning several disciplines. After he arrived back in England, a dispute with Arthur Dobbs – his armchair-cartographer nemesis -marred his reputation and cast doubt upon his important discoveries.

The Naujaat Arctic Circle Arch, a gateway to the Canadian Arctic. Credit: Wes Gill from Winnipeg, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Early on the morning of August 7th, 1742, Captain Christopher Middleton nervously paced the quarterdeck of His Majesty’s Ship Furnace.6 He and his crew believed they were on the threshold of a historic discovery: A northwest passage towards the “South Sea” (the Pacific Ocean). These explorers had diligently clawed their way up Roes Welcome Sound, between the northwestern shores of Hudson’s Bay and Southampton Island. Standing into danger, they had picked their way around “islands of ice” (icebergs) and “ledges” (land floes). When they could find no favourable winds, they had even used cables anchored to the ice to haul the ships north from berg to berg.7

A Chart of Hudson’s Straits and Bay, of Davis Straits, and Baffin’s Bay; as published in the Year 1668. This shows the extent of knowledge about the Bay after the Henry Hudson, Thomas Button, Luke Foxe, and Thomas James expeditions of the first half of the seventeenth century. “Buttons Bay” and much of the NW and SW coasts of the Bay was conjectural.8

In the hazy morning twilight of those extended northern days, Furnace had been working around a promontory which Middleton had just named “Cape Hope.” He believed this could represent the “extreme part of America,” (or the northern most point of the North American continental landmass) a major milestone along the way of achieving his Admiralty mission to discover the fabled maritime route westwards.9

Zenith Point, Murchison Promontory, on the southern shores of the Bellot Strait, is the highest point of land of continental North America, or what Middleton would have called the “extreme part of America.” It was discovered in 1852 by William Kennedy and Joseph-René Bellot. It is an important waypoint on one of the main routes of the actual Northwest Passage through the Arctic Archipelago, and is located at 72’00’06” latitude north, 740 km NNW of Middleton’s Cape Hope. Photo by author, 5 Sep. 2025.

Middleton was a skilled navigator, who had outfitted his ships with the latest navigational devices. He employed these to survey under exceptionally challenging circumstances.10 His career had prepared him for the rigors of commanding a discovery mission in the Bay.11 After early service aboard a privateer in North American waters (during Queen Anne’s War, 1702-1713), he had worked for many seasons as a merchant captain with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), sailing between England and the HBC factories of the Bay on yearly supply missions.12 His experiences commanding HBC sloops had led him to enthusiastically support a popular European belief that the undiscovered shores of the Bay concealed the beginnings of the Northwest Passage.13 In early 1741, with the support of an influential ally and confidant, Arthur Dobbs, he had left HBC service to secure the command of an official Royal Navy exploration mission.14 The crews of his two ships – Furnace and the small tender Discovery – were the first Europeans to navigate these waters (whose adjoining lands were the ancestral territory of the Aivilingmiut Inuit).15 They had endured many hardships since departing England on 8 June, 1741. A dozen of their mates had already perished.16 The dedicated assistance of both the HBC staff and local indigenous communities at and around the post at Churchill, over the winter of 1741-42, had prevented a much greater loss of life.17

Prince of Wales Fort, aerial view from 1930. The fort sheltered the Middleton Expedition’s senior staff at Churchill, while the crew were lodged in the old, disused post upriver. Middleton, during his HBC career, had been involved in this massive fortification’s original design.18 Credit: Alf Erling Porsild / Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds / Library and Archives Canada / a101002-v8

As the sun burned off the haze, the watch on deck sighted high land continuing westwards from under the cape – So far, so good. But then a low shoreline materialized across Furnace’s stout bows. The land stretched around to the starboard beam. This day would bring no happy run far to the west – Christopher Middleton had discovered another bay.19 Disappointed at being “embayed” and turned away from his main objective, he named these waters “the Bay of Repulse” (the Inuktitut name for these enclosed waters is Aiviliup Tariunga). The next few days would see the expedition halted from further progress north by an impassable barrier of ice at the top of Southampton Island. The captain went ashore with two healthy crew members and an indigenous guide, climbed to the highest point he could find, and surveyed the distant shores. From this vantage he saw an iced-over passage extending towards the east, and named this the “Frozen Strait.”20 Given what would befall him upon his return home, Middleton may well have lived to regret ever having been up here in 1742. Today we can acknowledge that he started something in this northwest corner of Hudson’s Bay: An organized program of northern discovery that would eventually see the mapping of vast extents of what would become the Canadian Arctic.

The entry from Furnace’s ship’s log for 6 August 1742, illustrating the hopes and then disappointment of the crew. A selection of the log is reproduced in his Vindication. (Cited below) Middleton’s observed position for this day was 66°44’ north. 21
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“We had a Good Reputation, we being the Canadians writ large. So, we were chosen”- HMCS Athabaskan escorts USS Princeton in the Persian Gulf – 18 Feb. 1991

Thirty-five years ago today, during Operation Desert Storm, the Canadian Navy came to the assistance of our US allies, in a characteristically classy way.1 Today, we mark the anniversary of HMCS Athabaskan entering into a mined area of the Persian Gulf to assist the damaged cruiser USS Princeton. This episode marked a meaningful connection between the careers of two storied warships.2

“Rendering Assistance” by Maritime Artist Dale Byhre, which depicts the moment 35 years ago that HMCS Athabaskan (at left) escorted the damaged cruiser USS Princeton (right). This shows CH-124 Sea King helicopters transporting supplies. Used with the written permission of the artist, who has prints available for sale.

At daybreak, 18 February 1991, Captain Edward Hontz, USN, was speaking to the crew of his command, the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) over the ship’s 1MC (PA system).3 The ship was crawling forwards at 3 knots through a suspected minefield, in shallow water near Falaika Island in the northern Persian Gulf. A crew member in a jury-rigged chair at the bows peered intently down into the water. Beside him, a shipmate manned a .50 caliber machine gun.

Crew members man the rails aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) as the ship departs from Pearl Harbor soon after its return from Desert Storm, 1 June 1991 Credit: USN official (OS2 John Bouvia) via NARA DNSC9203674.

Princeton was using its AEGIS missile-defense system to protect a force of minesweepers that was tasked with clearing a corridor for Coalition ships through an Iraqi-laid minefield. There was a suspected “Silk worm” anti-ship missile site on the coast. Hontz had just notified the crew that USS Tripoli (LPH-10), an Amphibious Assault Ship, serving as flagship of the minesweeping force, had been damaged by a mine early that morning.

USS Tripoli (LPH-10), having hull damage repaired in Bahrain after striking a mine on 18 February 1991, while engaged in mine clearing with its helicopters. Tripoli was decommissioned in 1995 but used as a test ship, and was the last Iwo Jima class amphibious assault ship in existence, only being dismantled in 2018. Credit: USN official (JO1 Gawlowicz) via NARA DNSC9108075

At 7:15 AM local time – just as Hontz reminded crew to remain vigilant during their current mission – a mine exploded underneath the Princeton’s port propeller and rudder. Seconds later another mine detonated off the starboard bow.4 Crew members were thrown around like rag dolls all over the ship. The up-and-down whiplash motion was especially violent at both bow and stern. This terrifying movement was joined by gut-wrenching side-to-side seesaw. The ship bent and flexed beyond what it was designed to take. Deck seams opened up, frames were fractured, the deckhouse structure cracked, and aluminum flexed and distorted. The propeller shaft was damaged and the rudder was jammed.5 As crew struggled to get to their General Quarters posts, many thought they’d be abandoning ship. The damage was serious. Miraculously, no one had been killed.6

USS Princeton at Bahrain three days after the incident, showing a jury repair over the hull cracking near the stern. (CWO Bailey) NARA/DoD 330-CFD-DN-ST-91-05714.

At 09:05, Commander John Pickford, RCN, aboard the Canadian Iroquois-class destroyer HMCS Athabaskan (DDG-282), received information about USS Princeton’s damage. Athabaskan was deployed to the Persian Gulf, along with HMCS Terra Nova, an older Restigouche-class destroyer, and the replenishment vessel HMCS Protecteur, as the naval component of Operation FRICTION, Canada’s military contribution to Desert Storm. Athabaskan had been operating to the south, in the central Gulf, escorting coalition vessels.

HMCS Athabaskan (DDG-282) photographed during 1983 while serving with STANAVFORLANT. Credit: Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada ISC-83-227

Pickford was ordered to escort the tug Smit New York to Princeton. Reportedly, Capt. Hontz had specifically requested Athabaskan’s assistance, acknowledging the usefulness of the Canadian ships’ specialized mine-avoidance sonar and the deployed air component of recently-upgraded CH-124 Sea King helicopters.7 Athabaskan had just refueled from USS Platte, “the preferred oiler of the Persian Gulf” the day before, and had received a visit from the commander of the Canadian naval forces in the region, CANCOMFORME, Commodore Kenneth Summers.

Extract of the 18 February 1991 Ship’s logbook entry of HMCS Athabaskan, deployed to Op Friction. This record was recently released through an Access to Information request to Library and Archives Canada where this can be found under RG24-D-2, Accession/BAN: 2017-00299-2, Box: 4.

Athabaskan immediately set a course north and assumed Defence Condition “Zulu,” bringing the ship and crew to full readiness while ensuring all watertight compartments were closed. Princeton’s crew were working to contain the damage, as the few serious injuries received medevac transport. The AEGIS system had not been disabled, and the ships’ 5″ guns and the missile systems were rapidly brought back online. Athabaskan rendezvoused with Princeton at 15:51 at position 28°37′ north, 49°59′ east and commenced the escort south towards Bahrain at 17:16. The Canadians handed the escort over to the elderly wooden-hulled minesweeper USS Adroit, while the tow was taken up by the salvage ship USS Beaufort. While Princeton was repaired first in Bahrain and then in Dubai, Athabaskan replenished from HMCS Protecteur and then returned to escort work in the central Gulf.8

HMCS Athabaskan refuelling from HMCS Protecteur Persian Gulf 1990. This photo was likely taken from HMCS Terra Nova. LAC Credit: Canada. Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / ISC 90 2080 (WO Wayne Loane)

Athabaskan’s next high-profile tasking involved escorting the hospital ships USNS Comfort and Mercy.9 As a parting gift for the exhausted crew of Princeton, a Sea King was used to “cross-deck” a pallet loaded with several cases of Labatt beer, and a bottle of Canadian Club whisky for Capt. Hontz.10

CH-124 Sea King helicopter 12404 “Black Horse,” performs Foc’sle transfer training aboard HMCS St. John’s, June 30, 2018, while deployed to Operation REASSURANCE. This same aircraft flew operations on 18 February 1991 from HMCS Athabaskan and is referenced in the ship’s log. Photo: Corporal Tony Chand, Formation Imaging Services RP17-2018-0028-15649

As a result of deployments to the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991, both Athabaskan and Princeton added new battle honours to the records of their illustrious forebears.11 HMCS Athabaskan served on until 2017, and was scrapped the next year.12 USS Princeton was set to rights and rejoined the US fleet, and continues to serve as one of the last Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers in commission.13 In Canada and the United States, former crewmembers of these outstanding vessels will continue to gather at reunions and online events, and, in their separate reminisces of their time in the Gulf, will think back to a remarkable episode of Operation Desert Storm.

HMCS Athabaskan led the Task Force out of Halifax on 24 August 1990 with fanfare. The author and his dad witnessed this memorable scene from onboard the CGS Acadia museum ship, which is immediately behind the red fireboat in this photo. The ships returned on 17 April 1991 to an exuberant welcome! Credit: Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CLICK FOR ENDNOTES

Where we poor sailors do sometimes dwell – The Middleton Northwest Passage Expedition Roll of Honour

This post commemorates the sailors who perished during Christopher Middleton’s Royal Navy exploration mission to Hudson’s Bay (1741-42).1 It can serve as a Roll of Honour for these early explorers. For the context to this effort to locate the fabled passage to the Pacific in the waters of Hudson’s Bay, please see our post on HMS Furnace‘s unique exploration design. Our next post will argue that Middleton’s ship crews should be considered the first Royal Navy polar explorers (forthcoming).

Throughout the many wars and infrequent peace of the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy expanded into a massive fleet sailing from establishments strategically located along the seaborne trade routes. This growth came at a tragic cost: the human toll of crewing this British “wooden world” was staggering.2 Amidst all this death, it may seem odd to commemorate a dozen seafaring explorers who died in an incredibly remote outpost of British Empire. These were some of the very first deaths in a program of British naval exploration of what is now Canada.3 They would not be the last.

Christopher Middleton’s Northwest Passage Expedition departed the Nore, 8 June 1741. He had experienced significant problems filling out the complements of both his small ships, at their anchorage of Gallions Reach, near Woolwich.4 The seamen who wound up crossing the Atlantic to go looking for a northwest passage in Hudson’s Bay included conscripted men.5 According to their commanding officer, these ninety men were a “crew of rogues.”6 After transiting the Hudson’s Straits into the Bay, a council of officers decided to head for the Churchill River (present-day Manitoba), to overwinter. They would commence their search mission early the next navigation season. At their arrival near the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) establishment, Fort Prince of Wales, crews laboriously cut both ships into secure docks to overwinter in Sloop Cove.

John Wigate’s map, “Chart of the seas thro which H. M. S. Furnace passed for discovering a passage from Hudson’s Bay to the South Sea.” Despite falsified sections of the NW coast of Hudson’s Bay (to support Arthur Dobbs’ spurious claims), this 1746 map includes this remarkably accurate inset plan of the mouth of Churchill River. On the northern shore, the “Old Factory,” Sloop Cove (“Winter Cove”), and the impressive Vauban-style “New Fort” are clearly indicated. If any of the crew were buried ashore, they should be located closer to the old factory. Credit:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 123 DIV 3 P 6 via Wikimedia commons.

These northern explorers weren’t equipped with the types of cold weather gear that later expeditions would benefit from. While the officers were lodged at the new fort, crew spent a difficult winter billeted in the “Old Factory,” the former HBC trading post. Several members suffered from frost bite, and the naval surgeons were routinely called over to the old HBC factory to amputate damaged toes before gangrene spread. Worse still, scurvy made an early appearance in the Fall. This dreaded mariner’s disease continued to be a feature of the Expedition all the way back to the Thames, and would eventually claim ten lives. But for Middleton’s desperate attempts to secure fresh meat and vegetables, and the intervention of local indigenous hunters (from the Dene and Cree communities who traded near the HBC Fort and who supplied the expedition with huge quantities of foul), there would have been many more deaths.

The transcribed page of the journal for 29 December 1741, recording P. Bennett’s death – the first Middleton Expedition death at Churchill. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Arthur Dobbs fonds, LAC MG18-D-4 volume 4.

I feel it important to compile the names of these early explorers, their dates of death, and the causes, based on the original expedition journal entries and associated contextual documents found in William Barr and Glyndwr Williams’ edited Hakluyt Society publication:


✝William Clark, sailmaker Furnace 28 July 1741 drowned after a fall from fore shrouds in Hudson’s Straits7;

✝Pashler Bennett (or possibly “Paskler Bennet” 29 Dec. 1741 (scurvy at Churchill)8;

✝Christopher Row 13 February 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Edward Matthews 21 February 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Abraham Page 13 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝John Blair 21 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Henry Spencer 26 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝James Thrumshaw 28 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Ralph Pearce Carpenter’s Mate Discovery 9 April 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝John Furnix 24 May 1742 (scurvy at Churchill)9;

✝Robert Rattery 31 May 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝John Matthews Master’s Servant Furnace 20 June 1742 (drowned at Sloop Cove near Churchill)

Sloop Cove rock inscriptions from 1741 overwintering of HMS Furnace and Discovery, as photographed in 1930. A series of inscriptions, including one by explorer Samuel Hearne, are preserved at the Sloop Cove National Historic Site. This may be the closest thing to a memorial the lost crew of the Middleton Expedition have. Credit: Northwest Territories (Album 31). Credit: A.E. Porild, Canada. Dept. Indian and Northern Affairs / Library and Archives Canada / e010983471

In some sources Middleton referred to two or three additional deaths. If anyone locates a reference to these other fatalities, or has any information about any known shore burials of the men who died near Churchill, please leave us a comment below.

Click for endnotes:

HMS Furnace- First Bomb to Blaze a Trail North

On that fateful day of May 19th, 1845, when the crews of Sir John Franklin’s last expedition in search of the Northwest Passage departed Greenhithe, England – never to return – they did so onboard two incredible vessels. Her Majesty’s Ships Erebus and Terror hadn’t originally been designed for polar exploration. Rather, these were both examples of a highly specialized type of warship called a “bomb vessel.” Why send a warship that was meant to bombard enemy positions on a polar exploration mission? This post briefly explores the history and design of the first bomb vessel that was sent north, HMS Furnace, which left England in 1741 on an earlier effort to locate that same illusive passage to the Pacific Ocean.1 Did Furnace blaze a trail across the frozen northern latitudes? Not exactly, but her modifications for exploration set an important precedent for a lineage of tough little ships which would be used on Arctic and Antarctic exploration missions.2

The Blast class, the original as-built configuration of Furnace from 1740, showing the two heavy mortar beds (cribbing) in the waist, the ketch rig (mainsail and a mizzen aft) a simple capstan perched high above the aft deck, and a windlass in the bow. Credit: © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London ZAZ5625.

Maritime historian and former National Maritime Museum curator Chris Ware’s work on the history of bombs, The Bomb Vessel: Shore Bombardment Ships in the Age of Sail, explores the history of the Royal Navy’s bomb vessels, and highlights the careers of selected ships.3 The type had been created late in the 17th century to carry one or two heavy mortars amidships. Like many other great British naval developments, the idea had come from France, whose navy had built the first bomb vessels, galiotes à bombes, starting in 1681.4 The mortars (which had been developed originally for land warfare) fired types of fused shells called bombs (explosive) or carcasses (incendiary) on a high trajectory over the bulwarks. They were used against fortifications or cities and towns. The bombs would plunge downwards to explode against or over targets.

John Bower’s engraving of the Bombardment of Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, in September 1814 by the British fleet, including HMS Terror and an earlier generation of HMS Erebus, and several other bombs. Credit: Dr.frog at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

To carry the massive mortars and handle their powerful recoil, which was transmitted down from their carriage directly into the wooden timbers of the vessel, bombs had to be very strongly built: They were framed, decked, and reinforced much more stoutly than other ships of their relatively small size. While the first English bombs resembled small coastal craft, by the 1730s new designs appeared that were closer to naval sloops.5 There were usually only a handful of bombs active at any given time. Most spent the vast majority of their careers out of commission or converted to other roles. The Board of Ordnance, which had responsibility for both the guns and the specialist personnel to work them, would unship and land the mortars to help preserve these valuable weapons. When being used as patrol vessels, a stronger battery of cannon was installed along the gundeck.

This painting by Samuel Scott is a rare representation of a mid-18th Century bomb vessel. It depicts the capture of HMS Blast, lead ship of Furnace’s class, in 1745. Blast was captured while serving as a sloop, and would have been armed without the mortars but with ten 4-pounder cannon when captured by two Spanish privateers. Blast appears to have a full 5-light (windowed) stern, and the additional armament has been added to the stern cabin (seen in the lower siting of the gunports aft). Oddly, the ship is now depicted rigged in the reverse of a ketch, as a brig or a snow. Credit: Samuel Scott, (Earl of Pembroke. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In contrast to the great and tragic expeditions that came both before and after, Christopher Middleton’s Northwest Passage Expedition of 1741 is rarely mentioned, even in exploration literature. This bid to locate the storied Passage, or “Straits of Anian” deserves more attention. Middleton was an experienced ship’s captain and a skilled navigator who had conducted a variety of scientific observations (including magnetic studies) while sailing to and from Hudson’s Bay, on annual supply missions for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had an early enthusiasm for exploration, the search for the Northwest Passage, and also an interest in establishing the fate of the vanished James Knight expedition of 1719.6 Middleton had been nearby at the HBC Factory at the Churchill River (present-day Churchill, Manitoba) when, unbeknownst to anyone, the crews of Knight’s two small ships were marooned on Marble Island.7 In recognition of his scientific publications, Middleton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1737. In 1741, having left the employ of the HBC, the Royal Navy appointed him to command HMS Furnace. His orders were to seek a Northwest Passage somewhere along the Western coasts of the Bay. In reviewing the available units of the fleet, this new and rugged generation of bombs must have seemed ideal candidates for an exploration mission, where ships were in danger of colliding with icebergs, grounding, or being forced ashore out in Baffin Bay or the Hudson Strait, or being damaged or crushed by pack or land ice. Furnace would be accompanied by a hired collier, HMS Discovery, which was commanded by Middleton’s cousin, William Moor. The Admiralty optimistically believed that, a Passage having been located and exploited, the ships might link up with Commodore George Anson’s 1740-44 circumnavigation of the World, somewhere in the Pacific.

After crossing the Atlantic, the officers spent the winter at Prince of Wales Fort to get an early start to the season. Expedition crew meanwhile stayed ashore in a disused wooden fort.8 They first prepared the ships for being iced into the harbour – with Furnace becoming the first bomb to overwinter. It was a long and difficult winter, and several crew died of scurvy. Once the exploration work commenced in July 1742 they quickly discovered that a promising inlet did not in actuality offer any corridor to the west (Middleton thought this a river and named it “Wager” after Sir Charles Wager, First Lord of the Admiralty, but it was later determined to be a bay). Other useful exploration work included the discovery of Repulse Bay (the community is now known as Naujaat) and the assessment that the Frozen Straits offered no likely passage to the west. With the crew weakening again from scurvy, and the major exploration work having led to dead-ends, Middleton hastened back to England.9

Middleton’s surveying work was attacked after his return, with Arthur Dobbs (a wealthy and influential Irish landowner who has supported Middleton’s original appointment) and Moor both coming around to the view that not enough had been done to rule Hudson’s Bay out as the beginning of a passage towards the Pacific.10 Moor departed on another expedition which explored more of the same coasts of the Bay. Future expeditions would take other reinforced bomb vessels further north to continue the search for a navigable passage amongst the Arctic islands. As William Barr has pointed out, the criticisms Middleton was subjected to were baseless, and the accuracy of his surveying was eventually confirmed.11

HMS Furnace was a Blast class bomb vessel, completed in October 1740 by Quallett (presumably the commercial yard of John Quallett of Rotherhithe in South London, which built other Royal warships such as HMS Chesterfield and several sloops). She was 91.5 feet long on the gundeck and 26’4” broad, with an 11-foot draft. All told she was almost 273 tons burthen.12 This new class of six bomb vessels were rushed into service as war broke out again against Spain in late 1739. As the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) spread across Europe, a second group of five almost identical sisterships were constructed the next year. Among them was the second bomb vessel to be named HMS Terror.13

Like most early bomb vessels, Furnace was rigged as a ketch, with a tall mainmast and a shorter mizzen aft. This rig proved to be problematic for the complicated laying, or aiming of the mortars, as it left only a small arc of fire unimpeded by the masts, yards, rigging and shrouds. When it came to the deck machinery, earlier bombs had been fitted with windlasses (horizontal drums) to assist in heavy tasks such as lifting the anchor cables, or the complex effort of warping the ship around on the anchor cables to precisely aim the mortars. The Blast ships, by contrast, were also fitted with the more powerful capstan (vertical drum) on the quarterdeck.14

HMS Grenado, a near-contemporary of Furnace, is depicted in a superb sectional model at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, which helps us explore the peculiarities of the design:

HMS Grenado model showing both octagonal mortar pits, the new trunnioned mortars, and the exposed deck beams and hull framing. Credit: Rémi Kaupp, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons the original model was built by Robert A. Lightley and is catalogued at National Maritime Museum as SLR0331.

We can observe a robust, wide hull, with closely-spaced frames. The solid construction continued into heavy knees supporting the deck beams. In Grenado and Furnace, the mortars were originally sited forward and aft of the mainmast, while the mizzen mast rises above the deck just forward of the break on the quarterdeck. A new type of mortar had been developed, which could elevate and depress on trunnions, and rotate in its octagonal pit. The mortars could be lowered and covered over with sliding hatches, and protected from the elements. The long run of the open waist amidships was necessary to provide the room needed to work the mortars. These ships, like the later Franklin vessels, were originally armed with a 13″ and a 10″ mortar. The secondary weapons, a battery of six light 4-pounder cannon, created a modest broadside for defensive purposes. Additional empty gunports, evenly spaced along the gundeck, allowed for the augmentation of these cannon when the mortars were unshipped. The officers’ cabins were tucked aft under a small quarterdeck, on a deck stepped slightly lower than the main run of the gundeck. There was a very small covered foc’sl forward of the large windlass, and between those was the usual belfry with ship’s bell.

HMS Furnace as converted for the Middleton Expedition in 1741. Credit: © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London ZAZ6524.

As can be seen by comparing the above Admiralty plans, preserved at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, with the Grenado model or the plans at the beginning of this post, Furnace was extensively modified for exploration. The masts were relocated, with a third mast making the vessel a sloop.15 There are many elements of the design that set the pattern for the Admiralty modifying ships for polar exploration, right down to those final modifications to Franklin’s two ships. Middleton’s input on this refit – reflecting his HBC service in the Company sloops – was important. Compared to the unmodified bomb vessels, this ship now has a shorter, less vulnerable stem, and higher sides. The open waist where the two mortars were once sited has been decked-over. The mortars, beds, and cribbing have been removed down to the keel. Furnace even has channels that have been reinforced with ice chocks to make them less vulnerable.16 The ship now has a larger double capstan, installed further forwards between the mizzen and mainmast, which could be worked by crew on both weather and lower decks. The windlass near the bows has apparently been removed.17 Middleton was able to influence the Admiralty into equipping Furnace with a complement of boats he wanted. He was even able to secure an “ice boat” for this mission, which was a specialized craft that HBC sloops used, but that had not previously been on the establishment of any British warship.18

Once the crews were wintering ashore at Churchill, Middleton held a council with his officers to discuss further modifications to Furnace. His journal, reproduced in Barr and Williams’ edited Hakluyt Society publication, provides detailed information about the March-April 1742 design modifications.19 The carpentry work that Spring optimized the bomb-exploration conversion. The quarterdeck was now built up to the level of the new main deck, to make a continuous weatherdeck. This fixed an issue where the oddly stepped-down aft deck shipped too much water during foul weather. Middleton also recognized the limitations of steering the ship in adverse conditions with an old-style tiller. He supervised the construction and fitting of a ship’s wheel, with the old curving iron tiller bar straightened out. All subsequent bomb-derived exploration vessels would be equipped with ship’s wheels.

HMS Furnace or sistership Firedrake at the bombardment of Gorée, 1758. [detail of] Attack on Goree, 29 December 1758 by Dominique Serres the Elder. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection BHC0386.

Upon the expedition’s return to England, Furnace was modified back to her original design. The overwintering and exploration work do not appear to have shortened her career: She served longer than all the other 1740-constructed bombs, being eventually decommissioned in 1763, after participating in several bombardments during the Seven Years War.20 HMS Furnace’s 1741 refit, – and Middleton’s expert 1742 modifications at Churchill – set the pattern for the modification of six other bomb vessels to be sent on future Arctic and Antarctic missions.21 This era ended more than a century later when the last two serviceable exploration bombs disappeared into the Canadian Arctic.

A model I worked on years ago, a modified Pyro British Bomb Vessel in (tiny) 1/150 scale. The design seems to be a simplification of a mid-eighteenth century bomb, which I modified as a fictional HM Bomb Vessel Cataclysm.
ENDNOTES:

Franklin’s Ship of Fate – The HBC ship Prince of Wales

🎶In Baffin’s Bay where the whalefish blow, the ship that’d first seen Franklin come, last saw him go.🎶

The Hudson’s Bay Company merchant ship Prince of Wales transported the Arctic explorer John Franklin from England to Hudson’s Bay in 1819 – to command his first expedition to explore the high latitudes of North America – and was also one of the last ships he encountered as he sailed west in HMS Erebus leading his final, ill-fated expedition of 1845.1 Let’s explore her interesting history, picking out those connections to Sir John, and his fellow explorers, who searched far and wide to determine his fate.

Robert Hood, a midshipman in Franklin’s first overland expedition of 1819, painted this fine work, which shows Prince of Wales at right, the HBC ship Eddystone at left, and an indigenous kayaker. Hood would die during the Coppermine Expedition. Credit Library and Archives Canada. Acc. No. 1970-188-1271 W.H. Coverdale Collection of Canadiana

The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), originally incorporated by Royal Charter in 1670, became a vast mercantile empire that dominated the North American fur trade to Europe.2 Demand for high-quality furs, and especially beaver pelts, increased through the 18th Century as fur products including clothing and hats were in high demand. By the mid-nineteenth century the HBC held monopolistic trading concessions in this chartered territory of “Prince Rupert’s Land” – a large swath of North America that included the traditional lands of a many groups of indigenous peoples. An intricate inland transportation and communication network connected indigenous communities, whose members hunted, trapped and skinned the animals to exchange for trade goods, with the middlemen, voyageurs, traders, and other company personnel.3 The HBC managed a network of trading posts – called “forts” or “factories” on the Bay, along inland waterways, and in the interior.

Prince Rupert’s Land, and a representation of the house flag of the Hudson’s Bay Company, flown from HBC Merchant ships from 1801. Credit: Themightyquill, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Starting with the first commercial venture, which involved the tiny Nonsuch ketch carrying a load of beaver furs from the Bay back to England in 1669, merchant ships were vital to the HBC’s long-distance fur trading. Company directors acquired a fleet of ships to resupply the isolated posts, transfer Company personnel, and transport the furs back to Europe for sale. It was a hazardous trade: In addition to all the regular dangers of navigation, there were icebergs, bergy bits, growlers, pack ice and land floes that could fatally nip a hull. A ship could be beset for so long that the crew had to abandon it to search for rescue.

The origins of the Hudson’s Bay Company fleet: the Nonsuch. The tiny ketch was originally constructed in Devon around 1650 and had already served as a merchant ship and then in the Royal Navy. In 1668 Nonsuch departed on a commercial venture to Hudson’s Bay, returning with furs. The success of this trade journey paved the way for the incorporation of the HBC in 1670. The replica (above) was built by HBC to commemorate the Company’s tercentenary and now is on display inside the Manitoba Museum. Credit: Hastings County Archives HC02649 via wikimedia commons.

Prince of Wales was completed at Rotherhithe, London, in 1793. In contemporary depictions, we see a stout vessel with a three-masted ship rig. She was fitted with a single row of stern galleries and displaced 351 tons. At this time, the French Revolutionary Wars were spreading beyond Europe. She received a heavy armament of 9-pounder cannon and would occasionally cruise under Letter of Marque – as a privateer operating against Britain’s enemies. The ship’s regular route involved yearly voyages from England through the Hudson Strait, and down into James Bay, the southern portion of the immense Hudson’s Bay.

Three ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company off Greenwich – John Hood’s 1769 drawing of an earlier generation of HBC ships departing for North America. (PAI6954) Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection

Prince of Wales had already served a quarter of a century when a small naval party, under the command of Lt. John Franklin, boarded the vessel for transport to the Bay. Franklin – who had recently commanded the second ship in David Buchan’s Spitsbergen Expedition towards the North Pole– had been ordered by the Admiralty to follow the course of the Coppermine River, tracking it northwards to chart its mouth and then the shores of the Arctic Sea.4 For this important mission he was accompanied by a small naval party: Surgeon and naturalist John Richardson; two young midshipmen, Robert Hood and George Back; and Ordinary Seaman John Hepburn. In the Orkney Islands Franklin hired on experienced hands who were familiar with overland travel in Prince Rupert’s Land. Other passengers on that Atlantic crossing included colonists on their way to Lord Selkirk’s settlement at Red River. Prince of Wales was accompanied on this and many of her yearly transits by another HBC ship, Eddystone.5 Franklin’s first trip to North America to mount a land-based Arctic surveying expedition nearly ended in disaster before the explorers had even disembarked at York Factory. On 7 August 1819 – while nearing the Hudson Strait in thick fog– icebergs and a line of sheer cliffs appeared dead ahead.

The Prince of Wales Striking Against the Rocks on the East Side of Resolution Island, by Robert Hood. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1970-188-1270 W.H. Coverdale Collection of Canadiana

The ship slammed into the rocky bottom of Resolution Island. The rudder was jarred out of position.6 A torrent of frigid water began pouring through rents in the stern. As the after hold filled with water, the ship was in real danger of foundering. More collisions followed. The crew used a small boat to tow the ship away from further harm. At the same time Franklin’s men and the ship’s carpenters worked to cut away damaged stern timbers and jury-rig repairs. Prince of Wales survived a 36-hour ordeal with everyone taking turns at the pumps. Finally arriving at the HBC Factory on the 30th of August, the exhausted expedition group must have felt relief at putting the Prince of Wales far behind them. Unfortunately, greater challenges lay ahead. During the Coppermine Expedition (1819-1822) the whole party nearly starved to death, with several members succumbing. The promising young officer and artist Robert Hood was murdered.

York Factory ca. 1853, lithograph possibly by W. Trask. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1996-475-2

Meanwhile, Prince of Wales kept to the annual schedule of grueling voyages to and from Hudson’s Bay. During the 1821 season, a young Dutch colonist also emigrating to the Red River settlement, Peter Rindisbacher, was aboard Lord Wellington, sailing in company with Prince of Wales and Eddystone. He produced an artistic record of several notable events.7 On 16 July 1821, the HBC squadron unexpectedly met the other major contemporary Royal Navy project to explore the Arctic: William Edward Parry’s maritime expedition, in search of a Northwest Passage. Parry’s second expedition was headed west along the top of Hudson’s Bay to explore the Frozen Straits and Repulse Bay for a (not existing) passage westwards.8 Parry’s crews in HM Ships Hecla and Fury were delighted that the “Strange Sails” to the northeast had resolved themselves into three Company ships.9

Peter Rindisbacker’s interpretation of the happy meeting of HBC ships, including Prince of Wales with HMS Hecla and Fury, Cmdr. W.E. Parry, July 1821. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-250-7

Days later, Rindisbacher witnessed Prince of Wales again being mauled by an iceberg. After the entire starboard side was crushed, only a shifting of cargo to Eddystone and a jury-rigged sail stretched over the hull saved the ship.10 Lloyd’s (of London) survey reports reveal that the ship was carefully set to rights after each new round of damage, and was fastidiously maintained during her HBC career. Despite this history of collisions and groundings, she was still assessed in “A1” or prime condition, fit for all commercial service throughout the late 1830s.11

“The ship Prince of Wales runs aground on an iceberg during the night of July 24, 1821. Lat. 61.42 N. Long. 65.12 W” by Peter Rindisbacher (watercolour) Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-250-10

As Prince of Wales continued the yearly voyages, Franklin, who had won acclaim mostly for his published account of surviving the Coppermine ordeal, returned to mount another land-based exploration of the Arctic shores. The Mackenzie River Expedition (1825-27) saw Franklin add much to the evolving cartography of the Arctic, all without any of the drama and tragedy of his earlier journey. Another notable event that would connect Prince of Wales to the Franklin saga occurred in 1833, when a young Orcadian doctor, recently qualified in Edinburgh, signed on to serve as ship’s surgeon. Dr. John Rae journeyed far away from the Orkneys; he would not see his home of Clestrain for many years. Rae and Frankin’s friend and exploration companion, John Richardson, would complete remarkable overland surveying journeys together, before pairing up to look for Franklin’s missing 1845 expedition. Rae would eventually bring back the first accurate intelligence about the tragic outcome of the expedition, which was obtained from interviewing Inuit near Pelly’s Bay and trading for actual artifacts.12

Dr. Rae in later life, photographed with a case of relics of the Franklin Expedition he acquired from Inuit he met. University of Washington, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Company eventually sold Prince of Wales in 1844.13 Instead of going to a ship-breaker’s yard, this redoubtable Arctic veteran was modified for a second career as a whaling vessel. the surveyors’ descriptions of the ship’s strengthened timbers and double-sheathed hull, found in the Lloyd’s reports, show that she was ideal for conversion. The refitted vessel sailed out of the busy whaling port of Hull under the command of Captain Dannet. During July, 1845, Prince of Wales was in the same general area as the whaling ship Enterprise (Captain Robert Martin, from Dundee), when HM Ships Erebus and Terror – virtually identical to William Parry’s ships of 1821, and on yet another Royal Navy Discovery Service Northwest Passage expedition – were sighted.14 Sir John Franklin’s two ships were tethered to an iceberg, waiting for favourable conditions to push westwards via Lancaster Sound.

The ships were riding incredibly low in the water, packed to the gunwales with supplies. Even the ice channels outboard of their hulls were encumbered with spare spars, and the ships’ boats amidships had been filled with some of the patent fuel for the engines!15


The Franklin expedition ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, setting out in late May 1845 from Greenhithe. This was originally published for the 24 May 1845 edition of the Illustrated London News. (Via wikimedia commons) These two reinforced ships were also not that different from Prince of Wales.

Members of Franklin’s crew took the opportunity to visit Prince of Wales. They were in a jubilant mood.16 The crews hoped to repeat the incredible progress Parry’s ships had made on his first voyage to the Canadian Arctic. Franklin, visiting with Martin onboard Enterprise, boasted to the whalers about the wonderful provisioning of his vessels: If they didn’t succeed at pushing through the Northwest Passage this season, the supplies would enable them to overwinter for a period of years. His crews had already been out shooting birds in the boats and would be salting them to supplement the stocks of meat. The whaling crews wished them well. At the end of July, the crew of Prince of Wales caught a last distant sight of Erebus and Terror.17 Franklin, his 128 men, and two stout ships disappeared into history.

As events would show, these three remarkable ships were sailing along on a similar trajectory towards shipwreck. Throughout the nineteenth century there was a yearly total of whaling ships that did not return to their ports. In June 1849 – after an incredible 55-year career – Prince of Wales was added to the list of marine casualties. She was crushed by ice, sinking in the familiar waters of the Davis Strait. The crew escaped by boat to the Orkneys. At this time, we still do not know exactly when Erebus and Terror sank, but all three ships may well have foundered during that same year. Prince of Wales was no Navy ship, but she had battled years longer than the Franklin ships in this same perilous environment of ice, rock, wind and weather.

Friendship of Salem, preserved at Salem MA, may be the vessel the most similar to Prince of Wales in existence today. This is a replica of a US-built East India merchant ship (1797) of virtually identical displacement, dimensions, and rig. Credit: I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

If you have more information to help us add to the story about Prince of Wales’ fascinating service, leave a comment!

NOTES:

Click for endnotes

Commander Leopold McClintock tours Beechey Island in 1854 and creates the first photographic record of the Canadian Arctic

Beechey Island, Nunavut, (Iluvialuit) is an important site connected to both the Sir John Franklin Expedition (1845) and the period of searching for the lost crews of HMS Erebus and Terror. In August 1854 Commander F.L. McClintock captured the earliest known photographic depictions of the Canadian Arctic at Beechey. For anyone interested in this era of Arctic exploration, the ruins, cairns, memorials, and graves can become touchstones to the lost Franklin crewmembers and to the other sites of the ill-fated Expedition. In this post we will travel back in time to the critical moment in the creation of the built environment of the Beechey Island National Historic Site.1 We will also digitally reconstitute an incredible collection that has been dispersed across at least two continents. Join us as we accompany McClintock on his photographic expedition: A tour of Beechey in four amazing photographs!

HMS North Star at Beechey Island, August 1854 (Photograph # 1). The squat shape of Northumberland House and the high pyramid of tins and tent at right are notable. Courtesy of Douglas Wamsley

Arctic history scholar Douglas Wamsley holds in his personal collection two historically important photographs, the earliest depictions of Beechey Island Sites National Historic Site of Canada. These were taken in an era when the crews of five exploration ships – Sir Edward Belcher’s Expedition – were engaged in the most extensive official effort to find the missing crews of Sir John Franklin’s Expedition that would ever be mounted. In their 1996 Polar Record article “Early Photographers of the Arctic,” William Barr and Doug Wamsley identified the photographer of these two views as Royal Navy Commander F. Leopold McClintock (1819-1907).2 They connected the two photos to his journal entries, and dated the first photo as having been most likely taken on 12 August 1854. McClintock – a veritable “go anywhere do anything” phenom of Arctic exploration – had commanded HMS Intrepid.

The explorer behind the camera! Sir Francis Leopold McClintock, ca. 1860 [detail of] in a captain’s uniform wearing the Arctic Medal. From Cheyne / Pound engraving. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1939-150-1  (removed from 1860 Illustrated London News).

Accompanying HMS Resolute (Capt. Henry Kellett) as a steam tender on the western arm of the Belcher searches, both ships were beset in ice, with no guarantee crews could extricate them. The northern arm of the searches also being iced-in, Belcher ordered Kellett and McClintock to abandon their ships during May 1854 and return to Beechey. After sledging back eastwards over the still-frozen channels and straits, they were welcomed with cheers from the crew of HMS North Star, the Expedition’s depot ship, which was under the command of William John Samuel Pullen.3 Resolute’s Assistant Carpenter, William Mumford, worked up a view of the overall scene which they encountered on their arrival, 28 May 1854. This watercolour helps us contextualize McClintock’s subsequent photographic expeditions. North Star is shown locked in ice and pointed northeast into the Bay.4

HMS North Star, dated May 1854, by Assistant Carpenter William Mumford. This remarkable view from the end of May shows the beset vessel under Beechey’s imposing and bleak cliffs. Ashore, Northumberland House, the storehouse the Belcher crews built, and a large boat which is likely Sir John Ross’s rescue yacht Mary, are visible. This was drawn before the installation of the cenotaph. [Detail of] LAC 1986-18-27
“Arctic Sea. Barrow Strait. Erebus Bay” Beechey Island and surroundings as surveyed by WJS Pullen, including annotations of ship locations, depth soundings in fathoms, and extent of ice [cropped and modified with photograph location annotations relevant to this post] created in 1854 and modified in 1876. Note that the 1,000 yard canal that crew cut between July and August 1854 to free HMS North Star is indicated. Credit: Library and Archives Canada R11630-3259-1-E

Having returned to Beechey without a ship, and not being then engaged in long-distance sledging (which he excelled at), McClintock decided to take up the role of “quasi-official” Belcher Expedition photographer. Before the Expedition departed England, HMS Resolute’s surgeon, William T. Domville, had originally been trained on taking photographic negatives using a camera obscura and developing them into prints using the calotype process. Domville took a few early photos in Greenland in 1852.5 It appears likely the camera was then stowed away for two years. Wamsley and Barr note that McClintock began taking pictures in early August 1854, and soon gained confidence with the apparatus and the complicated chemical treatment and development process.6 Despite the incredible challenges involved in producing an 1850s photographic record in the Arctic, McClintock even tried his hand at portraiture, capturing some of his companions (more on that below).

A camera obscura of French design, which resembles something similar to what McClintock would have used at Beechey. The Chevalier lens has two settings: Portrait and Landscape. Credit: Matilda Talbot. Science Museum Group © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London CCBY 4.0.

Let’s journey back to Beechey as it existed then, to accompany McClintock on his photographic excursions. In early August 1854 the explorer, now firmly in command of the northernmost example of one of Her Majesty’s cameras, struggled west across the uneven ice from HMS North Star towards the Island. He most likely led a small shore party to assist him in hefting the heavy camera and tripod. Having ascended the rocky beach, past some of the new construction the North Star crew had completed over the last two years, he tucked himself under the soaring, fortress-like cliffs, and pointed the apparatus towards the east, back across Erebus and Terror Bay (see the annotated map above).

Laid out before him was an incredible Arctic vista: The frozen bay stretched into the distance, with an almost incandescent glare rising off the ice. Above the far shore, the bulk of Devon Island (Tallurutit) extended out towards Cape Riley, whose grand headland would be just to the right of the frame. It was a view that the lost men of the Franklin Expedition would have been completely familiar with, as they had overwintered near this same spot 1845-46. The actual moment of capture was probably not attended with much drama–no flash like a cannon’s discharge, no crashing report like a musket volley fired over a crew members’ burial. Yet by removing the lens cap for a few moments, McClintock had yet again triumphed in the northern latitudes. As light passed through the lens and into the camera chamber, an image was projected and recorded onto a sheet of chemically-treated, light-sensitive writing paper placed at the back of the camera. Another wonder of the Victorian age had arrived in the Arctic! The process pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot would have involved McClintock treating the paper with noxious chemicals before leaving North Star, perhaps having started the first washes and sensitizing steps in an improvised darkroom deep in the ship (sheltered from the 24-hour sunshine). The stages of photography and print-making can be seen in the youtube tutorial from the Victoria and Albert Museum:

Opening the lens allowed for the image of this unique scene to be transmitted onto the sensitized paper that had been loaded into the back of the camera.7 At a later moment, another treatment process in the darkroom was used to develop this now-exposed negative and fix the image in place. Through a similar (though simpler) chemical process used to prepare calotype negatives, another sheet of sensitized paper would be physically pressed beneath the negative and exposed to sunlight via contact printing. This would create a positive version of the image. These positive variants are commonly known as salted paper-prints. They display a characteristic fuzziness – from the paper-to-paper printing process- while the printed image takes on sepia-like tones.7 Here was the great advance in photography over daguerrotypes: a film developer could use the process to create MANY salted paper-prints from the single calotype negative.

Detail of photo #1, showing HMS North Star, with wash hanging to dry, and what is likely the ship’s rudder hanging from the stern davits. In the foreground is the low-pitched roof of Northumberland House, a high flagstaff and signal mast, and the newly-erected cenotaph to the lost Franklin searchers. Precise cross-referencing of details of the construction with Mumford’s journal entries indicates the image could date from 1-12 August, 1854. Courtesy of Douglas Wamsley

On this first print, Northumberland House appears in the left foreground as a squat roofed-over structure. This depot or Arctic storehouse had been built over the 1852-1854 summers by the crew of North Star. Captain Kellett, McClintock, and the Resolute and Intrepid crews had built a similar structure at Dealey Island.8 The house had not yet been ringed by a low wall to the north and west, which is much in evidence during Allen Young’s 1875 Pandora visit.9 To the right, a signal mast – complete with stays and a topmast – is rigged near to the shoreline, with another shorter staff standing nearer to the House.10 In the near foreground, the brand-new monument or “Franklin Cenotaph,” is conspicuous, wearing its original somber coat of black. It had been shaped by Mumford and the other carpenters from the pawl bitt of the lost whaling ship McLellan’s windlass, and raised at the very end of July. The photograph may have actually been taken on the first or second of August, when crew were paving round the monument, but had not yet finished walling in the casks on the west and north sides of the House.11 This is the only image we will likely ever see of this important cenotaph before the Joseph René Bellot memorial was affixed to the front of the pedestal at the end of that August.12

The original Joseph René Bellot memorial plaque, which would be affixed to the Franklin Cenotaph days after McClintock took his photographs. Courtesy Nunavut Archives.

There is a pyramid of tins in the right foreground, while a tent (most likely a marquee tent raised in mid-July to prepare the site for the arrival of Captain Belcher from the still-beset HMS Assistance) had been pitched to the right. Just off the beach rests the considerable bulk of a three-masted sailing vessel in good focus. A motionless ship sailing a static sea makes for an ideal subject, given the technical limitations of 1850s photography.13 North Star was locked in ice, with masts all up but no sails bent on the yards. Though the scene has few crew members depicted, one gets the sense of industrious bustle ashore from casks lined up on the far side of Northumberland House, and what appears to be a line of boats aft of North Star. Wamsley and Barr noted that there was visible evidence at the bows that crew had commenced cutting the ice around the bows with ice saws. By the crew’s exertions cutting and parbuckling the ice, North Star had been turned with her bows now pointing south towards the open waters of the Barrow Strait.

Photo # 2: taken from an elevated position onboard HMS North Star. Northumberland House appears to left, while the low ground between Beechey and Devon Islands, and the historic Franklin Expedition graves, are at centre [cropped] Courtesy of Douglas Wamsley

The second photo used in this post was taken from onboard the North Star, in a northwesterly direction. It shows a distant and indistinct view of the shores of Beechey Island and the land bridge stretching around the bay to Devon Island. Northumberland House can be seen on the near shore. The House appears at a greater distance from the ship than in the first photo. It seems reasonable to assume this was taken days later, as North Star was gradually hauled south towards the edge of the ice. The ice appears disrupted in the foreground, suggesting the route the crew had already cut. Some black flecks at the very center of the photo may hint at the Franklin crewmembers grave boards, our next stop!

Up until a few years ago, these two prints comprised the entire extent of McClintock’s Arctic photography. That has changed over the last few years, starting with the digitization and uploading of a another salted paper print of the Franklin crewmembers’ graves located in the Gell family album at the Derbyshire Record Office (DRO). Franklin scholar Russell Potter has written an interesting contextual post about the discovery of this mysterious photograph, which we will identify here as photograph #3.14

Photo # 3: Salted paper print of the Beechey Island Franklin graves, located in the Gell family album about the Franklin searches, and likely taken by Leopold McClintock, August 1854. The graves are (L to R) William Braine, John Hartnell, John Torrington. Credit: Derbyshire Record Office (D8760/F/LIB/10/1/1) used with written permission.

It now seems likely that McClintock did what any modern visitor to Beechey equipped with a camera would do: He walked about 1.5 kilometers up the beach and snapped the first known photo of those famous graves, which, after all, contained the only Franklin crewmembers that any searchers had (as of 1854) yet located.15 Two important details link the McClintock prints to this mysterious DRO print of the three Franklin crew members’ graves: Erebus and Terror Bay (the shoreline to the right) is a blinding expanse of frozen ice, but there is no snow on the rocky ground.16 The dimensions of the three prints are also similar, which is consistent with having been created by the same camera apparatus.17 Since Domville is believed to have stopped taking photographs after the departure from Greenland, there is also, to date, no other known photographer using a camera combined with the calotype development process that was active in the area at this time.

Wamsley and Barr noted (in 1996) that none of McClintock’s calotype portraits from mid-August 1854 had ever been located.18 I believe we may now also have one example of this series, which, according to the journals of both McClintock and George Ford (ship’s carpenter from HMS Investigator), were taken on 21 August 1854, on the deck of North Star.19 Recently, an item came up for sale on ebay with a strong Beechey 1854 connection: A seated portrait of an officer of the mid-nineteenth century Royal Navy (photograph #4). Notations below the print indicate it to have been taken in 1850 aboard HMS North Star, before “Father” departed on an Admiralty search for Sir John Franklin in the Arctic region. “Remembering the Franklin Expedition” Facebook group member Conner Nelson noted a strong resemblance to Cmdr. W.J.S. Pullen.20 The portrait appears consistent with an unwaxed positive, salted paper-print, from a calotype negative taken using the camera’s portrait lens setting (or possibly a separate lens formatted for portraits).

Photo # 4: Master T.C. Pullen, most likely onboard HMS North Star, wearing the undress tailcoat and epaulettes of a Royal Navy officer, via ebay.com

I believe this portrait was most likely taken onboard North Star by McClintock in that high Arctic summer of 1854. I also believe it depicts W.J.S. Pullen’s brother, Thomas. W.J.S. had been appointed Commander while away on his first expedition searching for Franklin in 1850, two years before he was appointed to command North Star. For this new search effort, he would be accompanied by his younger brother, Thomas C. Pullen, who served in the role of Master (a senior warrant officer). Though I have not been able to examine the portrait in person, it is unique from the contemporary image that the engraving of the Belcher Expedition commanders is based off in The Illustrated London News.21 In contrast to his older brother, T.C. appears to be the right age. He is depicted in the pre-1856 undress uniform of an officer.22 Masters in the Royal Navy had recently been granted the authority to wear the epaulettes of a junior officer, which in this era were unadorned with the distinctive anchors, crowns, or pips worn by commanders and more senior officers. Where precisely was this calotype portrait taken? My familiarity with North Star’s layout and plans leads me to suggest one likely place: Just to the side of the ship’s wheel, tucked under a “poop” deck that, uniquely of all Belcher Expedition ships, North Star was equipped with.23

Our research has established that this plan depicts the 1851 modifications to HMS North Star in advance of the Belcher Expedition. T.C. Pullen would have been sitting just on the side of the ship’s wheel tucked under the poop deck, about 1/4 of the way from the stern (left). ZAZ5516 © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Though the louvered door is similar to the style of door found in an earlier illustration of North Star‘s flag locker (depicted prior to the James Saunders’ supply expedition this was located directly over the transom at the very stern), it is my belief this door led directly into “Officer’s country” – the decked-over passage and cabins at the stern that held the berthing for the Pullen brothers and the other officers.24 This would have been an ideal setting for McClintock to utilize a portrait lens (or a dual setting lens like the Chevalier lens fitted to the above Science Museum, London, artifact).25 The series of portraits captured by McClintock on 21 August may have been intended for a celebratory purpose: on that day, North Star crew finally cut through or blasted with explosive charges the final stretch of the more than 1,000 yard canal southwards and arrived at the edge of the floe. North Star had survived two punishing winters at Beechey, and could now escape the Arctic. T.C. Pullen’s 1854 journal entries record his titanic efforts – despite illness and profound weariness – to spur his crew on to free the ship from an icy grave.26

HMS North Star reconstruction 1852-54 [detail of] for information on my reconstruction of this original “Arctic Juggernaut”, and stern/bow elevations, as well as sources and other illustrations, please see our post. The TC Pullen photo would be taken just under the break of the poop. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

The depot ship was now burdened by supernumeraries from five abandoned Franklin search ships: Investigator, Resolute, Assistance, Intrepid, Pioneer. Just before departure, a strange sail to the east resolved itself into Edward Augustus Inglefield’s trim steamer, HMS Phoenix and the storeship Talbot. Onboard the steamer was the distinctive plaque to the memory of Bellot, to be affixed to the front of the monument, and – relevant to our photographic survey – a new generation of camera: a glass-plate camera employing the vastly superior wet collodion process. The age of the calotype photographic process had arrived and now departed from the shores of Beechey Island! Thank you for accompanying McClintock and I onboard HMS North Star, and out onto the rugged landscape of Beechey Island, these seventeen decades ago!

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Douglas Wamsley for his support and advice and for reviewing an early version of this post, and Russell Potter for facilitating our contact last December. Library and Archives Canada Audiovisual Specialist Anitta Martignago generously shared her expertise about calotype negatives and salted paper-prints: She has actually taken and developed calotypes herself! Sylvia Wright, a direct descendant of Sir Leopold McClintock, also provided feedback. The Derbyshire Record Office staff provided additional information and kindly consented to the usage of the Beechey grave print.

ENDNOTES:

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A Voyage through History aboard HMS Calypso

HMS Calypso was completed as a a steam-powered corvette – a uniquely Victorian mix of old and new technologies- in 1883. After a career of transformations, her hulk rests, all these years later, in a quiet cove in Newfoundland. She remains a historic artifact of Newfoundland’s important naval traditions. Years after adding a Google Earth view to my shipsearcher database, I recently got a chance to visit the site. Join me as I explore Calypso’s interesting past and current state!

Calypso’s port bows, including two large hawse pipes. This is one of the most recognizable sections of the derelict hull (Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com). Inset image shows Calypso under sail, driving before the wind, ca. 1898. Credit: Imperial War Museum, Symonds & Co. collection (Q 21057).

In 1883, Robert Falcon Scott, a young midshipman serving in HMS Boadicea, sat down to sketch a picturesque seascape and a lovely ship: The newly-commissioned HMS Calypso. Boadicea, an older corvette, was sold to the scrappers at the turn of the 20th Century. Scott went on to legendary fame as a polar explorer, before perishing in Antarctica after attaining the South Pole in 1912. All these decades later, Calypso remains.

Robert Falcon Scott sketch of Calypso, ca. 1883, sold at a 2007 Christie’s auction. Via wikimedia commons

Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, Director of Naval Construction, had designed this and several predecessor classes of corvettes, and sisterships Calypso and Calliope were both built at Chatham Royal Dockyards. Where earlier corvettes were built of a mix of iron frames and wood planking, the Calypso class had a steel hull, with wooden sheathing, and a copper-clad underbody. The modern steel hull was structural and complete, but the wood (mahogany planking above water) aesthetically linked the ships to the rest of the sail-and-steam navy. More wood below the waterline created a barrier between the steel and the same sheets of copper alloy that the Royal Navy had used to protect its ships from wood-boring marine life and biofouling since the mid-eighteenth Century.1

The view looking forwards towards the bows of the ship, with the inside of the distinctive hawseholes and some of the forecastle deck remaining above, including the cutout for the forward skylight, portholes, and a pair of heavy bollards. The steel hull is the reason that any of the structure of Calypso survives today, after deterioration and fire damage. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

The ship had vestigial features from the Victorian sailing navy: A towering three-masted sailing rig, a broadside layout of cannon, and elaborate stern galleries (which were merely decorative cladding).2 Contemporary photographs show that the Calypso had a spectacular appearance with all sails set, and, when running before the wind, studdingsails could extend the canvas outwards like wings. Improving on the Barnaby’s earlier Comus class, they were slightly longer, at 235’/71.6 m between perpendiculars, and heavier, at 2,700 tons. They were substantially more powerful, with larger engines that could propel the single screw with over 4,000 units of installed horsepower.3

HMS Calypso‘s original appearance, with a stately rig and aesthetic elements derived from the wooden-hulled sailing frigates. Allan C. Green original glass negative in State Library of Victoria, Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The class was armed with modern 6” breech-loading rifled guns.4 These were mounted in four sponsons (structures that mount armament which project out from the hull), with a wide field of fire. Five gunports were sited along the upper deck between the sponsons. A 5″ gun was mounted behind each port. Quicker firing light guns, Nordenfelts, were mounted high on the bulwarks, and were intended to protect from smaller, faster craft, such as torpedo boats. The two ships had a pair of 14″ diameter “carriage torpedoes.” These used compressed air to launch themselves out of cradles to start their run. Like the Comus class, the Calypsos had a partially-armoured deck of steel that protected some of the vital machinery – engines and boilers – low down in the hull just under the waterline.

Plan of Upper Deck of HMS Calliope (1884) National Archives and Records Administration 78116457
A recent Google Earth capture from July 2023 of the remains of Calypso, with a smaller trawler outboard. The google earth historical imagery shows marked deterioration since the first image, from 2006.

Predecessor Royal Naval classes had abandoned the graceful clipper stem for an upright bow with a massive bronze ram installed underwater. These were the last Royal Navy corvettes with a full sailing rig. Gaping deck ventilators and a wide buff-coloured funnel broke up the run of the upper deck. The ships were designed to be economical for long-distance cruising about the far-flung British Empire, and could sail and steam between widely-dispersed coaling stations. A contemporary folio of design blueprints, today in the archival collection of the Maritime History Archive, Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, helps us reconstruct some of these technical design features (look out for these structures in our photos of what remains of Calypso elsewhere in this post)5:

  • 1881 Construction Journal, Maritime History Archive, Calypso fonds, P1.
  • Sectional view of a steel bulkhead with watertight doors and the supports for the sloping armoured deck. Maritime History Archive, Calypso fonds P58.
  • Hawse Pipes at bows, showing teak bolsters. Maritime History Archive, Calypso fonds P135.
  • Capstan design. Maritime History Archive, Calypso fonds P144.

Unfortunately, from the day they were designed, the idea of a sailing-steaming corvette cruising the world’s oceans was on borrowed time: A new generation of cruisers, the Leander class were being designed, and the Admiralty quickly halted plans to build more corvettes.6 The Leanders were larger, heavier, more powerful, and had more armour and more bunker capacity to steam to distant ports, or police merchant sea lanes. They improved upon the Iris class despatch vessels, and had a similarly cut-down barquentine rig.

Calypso’s Sistership HMS Calliope -completed in 1884- had an eventful career in the Far East, gaining fame for being the sole surviving warship from a terrible cyclone off Samoa in 1889. Calliope became a drill ship on the Tyne in 1907, and survived until dismantlement in 1951. Her name is perpetuated by the current shore establishment at Gateshead.

HMS Calliope at Blyth, ca. 1920 . This shows the trim appearance of the class, which is hulked with a built-up quarterdeck housing and rigging mostly unshipped, but still has the sponsons and funnel fitted. Credit: From an uncredited postcard collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Calypso had a brief period of active service, cruising to distant ports as a member of the Sail Training Squadron. In 1895, Walter Hose, who would go on to serve as Director of the (Canadian) Naval Service during the Interwar era, was posted to Calypso. She was laid up at the end of the Nineteenth Century. In 1902, she was taken out of reserve and sent to Newfoundland to help train naval reservists in St. John’s for the newly-created Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve. Newfoundland was the first colony where a naval reserve was formally established, and the Dominion was seen as a potential goldmine of seafaring experience, with many residents connected into seafaring traditions in the ports and outports of “the Rock.”7 Calyspo’s sailing and steaming days were over; the vessel was quickly converted to a depot ship, with deck houses built over the weather deck, funnels and machinery taken ashore, and most of the masts taken down.

Across the North Atlantic from Calliope, at St. John’s, Newfoundland, here is a similar view of Calypso around 1915. The false gallery windows have been emphasized in white, which also are cut-through with two heavy stern hawse pipes. The standing lower mizzen mast, the only vestige of the original rig, would remain a feature of the ship until at least 1960. Credit: Maritime History Archive, Malcolm Griffin Sealing Album collection PF-345.004

During the First World War, the Calypso establishment trained many young Newfoundlanders for service with the Royal Navy. Almost 2,000 members served in everything from the massive battlewagons of the Grand Fleet, to armed trawlers, and 192 died.8 Alongside the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Forestry Corps, and merchant mariners, they represented the Dominion’s outsized-contribution to the Allied cause.

Reservists alongside the forward starboard side of Calypso, St. John’s, ca. 1916-1922. The ship still has armament in the sponsons, a Hotchkiss gun mounted near the gangway, and a heavy anchor suspended from the forward davit. Credit: The Rooms, Collection MG 110, Item A 142-30; B 3-29; NA 1529
The starboard bows, showing the remains of forecastle decking, skylights, paired bollards and a heavy fish davit for the anchors. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Calypso was renamed HMS Briton in 1916, to leave the name available for the new “C” Class cruiser. Eventually, Briton was sold off in 1922 to become a salt hulk in St. John’s. Moved to Lewisporte in 1952, most of the interior was stripped of valuable items. Some local residents hoped to save the moldering vessel for preservation. Instead, during 1968 the hulk was towed slightly north to near Embree, and set on fire.9

Calypso/Briton hulk with both port sponsons removed, decks built-over, and the lower mizzenmast still stepped. The photo was taken at St. John’s before the tow to Lewisporte. The Crowsnest Vol.12 No.4 Feb. 1960 P.15, Department of National Defence CN-3077.

The derelict has slowly deteriorated there ever since.10 Today, she functions as a sort of jetty or breakwater, alongside an old fishing trawler. There is remarkable drone and video footage of the site from 2022 at “Discovering Newfoundland.”11 Take a look at the footage below to see the submerged portions:

On a recent trip to Newfoundland, I had a chance to visit Embree and swim around the remains. The hull has settled at a slight list to starboard. The bows are most recognizable, along with the some of the ship’s deck structures, which rise out of the muck. These tall boxy features originally housed a set of ventilators, connected by a louvered structure. As the above drone footage shows, the submerged stern section is recognizable, and, incredibly, Calypso still had the remains of the lower mizzen mast jutting upwards above the site in 2022!12 The capstan, about a third of the way aft from the bows, is one of the remaining distinctive naval artifacts.

Much of the starboard side, adjacent to a small pier, is collapsed and displaced outwards onto the bottom. A small portion rises where the wheel would have been, where a bulkhead still shows a doorway.

The now submerged starboard side, with a visiting jelly fish. Much of that side appears to have collapsed outwards onto the cove seabed. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Immediately forwards of that is the housing for a large central ventilator with another distinctive louvered top. The port side elevation is more intact. In addition to this massive semi-submerged hulk, there are many artifacts which are preserved from Calypso.

On deck of HMS Calliope in July, 1901, at anchor in the Downs, looking after towards the poop with the ships double wheel. A 6” gun is at left, while at right there is a distinctive deck structure, near the ladders to the lower deck, that trunked up a single large ventilator. N18738 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Adams Collection
We are roughly at the level of the upper deck, looking aft from the original break of the forecastle deck. A similar structure near the forward ladderway is one of the remaining highpoints of Calypso. It originally brought a matched set of ventilators above deck level (note two circular cutouts in the original roof). Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

One of the ship’s large stockless anchors is now on display at Embree, while one of the 6” guns that originally was housed in one of the four sponsons is on display back in Portsmouth, UK. Two 3 pdr. Hotchkiss guns said to be from Calypso are also found at the shore establishment in St. John’s, HMCS Cabot, and near Cabot Tower at Signal Hill.13 This last still serves as a Noon Day Gun during the Summer!

  • HMS Calypso large anchor, on display in front of the Embree Town Hall. Credit:www.warsearcher.com
  • One of Calypso’s 6-inch Mk III guns, on display at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth, UK. Credit: geni, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • The picturesque siting of one of Calypso’s 3pdr. Hotchkiss guns at Cabot Tower, Signal Hill NL (Aug. 2023). Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Back where it all began, at Chatham dockyards, we are fortunate to have a preserved example of a smaller Barnaby design: A Doterel class sloop. HMS Gannet was about half the size of Calypso, and commissioned five years earlier. Like Scott’s old ship Boadicea, Her hull is composite – wood with iron frames – and she has a more traditional clipper bows.14 However, many of the interior spaces share much in common with Calypso, and this preserved museum ship has a sponson aft and quick-firing Nordenfelts installed!

HMS Gannet at Chatham, ca. Credit: Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Do you have old photos of HMS Calypso / HMS Briton that could complement the above post? Please comment!

The author, looking for and not finding any remains of the bronze stem.
References (CLICK)

Propelling the Terror – modelling a lost Franklin Expedition Ship’s “Steampunk” Victorian Stern

I recently wrote “Could I contemplate a scenario where new information would compel me to get back to work revising my Terror diorama?”1 Well, that situation happened almost immediately! In this post, I focus on what may seem a minor discovery – HMS Terror’s 1845 screw propeller. I argue that it is one of the outstanding finds at either Franklin Expedition wreck site. I will explore the history of this well-preserved artifact and situate it in a revolutionary program of naval ship design. I will conclude by showing how I incorporated the propeller into my diorama of the wreck site.

One hundred and eighty years ago, a visitor to Her Majesty’s Dockyard, Woolwich, near London, would have been treated to a memorable sight: one of Queen Victoria’s warships – under refit to explore the Arctic – was up on the stocks in dry-dock. This was one of a pair of bomb vessels (a type of specialized mortar-armed bombardment ship) which had been converted years before for polar missions. These tough ships had more than proved their mettle during James Clark Ross’s wildly successful expedition to Antarctica. Now the duo – each painted in severe black with a broad white strake stretching along the hull – had been selected for a new “Discovery Service” mission, to be commanded by Sir John Franklin: Complete a Northwest passage across the top of North America. Walking around the dock to the ship’s stern, that visitor would have seen something unusual: a strange cavity low down at the swollen stern post. This was just inboard from an enormous rudder. The hole opened clear through to the other side, like some casemated gun embrasure. Set into this void was a metal monstrosity: A cylindrical shaft with two broad blades twisting away from it. The visitor may have recognized this as a screw propeller – a marvel of the age. When coupled by a long shaft to a steam engine mounted in the bowels of the ship, the rotating screw could propel the vessel – all without a single sail of the lofty three-masted rig drawing a favourable breeze. If that same visitor had returned later, they may have felt the dupe of some trick: the machinery could have completely disappeared, leaving the man-sized hole. As if by some further sleight of hand, the whole cavity could have also appeared closed up, with only a faint rectangular outline now in evidence. What category of navy ship was this anyways? A sometimes-steamer with a propeller that unscrewed right off?! Indeed, here was something completely new: The first auxiliary screw-propelled polar exploration vessel!

The propeller, lowered and possibly installed in its aperture at the stern of the HMS Terror wreck, as photographed by the Underwater Archaeology Team during the late summer of 2019. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright. Scroll down to the next page to see my model of this area.

Early this year I was searching for information about the 2024 Parks Canada program of archaeology on the Sir John Franklin shipwrecks, HM Ships Erebus and Terror in Nunavut, Canada. Instead, I stumbled upon a new post “Anchors and Propellers” by Franklin Expedition scholar and veteran searcher David Woodman on his site: Aglooka.2 This update assembled interesting information about the ships’ complement of anchors, and also their propellers. Reading on, I encountered a previously unpublished image from the Parks Canada Underwater Archaeology Team (above). I was stopped dead in my wake! Here we see Terror’s screw propeller, installed in its aperture! With this photograph, we have the first visual confirmation that a marvelous piece of Victorian maritime technology has survived relatively intact after more than 175 years of immersion at Terror Bay.3

This simple two-bladed screw is one of the most important artifacts existing at either Franklin shipwreck site. The Commemorative Integrity Statement relating to this National Historic Site of Canada specifically identifies the marine screw propulsion as a character-defining aspect of the sites, demonstrating the 1845 technological innovation of the Expedition.4 From the waterline up, both ships looked much like they had during J.C. Ross’s expedition to Antarctica (1839-1843). Erebus and Terror were also not the first ships with an auxiliary steam engine to go north: In 1829 Ross’s uncle, Sir John Ross, had taken Victory north with an experimental – and mostly useless – steam engine.5 However, the idea of fitting a removable screw propeller into a Discovery Service exploration vessel was truly original. The suggestion came from a superstar in polar exploration. As Dr. Matthew Betts relates in his book HMS Terror – The Design, Fitting and Voyages of the Polar Discovery Ship, the seasoned Arctic explorer Sir William E. Parry – who now had an official role in investigating the optimal methods of steam propulsion in the Royal Navy – believed that the new propulsion technology could give vessels operating in the Arctic Archipelago a big advantage: The ability to navigate tight passages free from any dependence on the vagaries of the winds.6 Having auxiliary steam propulsion available to the Expedition captains could help force a constricted passage, position the vessels to better meet the rigors of overwintering in ice (for example by allowing them to get to a safe harbour or a more sheltered section of coast), or get them clear of an immediate hazard, such as an errant iceberg or a perilous lee shore. Parry’s experience commanding similar vessels in the Arctic provided him with an invaluable perspective on how screw propulsion could support this new attempt to transit the Northwest Passage. The Admiralty endorsed Parry’s idea.

Oliver Lang, Master Shipwright at Woolwich, was responsible for working up a technical plan to meet this new requirement. A half-century after he had begun drafting designs, he remained at the forefront of marine technological innovation. During the early 1840s, the military strength of the Royal Navy still rested on the line of battle ships of the sailing navy, those wind-powered “wooden walls” whose broadsides of cannon had allowed Great Britain to dominate the World’s sea lanes. Lang applied new technologies to both mercantile and Royal Navy vessels. He strengthened the basic structure of warships, packed their hulls with new innovations, and enhanced crew comforts onboard, especially to improve lighting and circulation of air. His innovations helped equip the fleet with larger, stronger, and safer warships. He had recently turned to incorporating steam technology into his designs. There had been experiments with steam engines and, since the early 1820s, some small naval units had been propelled by paddle-wheel. The Admiralty was conducting a series of trials of steamers to test a variety of newly-designed screw propellers against paddle-wheel propulsion.7

The famous trial of H.M. Steam sloops Rattler and Alecto, 3 April 1845 (artist unknown). Rattler (left) displays Lang’s newly-installed mizzen mast. PAH0923 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Lang’s own treatise Improvements in Naval Architecture (1853) is an important source for understanding his remarkable career. In his own words he “Arranged and fitted the first SCREW propeller to ship and unship in a TRUNK, so as to be taken up on deck in the ships “Erebus” and “Terror” on the late Arctic Expedition for Sir John Franklin.”8 The years 1844-46 were a busy period for Lang, which saw him embark on an ambitious campaign of propeller experimentation, design, and installation. He had first improved upon Rattler’s recently-installed propeller by re-rigging this steamer with a new mizzen mast, which could be used to lift the propeller in its frame straight upwards through a slot which communicated with the steamer’s weather deck. This allowed the crew to ship and unship the propeller, without specialized dockyard facilities.

While building the large steam frigate HMS Terrible (1845 – fitted with paddle wheels), he moved on to designing and fitting his first complete naval propeller assembly. HMS Phoenix (1832) was modified from a paddle-wheeler to a screw steamer. Most of the essential elements of a Lang screw-fitted stern were now in place: propeller aperture, screw propeller, false stern or rudderpost behind the sternpost, a passage for lifting the screw upwards to the weather deck, and the means for lifting it out. The modifications to the Phoenix were underway when he got the “rush order” for the work on the two Northwest Passage exploration vessels.9

March 1845-dated plan of the modifications to the stern of both HMS Erebus and Terror, showing the massive rudder and stout construction. At left the screw propeller is raised and the full chock fills the aperture, while at right the simple two-bladed screw is installed and connected to the shaft which leads forward to the railroad steam locomotive that was installed in the hold. © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London ZAZ5683, CC BY-NC-ND

The main difference in modifying Erebus and Terror with auxiliary propulsion (with much less powerful steam engines converted from railway locomotives) was that the screws would only be fitted during occasional steaming, and chocks would fill each ship’s propeller aperture most of the time. This filler needed to streamlined into the lines of the hull to not weaken a vulnerable area, and to continue to guide the flow of water aft to the rudder. Lang’s other designs had the propeller fitting into its own iron frame, with the entire assembly lifted through a narrow passage to the deck, or lowered back in place. Erebus and Terror, by contrast, had rails that guided the propeller, which was lifted on its own.

A model of the stern of the Arctic ships as modified by Lang in 1845, showing the propeller aperture, and the bracing of both the stern post and new rudder post to permit the propeller to be hauled up into the trunk and on deck. A view from above shows the almost square passage for lifting or lowering the screw and installing the chock, and the smaller opening for the head of the rudder. Like at the wreck-site, the enormous rudder that would normally project aft is absent. SLR2253 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Phoenix was ready in February 1845, and Lang moved to the design of HMS Niger, which would go on to be used in a more balanced round of evaluations of screw-versus-paddle propulsion (with Niger and Basilisk a closer match than Rattler and Alecto had been). During April, the Franklin ships were modified with their unique combination of adapted railway steam locomotive – installed deep down in the after hold – and auxiliary propeller. Woolwich dockyards had its own highly specialized engineering facility – the “Steam Factory” – with the equipment and docking slips to install the new steam systems. Lieutenant Henry T.D. Le Vesconte of HMS Erebus provided a contemporary description of the work. Writing to his father on 2 April 1845 – after he discussed the excellent prospects for promotion that would come his way by serving with the Franklin Expedition – he noted: “The ships are at present in dock where we are rigging each and stowing them while the shipwrights are altering their sterns by bracing on abaft the stern posts an large mass of timber of the same thickness in which to work the screw propellers the engines will be put in next week[…].”10 After the engines and propellers were tested, and the ships finished provisioning, the Expedition departed from Greenhithe, 19 May 1845. (Continue to explore Terror’s screw propeller on the next page)

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Launching a Sad Little Boat Model

What if we could rebuild the “Boat Place” Franklin Expedition boat from its wrecked and scattered remains? In this post I will show my efforts to reconstruct the important boat I explored last week, at the same small scale as the HMS Terror wreck diorama.

The 2.4″/6cm long model on its sledge. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

In early 2025 I set about transforming a tiny plastic model to represent the boat and sledge that searchers looking for the lost Sir John Franklin 1845 Expedition came across in 1859 on the western coast of King William Island.1 My research is summarized in the “design dossier” section of my recent post on this discovery. Stages of my build resembled some of the real modifications ship carpenters would have worked at early in 1848, as they prepared to desert HM Ships Erebus and Terror – I sawed off the old square transom (visible in the below photo) and reshaped a sharp or rounded stern using Milliput putty around a balsa wood carved-out form (later removed), and built a new curved sternpost. I added two gudgeons, on the chance that the boat could have been fitted with a rudder. As of this writing, I believe the converted boat was based on the hull of the lighter 25’ Cutter instead of the Pinnace (see below boat dimensions section for detailed information).

The model boats. The sharper and narrower whale boats are 30 scale feet long. The original square transom of the model appears beside the two-dollar Canadian coin. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

I modelled the stanchions (the two posts rising out of the hull painted two-tone black and white) to be high, with gaff jaws at their tops (as described by Lt. Hobson). Some practical tests with the model revealed that the pronounced list observed in 1859 meant that, in order for Hobson’s team to have spotted anything emerging from the high drifts of snow, that stanchion would have to be significantly taller than represented in most reconstructions. With its gaping jaws open to the sky, it must have appeared a grim marker, indeed!

The model and sledge with a list down to starboard, buried in a drift of snow in my backyard. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

I decked over the bow and stern areas based on the Durand-Brager illustration (seen in the last post). The internal layout is similar to the whale boats that the ships carried. I like to think that the crews had a space in each boat to shelter an exhausted or ill member. A foredeck and covered stern sheets may also help explain the decade-long survival in decent condition of some of the artifacts that Hobson and McClintock discovered in the boat.

The gunwales were drilled for the thowells – tiny metal rods. I believe there was no washstrake boards, so I spaced the twenty-four thowells to support a washcloth that wrapped around the hull between the posts. Hobson noted these thowells (National Maritime Museum artifact AAA2143) were doubled up to assist the paddling. I paired them to create four rowing positions a side, and ran a rope along the top of the thowells, which the washcloth would have been rove into along its top edge.

The awning, and “cutaway” view. It is also possible that the awning connected directly to the gunwales, and not to the tops of the stanchions, which may not have been fitted while sledging on land. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Artifacts currently placed in the model hull include six modified oars (cut down with add-on blade extensions), the sheet block (AAA2198), the folded-up lead sheets (AAA2280), and some sailcloth that could be the awning or the washcloths (AAA2144). Basic pieces of boat equipment, such as two masts, and a rudder, have never been found. I have added a mast step amidships, in case information or evidence of these details turn up. When under sail, the boat would likely have carried lugsails on its two masts.2 I hope someday to model the ice grapple/anchor encountered by the searchers. The bewildering assortment of personal items, cutlery, packets of chocolate, and human remains have not been represented.

The model takes to the water. Credit:www.warsearcher.com

This boat and sledge combination may look unwieldy, especially when compared to the supremely well-adapted Inuit equivalents: animal hide boats (Umiaks) on sledges built of lightweight organic materials. But in 1859, Francis Leopold McClintock – a masterful long-distance sledge traveler – seems to have been impressed by the lost crews’ efforts at lightening it.

As with so many of the specifics about the 1845 Franklin Expedition, we continue along our own voyages of discovery. This is not the first interpretation of the Erebus Bay boat, nor will it be the last. I have created a sad miniature of that “melancholy relic.” [Read more in the Appendix below for technical info about the boats and sources]

Appendix-JC Ross (1839) and Franklin (1845) Expedition boat types and sizes and notes:

Interpreting that “Melancholy Relic” – the Erebus Bay Boatwreck

In this post I will describe the “boat place” boat at Erebus Bay that searchers looking for the lost Sir John Franklin 1845 Expedition came across in 1859. A later post will show my effort to construct a small model of this unique and sadly-fated boat, and propose some likely dimensions of the full complement of Franklin boats.

William Thomas Smith’s powerful 1895 work “They forged the last link with their lives: HMS Erebus and Terror, 1849-50.” The boat has several well-researched components, such as the washcloth around the gunwale and the ice grapnel. It also appears rigged for sailing with full masts stepped. (CC-BY-NC-ND) copyright: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich London

On May 23rd, 1859, at a wide bay on the frozen western shores of King William Island, a group looking for the lost Franklin Expedition found something incredible: A large boat on a sledge. Fourteen years after Franklin’s two ships had left Greenhithe, England, searchers had finally arrived at “ground zero” of the Franklin Expedition escape saga. They were a decade too late. Quartermaster Henry Toms and Carpenter’s Mate George Edwards – both members of Lt. William Hobson’s detached sledge party searching the coast as part of Francis Leopold McClintock’s Franklin search expedition – first spotted something odd projecting out of the snow as they scouted ahead of their mates.1 Closer examination revealed it to be a wooden stanchion, hanging like a beacon over the curved outlines of a gunwale in the high drifts of snow – beneath their feet was the ghostly outline of a large boat.

Chart showing the vicinity of King William Island with the various positions in which relics of the Arctic expedition under Sir John Franklin have been found / compiled by Lieut.-Cmdr. R.T. Gould, R.N [detail of]. “Boat Place” is indicated in red text at the base of Erebus Bay. Credit: Library and Archives Canada 3674742

The next morning Hobson’s group began in earnest a two-day process of clearing out the site and inventorying an unusual assortment of artifacts. That stanchion also marked a gravesite – the resting place of at least two unidentified Royal Navy crewmembers who were entombed within the hull. McClintock’s sledge team arrived a few days after Hobson had departed. His published description of what he called this “melancholy relic” is the standard account of the site.2 But Hobson had also drafted a report on his sledge team’s discoveries, which included a detailed description of the boat. We are indebted to archaeologist Dr. Douglas Stenton’s work resuscitating Hobson’s report about his journey from obscurity. Stenton’s publication of the report provides important additional details to help explore the boat place.3 Since Hobson’s team had excavated the snow from the boat and examined the objects found therein, the site had already been altered before McClintock’s party reached it. For a detailed list of the interesting and unusual contents of the boat, please see Russell Potter’s Visions of the North blog “The Boat” on the topic. My interest here remains focused on the boat itself.

This early 1860s illustration represents some of the major relics accurately, and shows the double-ended appearance and large proportions of the vessel. Credit: Durand-Brager, from Arthur Mangin, Voyages et Découvertes outre-mer au XIXe siècle, illustrations par Durand-Brager, 1863 ː Découverte des restes de l’expédition Franklin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Erebus Bay find remains the only Franklin Expedition boat and sledge, originally encountered reasonably intact, whose appearance and contents were described in detail. Its importance is tied to the slightly earlier discovery by Hobson’s party of the Victory Point record, in a sealed cylinder in a cairn about 60 km northeast. An update to a routine Admiralty form mentioned the abandonment of the long-beset ships, and recorded captains Crozier and Fitzjames’s intention to mount a desperate trek with their ailing crews towards Back’s Great Fish River. The note had no specific information about how they planned to cross the vast distances involved. The Boat Place discovery seemed to illustrate the mechanism of the evacuation plan: Crew members would use drag ropes to man-haul boat/sledge combinations down and around the coastline of King William Island. They would then unship the sledges and navigate the boats to the mainland and down a treacherous river towards a still-distant fur trading post. We don’t know how this plan changed as they struggled along, losing more men, and abandoning more boats. Some of the last of a group of weary men laid down to die, under another boat, on the mainland at Starvation Cove.

Back at Erebus Bay, the 28’/8.5 m boat was found just above the frozen shoreline. It listed dramatically down to starboard. A hole may have allowed wildlife – bears or scavenging foxes – access on the low side. Both boat and heavy sledge were oriented back towards the northeast, though if that was by intent (to return towards the ships), or by happenstance, no one can say. McClintock commented on both the boat’s lightness, and the sledge’s weight. He estimated the weight of the boat to be about 700-800 lbs while the sledge could have been as much as 650 lbs (the average weight of a 28-foot whaling boat, by contrast, was about 1,000 lbs).4 His observations were informed by his great expertise in sledging, acquired during his participation on this and earlier expeditions.

A remarkable 3D interpretation of “Boat Place.” This well-researched depiction of the boat and sledge is a recent and valuable addition to the artistic reconstructions of Erebus Bay. It was inspired by Matthew Betts’ reconstruction (see notes). The outlines of one of the ships in the distance heightens the pathos of this bleak scene. Certainly, the ships did transit by the Bay at some point after April 1848. Used with written permission of Case Western, who maintains a site with 3D printing models.

The boat had been modified by the ships’ carpenters – the square transom at the stern had been removed and the boat was now pointed or “sharp” at both ends, with a curving stem and sternpost, like a broader, deeper version of the two ships’ whale boats. The “carvel” planking (flush-edge-to-edge) of the top strakes of the hull had been replaced and lighter fir “clinker” planks (overlapping) re-laid in their place. An ingenious washcloth design of canvas was fitted in the place of the heavier washstrake boards. The set of six paddles – cut-down oars converted with larger “add-on” blades – indicate that the boat had been converted for inland/river navigation.

The stem, as drawn by McClintock in his 1859 edition of The voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic seas: A narrative of the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions (P 292) see notes section for link.

The distinctive stem of the boat was sketched by McClintock. This was recovered two decades later by American Franklin searcher Frederick Schwatka, who, while looking for records, was leading the first expedition on King William Island that encountered the sites in the summer, not under cover of snow and ice.

According to Inuit oral testimony, there was at least one other abandoned boat with many more skeletal remains that was located nearby.5 Both boats were dismantled in the early 1860s for their useful materials and fittings. Following the initial recovery of some artifacts, the dismantling, and Schwatka’s later removals, only archaeological traces and a memorial with bone fragments remain at the site – the last vestiges of a melancholy relic.

Another famous boat/sledge with a less tragic outcome, the James Caird, originally one of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 22.5’/6.9m boats from his exploration ship Endurance, being dragged across the sea ice in Antarctica, Dec. 1915. Credit: Frank Hurley : via wikimedia commons.
The Design Dossier and References (click here):

The Great Terror Wreck Repair[2025]

A basic principle of model shipwreck archaeology is that – in contrast to their full-size brethren – model shipwrecks do not necessarily deteriorate. In this post we explore updates to our miniature interpretation of HMS Terror’s wreck. The Terror mini-site has witnessed substantial improvement since 2022!

Terror’s rebuilt stern, with new rudderpost, gudgeons to hang the absent rudder, a broader stern tuck up to the sternlights (windows) and lower water-closet deckhouses aft of the double wheel.

An earlier post “Wrecking the Terror: Recreating an Epic Tale of Old Loss and New Discovery” summarized what we know about the actual wreck of HMS Terror located in Terror Bay, Nunavut, and my 2022 project to build a small diorama of the wreck site. Terror, an astonishingly well-preserved time capsule of the last Franklin Expedition, continues to captivate Franklin scholars and enthusiasts, archaeologists, naval historians, ship lovers, and the expanding fandom community who continue to enjoy the fictionalized drama of AMC’s “The Terror”(season 1).

HMS Terror site sketch, 2017 copyright Parks Canada 2021 [modified by rotating]. Source.

Turning now to the reduced-scale World, Terror was my first wreck diorama, and was followed by Breadalbane High Arctic shipwreck and HMS Ontario.

A “glass-bottomed boat” view of the updated wreck site, 80 scale feet under the acrylic case top. The shadow of the bowsprit points due north.

Two years after I thought the diorama was complete, I decided it was time to open the case up and revise some features. A sketch I had worked up independent of this project also helped motivate me to rebuild the Terror.

So what changes has the miniature site undergone? The entire lower hull was reshaped to better highlight the turn of Terror’s bilge, the overall body lines, and the broader aft quarters. The wreck was also placed at a more pronounced list to starboard. I added more detail to the debris of fallen masts and yards now located on the upper deck, which better interprets the complexity of the three-masted barque-rig and the chaotic event of the sinking. This “top-hamper” – and what appears to be the ridge poles of winter awnings – would have showered the deck and areas immediately adjacent to the hull with the types of debris we see in the site plan released by Parks Canada, and imagery released by their Underwater Archaeology Team.

The weather deck looking forwards from the taffrail.

Under all the accumulated silt and growth, there is likely to be a bewildering variety of artifacts, which my interpretation can only begin to hint at. The ship’s boat off the port quarter of the wreck was given a modest update: A more accurate fallen davit resting across the stern.

The bows including the port bower anchor, the hawse holes, the catshead with whisker boom, and other oddities of the polar-modified bomb vessels. under the reinforced channels, the massive ice shield of iron plates shows corrosion and marine life.

The water-closet structures at the stern were completely rebuilt with lower roofs and sliding doors opening to the sides. They still have detailed “privy” interiors. A small cavity at the aft end of the starboard closet shows where the flag locker was located.

The new stern water closets, the double wheel and the captain’s skylight just forward of that. In the foreground, a pipe leads down to the captain’s small stove.

The interior of the wreck diorama remains practically inaccessible, and no substantial work was done belowdecks during our “great repair.” I do hope that, in a future season of modelling work, a more fulsome recording of the detailed interior spaces of the model could be attempted. For now, we had a quick examination of Capt. Crozier’s miniature great cabin through the stern windows; his captain’s desk remains in place, but the drawers are still modelled tightly shut. No miniature records have yet been recovered.

Light shines down through the captain’s skylight onto the surface of Crozier’s desk.

Those with keen eyes will note that the team of scuba-diving archaeologists have not been reinstalled in their customary positions. The site is currently under ice and snow, and they will not return to their program of scale archaeology until the next dive season commences in August, 2025. Could I contemplate a scenario where new information would compel me to get back to work revising the Terror diorama? You bet your sextant I could!

The diorama with its winter cover of ice and snow.

Rise Again Terror Boat: The Surface Needs You!

Raise the Terror…NO! Raise the HMS Terror’s Boat! Why? Read on!

A year ago we “floated” the idea of raising an important artifact of the lost 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition, from one of the two incredible shipwrecks at the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site: A ship’s boat from HMS Terror. In the intervening months, we have bulked-up on our boat-raising research, and have circled back to this topic. We’re doubling down: the World NEEDS the Terror boat back on dry land.

A simulated underwater archaeologist contemplates raising the 1/125 scale model boat wreck on our diorama of the wreck site of HMS Terror. Credit: www.warsearcher.com

During September 2024, Parks Canada underwater archaeologists were again on site in Nunavut, in the high Canadian Arctic. They were conducting an archaeological program at the extraordinary shipwrecks of HM Ships Erebus and Terror. Early indications suggest that they had a long dive season! We are very much anticipating the release of information about newly-recovered artifacts and other discoveries.

There is an artifact that we hope someday will be recovered: one substantially intact 23-foot/7m ship’s cutter. The boat was pulled down as Terror sank in a bay along the southwestern coast of King William Island later named, by coincidence, Terror Bay. Lost about 175 years ago, it has, like the rest of the Terror site, remained astonishingly intact, 80’/14,4m beneath the freezing waters of the Bay.

HMS Terror site plan, ca. 2017, available online as of late 2021. The boat is marked “Cutter” at lower right. Credit: Parks Canada source.

In the earlier post, we explored the idea that this important artifact could be raised from its location on the seabed off the port quarter of the Terror hull (the same caveats still apply).1 The boat wreck could then be conserved and stabilized for eventual public exhibition. Visitors would be able to engage with a remote National Historic Site of Canada by interacting with a substantial Franklin Expedition artifact. We also proposed that it could be replaced with a wooden replica, carefully deposited in position back at Terror Bay. This replica boat would replace the original at the wreck site: It would aesthetically preserve the integrity and character of the site; it could also help monitor changes to the seabed environment that may be less apparent on the original wreck structures; and it could provide powerful commemorative options for an in situ memorial, that would remain, marking this important site for generations to come. Why not have a memorial boat serve as a submerged cenotaph, with plaques in three languages – English, French, Inuktitut– to commemorate the lost 129 men of both the Erebus and the Terror?

This sunken cutter is the only boat from either ship that has survived the destruction of the Expedition in any semblance of its original condition. It would be a signature object around which to build commemorative and interpretive programs. After treatment, it could be placed on display at the Nattilik Heritage Centre in Gjoa Haven, or another suitable museum.

The Nattilik Heritage Centre, Gjoa Haven, taken during a visit from Adventure Canada cruise members in 2019. The Centre houses many interesting artifacts, and the exterior nods to both Inuit and explorer traditions. Credit: Kerry Raymond, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There was an era in underwater archaeology when raising a wooden artifact that had been immersed for any length of time was a recipe for destroying it. Sunken wood becomes saturated with water molecules, and swells. This alters the original properties of the wooden structures. After it is exposed to air and dries out, the artifacts become fragile to the point of crumbling. During the 1960s, starting with the famous archaeological work on the Vasa warship wreck in Stockholm Harbour, conservators learned to treat wood and metal artifacts with Polyethylene Glycol (PEG). This compound can replace the water content in the wood, to help it retain its basic dimensions and structure, and allow it to be stabilized for long-term preservation.

The Vasa’s treated hull at right, with a ship’s boat at lower left, and a large-scale model at upper left, all on display at the Vasamuseet, Stockholm. Vasa was found to be carrying three boats, including this 38’/11.7m elbing boat, recovered from the 105’/32m seabed. Credit: Pierre Goiffon via Wikimedia Commons.

The success of a project of this importance would depend on securing an elite team of archaeologists and conservators. The good news is we did not have to look far afield! The archaeologists currently working on the wrecks – Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team (UAT) – have some of the most relevant expertise in the World at successfully completing exactly this type of project. They have surveyed, disassembled, conserved, and reassembled sunken boats from National Historic Sites of Canada – and they’ve done an incredible job. During the late 1960s Parks Canada was an early adopter of PEG treatment to help conserve raised boat wrecks.2 Since then, they have tackled larger and more complex projects.

This and the other volumes in the edited multi-volume Parks Canada series show the ambitious archaeological project at Red Bay Labrador. The project is the major precedent for the current work on HMS Erebus and Terror (Cover illustration by Carol Piper). For full citation see endnotes.

At the Red Bay National Historic Site, Labrador, the remains of a 90-foot long, 250-300 ton Basque whaling ship, usually identified as the San Juan, were methodically excavated from 1977-1992. A thrilling discovery was made in 1983 under the timbers at the stern of the 16th Century shipwreck: The remains of a well-preserved chalupa-type whaling boat. The whaling boat is believed to have been dragged under at the moment of the shipwreck, in a similar manner to Terror’s cutter. The project was extensively described in a multi-volume publication by Parks Canada.3 It was a remarkable find – a missing link in the development of whaling boats and a Basque precursor of North American-built whaling boats. After meticulous planning and preparations, the decision was taken to raise the remains of the four-hundred year old vessel to reassemble it. An article by Charles Moore, a leading Parks Canada archaeologist, and a piece on the Parks’ website – “Archaeology of a Sixteenth-Century Basque Whaling Boat” – describe this work.4

The Parks Canada conservation laboratories in the south of Ottawa, ca. 2023. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

The recovered timbers were shipped to Ottawa, stabilized and treated with PEG, and then painstakingly reformed and reassembled in Parks’ conservation facilities. In July 1998, after a nerve-wracking drive back to Labrador, the 26-foot boat was placed on display in a new interpretation centre back in the community of Red Bay. Today, the artifact continues to offer visitors an accessible connection to the history of Basque whaling in North America, and the National Historic Site under the adjacent waters of Red Bay. A chapter of Parks Canada’s multi-tome series on the Archeological program and discoveries of Red Bay, written by archaeologists Ryan Harris and Brad Loewen, documents the UAT’s meticulous efforts to survey, excavate, raise, and reconstruct this boat.

Reconstructed Chalupa 16th Century Basque whaling boat raised from seabed by Parks Canada and conserved at the Red Bay National Historic Site Credit: Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It was especially challenging to extricate this boat from the whaling ship remains: the chalupa had been crushed by the bulk of the San Juan’s stern and flattened later by collapsing ship timbers. It was also sandwiched between articulated wreck elements. Terror’s cutter, by contrast, appears to be substantially intact and disassociated from the main site. Indeed, from the above site plan, and Parks Canada photos and film, it appears to be sitting pretty, filled with protective sediment and lightly embedded in the muck. What worked for the Red Bay site during the 1990s can now work for Terror Bay in our years. Raising the boat could be the type of tantalizing project that would sustain popular enthusiasm for the meticulous archaeological investigation of both sites over the coming decades.

The preserved artifacts mentioned in the text and notes of this post have all become prestige objects to build museums, visitor centres, and collections around. This is what we would wish for the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Sites of Canada. It does feel like it is time we start talking about raising the Terror’s boat.

A simulated underwater archaeologist has been convinced about raising the model boatwreck on our diorama of the wreck site of HMS Terror. Credit: www.warsearcher.com

Rise again, rise again, that her name not be lost
To the knowledge of men. We’ll make the Terror ship’s boat rise again! [paraphrase of Stan Rogers’ The Mary Ellen Carter]

We asked a year ago and are asking again: Have we convinced you? Let us know in a comment!

REFERENCES

Erebus Emerges from the Shadows

Ten years ago, the sea gifted us back a legendary ship, lost for almost seventeen decades: HMS Erebus. As visitors to our site know, there is a lot of Terror talk on this blog! HMS Terror, was the “other ship” on Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 expedition to discover a Northwest Passage. We had been neglecting Erebus, and are now trying to make amends! Interpreting a variety of archival sources, we decided to attempt a simplified set of plans of this incredible ship to mark the important anniversary of Erebus being back in our World:

Our reconstruction of HMS Erebus in her 1845 (final) configuration: stern/bow and side elevation. Credit:www.warsearcher.com adapted from National Maritime Museum plan ZAZ5673 and other technical info and used with written permission of NMM staff. Dotted lines represent features documented on Terror wreck, which could just as well have been located on Erebus, while anchor positions are from 1845 artistic representations of both vessels at sea, click the “design dossier” link at bottom for more information on this reconstruction.

On 7 September 2014, Parks Canada, a key member of the Victoria Strait Expedition – a consortium of government and private partners – definitively located one of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships. A promising sonar target had been identified in Wilmot and Crampton Bay, Nunavut, on 2 September, after archaeological finds on a nearby island had redirected the search. The Parks Canada Underwater Archaeology Team (UAT) deployed a Remotely Operated Vehicle to the well-preserved remains of a shipwreck, located in only 11 meters / 36 feet of water. By the afternoon of the 7th, it was clear to the team that the vessel was one of Franklin’s elusive ships. The UAT informed Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Office. Further investigation by the UAT dive team allowed them to definitively identify the ship on 1 October as HMS Erebus.1 The discovery tied into a rich tradition of Inuit oral history, which had suggested, down through the 166-years of searching, that one of the lost ships had come to grief on the western coast of the Adelaide Peninsula.

The moment had finally come for Erebus, that personification of darkness, of gloom, of the unseen World, to come back into the light; it was time for Sir John Franklin’s lost flagship to be restored to the public consciousness. The discovery was an immediate sensation, and ten years on, the yearly program of archaeology – of surveying, imaging, artifact recovery and conservation – continues to be followed with great enthusiasm.

Ryan Harris (left), Parks Canada project lead, alongside Prime Minister Stephen Harper (center) and Minister of the Environment Leona Aglukkaq, announcing the discovery of HMS Erebus 9 Sep. 2014 [cropped]. Credit: Jason Ransom Library and Archives Canada R16093-50252-9-E.

On the day the find was announced, 9 September 2014, as media reports appeared on my device, I was staring at a damaged ship’s wheel and a bell recovered from another famous shipwreck – and one of Canada’s worst maritime disasters – RMS Empress of Ireland. These were on display in the exhibit Empress of Ireland: Canada’s Titanic at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. I bought a commemorative bell, walked across the Alexandra Bridge to stand under the statue of explorer Samuel de Champlain – wielding his famous astrolabe over Nepean Point (now Kìwekì Point) – which looks out over the Canadian capital – and rang the bell to celebrate the discovery! It doesn’t have to make sense, it just felt right.

RMS Empress of Ireland wheel, recovered from the wreck off from Pointe-au-Père QC. Taken 9 Sep. 2014 at the Canadian Museum of History (centenary of the sinking) exhibit.

HMS Erebus was a Hecla class bomb vessel completed in 1826, long after the conflict the “bombs” were designed for had terminated. This small warship was about 370 tons burthen, about 105′ / 32m on the gundeck (later considered the lower deck), with a beam (width) of about 28′ / 8.5m. The class was originally armed with two massive mortars – 10” and 13” varieties – housed in rotating carriages in firing beds overtop of reinforced cribbing, that also stored their massive shells. The mortars were located along the centerline of the deck between the fore and main masts. A few cannon installed along the gundeck rounded out the armament, and enabled the ships to defend themselves and perform auxiliary service as a convoy escorts – a useful secondary role during the Napoleonic Wars, when enemy warships and privateers were a constant worry to keeping merchant sea lanes open. The first Heclas were completed at the very twilight of the Wars, and took no active role. Hecla and Fury did participate in the August 1816 Bombardment of Algiers, firing hundreds of shells into the fortified city. In 1819, to lead William Edward Parry’s first exploration mission north, Hecla was converted to the radically different role of polar discovery vessel. For Parry’s next two exploration missions (1821-1825), Fury accompanied Hecla. This revived a tradition of the crews of two reinforced bombs working together on polar missions.2

His Majesty’s Discovery ships, Fury and Hecla by Arthur Parsey (Artist & Engraver) Charles Joseph Hullmandel (Printer) in 1823. Both show early “Parry scheme” modifications for Arctic service, with broadside armament and mortars removed, reinforced channels, and bow iceguards. credit: National Maritime Museum PAH9224.

Erebus, completed the next year at the Royal Navy’s Pembroke, Wales, dockyard, remained in ordinary (out of commission), awaiting a day when the Royal Navy would have need of this compact, incredibly specialized warship. Her first missions saw her employed in the Mediterranean making ports-of-call visits and showing the flag, the typical peacetime routines of the “wooden walls” – the ships of Britain’s massive naval fleet.3 In 1839, Erebus’s moment came to be modified, but it was for an entirely new theatre of polar operations: The exploration of Antarctica. Erebus was selected to be the lead ship in James Clark Ross’s expedition south. The older and smaller Terror (commanded by Francis Crozier) accompanied her. The waist was decked over in a continuous weather deck, as the mortars were unshipped and the massive beds were removed. The ship’s basic skeleton – keel, frames and knees – was reinforced, hull planking was doubled, and this new weather deck was overlayed with diagonal planking. An enormous ice channel or chock now extended from bows to the stern, girdling the hull more completely than earlier exploration ships. The elaborate seven-light (windowed) stern with overhanging quarter galleries was reduced to five lights across the transom, in a simplified design. The entire underbody of the ship was clad in a shining layer of copper plating, but certain areas, such as the bows and waterline, were reinforced with special thickened copper. The vessel that emerged from refit looked less like a pint-sized frigate from the Wars, and more like a bulked-up whaling ship.4

HMS Erebus as fitted for the 1839 Ross Antarctic expedition. (ZAZ5673) © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

The crews of both vessels succeeded brilliantly on their four-year surveying odyssey, charting vast coastal expanses and ice shelves of the most southern continent, and making important scientific discoveries in biology, zoology, and magnetism. Operating in totally uncharted waters was perilous work, with Erebus and Terror both being damaged in an almost fantastical collision while dodging icebergs. Despite the hazardous environment, casualties on the voyage were incredibly light.

“The Erebus passing through the chain of bergs, 13 Mar. 1842” by John Edward Davis (who was Second Master in HMS Terror) depicts the moments after the collision of the two ships when the damaged Erebus sought refuge in the lee of an Iceberg to make emergency repairs. As Terror maneuvers in the distance, Erebus has lost some of her rig, her bowsprit, and her starboard cathead. Crew are frantically trying to save the bower anchor. PAF0593 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

After repairs and a brief lay-up, the “Discovery Duo” was selected for the next major polar effort: Sir John Franklin’s 1845 bid to chart the last section of the Northwest Passage along the top of the North American landmass. Another major rebuild followed. A reinforced iceguard of massive iron plates was fitted to the stem and forefoot under the bows. A radical alteration to the stern timbers allowed each ship to operate a screw propeller, powered by a converted railway steam locomotive (please see our subsequent post about HMS Terror’s screw propeller to explore this interesting technological update). When not in use, the screw could be uncoupled from the drive shaft, and raised into a protective cavity that hung inside the stern. These small engines, with a very limited supply of coal for fuel, were intended to help the ships navigate in the challenging Arctic environment without being fully dependent on the wind’s vagaries.

The Franklin expedition ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, setting out with fanfare in late May 1845 from Greenhithe. This was originally published for the 24 May 1845 edition of the Illustrated London News. (Via wikimedia commons) The location of the prominent scuppers along the ice chock of Erebus (in white) seems to indicate Erebus is at right.

Franklin, installed on Erebus, would lead the expedition. James Fitzjames commanded the flagship, while Crozier, Second-in-Command of the effort, remained in his familiar Terror. As most visitors to this site likely are aware, this was to be a one-way trip for ships and crew, that ended in disaster, shipwrecks, boatwrecks, and a trail of abandoned items, burials and bones. Of the lost 129 expedition members, 67 had served on Erebus. The hulk somehow wound up wrecked in Wilmot and Crampton Bay, south of King William Island. Just like the wrecking of HMS Terror nearby, the exact details of the Erebus sinking have yet to be established.

Archaeological reconstruction of the wreck, discovered ten years ago. The site plan was completed in 2017 and shared online in 2021. Credit: Parks Canada, under Crown Copyright

What were the main differences between Terror (Vesuvius class) and Erebus (Hecla class)? These were not sisterships, though they appeared so similar most observers may have thought they were. Both ships were stout, and very similar to merchant designs, with their bluff bows and broad hulls. The differences were summarized by Dr. Matthew Betts, an expert in HMS Terror’s design and history, in his blog post “What’s the Difference – Franklin’s ships compared“. Henry Peake’s original 1813 design for the Hecla class emerged iteratively out of his earlier design for the Vesuvius class. The enlargement of 50 tons displacement and deepening of the hull are less visible than the overall impression the original plans provide: Terror’s lines harkened back to a time of more elaborate decoration and sweeping sheer (sheer being the lengthwise curvature up by the bows and stern, down at the waist); Erebus was more upright, with stem and stern posts that dropped from the ship’s built-up rails almost straight down, and a flatter sheer. The very bottom of the ship, out from the massive keel, was broader in Erebus, while Terror had a noticeably more “V” shaped lower hull.5

HMS Erebus and Terror in the Ross Sea. Erebus is at left. John Edward Davis, R.N. (1815-1877), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

During the 1845 refit, Terror’s bowsprit was seated much further aft, so that this heavy mast angled out forwards at the level of the rails. Erebus’s bowsprit remained in its traditional location, piercing the bow lower down, between the anchor hawse holes, and just above the visible ledge of the ice channel. As detailed in the “Design Dossier” link below, what is revealed from a close interpretation of plans and depictions of these vessels through their lengthy service is that Erebus, and the Heclas, had upper counters beneath their stern windows, whereas Terror and her two Vesuvius class sisters did not. Erebus also had six large scuppers a side that discharged via pipes halfway down the ice channel. These drained the weatherdeck. Terror had four large scuppers that discharged higher up, level with the deck and above the channel. Thus, by the time of their departure from Greenhithe on 19 May 1845, the ships featured distinctive elements to sort one out from the other at the bows, amidships, and aft.

May Fluhmann (1906-1985), a notable Franklin researcher, commissioned this model of Erebus during the mid-1950s. We know based on her archival records at Library and Archives Canada that she worked diligently to secure the ship’s plans. We now also know it to not be a strong likeness, of the indicated 1845 appearance. Credit: Library and Archives Canada May Fluhmann fonds.

To conclude, when it comes to the design of these two incredibly unique vessels, we are still very much on a voyage of discovery! It has been a decade since the heady days of the Victoria Straits Expedition’s location of Franklin’s lost flagship, HMS Erebus. Much has been discovered, and much remains to be found at both Erebus and Terror sites. Along with artifacts that allow us to explore the human tragedy – the loss of two shiploads of exceptional individuals – our knowledge about the exact design and advanced technology of both ships will continue to expand over the next decades. Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team is at the Franklin ships at this exact moment! What will they find this year?

“Westward from the Davis Strait, tis’ there twas’ said to lie; the sea route to the Orient, for which so many died. Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered broken bones, and a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones” (S. Rogers Northwest Passage – 1981)

CLICK HERE to read the “Design Dossier” for HMS Erebus, and Acknowledgments

The Design Dossier: To create my reconstruction and simplified plans, I had to interpret a variety of sometimes contradictory sources. This project followed on from the reconstruction of HMS North Star, Franklin search ship, and HMS Ontario historic shipwreck. This may only interest a few readers, so I will summarize this research. It adds up to a unique perspective on HMS Erebus. My starting point was the excellent archival collection of plans held at the National Maritime Museum (NMM), Greenwich. My simplified reconstruction omits some frame lines along the midships section for clarity, and because I drew the plans at a small but consistent scale of 1:125. A particularly fine set of technical drawings that show the body plans or hull lines exist at the NMM for Erebus sisters Meteor (1823) and Fury. These made it possible for me to reconstruct both the overall hull lines, and also the bow and stern elevations and body plans for Erebus. Without close adherence to these plans it would be virtually impossible to reconstruct these ships, absent more information from the wreck archaeology. Another guide in this reconstruction was the artistic works that Lt. Graham Gore [Scott Polar Research Institute item 35195957] and Capt. Owen Stanley [National Library of Australia collection item 2484731] created in 1845, as the squadron moved north. I am privileging their first-hand observations over certain other technical evidence. Gore, as First Lieutenant, would have had direct involvement with readying the vessels for sea in 1845, whereas Stanley had sailed in Terror during the 1836 Frozen Strait Expedition, and temporarily accompanied the squadron northwards while commanding HMS Blazer, a steamship towing Erebus. Gore sent his artistic depictions back for Lady Jane Franklin while the expedition members posted their final letters from Disko Bay, Greenland (Qeqertarsuup tunua).

  1. Erebus had a large convex iron iceguard fitted to the bows. Parks Canada’s archaeology has documented iron plating extending from the stem all the way back to be level with the foremast. Their commissioned wrecksite diorama (built by professional model builder Fred Werthman) also demonstrates this expanse of plating. Correspondence with Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team and Dr. Matthew Betts have substantiated this feature. This appears to be larger than any polar-modified ship from before the Expedition and any of the search vessels that followed in the wake of the lost ships (with the possible exception of the armoured “beaks” of HM Steam Vessels Pioneer and Intrepid).
  2. A distinctive difference in the sterns of the ships is that Erebus always had an upper counter, whereas Terror never had one. An upper counter (see below HMS Victory model) is a space traditionally found under the lowest level of lights (windows) on the stern of a vessel, which also often has the nameplate or lettering identifying the ship. Developing to its classical appearance in the early 18th century, the design of the upper counter was mostly aesthetic, and made a visual transition to the more concave space of the lower counter (where the ship’s rudder usually enters the stern, and stern chase ports, if they exist, are located):This small feature can be readily seen under the stern windows of Parry’s ships in the illustration of Hecla and Fury at top. Terror and her two Vesuvius class sisters (RMG ZAZ5615), by contrast, were more constricted aft and had less deck height in the great cabin, so no upper counter existed under the lights, even when the ship had full, frigate-like stern and quarter galleries. Terror lacked the upper counter in 1813, in 1836, and again in 1845, according to the NMM collections of plans, and a variety of depictions. The upper counter is documented for Erebus on Meteor and Fury‘s 1823 plans and her own 1839 plans as rebuilt for the James Clark Ross Antarctica mission.
  3. This era saw a lot of experimentation in naval architecture around the stern, to establish the most optimal means of fitting a screw propeller into an existing wooden warship. Oliver Lang (the shipwright for the 1845 modifications to both ships) was at the very heart of this innovative furor, and was involved in the design of the stern of revolutionary new types of steam sloops, frigates, and line-of-battle ships, all modified or designed from the ground up to fit the new models of screw propellers (please see my subsequent post exploring Lang’s contributions to steam-propelled warship design). I believe, when he came to modify these two veteran exploration ships with new propulsion, he omitted the traditional lower counter design from under the transom/stern galleries of both ships, rounding the tuck up, or carrying and uniting the hull planking upwards to meet the transom timbers. His 1845 technical drawing for the stern of both ships (RMG ZAZ5683) is an approximation, even when overlaid to produce the June 1845 “green ink” updates on the 1836 Terror plan (RMG ZAZ5672). The plan had to work for both ships, which had some significant differences in dimensions and stern post orientation. This plan’s inaccuracy can easily be observed when it was traced over to the 1836 Terror plan: The 1845 updates create lines at the level of the ship’s upper rail that have no sheer and terminate hanging in space! Those lines are a simple tracing of the left side sectional stern plan from the 1845 technical drawing, not the right side exterior elevation. This means they are a sectional view imposed inaccurately over Terror’s 1836 lines, with nothing added about what this all looked like from the outside! My interpretation is one of three possible options for the 1845 stern: Round the tuck up to the level of the upper counter in Erebus and the transom/stern galleries in Terror; round the tuck up to the level of the galleries and also remove Erebus’s upper counter; deviate from Lang’s 1845 technical drawing and retain the lower counter in both ships, with Erebus likely also retaining her existing upper counter. As I hope I have indicated with linked examples above, the green tracing on the 1836/45 Terror plans are not accurate – but especially not for the larger Erebus! Only the wreck archaeology will determine the true dimensions and precise geometry of either ship’s 1845 stern configuration. I believe that Lang, familiar with what had happened to Terror’s old-style traditional stern during her 1836 Frozen Straits Expedition ordeal – the near fatal damage to the stern timbers – would have followed his general program of propeller installations, and planked the strongest stern he could have into the two ships- to give the vessels the best chance of not being destroyed by Arctic ice. In my plan, I drew in a “quarter fashion piece” element which tails downwards and which would have flanked the original lower counter in Erebus. This is a stylistic decision and also allows me to easily pencil in a lower counter dividing line towards the stern post if I end up being wrong!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: We would like to acknowledge the assistance of staff at the National Maritime Museum / Royal Museums Greenwich, as well as HMS Terror expert Dr. Matthew Betts, and Jonathan Moore at the Parks Canada Underwater Archaeology Team, both of whom generously corresponded with me about elements of Erebus’s design over the course of my often-ambling 2022-24 correspondence. Their assistance does not imply that they endorse the above interpretations.

Notes:

  1. This summary of events is drawn from several chapters of John Geiger and Alanna Mitchell Franklin’s Lost Ship: The Historic Discovery of HMS Erebus (Toronto: HarperCollins Pub. 2015). Ryan Harris, Parks Canada’s project lead on Erebus, provided an incredible guided tour of the wreck in October 2014: https://youtu.be/ZxH18XKqt-k?si=OCrC1XHYZa6AfpvC ↩︎
  2. Earlier expeditions of the 19th Century had used converted whaling ships, but Captain Christopher Middleton’s 1741-42 Northwest Passage Expedition featured the converted bomb vessel HMS Furnace, while Constantine Phipps 1773 Expedition “towards the North Pole” (which a young Horatio Nelson journeyed on) used a pair of bombs, HMS Racehorse and Carcass. Fury did not survive her Arctic ordeal, and, it is hoped, one day this near-sister of Erebus, with earlier Arctic modifications, will be discovered near Fury Beach, Somerset Island, Nunavut. ↩︎
  3. Michael Palin’s book, Erebus: The Story of a Ship (Random House: 2019), is an essential source for information about all periods of the vessel’s service. The equivalent work for Terror is Dr. Matthew Betts’ HMS TERROR: The Design, Fitting and Voyages of a Polar Discovery Ship (Seaforth pub.: 2023) ↩︎
  4. Hecla was in fact sold for conversion to a whaling vessel in 1831, and a very good whaler was she! ↩︎
  5. In technical parlance, Terror had slightly more steep-rising floors. A useful description of the changes to sterns, bows, and sheer in the first half of the nineteenth century can be found in Dr. Frank Howard’s Sailing Ships of War 1400-1860 (Greenwich: Conway Maritime Press, 1971) P271. Howard also mentions an interesting and cautionary issue about interpreting contemporary 19th C. naval plans: The ability to draft accurate technical depictions to represent new design elements on paper lagged behind the innovations themselves. ↩︎

Breadalbane Part 4: 171 years on – Still the Beautiful Wreck!

A hundred-and-seventy-one-years ago, crew members of the supply ship Breadalbane gazed forwards from the bow rails, looking towards the forbidding cliffs and unknown shores of Beechey Island, in the High Arctic. Today, the spot where they once stood is preserved 310 feet/ 95m underwater, near those same cliffs. Breadalbane’s shipwreck endures as a magnificent time capsule of a remarkable era of Arctic exploration.

Breadalbane’s broken bowsprit and head rails. The bowsprit was most likely sheared off as the ship plunged through the ice. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright

This fourth post will focus on the program of archaeological research conducted ten years ago by Parks Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces at Beechey Island, Nunavut. We will also provide a brief description of the wreck, accompanied with remarkable images. The first post summarized the loss of this supply ship in the High Arctic in August 1853, while provisioning search expeditions looking for the Franklin Expedition. The second post described the original 1980s discovery and exploration of the wreck. The third post showcased the construction of an archaeologically-based scale diorama of this National Historic Site of Canada.

Two decades after the last visits to Breadalbane, there was a revived interest in exploring the wreck. The 2012 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) work involved a preparatory survey by a naval dive team using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Parks Canada archaeological participation would correspond with the 2014 iteration of Operation NUNALIVUT, a CAF exercise in the Arctic.

Combined dive team photo Operation NUNALIVUT 2014 with Beechey Island’s cliffs in the background (left to right): Jonathan Moore (Parks Canada Underwater Archaeology Team), Jesse Rodocker (SeaBotix Inc.), Petty Officer Second Class Geoff White, Petty Officer First Class Yves Bernard, Leading Seaman Luke Therrien, Lieutenant Greg Oickle and Leading Seaman Quinn Audette from Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic). Credit: Crown Copyright Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces RE2014-0013-140 (cropped)

This visit involved surveying and filming efforts employing SeaBotix ROVs, one of which used multibeam sonar to guide the exploration to sites of interest, and to construct a detailed visual survey of the site. Parks Canada Underwater Archaeologist Jonathan Moore was the permit holder for the archaeological program, working from an ice camp 330’/100m above the seafloor.

One of the Seabotix ROVs in the ice hole above Breadalbane Credit: Crown Copyright Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces RE2014-0013-139 [cropped]

We are very excited to share stunning ROV images from this visit. Some photos were generously provided to us by Parks Canada, and others are from the Department of National Defence. These allow us to navigate around and inside this wrecked supply barque to note some of her outstanding features.*

The ship’s port bower anchor, resting on the seabed near the copper-clad stem. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright

The return to Breadalbane was an exciting phase in the archaeological survey of Franklin Expedition-related sites, continuing on from the 2010-2011 Parks Canada-led location and dives on HMS Investigator at Mercy Bay, Northwest Territories, and coming a short time before the discovery of Sir John Franklin’s lost flagship, HMS Erebus, in September 2014. One objective of the underwater survey was to assess changes to the Breadalbane since the 1980s.

The broken port quarter rail and rear of the unusually large deckhouse, showing fallen roof planking, the tight fit with the ship’s side rails, and the small aft deck. This area is little changed in 30 years. Credit: Crown Copyright Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces RE2014-0013-133

Though Breadalbane is often treated as a footnote in the saga of Arctic exploration, and as “also wrecked” in the high-drama surrounding the lost Franklin Expedition, it is an incredible site – many areas have not witnessed significant deterioration.

Breadalbane’s well-preserved lower hull, clad in copper sheathing, and stern post (the rudder lies under the wreck on the seabed). This shows the draft marks that climb up the post. Credit: Crown Copyright Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces RE2014-0013-131

The marine life growing at the wreck site is as stunning as what Dr. Joe MacInnis and his teammates encountered in the early 1980s.

Breadalbane’s capstan between the forward wall of the deckhouse and a companionway. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright

Breadalbane helps us understand the range of options available to the British Admiralty for reinforcing mid-19th Century vessels intended for polar service. This supply vessel was not a “paper ship”, totally unprepared for the rigors of Arctic service, but rather received hybrid modifications which were suitable to her intended role: “Continuation service” outbound for the Lancaster Sound.1

This shows a sectional plan of HMS Enterprise, a barque similar to Breadalbane, which was given the full reinforcement for polar service on the Franklin searches in 1848. This plan contrasted her internal arrangements and hull prior to modification (right) with the polar modifications (left). Breadalbane did not receive most of these upgrades. The most obvious external difference is there was no heavy ice chock or channel which girdled the hull. Credit: © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London J7311

Breadalbane was going north in the high summer. The ship was not intended to be beset by ice – frozen-in over the long, dark months. The commanding officer of HMS Phoenix, Captain Edward Augustus Inglefield, was under specific instructions to unload Breadalbane’s vital cargo at Beechey, and then get her turned around and on her way back south before the season changed and all the navigable waters froze.

Breadalbane’s interior spaces. The Lower deck looking aft from near the companionway, towards closed cabins near the stern. Note the heavy timbers to reinforce the hull. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright

An 1853 Lloyd’s special survey report notes that the outside of the bows was shielded by 4″ thick Canadian elm planks, which extended 7′ / 2.1m below the water, from the stem back to a point even with the foremast. This was a lighter-duty version of the combined sheathing and iron-plates installed at the bows of the Franklin search ships.

Lower area of the starboard bow. This view shows the coppering of the lower hull and the beginning of the elm sheathing that extended 7′ down from the waterline and forwards to the stem. Credit: used with written permission of Parks Canada, who retain copyright

Ultimately, these reinforcements did not save the ship from being crushed. The unexpected movement of the ice south of Beechey Island on 21 August, 1853 was instantly fatal to the fabric of the lower hull. The ice created a large rent that stretches for 70’/ 21m along the starboard side, revealing the ship’s mostly empty cargo hold.

The ROV explores the massive hole in the starboard side, running along the bilge. The ice punched through the copper sheathing, ship’s side, and interior framing, before continuing on to damage supporting knees, bulwarks, and decks. Credit: Crown Copyright Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces RE2014-0013-130

I would like to acknowledge the significant assistance of Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team, and especially Jonathan Moore, who generously shared Parks’ substantial research and the above images.

  1. This is how the Captain of HMS North Star, William J.S. Pullen, described Breadalbane in a letter to John Barrow, written at Beechey Island soon after the sinking. At this time North Star was frozen-in on the inland side of Beechey. As noted in the first blog, the Lloyd’s survey report of early 1853 is an important source for interpreting the modifications Breadalbane received for her “Continuation Service” (a termed used in their survey) in early 1853. ↩︎

HMS North Star CRUSHES IT in the Arctic and Saves the Searchers!

HMS North Star was an outstanding ship with a most fitting name. Like her namesake, the Pole Star, she guided mariners back home from the edges of the charted World. Though overshadowed by the lost Sir John Franklin 1845 Expedition ships Erebus and Terror, and the famous vessels searching for them, Resolute and Investigator (to name two), North Star did exceptional work in the Arctic.1 Her transformation from fighting corvette to expedition depot ship may not seem as interesting as the refits those other ships received. Actually, the 1849 rebuild created an Arctic juggernaut – a vessel tough enough to withstand collisions, groundings, ice “nipping,” and general Arctic pummeling during two missions over the course of five busy years. When all other ships had to be abandoned, North Star brought the Sir Edward Belcher Expedition home – saving the Franklin searchers!

Our interpretation of HMS North Star’s updated appearance ca. 1849-1854, ready for the Arctic! Credit:www.warsearcher.com adapted from National Maritime Museum plan ZAZ3213 and other technical info and used with written permission of NMM staff.

HMS North Star was launched at Woolwich dockyard in 1824 and completed in 1826, to a trim design – an Atholl class corvette – that we explored in a recent post.2 Like other “Donkey Frigates,” she spent much of her career in distant waters. “Donkey Frigates” was a contemporary term for a small frigate-like corvette performing the roles normally taken on by larger, more expensive to operate warships, such as Leda class frigates. A fine record of the 1826-1848 events of North Star exists at the “Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels and some of their movements” at RootsWeb. Her early service came as a member of the West African Squadron – patrolling to suppress the Atlantic slave trade. This was followed by participation in two of Britain’s imperial wars of the mid-19th Century.

A half-hull model of HMS Rainbow (1823) North Star’s sister. This model shows the clean lines of the original corvette design. SLR0706 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

A member of Sir William Parker’s fleet involved in the First Opium War (Anglo-Chinese War), she was present at the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. During 1845-46 North Star operated around New Zealand during the Flagstaff War, contributing shore parties that fought in battles against Maori warriors who were resisting the recently-imposed colonial regime. At the same time, at the frozen top of the North American landmass, Sir John Franklin and his two ships – making their bid for completing a Northwest Passage – were wintering at a location that would figure large in North Star’s subsequent history: Beechey Island.

HMS Cornwallis and the British Squadron saluting the peace treaty at the signing of the Treaty of Nanking 29 August 1842. HMS North Star under Captain J.E. Home was present. Rundle Burges Watson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Three years later, public concern about the condition of the missing Franklin crews was reaching fever pitch. North Star was ordered north to rendezvous with Sir James Ross’s search expedition, consisting of HMS Enterprise and Investigator. North Star, under the command of Master James Saunders, would carry provisions to help continue Captains Ross and Edward Bird’s Franklin search. Saunders was familiar with the Arctic and the lost ships: he had served on Terror for George Back’s 1836 Frozen Straits Expedition. Before the veteran warship and her forty crew members could depart, she had to be extensively modified to survive in one of the harshest maritime environments.

Master Shipwright Oliver Lang, who had been involved in the 1845 modifications to Erebus and Terror, supervised the work. More than a hundred shipwrights were tasked with the modifications at Sheerness dockyard from late February 1849. In April, that number surged to two hundred. They worked feverishly to get the ship ready for a mid-May sailing. Of all the ships that Lang was involved in refitting for Arctic service, North Star was special. What emerged from drydock wasn’t like the three other Atholls involved in the Franklin searches. It wasn’t last war’s corvette, a light survey vessel, a troopship, or some “Donkey Frigate.” Lang had created a monster! The design looked whacky, but it would prove to be the right kind of crazy for the challenges that awaited the Belcher Expedition in the Arctic.3

HMS North Star‘s updated bows, including the simplified stem and massive iron sheathing. Credit: ILN staff The Illustrated London News, 26 May 1849, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The headrails and decoration at the bows were removed and a prominent ice guard of iron sheathing was installed. This projected out on a shelf-like section. Two massive hawse holes pierced this ice guard on either bow, to pay out and haul in the thick anchor cables. Reinforced catsheads supported massive port and starboard bower anchors.

A detailed view of North Star‘s bow as it appeared in 1852.”Sir Edward Belcher’s Arctic Expedition, sent in search of Sir John Franklin” Illustrated London News 17 April 1852 P305

Stretching aft along the sides of the hull, the channels were filled-in to protect the shrouds against ice damage, and massive vertical riders were installed amidships near the entryway stairs. Along the gundeck, several gunports were deleted, while the remaining ones were simplified to small scuttles-an identifying feature of this vessel. Heavy davits were hung out over either quarter over the mizzen channels to hold the boats securely. The davits over the stern had to be especially strong as this was also a location to hang the comparatively fragile rudder off of when the ships were beset in ice.

An Admiralty model long thought to be HMS Terror or Enterprise, has been identified by us as HMS North Star as modified for Arctic service. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, (SLR0832)

The decorative stern and quarter galleries were simplified, with the lights (windows) appearing as narrow slits. Another pair of hawse holes appear to have been installed in the transom over the stern at the level of the quarterdeck, in a similar position to sister Rattlesnake’s fittings (an image of this appeared in the earlier post). These may have been intended to help position the vessel during anchoring or for shifting cargo to expedition vessels alongside. Flanking this rugged stern, the old quarter galleries were simplified. The three-masted ship rig was reduced to a barque by simplifying the yards of the mizzen mast.

HMS North Star towed out by the Stromboli departing for her first Arctic Franklin search expedition in early 1849 [detail of]. This is one of the most detailed views of North Star‘s modified appearance. Illustrated London News 26 May 1849 P340.

North Star was towed from Greenhithe by HM Steam Vessel Stromboli, departing 16 May 1849. As the season progressed, Saunders was not able to locate Ross, and instead dropped stores where they may have come in handy to either Franklin’s crews or expeditions searching for them. He departed the Canadian Arctic to re-cross Baffin Bay to Greenland. On the return journey, North Star endured treacherous ice conditions starting in July, and was nearly crushed several times. Eventually the crew sought shelter at Wolstenholme Fjord and the ship was beset in September. They overwintered further north than previous expeditions, on the coast of northwest Greenland near a table-topped mountain named Dundas Hill (Umanaq).

North Star Bay, with the ship frozen into the unusual surroundings of Dundas Hill/Uummannaq near the site of present-day Qaanaaq (fmr. Thule). Credit: Horace Harral, the Graphic 13 Nov. 1875 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Four crew members perished during this time, and were buried nearby. When the ice cleared, Saunders turned west to return to the Canadian Arctic, to Baffin Bay and Wellington Channel, depositing more supplies at Navy Board Inlet. He learned that Ross had sailed for home from a chance encounter with William Penny (leading a privately-funded search expedition). North Star returned to England in the summer of 1850. Penny and Capt. Horatio Austin’s crews jointly discovered that Beechey Island had been the site of Franklin’s first overwintering – an event that would focus subsequent searches.

The Admiralty sent North Star back up again in early 1852, under the command of William J.S. Pullen. Pullen had distinguished himself in boat-led exploration missions while detached from the early western Arctic searches of HMS Plover and Herald. The new assignment was to travel with the large search squadron now being assembled by Sir Edward Belcher: HMS Assistance (Cmdr. George H. Richards) and HMS Resolute (Capt. Henry Kellett), and their steam tenders, Pioneer (Cmdr. Sherard Osborn) and Intrepid (Cmdr. Francis Leopold McClintock). North Star’s role was the unglamorous-yet-vital one of supply and provisioning.


“The first view of Greenland, Cape Desolation 21 May 1852” the Belcher squadron is all depicted, with Kellett’s and McClintock’s commands, Resolute and Intrepid, in the foreground, passing some bergy bits. Credit: Mumford Fonds, Library and Archives Canada 86-18-3

The Belcher Expedition used the same successful quartet of vessels that had gone up under the command of Austin in 1850, but added the depot ship to the mix. This, it was hoped, would help the search ships explore further and stay on mission longer than previous attempts to locate the long-lost Expedition.

A formal portrait of WJS Pullen 1813-1887, depicted later in life, in the full dress uniform of a Rear Admiral, wearing the Arctic and Crimea Medals. Courtesy of the State Library of South Australia B25099.

In early July 1852 the squadron was moving up Baffin Bay. They encountering some of the yearly whaling fleet while navigating along ice floes. North Star was damaged by the American barque McLellan. The threat of being caught between land floes and the floating pack ice was ever-present. A moment’s change in conditions could “nip” ships between these two frozen masses, without sufficient time to cut a protective “ice dock” into the land floe. Several whalers and North Star were nipped July 7th. The shuddering and wild pitching of hulls created a demonic clanging of ships’ bells. The unfortunate American whaler had also been forced against both North Star and the Alexander whaler (from Dundee). North Star‘s starboard cathead was mauled, and crew worked frantically to save the jibboom and bowsprit. As McLellan was further destroyed on the 8th, carpenters salvaged much of the hulk, and set North Star to rights.

George Frederick McDougall “The Loss of the McClellan – American Whaler” 8 July 1852 [detail of] this view shows a view of North Star, the nearer ship at left flying the red ensign, which shows some remaining transom lights and decoration, and the rudder suspended from the stern davits. Credit: Elizabeth Matthews (https://www.hms-resolute.co.uk/) used with permission.

Days later, the ship was proceeding up Lancaster Sound along the southern shores of Devon Island. Even with her rugged alterations, North Star proved the finest sailer in the squadron.4 In August, at Beechey Island, the search ships topped up coal stocks from the depot ship’s supplies. Assistance and Resolute departed separately with their steam tenders to search different areas of the Arctic archipelago. They deposited caches of supplies and left records in prominent cairns as they went. North Star’s coal supplies were vital to extending the range of the whole effort: The combination of sail and towing by steam tender proved especially successful to advancing deep into uncharted passages and extricating Assistance and Resolute from perilous conditions. North Star remained at Beechey Island from 1852-1854, overwintering twice in Erebus and Terror Bay.

“HMS North Star forced on shore by the ice at Beechey, near Cape Spencer”, This dramatic June 1853 view by HMS Resolute’s WT Mumford shows another instance where North Star was in peril. Credit: Mumford Fonds, Library and Archives Canada 1986-18-20

In September, as the Barrow Strait became a treacherous seascape of shifting ice, the Bay froze over. North Star was almost destroyed against the shore. The next June, she was again forced up. In between existential crises, Pullen kept his crew busy building up the shore establishment at Beechey with a new depot/storehouse, Northumberland House, built from components of the lost whaling ship. Crew moved Mary, a yacht left by Sir John Ross, to Beechey from nearby Cape Spencer to serve as a “rescue yourself” lifeboat, should anyone require it. In 1854 ships’ carpenters even built a cenotaph to commemorate their lost shipmates, again from timbers salvaged from McLellan.

HMS North Star, at Beechey Island. Dated May 1854, this remarkable view by HMS Resolute’s William Mumford shows Beechey’s imposing and bleak cliffs. Ashore, Northumberland House, the storehouse, and a large boat which is likely Sir John Ross’s rescue yacht Mary, are visible. [Detail of] Credit: Mumford Fonds, Library and Archives Canada 1986-18-27

The North Star and the Beechey establishment remained as the vital link in the logistical chain that sustained the Franklin search. Other vessels, under the command of Captain E.A. Inglefield, journeyed from England to resupply North Star at Beechey in the high summers of 1853-54. In early 1854, with crews weakening from the effects of scurvy and other ailments, and with no immediate prospect of escape for the ice-imprisoned search ships, Sir Edward Belcher took the difficult decision to order his captains to abandon their ships. Crews would sledge back to Beechey, along a route they knew, that they themselves had stocked with supply depots. Pullen and his forty crew assisted in bringing them in, provided medical assistance to the weakened, closed up Northumberland House in good order, and cut their own canal out of Erebus and Terror Bay to start for home at the end of August. Five crews adding up to about 230 sailors had abandoned their frozen ships and were in sledging parties marching a long trail through difficult terrain. But, unlike the 129 dead men they had been sent to find, these sailors knew they were trekking back to salvation – a beacon in the High Arctic – their familiar North Star.5

  1. This account draws from the article “Icy Imprisonment: the 1848 Voyage of the HMS North Star” at https://beyondthebackyard.com/2014/09/03/icy-imprisonment-the-1849-voyage-of-the-hms-north-star/ and from Richard J. Cyriax (1964) “The Voyage of H.M.S. North Star, 1849-50” The Mariner’s Mirror, 50:4, 302-318. (which was provided to us with thanks from Randall Osczevski). I would also like to thank Fabiënne Tetteroo for providing higher-resolution images of the first and third ILN illustrations used above, and Elizabeth Matthews of HMS Resolute, for the same help with G.F. McDougall’s “The Loss of the McClellan – American Whaler.” ↩︎
  2. Please see our earlier post on the Atholl Class sister ships that were involved in the British search efforts for the missing Sir John Franklin Expedition, for a description of the original design of the class of fourteen ships and a brief account of the Franklin search-related careers of HMS Herald, Rattlesnake, and Talbot. The group contributed a lot to the Franklin search efforts! ↩︎
  3. To see how far the original Atholl class corvette design had evolved, see for example, the 1844 plans of sistership HMS Crocodile (1825), modified for rugged service as a surveying ship, also with a fortified bow guard, and a built-up weatherdeck: National Maritime Museum ZAZ5498. This was an important source for our reconstruction. There would also have been an extensive doubling, fortification, and interior strengthening of the hull of North Star. Our plan is not considered a final plan, but is a simplified representation, and it is the only of its kind. ↩︎
  4. Observers on HMS Resolute, George McDougall and William Mumford, both commented in August 1852 entries on North Star’s turn of speed while detached to arrive at the rendezvous of Beechey to check for Assistance and Pioneer (who had become separated but were themselves were still miles away). McDougall’s 1857 published account is currently available online at babel.hathitrust.org. Mumford’s invaluable diary exists as the main part of his archival fonds at Library and Archives Canada. ↩︎
  5. HMS Investigator’s 61-man crew, frozen in at Mercy Bay, was fortuitously located by a party from HMS Resolute under Lt. Bedford Pim on 6 April 1853. Robert McClure abandoned Investigator, and moved his ailing crew over to Resolute and her steam tender Intrepid (which eventually allowed him to claim his crew had been first to transit-not sailing- the Northwest Passage). I have counted the crew in with the 180 other men of the search ships. HMS North Star’s crew was about forty strong, if she had the same numbers born as for the 1850-51 voyages, making the Expedition total to about 281 men, 13 of whom, tragically, died in the course of their service and are commemorated by name on the remote but important Beechey Island Cenotaph. The French officer Lt. Émile-Frédéric de Bray, in his published account, lists the total number of personnel at 263 (Quoted in Barr and Stein’s “Frederick J. Krabbé, last man to see HMS Investigator afloat,
    May 1854″ Journal of the Hakluyt Society 2017/01 P28). As North Star was leaving Beechey on 26 August 1854, HMS Phoenix and Talbot (North Star’s sister ship) arrived on their resupply mission, and so helped disperse the Belcher crews to transport them home to England in three vessels. ↩︎

The Ontario Wreck Diorama – Yours to Discover!

There is an incredible ship, frozen in time down in the depths of Lake Ontario. HMS Ontario was a wooden warship that sank in a storm October 31st, 1780. This tragedy claimed the lives of as many as 129 sailors, soldiers, Indigenous warriors, American prisoners, women and children. All these decades later she is still down there, astonishingly intact. This ghostly Revolutionary War relic appears almost as if she is sailing west across the lakebed. After months of work, we have completed a model diorama to help interpret the history of this archaeological marvel.1

The wreck diorama Credit: http://www.warshearcher.com

Early in 1779, with the American Revolutionary War raging along the Lower Great Lakes watershed, Master Shipwright Jonathan Coleman designed a British warship for service on Lake Ontario. He drafted out a scaled-down version of his Royal George, already active on Lake Champlain.

British vessels active on nearby Lake Champlain early in the Revolutionary War. These types are similar to those on Lake Ontario. The ship-rigged Inflexible (near left) was a similar size to Ontario, but had been taken apart at Quebec City and rebuilt. Lake Champlain was a more contested body of water, and many of these ships would fight an American flotilla at the Battle of Valcour Island, in 1776. Charles Randle Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1996-82-1

This new vessel, to be named Ontario, had a pleasing sheer, a full underbody, and elegant decoration at the stern.2 The bows were adorned with a simple scroll. This impressive inland warship was built at Carleton Island (the dockyard facilities of the British on Lake Ontario near present-day Kingston). She was launched 10 May 1780, and when completed that summer, her twenty-two cannon made her the most powerful warship operating on the Lake.

The original plans for Ontario, ca. 1780,signed by Jonathan Coleman ZAZ4725 Credit:
© Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

The gundeck was 80’/24.4m long, the ship displaced about 220 tons and the two masts were set up as a snow (similar to a brig-rig but with a small pole mast running from deck up to the level of the maintop, which normally carried a loose-footed gaff sail). She was a beamy 25’/7.6m wide, and had a capacious hold, appropriate to her main role of military transport. Her armament consisted of sixteen six-pounder cannon, mostly disposed on the gundeck, and lighter pieces on the quarterdeck and focs’l. Her hull was somewhat shallower than an ocean-going vessel of this length.

A model of Ontario on display at the Aquatarium, Brockville ON (modeller unknown but provenance seems to be from the Doran Bay model ship museum). From details, the model appears to have been completed before the discovery. Credit:www.warsearcher.com

The careers of warships on the Great Lakes during the 18th and early 19th centuries were generally brief, as hulls were often hastily-constructed of green wood and wore-out quickly over the harsh winters. Even so, Ontario had a woefully short existence: a few months of ferrying troops and supplies. Under the command of Captain James Andrews, she supported the continuing “Burning of the Valleys” campaigns, helping to supply John Butler and Mohawk leader Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant)’s forces and other Indigenous allies fighting as part of the Haudenosaunee / Iroquois confederacy. On 26 October 1780, she departed Niagara bound for either Oswego or Carleton Island. Lt. Colonel Mason Bolton, Commanding Officer of the 8th King’s Regiment at Fort Niagara, was taking passage to England to convalesce. The crowded ship was sailing along the southern shore of the Lake.

Fort Niagara, now located in New York. This is the original French fort HMS Ontario departed from. Taken from a PBY Canso aircraft belonging to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum 2024/07/27. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

A violent storm swept from northeast to southwest across the Lake on 31 October. The crew were likely caught by surprise late at night, as a sudden squall overcame the ship in the darkness and laid her over on to her beam ends. Andrews, Bolton, and more than a hundred other unfortunates disappeared into the Lake.3 The next day, debris was found near Golden Hill by a party of Butler’s Rangers and others who were returning to Niagara from Oswego. Boats, hatch coamings, sails, hats (including Andrews’ own tricorn), the binnacle cabinet, and some sections of quarter lights (windows) had washed up. Much later, in July 1781, a macabre reminder of the loss surfaced–six bodies floated ashore. These victims had been trapped at some intermediate depth until the lake waters released them. No other discoveries would provide context to the loss. The War and life in the (warring) colonies moved on. Ontario’s place in the squadron was taken by a new sistership, Limnade, and the story faded from memory.

The bows of the wreck, showing fallen spars. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Historians of the frontier campaigns of 1780, maritime scholars, and history buffs did not forget about Ontario. Of the many ships that have come to grief in the Lake, her story remained unique. When new technologies were developed that allowed amateur shipwreck hunters to search in deeper areas (which had been the preserve of well-funded professional expeditions employing incredibly expensive specialist equipment), enthusiastic searchers set out on the Lake to find the resting place. There were several claims over the years announcing that Ontario had been located, and many other lost ships were discovered.

Jim Kennard, of Fairport, NY, had an interest in Ontario that stretched back to the 1970s. After retirement, he returned to searching and built his own sonar outfit. He partnered up with Dan Scoville, a recreational diver from Rochester who had experience building ROVs (Remote Operated Vehicles). On 24 May 2008 – after three years of dedicated searching – a promising target appeared on side-scan sonar images onboard their search boat. In common with almost every discovery story we have ever heard, they were packing up and turning for home when the target appeared! The find was confirmed two weeks later by footage from Dan’s ROV. The rich documentary record revealed a shocking sight 500’/152m down: During the twenty-two decades the ship had awaited discovery, she had barely decayed!4

Ontario’s decorative stern gallery, with the large ship’s launch sitting on the lake tucked against the starboard quarter. The rudder post is visible in the central stern light, climbing to the hard-over tiller on deck. There is a single stern-chaser cannon still poking through the carvings over the damaged port quarter-gallery.

The ship is deeply embedded in lake sediment, with a pronounced list to port. The two masts still tower over the site. The mainmast is fully intact to its topgallant mast cap. It is unusual for a wooden wreck to be leaning so steeply to one side, and may speak to a fatal shifting of ballast or guns under the onslaught of the storm. The bowsprit and decorative scroll points west, back towards Fort Niagara.

The foremast top rises above the bows, and bowsprit. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

A large ship’s boat rests just off the starboard quarter above the sediment. The loss of lights from quarter and stern galleries opens up tantalizing views of the interior of the great cabin. On deck the tiller bar leans over hard, continuing the angle of the rudder tucked under the counter. It is as if the ship went down while the crew tried desperately to steer the vessel to starboard. Two cannon carriages appear to be wedged underneath it. There is very little visible damage, and few missing elements. On the whole, it is difficult to credit that an 18th Century ship could have survived into the 21st Century in this condition. The Ontario site endures as a lovely wreck of a beautiful ship. We hope the diorama helps interpret this site, and that the Ontario resting place is protected from harm.

Site overview of the diorama. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

For more information about the model and the sources consulted, read more in the Dossier! (next page)

Continue reading “The Ontario Wreck Diorama – Yours to Discover!”

Frigates for Finding Franklin!

“Franklin Search Frigates!” What?! The three ships we are profiling today were involved in an important but unglamorous role: sustaining the search efforts for the missing sailors of the 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition ships HMS Erebus and Terror. They helped support the search missions by caching supplies along the Alaska coast to provision the crews that were exploring the Canadian Arctic. This was important work, but is rarely mentioned in the literature about the lost Expedition or the many searches.

The last of the Franklin adjacent ships! HMS Trincomalee at Hartlepool Maritime Experience, 2009. Credit: Ian Petticrew, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Leda class frigates HMS Daedalus, Amphitrite, and Trincomalee were the largest ships that we are aware of that were involved in supporting the Franklin search efforts.1 The service of these three powerful vessels, from 1851 to 1854, involved supply missions to sustain the western Arctic searches (and especially the ongoing searches of HMS Plover under captains T. E. L. Moore and then Maguire). These efforts complement the Atholl class corvettes’ similar work, which we explored in more detail in a recent post.

The Ledas were a highly successful group of forty-seven frigates based originally on the lines of a French Hébé, which had been captured back in 1782. Copying French ships was a fine tradition in the Royal Navy.2 The design was adapted to Royal Naval requirements. These were large frigates, that displaced more than a thousand tons – twice the size of the Atholl class supply ships also assisting in the searches and three times the size of Franklin’s two missing exploration vessels. They were originally armed with thirty-eight or more heavy cannon – the main armament on the expansive 150’ gundeck consisted of twenty-eight 18-pounders. During the War of 1812, a member of the class, HMS Shannon, had captured USS Chesapeake in an incredible duel off Boston.

HMS Shannon boards USS Chesapeake on the afternoon of 1 June 1813 off Boston, by Thomas Buttersworth via wikimedia commons. Shannon (left) displays the original fine lines and traditional galleries of the first Leda frigates.

Since units were under construction for almost thirty years, the design was modified many times. “Improved” members of the class eventually boasted updated diagonal framing and circular sterns. The early Victorian sailing navy was serving through an innovative period of technical experimentation, and Ledas underwent some quite radical transformations in their long careers. Today, astonishingly, two members of the class, HMS Trincomalee and Unicorn, are preserved and show different eras of the design.

A 1968 view of HMS Unicorn showing small masts stepped, and the innovative “round stern” design that allowed more cannon to be trained aft, to defend the vulnerable stern. Unicorn and Daedalus were nearly identical. Courtesy of National History Ships UK http://www.nationalhistoricships.org

Daedalus was launched in 1824 just prior to the similar Unicorn, which survives today as a museum ship. Both ships featured the then-revolutionary “circular stern” design. Like Unicorn, she was left in reserve status for decades. The design was cut-down or razéed and converted to a steam-powered screw-propelled 19-gun corvette in 1844, with the stern galleries omitted. Given the odd numbering of cannon, she likely had a single rotating gun over the stern. She famously “tangled” with an enormous sea serpent near the Cape of Good Hope in 1848. Under the command of Captain George Wellesley, Daedalus was sent in 1851 to support the searches of HMS Plover. Daedalus survived as a naval reserve drill ship until 1911 when she was dismantled at Bristol.

“Sea Serpent Sighted by HBMS Daedalus,” from Gleason’s Pictorial 3 July 1852. [Detail of]. This is a nice depiction of Daedalus refitted to a corvette, though we can’t speak to the accuracy of the sea serpent. Uploader Andrewelston inston, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Amphitrite was built in Mumbai of teak, a durable hardwood that proved as resilient as the traditional English oak. She was launched in 1816. While serving as a unit of the Pacific Squadron, under the command of Captain Charles Frederick, she was used on supply missions in 1852 and again in 1853. From the illustrations used in this post, she appears to be the only ship of the three that had not been substantially rebuilt to the lighter specifications of a corvette by the 1850s. Amphitrite was eventually broken up in 1875.

“HMS Amphitrite in the Ice, Sea of Ochotska. Lat. 53o 50′.n. Lony.142o OO’.E” Watercolour by Henry Hand. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Her Majesty’s Ships Amphitrite & Trincomalee leaving San Francisco, 1854. Amphitrite (left) displays the elements of the Leda class design, whereas Trincomalee (centre) had been refitted as a corvette. Watercolour by Henry Hand, PAH0799 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Trincomalee was also a teak-built frigate built in Mumbai. She was launched in 1817 and had to transit to England for completion. Soon after arrival, she was placed in reserve status and remained that way until 1845. The ship was under refit at the same time as Franklin’s ships, Erebus and Terror, and was modified with a new elliptical stern and down-rated as a corvette. Interestingly, this stern is actually a later style than the circular sterns of Daedalus and Unicorn, but fits aesthetically more with the traditional lineage of elaborate Georgian-era galleries. Trincomalee, a unit of the Pacific Squadron, was sent up to Alaska in 1854, under the command of Captain Wallace Houston, and met HMS Rattlesnake. Serving for more than a century as a tender, and a training ship, TS Foudroyant – the companion of the venerable Trafalgar prize Implacable – she was preserved as a museum ship during the 1990s.

Training Ships Foudroyant (left) and Implacable. Foudroyant was and would be renamed Trincomalee, while Implacable, scuttled in 1949, was originally the French prize Duguay-Trouin, captured at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. © IWM (A 25960)

Today this lovely frigate, restored to her 19th Century appearance, exists as the last non-wrecked vessel that participated in any way in the Franklin searches.

  1. The author is again basing this off the list of participating ships found in W. Gillies Ross’s “The Type and Number of Expeditions in the Franklin Search 1847–1859,” ARCTIC Vol. 55, No. 1 (MARCH 2002) 57–69 https://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic55-1-57.pdf ↩︎
  2. The origins of the whole frigate category were from French vessels captured during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). The same is arguably true of the move from inferior third rate line-of-battle ships to proper 74-gunners in the mid-18th Century. ↩︎

The Atholl Corvettes: Supporting the Franklin Searches in Style

One class of Royal Navy vessel is connected to the search for the missing Sir John Franklin Expedition of 1845, and you’ve likely never heard of it! The Atholl class of corvettes were built two decades before Franklin’s Northwest Passage Expedition sailed, at the same time as HMS Erebus, Franklin’s lead ship. Four members of the class, HMS Rattlesnake, Herald, Talbot, and North Star participated in search efforts for the missing crews. In this post we explore the design of these ships and the Arctic service of three members of the class. A future post will reconstruct HMS North Star’s unique refitting and summarize her important career.

A half-hull model of Atholl class HMS Rainbow (1823) SLR0706 Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

What is so special about these ships? Arctic and Antarctic exploration vessels were heavily-adapted to survive difficult conditions at the high latitudes. Exploration ships were under a different type of attack these warships had been designed for. Hulls required strengthening and fortification to serve in a chaotic environment characterized by ice floes; icebergs; bergy bits; growlers; land ice and pack ice. A ship overwintering–frozen-in to the pack–was subjected to prolonged pressures, or sharp, intense “nipping,” as the ice shifted. Exploration/discovery vessels in this period were about 100-120’ long on deck and displaced 500 tons or less. The Atholl class fits these general parameters, but its design lineage was not from the stout hulls of the bomb vessels, like HMS Terror, Hecla, Fury and Erebus. With the disappearance of these “bombs”, the Admiralty moved to searching for the lost Franklin crews with heavily converted merchant hulls: HMS Enterprise, Investigator, Assistance, Resolute.

The handsome lines of the original Atholl class design from 1817 © Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London ZAZ3213

The Atholls were a different species altogether. Their full gundecks speak to their intended role: general-purpose warships. These 28-gun corvettes were designed just after the Napoleonic Wars had concluded. They fit into a category often called “donkey frigates” – corvettes that took on some of the duties of the more expensive to operate frigates – but they would have been considered light frigates in an earlier era. The original plans for the lead ship, Atholl, were co-signed by an important design team: Surveyors of the Navy Henry Peake, Joseph Turner, and Robert Seppings. Peake had designed the Vesuvius and Hecla class bomb vessels (HMS Terror and Erebus), while Seppings was implementing wide-ranging changes to the designs of all classes of ships. In contrast to the full bilges, rounded tumblehome, and sweeping sheer of 18th Century ships, Atholls had steeply rising floors (a “V-shaped lower hull), a distinctive flat rise at the waterline, and almost flat sheer along the length of the decks. In the early years of the 19th century, these were state-of-the-art design features. Above the deck, three towering masts supported the spars, cordage, and canvas of a three-masted, fully-rigged ship.

A rare rigging plan of an Atholl class dated 1844, from the collection of the National Maritime Museum. This unnamed ship was being converted to a troop ship, and shows the simplified rig of a barque, likely to have been used on many of the converted ships. In comparison to the earlier plan, the outline of the hull shows the building up of stern and bows. ZAZ5511© Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

For their main armament, they were fitted with a modern, versatile battery of guns. Their gundeck was fitted with twenty heavy “smashers”: 32-pound carronades. This gave the class an outsized weight of broadside.1 Compared to the older “long guns” – traditional cannon – carronades were lighter and took less crew to work, but did not have the same range to strike more distant targets. The ships also had 9-pounder bow-chaser cannon and lighter carronades on the quarterdeck. While the bomb-vessels had been built to withstand the strain of firing their two massive mortars at land targets, the Atholls were designed to withstand the firing strain of broadsides of 32 and 18-pounder carronades.

A useful contrast between a carronade (near) and a cannon. These guns are located at the Dom Fernando II e Glória (1845) Portuguese frigate at Lisbon. Credit: GualdimG, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fourteen ships were built in the period 1821-1828. Some of the class had been constructed in the East Indies, with design changes based on the availability of exotic timber and a shortage of iron knees.2 Three of these – Rattlesnake, Samarang, and Crocodile – appear to have had a second row of stern galleries (windows), at the level of the quarterdeck. At a time when decoration was being simplified or removed altogether, this odd arrangement for a warship made them appear similar to East India Company merchant ships.

Rattlesnake June 1849 watercolor by her captain, Owen Stanley, Public domain, Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake Album: Vol. I, Old Collection of David Scott Mitchell (1836-1907), p. 84 (imag. 487084) Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (PXC 281, IE 3174589), Australia. via Wikimedia Commons

The Atholls served in some notable actions. HMS Talbot played an important role at the last great battle under sail, Navarino (1827), during the Greek War of Independence, and was also present at the 1840 Bombardment of Acre. North Star and Herald served in the First Anglo-Chinese or “Opium” War. In 1845-46, North Star was operating at New Zealand during the Flagstaff War at the same time the Franklin ships were overwintering at Beechey Island.

The Allied fleet at Navarino, 20 Oct. 1827. Reinagle, George Philip; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co Ltd; Plate 9. HMS Talbot is the ship firing at left near a burning hulk. Note the characteristic built-up look to the stern of the Atholl ships. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London PAF4856

During their long careers, these ships proved to be very adaptable to new roles. They could be provisioned to serve out of distant posts of the British Empire, and could be quickly converted to carry troops. Units of the class got a new lease on life when many were converted to survey or depot/supply ships. Some common modifications appear from the 1830s on. Decoration at the bows and stern was minimized, and most of the armament was removed. The spaces of the old weather-deck were enclosed to form new focs’l and quarterdeck accommodation. The officer’s cabins and wardroom were extended, and the captain’s great cabin was moved up a deck to the newly-enclosed area aft. In some cases this building-up and decking-over created what in essence is a pint-sized two-decker. Later still, the ships were converted to a variety of rolls, such as receiving ships, supply ships, storehouses, or storage hulks. HMS Talbot’s final service, as a gunpowder hulk, is visually documented because of her proximity to the site of the tragic 1878 Princess Alice sinking. The last of the class known to exist was the former HMS Nimrod, scrapped in 1908.

Recovering victims of the Princess Alice disaster. Talbot in use as a gunpowder storage hulk at right (in other views the hulk has enormous “GUNPOWDER” lettering). Unlike other views, this shows the powder hulk still having a clearly defined bow and stern. The Collision on the Thames, 14 September 1878, The Graphic, Page 4 JR Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s briefly explore the Franklin search-related efforts of three of the class:3

HMS Rattlesnake (1822): Rattlesnake played a minor role in the Franklin search efforts. She was commissioned on 28 December 1852 by Commander Henry Trollope (with a compliment of 80) for conveying relief supplies to the (western) Arctic ships employed in the search for Sir John Franklin’s expedition: HMS Enterprise (Richard Collinson) and HMS Investigator (Robert McClure). Rattlesnake’s captain between 1845 and 1850 had been Owen Stanley, who had served on Terror during the 1836 George Back expedition, and had accompanied her and Erebus north in 1845.

“HMS Rattlesnake” by acclaimed artist Oswald Walters Brierly, who was onboard in 1848 when Rattlesnake was under the command of Owen Stanley. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London PAF5620

HMS Herald (1824): Captain Henry Kellett was involved in several of the western Arctic searches for the Franklin crews, from 1848 to 1850. He explored the Bering Strait (the early Admiralty assumption was that the Franklin ships may have been caught much further west along the Passage), discovered Herald Island, and in 1849 encountered HMS Investigator (Robert McClure). In the early period of searching, Kellett’s exploration complemented the searches of HMS Enterprise (James Clark Ross and later Richard Collinson) and Investigator. Herald was frequently used to resupply HMS Plover (T. E. L. Moore and then Maguire), during Plover’s six year vigil in the Pacific. In between Herald’s three forays up north, a succession of crews completed very important surveying along the Pacific coast.

This incredible 1857 photograph of HMS Herald at Sydney Harbour shows she retains her original corvette lines, full rig, and bow and stern decoration. The quarterdeck has been enclosed or decked over, as evident by the windows above the mizzen channels. She has been updated with iron davits and rails enclosing the new poop deck. The large stove pipe aft of the Foremast is evident on many plans. 79(b). H.M.S. Herald Sydney Harbour 1857, Album of views, illustrations and Macarthur family photographs, 1857-1879, PXA 4358/Vol. 1, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nM7lp5AY/B4xQpbaW72Xey

HMS Talbot (1824): After an active career, this veteran was converted to a storeship, to accompany Edward Augustus Inglefield’s 1854 provisioning mission to the Belcher Expedition at Beechey Island, in a similar way as Barretto Junior had helped provision the Franklin Ships in 1845.4 Unlike that ship, Talbot and Diligence (the other member of the squadron) continued on to Beechey, and were on hand to assist Inglefield’s command, HMS Phoenix, and North Star, to transport the crews of Belcher’s abandoned ships home. We are fortunate today to have a fine daguerreotype image of what Talbot looked like at this time on Inglefield’s stopover in Greenland. Talbot retains the trim appearance of a sixth-rate warship, with the characteristic updated variant of the “Nelson Chequer” of a white band picked out with black gunport lids. The transom shows some simplification, as the quarter galleries are not in evidence and the transom has been abbreviated to only five lights (windows). As with Herald above, there appears to be a building-up of the aft section to enclose new officers’ quarters.

HMS Talbot, June 1854 looking NW from Holsteinborg, Greenland. HMS Phoenix and the store ship Diligence were also depicted (cropped out from left). Phoenix’s captain, Edward Augustus Inglefield, is credited as the photographer[detail of] Credit: Captain Edward Augustus Inglefield, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons source is National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich G4254

Please watch for our upcoming post that will explore Atholl class HMS North Star’s incredible history and design features!

  1. In an age of fighting sailing ships, whose main armament was disposed over either Port or Starboard batteries of cannon, this is the weight of broadside or “striking power” based on the notional weight of cannon balls fired from all guns in a single broadside fired from either side. Carronades gave small ships a “smashing” broadside. Atholls broadside added up to 383 pounds: (10X32lbs+3X18lbs+1X9lbs). For comparison, a roughly equivalent ship of the previous era, HMS Surprise, of Patrick O’Brien novels’ fame, had an armament of 9-pounder cannon and a total weight of broadside of 164 lbs. ↩︎
  2. See for example National Maritime Museum midships sectional drawing ZAZ3436 of Termagant (which became Herald), Samarang, Alligator which describes some differences in these East Indies built ships. An aborted plan of the 1830s would have even cut down the design to create 20-gun ships. ↩︎
  3. For an excellent primer on the bewildering number of vessels involved in various search efforts, including the ships above, please see W. Gillies Ross’s “The Type and Number of Expeditions in the Franklin Search 1847–1859,” ARCTIC Vol. 55, No. 1 (MARCH 2002) 57–69 https://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic55-1-57.pdf ↩︎
  4. The previous year, Inglefield had gone up accompanied by the Breadalbane store ship, which was destroyed by ice in August 1853. ↩︎

What Sir John Franklin’s High Arctic Cenotaph is Made of – A Whaler of a Tale!

A cenotaph to lost Royal Navy personnel – a National Historic Site of Canada – and archival records that show that it is made from an American shipwreck! Readers may recall the very origins of this website were to help explore and add provenance to relics and artifacts connected to Canadian military cenotaphs. So in a sense, after interpreting the history and shipwrecks connected to the lost 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition in search of a Northwest Passage, we’ve come home!

We recently posted about the history of the “Franklin Cenotaph” at Beechey Island, Nunavut. This isolated monument is an incredibly rare memorial to the crews of the lost 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition and the searchers who died looking for them. It is identified by Parks Canada as a “character-defining element” of the Beechey Island Sites National Historic Site of Canada. It is important to understand what the cenotaph is and what components combine to create it.

Beechey Island sites, photographed from the air in 1997. This shows the Franklin Cenotaph at the top center above the crucifix made out of empty tins. The ruins of Northumberland House (the supply depot) are down towards the beach, while other memorials are located at right. Credit: Ansgar Walk, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

The column itself, built in the arctic summer of 1854, under the direction of Captain W.J.S. Pullen, HMS North Star, is thought to be made out of the machinery of a lost American whaling ship, the McLellan. This little-known detail further solidifies the Anglo-American character of the commemorative program of the monument.1 We ended our earlier post with a series of questions we hoped could be answered about the column’s origins. We also wondered if it really could have been made out of the capstan of the McLellan, as has been reported.2 A capstan, as defined by wikipedia is “a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to multiply the pulling force of seamen when hauling ropes, cables, and hawsers.”

An image of the “Franklin Cenotaph” and surroundings (left) compared to a capstan located at Whitby, England. One origin story of the Franklin monument is that the central “Belcher Column” is made from the capstan of the American whaling ship McLellan. The model of capstan at right exposes the spindle, which more often formed the core, surrounded by a substantial drum. Credit: (left) NWT Archives/Stuart M. Hodgson fonds/N-2017-008: 0918 / (right) Neil Reed / Capstan, Whitby East Pier, 2009 via wikimedia commons.

McLellan was a 366-ton barque-rigged wooden ship which had served as a general merchant in the 1830s, but had been purchased by the firm Perkins & Smith for the bowhead whaling industry in 1846. It was homeported out of New London, Connecticut, under the command of Captain William Quayle.3 We recently had an opportunity to closely examine a work at Library and Archives Canada which depicts the July 1852 loss of this ship:

Cmdr. Walter W. May (1855) “Loss of the McLellan” (Engr. J. Needham) Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-2137 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana.

The engraving, made from a sketch by Cmdr. Walter W. May – who witnessed the events –includes many interesting details of whaling ships beset in ice near each other, and Royal Navy vessels. It also shows crew members salvaging items from a visibly-damaged ship.

Walter W. May was a gifted artist and an officer serving on HMS Assistance. This most likely depicts Alexander, a whaling ship, HMS North Star, which was nipped, but repaired, and McLellan at the far right being salvaged. [detail of op. cit.]

During the 1851 season, McLellan had been involved in a milestone in the development of the American whaling industry. Quayle had landed a shore party, led by mate Sydney O. Budington, at Nimegen Island, Cumberland Sound. This small group built a stout structure there and hunkered down to overwinter. With the assistance of local Inuit families, crew were able to live in relative comfort into 1852, trading for items and swapping their clothes for warmer furs.4

The plan was for the group to begin whaling far earlier than any ship-based crew could gain access to the area. It was a bold plan and it worked – they were able to land a huge catch of seventeen bowheads. They also became the first commercial interest to overwinter in the Canadian Arctic since the 16th Century voyages of Martin Frobisher. This shore party stayed on until September of 1852, and would eventually have to be taken off by another whaling ship.

The George Henry (1841) whaling ship. This ship was similar to McLellan, and was later commanded by both Sydney O. Budington and his uncle James Buddington. James would stumble across the abandoned Franklin search ship HMS Resolute in 1855. The prominent boarded-up port amidships is for the “cutting stage,” a relatively recent development to flense whales. Credit: Sherard Osborn, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

At the beginning of the 1852 season, McLellan, on the return voyage to the whaling grounds and to pick up Budington’s party, was one of a group of whaling ships that were beset in ice in the Davis Strait near Melville Bay. The ships were in a perilous position, between the land ice and the shifting sea floes.  Sir Edward Belcher’s Arctic Squadron, comprising HM Ships North Star, Assistance, Resolute, Pioneer, and Intrepid, were on their way up to Lancaster Sound to launch a sustained effort to locate Sir John Franklin and the crews of HMS Erebus and Terror (by this time missing for seven years). On June 20th, just as the naval squadron was coming up with the group of whalers, the veteran Kirkaldy whaling ship Regalia was crushed by ice. What followed seems unusual nowadays, but was apparently the accepted practice: The ship was quickly stripped of valuables, crew set out to find another whaler to serve in, something of a party broke out on the ice, and the hulk was burned to ensure it would not menace other ships.

In early July, McLellan ran afoul of North Star, the depot ship of the Expedition, and the Alexander, a Dundee whaler. It damaged the cathead of the North Star, and the bowprit of the Alexander. The mizzen mast of McLellan had to be cut away to avoid further damage. The American whaler was severely nipped by the encroaching ice. The crew were preparing to abandon ship and the whalers in the area looked forward to commencing the usual “sacking and burning.” Instead, Belcher purchased the damaged vessel from Captain Quayle. The Royal Navy crews set about repairing the whaler. The repairs held until the ship was nipped more forcibly on 8 July. McLellan was gradually crushed over the next week. Naval crews salvaged spars, stout timbers, fittings, machinery, and cargo from their newly-purchased hulk. Valuable items were shifted over to North Star and the search ships.

Crew members salvage boats, casks, and other items as McLellan is destroyed. [detail of op. cit.]

Two years later, these parts were a ready source of materials for the program of construction and “beautification” that Belcher and W.J.S. Pullen organized at Beechey Island, the site of the Expedition’s depot. We originally believed that the (interior) spindle of McLellan’s capstan had used to create the central element of the Franklin Cenotaph. At the time of our earlier post, we were concerned about one issue: not all whaling ships had capstans. For example, the most similar ship to McLellan remaining in existence, the Charles W. Morgan, isn’t fitted out with this prominent piece of machinery. To effectively operate a capstan, a ship required a large crew. Many merchant ships favoured the use of their windlasses, which could be operated with their smaller crews. A windlass, normally situated near the bows, is “ A mechanism operating on the same principle as the capstan, but on a horizontal axis, used on board merchant ships, and some smaller vessels of the royal Navy, for weighing the anchor, hoisting and hauling.”5

Resolute’s apprentice carpenter, William T. Mumford, the subject of our recent post, was an active participant both to the July 1852 salvage of McLellan, and to the construction of the cenotaph during June 1854. He had just arrived back to Beechey after the mid-May abandonment of Resolute off Dealey Island. Mumford’s information, from his records at Library and Archives Canada, has helped us update the provenance of this important memorial. He wrote in his diary on Saturday, June 24th, 1854: “Midsummer Day, Light breeze from the E-N-E full in the forenoon but hazy with sleet in the afternoon. No water on the floe, and the pools on the land coated with ice. Hands cleaned main & lower decks carpenters employed trimming the Pawl Bitt of the McLellan for a monument to the memory of those who died and are buried elsewhere.“

“The Pawl Bitt of the ‘McLellan'” – WT Mumford Diary entry 24 June 1854 (not paginated). Credit: Library and Archives Canada W.T. Mumford Fonds, 1986-018 PIC.

More than almost any other member of the Belcher expedition, Mumford’s occupation and prior experiences make him an expert on the origins of the central monument at Beechey. The “Pawl Bitt” was a strong timber, normally square, that was an important part of a ship’s windlass in the era of wooden sailing ships. It supported the “pawl”, a strong ratchet that ensured that leverage gained by the rotation of the windlass barrel was not lost. The pawl bitt was a substantial structural timber that usually connected straight down to the lower deck. It also usually supported the ornamental bracket the ship’s bell was hung off. This made it an important ceremonial and commemorative shipboard site. In this case, the Belcher Expedition carpenters’ efforts at “trimming” seems to have involved carefully working the square timber into an octagonal column, creating a finial ball to surmount the column, carving out or adapting some cavity to house the idiosyncratic “postal office” plaque now located at the rear of the column, and installing the eight dedicatory plaques to memorialize lost crew members (which are individually identified in a note in our earlier post).

As it happens, there are contemporary examples of both a capstan and a windlass less than three kilometers away from the Cenotaph, on the seafloor of the Barrow Strait! Breadalbane, whose well preserved-wreck is also part of the National Historic Site at Beechey Island, was equipped with both a capstan and a windlass, including a pawl bitt. The pawl bitt is the stout post just forward of the horizontal windlass drum, with the ratchet-like pawl angling down. There was usually a brass ship’s bell sited atop this bitt. This is our scale model interpretation of the wreck. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

As we hope we have shown with both posts about the “Franklin Cenotaph,” this memorial is a powerful site of memory of a great era of polar exploration history. As a very early example of a military cenotaph, it has much in common with First World War battlefield memorials. It was constructed from relics and materials on hand, by comrades who knew the lost searchers. Ship’s Carpenter William Mumford’s diary has helped enrich the provenance of this important monument by linking it to an identified feature of the wrecked American whaling ship McLellan. We hope that visitors to Beechey Island, Nunavut, who stand in contemplation before the cenotaph, can better appreciate this remarkable artifact.

  1. An inscription added later recognizes Anglo-American cooperation in the search efforts over the High Arctic. The United States participated in search efforts such as the two Grinnell expeditions, and Elisha Kent Kane’s later searches. The 1858 addition to the monument of Lady Franklin’s marble (eventually brought up by Captain Leopold McClintock) expresses the shared Anglo-American concern for establishing the fate of the Franklin crews. ↩︎
  2. The link between the Belcher column and McLellan is noted in Barr and Stein’s January 2017 article “Frederick J. Krabbé, last man to see HMS Investigator afloat, May 1854” Journal of the Hakluyt Society. (P27) The authors appear to have consulted Mumford’s diary, but mention the source of the column is McLellan’s capstan drum. ↩︎
  3. This description of McLellan’s wrecking draws extensively from information in Philip Goldring’s Jan-Feb. 1986 Beaver Magazine article “The Last Voyage of the McLellan” PP39-44. The issue is currently accessible at the Canada’s History Magazine archive: https://www.canadashistoryarchive.ca/canadas-history/canadas-history-feb-mar-2019/flipbook/1/ Captain (later Colonel) William Quayle had a remarkable life, before and after his four years with McLellan, with many notable events outlined in a 20 June 1901 Moberly Weekly Monitor profile of him: https://www.newspapers.com/article/moberly-weekly-monitor-william-quayle/66609/ that article also gives Quayle’s description of McLellan as having been a barque of 110 feet overall length, 27 feet 7 inches wide, 14 feet nine inches deep, of about 326 tons. ↩︎
  4. McLellan and the other American whalers had more diverse crews than mid-Victorian Royal Navy ships. It would be interesting to know if Budington’s shore party had brought Black whalers directly into contact with Inuit families. ↩︎
  5. “Windlass” A Sea of Words ; A Lexicon and companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales (New York: Owl Books 1997) P.458. ↩︎