HMS Terror: The Design, Fitting and Voyages of the Polar Discovery Ship

By Matthew Betts

In the summer of 1845, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 134 men entered Lancaster Sound on board HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in search of a Northwest Passage. The sturdy former bomb ships were substantially strengthened and fitted with the latest technologies for polar service and, at the time, were the most advanced sailing vessels developed for Polar exploration. Both ships, but especially HMS Terror, had already proven their capabilities in the Arctic and Antarctic. With such sophisticated, rugged, and successful vessels, victory over the Northwest Passage seemed inevitable, yet the entire crew vanished, and the ships were never seen again by Europeans.

Finally, in 2014, the wreck of HMS Erebus was discovered by Parks Canada. Two years later, the wreck of HMS Terror was found, sitting upright, in near pristine condition. The extraordinarily well-preserved state and location of the ships, so far south of their last reported position, raises questions about the role they played in the tragedy. Did the extraordinary capabilities of the ships in fact contribute to the disaster? Never before has the Franklin Mystery been comprehensively examined through the lens of its sailing technology.

This book documents the history, design, modification, and fitting of HMS Terror, one of the world’s most successful polar exploration vessels. Part historical narrative and part technical design manual, this book provides, for the first time, a complete account of Terror’s unique career, as well as an assessment of her sailing abilities in polar conditions, a record of her design specifications, and a full set of accurate plans of her final 1845 configuration. Based on meticulous historical research, the book details the ship's every bolt and belaying pin, and ends with the discovery and identification of the wreck in 2016, explaining how the successes and ice-worthiness of Terror may have contributed to the Franklin disaster itself. It is an ideal reference for those interested in the Franklin Mystery, in polar exploration, the Royal Navy, and in ship design and modelling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Oct 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526783141

Matthew Betts

DR MATTHEW BETTS is an internationally recognised expert on Sir John Franklin’s ships, and is an active consultant with Parks Canada, which discovered the wrecks. He has contributed to major documentaries on the expedition and recently acted as an historical advisor for the first season of AMC’s major historical drama, The Terror. His model and plans of HMS Terror have been showcased in exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and Mystic Seaport Museum. Dr Betts is currently a curator of archaeology at the Canadian Museum of History.

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Introduction

FOR MORE THAN TWENTY-SEVEN HOURS between 13 and 14 September 1814, HMS Terror and a small fleet of Royal Navy vessels hurled more than 1,500 mortar shells at Fort McHenry, near Baltimore in the state of Maryland in America. The bombardment was so dramatic that it inspired Francis Scott Key to write a lyric poem that would eventually become the American national anthem. When Americans sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, they are, in part, serenading the history of Terror, whose ‘bombs bursting in air’ illuminated the fort’s American flag during the shelling. For most Royal Navy bomb ships, vessels designed to bombard shore targets with exploding shells, to be involved in such a historically significant action would represent an exceptional achievement. For Terror, it was a mere footnote in her remarkable career, and Key’s lyric is just one of many verses and ballads written about her exploits.

On 3 September 2016 the wreck of HMS Terror was found at a depth of 24m (79ft) in a bay on the south coast of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. Her condition is astonishing, with deck fittings largely intact, portions of her masts and bowsprit still standing, and dishes and bottles stacked neatly on shelves on the lower deck. How did Terror end up in one of the most remote places on the planet, thousands of kilometres away from any naval conflict? How could a small wooden bomb ship survive some of the world’s worst sea ice before finally coming to rest in an ice-clogged bay in such pristine condition? What role did Terror play in the disaster that befell her final crew? Such considerations form the subject matter of this book.

HMS Terror: history’s greatest polar exploration vessel?

Following her use as a bomb ship, the already ageing Terror was refitted as part of the British Royal Navy’s polar exploration fleet. Her extraordinary second career took her beyond the icy edges of the charted world, where she encountered more peril, and endured more aggregate punishment, than any comparable survey ship (polar or otherwise). When Terror was deserted in the pack ice north of King William Island in the spring of 1848, her crew left behind one of the most advanced sailing vessels on the planet, a ship nearly unrecognisable as the floating siege engine she was originally designed to be.

The moment Europeans realised that the Americas were not Asia, they began to search for a sea route through them, rather than around them, from the Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean. At stake was global trade in an era when great seafaring nations ruled the world. A voyage of approximately 2,160 nautical miles (4,000 kilometres) via a navigable channel through North America would be considerably more profitable than sailing 17,200 nautical miles (30,000 kilometres) around South America, which at the time took several hazardous and very expensive months. The Arctic was an obvious and more expedient route, made all the more attractive given that European whalers and fishermen had long told tales of open channels and ice-free passages spotted during the summer months. From the sixteenth century, colonial nations tested the Arctic waters for a route through the ice, but for the English, finding a Northwest Passage, as they called it, became an obsession.

Siege warfare is an appropriate analogy for the Royal Navy’s philosophy of polar exploration throughout the nineteenth century. Modified Royal Navy warships had been sent into the Arctic since the 1500s. By 1773, when Constantine Phipps¹ attempted to reach the North Pole with HM Ships Racehorse and Carcass, the Royal Navy’s ship of choice was the highly specialised bomb vessel. Bombs were an excellent option for polar service. They were generally available, having limited uses even in wartime, possessed capacious holds which could be crammed with stores, and had enormously strong framing built to withstand the recoil of their massive mortars. The Royal Navy expected that such qualities would prove useful against the ice and they were correct. Phipps laid siege to the ice surrounding the Pole, penetrating more than 80° N, a record that would be held for more than thirty years. This practice of sending bomb vessels to battle the ice would characterise Royal Navy exploration in polar regions for decades to come.

HMS Tenor’s first besetment in pack ice, 26 August 1836, during the George Back-led Frozen Straight expedition. (Owen Stanley, Fisher Rare Book Library MSS 05201)

In the early nineteenth century, William Edward Parry,² sailor, innovator, and partial architect of the Royal Navy’s nineteenth-century approach to polar exploration, maintained this tradition. However, he also substantially modified his bomb vessels, Hecla and Fury, instituting alterations and standardisation protocols for paired vessels that would subsequently be incorporated into many other polar expeditions. His tremendous success in the Arctic (for which he was knighted in 1829), and his unfortunate loss of Fury in 1825, practically assured that Terror would be pressed into polar service.

However, Terror’s reputation for durability did not begin in polar regions and, indeed, neither strengthening nor modification were necessary for her to survive one of the worst threats a ship can face. In February 1828, while on Mediterranean duty, Terror was pushed onto a rock-bound lee shore on the coast of Spain during a hurricane and was, quite literally, wrecked. Her keel was smashed along its length (typically the death knell for a wooden vessel), she was bilged starboard and port, her sternpost and rudder were smashed, and her bulwarks were knocked down to the deck. Though her back was completely broken, Terror’s unusually sturdy frame held the vessel together. Miraculously, she survived to be re-floated and repaired, and after some time in ordinary, she took duty at Sheerness in 1835 as a tender to Howe, a first-rate flagship.

An emergency was responsible for Terror’s first polar expedition. In 1835 Terror and another bomb ship, Erebus, were quickly outfitted to resupply eleven whaling ships trapped in ice near Davis Strait. The whalers escaped before Terror set sail, but the Admiralty seized the opportunity given by the refit to send her north on discovery service. Terror was further prepared for extended polar exploration and, under the command of Captain George Back,³ spent the winter of 1836/7 in severe ice conditions in Frozen Strait, off Southampton Island in northern Hudson Bay. The ship was under such tremendous pressure from the ice that her frame was wrenched and beams were lifted off their shelves. She was repeatedly thrown on her beam ends, and her sternpost and after keel were so completely shattered that upwards of 5ft of water per hour poured into her hold. Such damage would have been fatal in a less sturdy vessel, but Terror was still able to bring her men safely back across the Atlantic, albeit with pumps in continuous use.

Learning critical lessons from Terror’s first voyage north, the Admiralty extensively refitted her and Erebus for an ambitious four-year expedition to explore the Antarctic, under the leadership of Captain James Clark Ross.⁴ The slightly larger and younger Erebus was assigned as the command vessel, and the well-experienced Commander Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier,⁵ who had previously served under Captain William Edward Parry in three Arctic expeditions, was assigned as captain of Terror. Crozier would become forever linked to Terror, the ship on which he received his promotion to captain. The Antarctic expedition was one of the last great voyages of exploration to be undertaken completely by sail, and still ranks as one of the Royal Navy’s greatest achievements in scientific and geographical discovery.

Like her mission to the Arctic, Terror survived remarkable trials during the Ross expedition. Both ships were used as wooden icebreakers to smash through heavy ice barriers, reaching farther south than any previous vessel. In constant peril from the heavy seas and ice, Terror was repeatedly damaged and at one point her rudder was smashed, requiring a jury rudder to be constructed. Erebus and Terror even collided in an event so harrowing, and resulting in so much damage to the ships, that some crew members were unable to recall the event years later without becoming physically ill.

Eager to duplicate the success of the Antarctic voyage, Erebus and Terror were next assigned to Sir John Franklin⁶ on an expedition to navigate a Northwest Passage. Following extensive modification and provisioning, the expedition left Greenhithe, England, on 19 May 1845. After nearly six weeks of sailing, the ships arrived at a staging harbour in Disco Bay, Greenland, where their holds and decks were packed with stores. They set out on 12 July and were last seen by European eyes several days later, when the British whaler Enterprise reported Erebus and Terror moored to an iceberg near Lancaster Sound, the gateway to the Northwest Passage. By the time they were deserted on 22 April 1848, Erebus and Terror had spent three years in the Arctic, 588 days (nineteen months) of which saw them entirely beset in multi-year pack ice off the northern coast of King William Island. The story of Terror’s final voyage and the tragedy which followed, remains one of the most compelling, but often inscrutable, historical mysteries of human exploration.

The human history of the expedition has been covered in detail by many authors. The commanders of the expedition have all had one or more volumes written about them, and many of the junior officers and enlisted men have been scrutinised in print. An excellent book by Michael Palin has documented the outstanding career of Erebus and, in particular, her major success on the Ross Antarctic expedition. One of the major lacunae of the Franklin mystery remains Terror and, indeed, the central role she played in nineteenth-century polar exploration. Even without her role in Franklin’s 1845 expedition, Terror’s previous Arctic and Antarctic voyages alone make her a candidate for one of the most successful, and hardy, polar exploration vessels ever built. Her recent discovery, in such remarkable condition, undoubtedly puts her in a class of her own.

Understanding Terror’s capabilities and achievements, and how these were perceived and exploited by Royal Navy officers, may provide a unique window onto the Franklin tragedy itself. British bomb ships had seen remarkable success in the field of polar exploration. Terror had withstood some of the worst sea and ice conditions ever experienced by a survey vessel and had endured more natural punishment than any ship in the fleet, yet had survived it all. She had always brought her men safely home, and there was every expectation that she would do so again on the Franklin expedition. Did Terror’s remarkable qualities contribute to the disaster? Answering this question requires a detailed look at her history and career.

My exploration of the history of Terror began in a unique way. I wanted to build a highly detailed model of Terror as she was fitted for the Franklin expedition. However, I quickly realised that no accurate models of the vessel in her final 1845 configuration existed, because no plans had ever been drafted for her final refit. To build my model, I would have to draft these plans myself, and to draft the plans, I would need to undertake meticulous historical research.

In structure, this book follows the journey I took to build my model of Terror. It begins with a consideration of the existing data relating to the construction and modification of Terror. The primary information on her design, construction and many refits comes from a set of Admiralty plans now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum. These cover her initial 1813 construction and both her 1836 and 1839 polar refits. Unfortunately, complete plans of her 1845 configuration were never drawn, though faint pencil annotations on her 1836/7 plans provide some critical information. To fill in the missing pieces required extensive consultation of contemporary journals, patents, ship logs, letters, paintings, sketches, newspaper articles and, finally, recently published data and images released by Parks Canada, who continue to explore the wreck. The plans, design notes and modelling tips in this book focus primarily on Terror’s final 1845 configuration which, for the era, represented a pinnacle in naval engineering and architecture. Though nearly thirty-five years old when she was deserted in 1848, Terror was, in fact, the most technologically advanced sailing vessel of the era.

Part historical narrative and part technical design study, this book is organised in three parts. The first part, spanning four chapters, presents a detailed history of Terror’s career and voyages, gleaned from contemporary sources. This follows Terror’s entire career, from her role in the War of 1812 to her final desertion in the ice of the Northwest Passage. The second part focuses on understanding Terror’s unique construction and fittings, details of which, along with a description of her scantlings, are covered in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 presents the first comprehensive reconstruction of Terror in her 1845 configuration. Every bolt and belaying pin is diagrammed in these annotated and labelled plans, making them ideal for those who are interested in nineteenth-century ship construction and marine technology, as well as for those who wish to create their own model of Terror. Part Three is dedicated to the building of HMS Terror, that is, the construction of my model, including detailed images of her final construction configuration, which is a more detailed version of an Admiralty-style 1839 Erebus model at the National Maritime Museum. It also includes a discussion of the recent creation of a highly accurate 1:1 scale reproduction of Terror for the recent television series The Terror, on which I served as an historical consultant. The visuals from this reconstruction are both evocative and useful for those hoping to understand what life may have been like onboard Terror during her final days afloat.

The book ends with an epilogue, highlighting the recent discovery of Terror in 2016. Her discovery raises many questions about the Franklin mystery itself, but her location and condition may also answer important questions about Terror’s capabilities and, ultimately, her role in the fate of the Franklin expedition. Having reviewed all the information currently known about Terror in the preceding chapters, the epilogue is a fitting place to explore these questions.

Why a book on HMS Terror? Why all the attention on a ship which was already twenty-three years old when she was first pressed into discovery service? Why detail the career of a vessel never chosen as the flagship? Why is it important to tell the story of a ship which had a reputation for poor sailing, and which ultimately had to be deserted by her men?

Terror was a technological marvel, fitted with the most advanced and reliable marine technologies of the day. For her remarkable engineering and fittings alone, she deserves careful study. In many respects, she and Erebus were at the pinnacle of the mid-nineteenth-century wooden shipwright’s art in her day – ironically embodied in a squat, slab-sided bomb, with the lines and dull sailing qualities of a merchantman. But her adventures, and her ability to endure punishment, are also a history that needs to be explored. She was designed to survive the greatest trials frozen and savage oceans could throw at her – conditions that would have milled a lesser vessel to splinters. Her ability to endure these extreme conditions placed her in a central role in mid-nineteenth-century polar exploration, and she shaped its history for decades, and continues to loom large in Arctic exploration and national identities.

Stern section of the 1:48 scale model built by the author. On display are the doubled windows (stern lights), stern davits, propeller, wide rudderpost, simplified transom, and unique run of planking on the counter.

More than 175 years after she was deserted in one of the world’s great ice sinks, she was found sitting upright on the sea floor, in near-pristine condition. An argument could be made that where she rests means that she completed the Northwest Passage. More importantly, it means that she took everything the Arctic pack ice could throw at her. She sheltered her men to the very last and never, not once in three harrowing expeditions, abandoned them to the ice. She performed exactly the way she was designed and there was nothing more anyone could have asked from Terror. This remarkable ship’s story needs to be told: she is the greatest polar exploration vessel the world has ever known.

PART ONE

The History of HMS Terror, 1812–1848

CHAPTER ONE

His Majesty’s Bomb Ship Terror, 1813–1828

AS TENSIONS GREW between Great Britain and the United States during the autumn and winter of 1811/12, the Royal Navy quickly realised that its fleet of bomb ships was inadequate to fight both the French, with whom the British had been at war since 1803, and Americans simultaneously. On 30 March 1812, as military conflict with America became increasingly likely, directions were given by the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty to design a new class of ‘bomb vessel’ (also called mortar vessels, bomb ships, or simply, ‘bombs’). Drafts were quickly developed and delivered on 20 May, yet the Americans declared war precisely thirty days later on 18 June, before construction of any of the much-needed ships got underway. Faced with a rapidly evolving military situation, Admiral John Borlase Warren¹ arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in September to take charge of the Royal Navy’s North America Station. Despite his speedy deployment, the admiral nonetheless arrived prepared: anticipating the importance naval strength would play in the looming conflict, he had requested additional bomb ships before he even left British waters, ‘in case it is decided to annoy the coast of America’.²

Sir Henry Peake’s new bomb ship: the Vesuvius class

Henry Peake, then master shipwright and Surveyor of the Navy, took on the task of designing this new 1812 class of vessel. Though he could not have expected it, one of these bomb ships was destined for fame, but not as a vessel of war. In fact, what he imagined over fifty-two days in the spring of 1812 was to become one of the greatest polar survey vessels ever built, with a deserved reputation as one of the toughest wooden sailing vessels of all time. While Peake undoubtedly knew that previous iterations of Royal Navy bomb vessels had been used for Arctic survey work, he would not live to see the significant achievements of a ship of his design in the pack ice of both poles. It is therefore ironic that his design was initially considered flawed: Terror and her Vesuvius-class sister ships were plagued with stability problems that would not be resolved, at least in Terror’s case, until the final years of her career.

Peake’s sole concern in 1812 was creating a new type of floating siege engine, a modern design for an empire whose vast reach was straining the capabilities and capacity of its fleet. Extant bomb vessels tended to be small, with shallow draughts of 10–13ft which allowed them to stand in close to shore, increasing their effective range. But these shallow-draught designs, some mimicking the lines of small frigates, had necessarily compromised hold capacities, so that each bomb ship required a tender to carry much of its ordnance. This created obvious logistical problems in transport, staging for battle, and especially when expending and restocking ordnance during an engagement.

The Admiralty required the new bombs to have a degree of self-sufficiency, so Peake settled on a hybrid vessel design which incorporated several important qualities borrowed from merchant ships. Merchant conversions were a long-time staple of the bomb fleet, and the qualities of these conversions were well understood by Peake. For example, the famous three-masted Discovery (1789), converted to a bomb in 1798, shared many qualities of the later purpose-built bombs. However, while their deeper and more spacious holds allowed them to carry far more ordnance, these benefits came at a cost in sailing ability. Merchant ships tended to be slow and were sometimes unstable, traits uncharacteristic of most Royal Navy vessels of similar tonnage.

Peake had never designed a bomb vessel, but few shipwrights of his era had. However, his design of the Cherokee class of small cruisers was an unparalleled triumph, with the ships being versatile, quick and weatherly. In fact, they were some of the most successful Royal Navy vessels of the early nineteenth century, and more than a hundred were built. The cruisers were easily modified and saw significant use as surveying and charting vessels, being the perfect size and rig (many were converted from two-masted to three-masted vessels) for demanding nearshore work. HMS Beagle is by far the most famous vessel of the Cherokee class and her discovery service under Captain Robert Fitzroy’s command would have been notable, even if Charles Darwin had not served as naturalist on her 1831 expedition. Indeed, as will be outlined in later chapters, Beagle played a tangential role in reconstructing the history of Terror, as records of the former’s fittings were of specific utility.

Unsurprisingly, Peake’s Vesuvius-class bombs mimicked the cruisers he was accustomed to designing, especially in their topside configuration.³ However, unlike the Cherokee cruisers, Peake’s new bombs were much larger and had hull forms characteristic of merchant vessels, with very bluff bows, limited tumblehome and full lines. The 1812 order required four vessels and like all bomb ships their names were chosen to inspire dread in their enemies. Terror, Belzebub, Vesuvius and Fury were all designated for the Vesuvius class, but in the end only three vessels were constructed, with the name Fury saved for the subsequent, and slightly improved, Hecla class, also designed by Peake. Contemporary plans in the collection of the National Maritime Museum show that these Vesuvius-class ships were designed with identical specifications. However, when completed, Terror was built slightly larger than Belzebub (by mere inches), though it is unknown if this was intentional, or owing to the vagaries of wooden ship construction. Fortuitously, the contemporary contract survives for Belzebub, allowing Terror’s initial design and scantlings to be reconstructed in minute detail.⁴

Terror was designed around the mortars she needed to carry: one 13in mortar just afore the mainmast and a 10in mortar forward of this, separated from the latter by the main hatch.⁵ The most significant design characteristic was the massive mortar beds, which extended from the lower deck to the hold and were supported by eighteen heavy stanchions, as well as diagonal oak bracing, which was reinforced by iron knees.⁶ The stanchions were enclosed to create a locker for mortars and carcasses (bomb shells), which could be passed out through windows and hoisted up the main hatch to load into the mortars. Unlike previous bombs, Terror and her Vesuvius-class sisters had a unique upper deck design that included a poop and forecastle, as well as a series of removable gangways, hatches, carlings, and even beams. These removable fittings covered the mortars when they were not in use, and effectively gave Terror a flush upper deck until the ship was readied for action.⁷ As a result, she was much more comfortable below decks than standard bomb vessels, and had more usable space for berthing the crew.

Vesuvius-class ships also carried two 6pdr brass cannons and eight 24pdr carronades, making the vessels relatively formidable, despite their small size. The ships were also designed to have more gun ports than guns, presumably to permit the repositioning of guns during stationary bombing manoeuvres. As a testimony to Peake’s design, Terror and her sisters could stow a tremendous amount of ordnance for their small size, including 138 13in mortars, 140 10in mortars, and fifty carcasses, in addition to round- and small-shot. Only later would it be realised that this ability to stow so much ordnance would become something of a liability on longer voyages of war (but a tremendous advantage on extended voyages of exploration).

In other respects, the Vesuvius class was like the small cruisers which Peake knew intimately. Windowed quarter-galleries imparted a sense of elegance to Terror and her sister ships, and her stern gallery, which consisted of seven large windows, was elaborate for a ship of this size.⁸ As designed, Terror’s quarterdeck was relatively cramped, with a large wooden tiller positioned above the deck connected to traditional steering tackle. Terror was designed as a barque-rigged vessel, meaning she had square sails on the fore and mainmast, but fore and aft sails on the mizzenmast. While square-rigged ships were generally faster, barque-rigged vessels required a smaller crew and could be more manoeuvrable if skilfully handled. The latter was an important characteristic for both bomb and exploration vessels, which were often required to stand in close to shore.