168 years after the crews of polar explorer John Franklin had to abandon their ships "HMS Erebus" and "HMS Terror" in the Arctic Victoria Strait, researchers from the Arctic Research Foundation have now discovered the wreck of "HMS Terror". It lies at a depth of around 24 metres in a bay on King William Island and is said to be surprisingly well preserved. Although all the masts are broken, they are still standing; inside the ship, a diving robot discovered, among other things, glasses and crockery.
All the signs obviously point to the wreck being the "Terror", but underwater archaeologists are still to officially identify and confirm the find. The crew of the research vessel "Martin Bergmann" had already been able to locate the wreck on 3 September, around 90 kilometres south of where it was actually thought to be. The Canadian government had launched missions to locate the Franklin ships since 2008 and had already been able to find the "HMS Erebus" in 2014, which had sunk further south of the "Terror".
Both ships had set out on a polar expedition under the leadership of John Franklin in 1845 to discover and cross the Northwest Passage. After the crews had survived two winters in the ice, the third was their undoing - the ships could no longer get out of the ice, Franklin died, the men began to seek their salvation by fleeing on foot and left the ships to their own devices. However, all 129 members of the expedition died in the process.
