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A more than 160-year-old Arctic mystery has come to resolution: The HMS Terror, a vessel from a doomed Royal Navy exploration to chart an unnavigated portion of the Northwest Passage, has been found, Aleta Brooke, operations manager for the Arctic Research Foundation said.

The Guardian, which first reported the story

, said the vessel is in "perfect condition." The paper reports:



The flagship vessel of British Capt. Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, the HMS Erebus, 

, the HMS Terror was found just north of HMS Erebus wreck in Nunavut's Terror Bay.



How researchers located the HMS Terror after all these years is also likely to become the stuff of legend.

, a researcher heard an Inuit man say that about six years ago he saw a large piece of wood that looked like a mast sticking out of the ice near Terror Bay.


He took a picture but lost the camera. He kept quiet all these years because he thought losing the camera was a bad omen.

The researcher took the Inuit man's story seriously and they found the wreck right where the man said he had seen it.


The Canadian government launched a formal search for the two vessels in 2008. It was a Parks Canada expedition that found the HMS Erebus and it is expected that Canada will attempt to confirm the HMS Terror find.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Arts and Culture

Eyder Peralta

Author

The HMS Terror went missing in 1848 as the Royal Navy sought to chart an unnavigated portion of the Northwest Passage. All 129 crew members perished.

Second vessel from doomed Franklin expedition found in the Arctic

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