Everything about Hms Terror 1813 totally explained
HMS Terror was a
bomb vessel designed by Sir
Henry Peake and constructed by the
Royal Navy in the Davy shipyard in
Topsham, Devon. The ship, variously listed as being of either 326 or 340 tons, carried two
mortars, one 13-inch and one 10-inch.
War service
Terror saw service in the
War of 1812 against the
United States. Under the command of
John Sheridan, she took part in the bombardment of
Stonington, Connecticut on
August 9 -
12,
1814, and of
Fort McHenry in the
Battle of Baltimore on
September 13 -
14,
1814; the latter attack inspired
Francis Scott Key to write
The Star-Spangled Banner. In January,
1815, still under Sheridan's command,
Terror was involved in the attack on
St. Marys, Georgia.
After the end of the War,
Terror was laid up until
1828, when she was recommissioned for service in the
Mediterranean. On
February 18 1828 she ran aground on a
lee shore near Lisbon; eventually refloated, she was withdrawn from service after repairs.
Arctic service
Bomb vessels were strongly built in order to withstand the enormous recoil of their 3 ton mortars, and this made them suited to Arctic service. In
1836, command of
Terror was given to
George Back for an expedition to the northern part of
Hudson Bay, with a view to entering
Repulse Bay, where landing parties were to be sent out to determine whether the
Boothia Peninsula was an island or a peninsula. However,
Terror failed to reach Repulse Bay and barely survived the winter off
Southampton Island, at one point being forced 40 ft up the side of a cliff by the ice. In the spring of
1837, an encounter with an
iceberg further damaged the ship, which was in a sinking condition by the time Back was able to beach the ship on the coast of
Ireland at
Lough Swilly
Ross expedition
Terror was repaired and next assigned to a voyage to the
Antarctic in company with
HMS Erebus under the overall command of
James Clark Ross.
Francis Crozier was commander of
Terror on this expedition, which spanned three seasons from
1840 to
1843 during which
Terror and
Erebus made three forays into Antarctic waters, crossing the
Ross Sea twice, and sailing through the
Weddell Sea southeast of the
Falklands Islands. The volcano
Mount Terror on
Ross Island was named for the ship.
[
]Franklin expedition
Erebus and Terror were both outfitted with 20hp steam engines, and iron plating added to the hulls, for their voyage to the Arctic, with Sir John Franklin in overall command of the expedition in Erebus, and Terror again under the command of Crozier. The expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been charted from both the east and west but never entirely navigated.
The expedition sailed from Greenhithe on May 19 1845 and the ships were last seen entering Baffin Bay in August 1845. The disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic and the broad circumstances of the expedition's fate was revealed during a series of expeditions between 1848 and 1866. Both ships had become icebound and were abandoned by their crews, all of whom subsequently died of exposure and starvation while trying to trek overland to Fort Resolution, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost to the southwest. Subsequent expeditions up until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, also revealed that their canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William's Island during the late 20th century.
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