By Tim Binnall
A research project out of Canada has produced breathtaking footage from inside the wreckage of the doomed Arctic exploration vessel known as the HMS Terror. The ship became infamous back in 1848 when it was abandoned alongside its sister ship, the HMS Erebus, while on an expedition in the Arctic. With its crew perishing in the frozen tundra under gruesome circumstances, the tale of the Terror and Erebus have long fascinated historians curious about the circumstances which led to the terrible and somewhat mysterious turn of events.
Earlier this month, a team of researchers embarked on an expedition to the site in the Arctic Ocean where the wreckage of the Terror was finally found in 2016 and brought back some fascinating insights into the state of the ship. Over the course of seven days, divers explored the wreckage using a remote-operated vehicle that was able to maneuver inside the vessel and examine the condition of a whopping 20 cabins and room constituting 90 percent of the lower deck of the ship.
What the expedition found was rather amazing as, thanks to the frigid temperature of the water and a heavy layer of sediment, much of the materials inside the ship were, according to a statement from Parks Canada, "essentially frozen-in-time for approximately 170 years." Incredibly, they speculated that "there is a high probability of finding written documents that have been sealed within these areas of HMS Terror because the environment would be preserving them in a near-perfect state."
Researchers surmised that, based on the state of the ship in this veritable time capsule form, the vessel was abandoned quickly and sunk fairly soon after the crew had departed. This means that there is likely to be a vast array of artifacts to be found within the various drawers and cabinets that have left undisturbed for the nearly two centuries since the ship met its untimely fate. With that in mind, it stands to reason that future expeditions to the wreckage will attempt to retrieve objects which just might shed light on the final days of the Terror.