Searching for Franklin's Ships- Terror and Erebus

When Sir John Franklin and his crew did not return home to England—with no one knowing where they were—other explorers began to search for Franklin's two ships, the Terror and Erebus. No one knew where those ships might be.

Some folks reported seeing ships which resembled those two vessels in Baffin Bay (where they were apparently trapped in ice floes). But, if those were the two ships, where did they go? Did they eventually sink?

Other individuals reported seeing two ships on an ice flow near Newfoundland Banks. In 1959, Rear Admiral Noel Wright penned a story about that 1851 sighting:

...two ships came out of the Arctic all by themselves. They were sighted in April 1851, on an immense ice-floe off the Newfoundland Banks.

Different theories led to different ideas about where the two lost ships might be. Inuit men found what could be pieces of a ship which had washed-ashore at King William Island and on Matty Island. Where those items part of Franklin's ships? If so, did the ships sink nearby?

The key to this map tells us about the search for the Terror and Erebus: 

• The starting point for a search begins with the "approximate point of abandonment" in the Victoria Strait, off King William Island;

• Following the likely drift path from the approximate point of abandonment, we come to an area along the western coast of King William Island, continuing to the island's southern shore and then along its eastern coast;

• Those drift paths seem to mostly coincide with places where Franklin artifacts had been located over the years;

• Inuit testimony also seemed to confirm that the area around King William Island was a good place to search.

Click on the image for a better view.