The Terror, her name was The HMS Terror and her sister The HMS Erebus were warships in their youth and then decades later they were refitted as Arctic exploration vessels.
The short version of this story is, on their last mission the crews abandoned the Terror and the Erebus when the ships became icebound. We also know during the journey that the crew were consuming canned food supplies which were contaminated with botulism and that the poorly manufactured cans also contaminated the food with lead.
By the time the ships were locked in ice the Crew on both ships were already in failing physical and mental health due to the food poisoning.
Then they began to starve.
I’m not sure at what point they resorted to cannibalism, but really who can blame them?
I can’t help but to wonder, what it was like for the Terror and the Erebus – memories of war etched upon their bones, the sounds of a crew falling into paranoia and madness echoing from deck to deck, cabin to cabin trapped maybe, in her hold with the darkness ultimately to be left by their crews, abandoned alone in their tombs of ice.
Let’s just say ( or in my case hope ) that the Terror and Erebus were able to free themselves from their cold dark graves and that one foggy, bone chilling moonlit evening I was out on the Soun and I saw the two ships coming towards me and then they stopped and something told me to go ahead- board The Terror, The Erebus- chose one.
You are invited that something would be saying into my ear.
What would you do if you were invited to travel with companions like Terror and Erebus. Would you say yes? Would you run away screaming? Where would you go? What would you see?
I’d like to find out, but I’m willing to be my Soul that you would sail to places where nightmares come from. I can’t think of two better companions for that journey then the Terror and Erebus and I’m pretty sure they know the way by heart so…
I’d be packed and gone so fast it would be like
I was never here at all- like a ghost you think you see from the corner of your eye in a dream.
Or maybe a nightmare.
( Fanciful thoughts aside, here are two clips about the crew of The Terror and Erebus)
