The Terror, in all her glory ...

Side-scan image of HMS Terror by Parks Canada; used by permission

In the Franklin story there are just a few images that, without a single word to accompany them, tell volumes: the face of John Torrington seeming to stare forth from his coffin; the lone skull in a field of rocks at Erebus Bay; William May's still-life lithograph of the Franklin relics. Certainly the sonar image of HMS "Erebus" was another, and to that may be added the even more dramatic scan made by Parks Canada of HMS "Terror." In it one can see many structures missing from her sister ship Erebus: the long and lovely bowsprit, the davits from which the boats once swung still attached to the deck, and the shadows of the deckhouse, masts and other fixtures. Indeed, it's possible if one places a plan of the ship over the top of the image, to see the correspondence of the vessel that enabled Parks to make its identity positive -- not that there were any other missing vessels of that period know to be in the vicinity!

The ship appears a bit narrower than she actually is, and the bowsprit seems to be at an angle -- but these effects are due to the relatively steep angle of the sonar beam; like the beams of some artificial sun, the shadows it paints are an a steep angle, a golden sunset not solar, but painted by reflected sound.

But like those other images, it raises as many questions as it answers: where precisely does she lie (we're not meant to know just yet, for the understandable reason that the security of the site is paramount); near what portion of land (which instantly becomes the ideal place for archaeologists to do work on the ground); facing in what direction? Was she piloted here or did she drift (the former seems, for now, by far the most likely). The Inuit testimony tell of a sudden sinking, but so far as can be seen, she seems in "ship shape" from stem to stern. Nevertheless, she sits in deep silt, which may yet disclose the damage, severe or slight, which brought her to her resting place. Even that place is a question: according to some modern Inuit accounts, the ship may have shifted in position about seven years ago, such that a mast was present above the ice of the bay -- a mast which may since have been broken off or carried away. Low tides that year may have also had something to do with it, And, however she reached her present resting place, the all-important when is yet unknown -- upon which the chronology of the "Terror Camp" on land, and the subsequent departure of some number of survivors, depends. For that answer, we'll have to wait at least until next year's dive season.