Since the discovery of the New World in 1492 explorers had been searching for ways to travel outside the continent to reach Asia.
In 1578 Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Pacific Ocean through Cape Horn, but that route was large for ships trying to reach the trade routes to China and known as the Islands. Spice, in present-day Indonesia.
The discovery of Australia and New Zealand in the 18th century and the conquest of India by the East India Company reinforced the need for a faster sea route to the Pacific Ocean.
The Northwest Passage became a sacred grid sought by many British explorers and others, beginning with John Cabot’s expedition in 1497.
Sir John Franklin, an experienced explorer, volunteered to lead a voyage to find the Northwest Passage and was commanded by two modern vessels that were even equipped with early steam engines.
HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were sent out in the summer of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage but took a wrong turn and ended up lost and surrounded by packaged ice.
HMS Terror was one of the British ships involved in the explosion of Fort McHenry at the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814.
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus sailed from England in May 1845 under Franklin and a crew of 128 men.
The ships sailed to Canada but went too far south and were captured near King William Island.
The last message of the crew before their evacuation – sent on 25 April 1848 – indicated that people were alive – but, at that time, they were abandoning their ships.
The crew left the two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, north of King William Island and embarked on a arduous journey south to mainland trading post.
None of the crew was ever heard from again, although a skeleton and device were found at the site linked to extinction.
Judging by the bodies found so far, none of the remaining crew made even a fifth of the way to safety.
According to legend – backed by folklore stories from the Inuit people living in nearby Nunavut – the missing sailors tried to escape by crossing the ice and dying only after some go to cannibalism.
With no news of the trip, his wife Lady Franklin persuaded the Royal Navy to send a rescue mission but they were confident that he was still alive and even promoted to Rear-Admiral five years after his death.
This eventually led the team to a frozen death, although no-one knows exactly what the details were going through the years they needed.
Search parties were sent out, useless.
In 1850 a new voyage, under Robert McClure, was commissioned. They eventually found the Northwest Passage and their team received a reward of £ 10,000 given to them by the Parliament.
But packaged ice didn’t make the passage suitable for sailing and never got the status the fans had hoped for.
Sea travel did not succeed until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his voyage in 1903-06.
It was not until the 2000s that divers discovered shipwrecks, which sat far apart.
HMS Terror was found in 2016 under 79 feet (24 meters) of water in Terror Bay, on the coast of King William Island, about 40 miles (64 km) north of where HMS Erebus was found in 2014. .
Both shipwrecks have been swept away by the ice over the years.