HMS Terror was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry. She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with .

On 12 September 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation announced that the wreck of Terror had been found in Nunavut's Terror Bay, off the southwest coast of King William Island. The wreck was discovered south of the location where the ship was reported abandoned, and some from the wreck of HMS Erebus, discovered in September 2014.

Early history and military service

HMS Terror was a bomb ship built over two years at the Davy shipyard in Topsham in south Devon, for the Royal Navy. Her deck was long, and the ship measured 325 tons burthen. The vessel was armed with two heavy mortars and ten cannon, and was launched in June 1813.

Terror saw service in the War of 1812 against the United States, during which the ships of the North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy blockaded the Atlantic ports of the United States and launched amphibious raids from its base in Bermuda, leading up to the 1814 Chesapeake campaign, a punitive expedition that included the Raid on Alexandria, the Battle of Bladensburg, and the Burning of Washington. Under the command of John Sheridan, she took part in the bombardment of Stonington, Connecticut, on 9–12 August 1814. She also fought in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814 and participated in the bombardment of Fort McHenry; the latter attack inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner".

After the war, Terror was laid up until March 1828, when she was recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean Sea. She was removed from active service when she underwent repairs for damage suffered near Lisbon, Portugal.

The admiralty dispatched the shipwright, William McPherson Rice, to refloat and repair Terror sufficiently to enable her to sail to the naval shipyard at Chatham in Kent, where full repairs were carried out. Correspondence describing the repairs and the crew's sojourn in Rathmullan are held in the Royal Museums Greenwich collection. Back subsequently published a complete account of this voyage right up to the decommissioning of Terror in Chatham.

Ross expedition

thumb|upright=1.4|"Erebus" and "Terror" in New Zealand on the [[Ross expedition, August 1841, by John Wilson Carmichael]]

In 1839 Terror was assigned to a voyage to the Antarctic along with Erebus under the overall command of James Clark Ross. Iron plating was added fore and aft on the ships' hulls to make them more resistant to pack ice, and their decks were cross-planked to distribute impact forces. on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century. Attempts were also undertaken in 2010, 2011, and 2012, all of which failed to locate the ships' remains.

On 8 September 2014, it was announced that the wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 7 September using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. On 1 October 2014, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the remains were that of Erebus.

On 12 September 2016, a team from the Arctic Research Foundation announced that a wreck close to Terrors description had been located on the southern coast of King William Island in the middle of Terror Bay (), at a depth of . The remains of the ships are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the exact location withheld to preserve the wrecks and prevent looting.

Sammy Kogvik, an Inuk hunter and member of the Canadian Rangers who joined the crew of the Arctic Research Foundation's Martin Bergmann, recalled an incident from seven years earlier in which he encountered what appeared to be a mast jutting from the ice. With this information, the ship's destination was changed from Cambridge Bay to Terror Bay, where researchers located the wreck in just 2.5 hours. According to Louie Kamookak, a resident of nearby Gjoa Haven and a historian on the Franklin expedition, Parks Canada had ignored the stories of locals that suggested that the wreck of Terror was in her namesake bay, despite many modern stories of sightings by hunters and from airplanes.

In 2018, Terror and Erebus were gifted to Canada and the Inuit, in care of the Inuit Heritage Trust, by the government of the United Kingdom. This includes all the remaining artifacts.

Although the exact location has not been released, Nancy Anilniliak, the Field Unit Superintendent of the Nunavut Field Unit, has restricted access to an approximately rectangular area in Terror Bay. The area runs from Point E () to Point F () to Point G () to Point H ().

In August 2019, taking advantage of "exceptionally co-operative" weather conditions, Parks Canada conducted 48 dives over the course of seven days to Terror, 3D-mapping the wreck and searching the interior with ROVs. The team was able to map out ninety per cent of Terrors lower deck, but were unable to access Crozier's cabin due to the buildup of sediment. Despite this, Crozier's cabin was considered the best preserved space in the lower deck, and Parks Canada has expressed the hope that written materials may be found there. The planned exploration of the wreck sites in 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team returned to the wrecks in May 2022, after a two-year postponement caused by the pandemic.

Legacy

In art, entertainment, and media

HMS Terror is featured, often alongside HMS Erebus, in fictional works that involve or allude to the Franklin expedition, such as:

  • "Northwest Passage" is a 1981 song by Canadian musician Stan Rogers about the Franklin expedition and its fate.
  • Terror and Erebus (1965) is a verse play for CBC Radio by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, subsequently published in her collection Afterworlds (1987).
  • Mordecai Richler's novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989), in which Ephraim Gursky survives the expedition and lives to pass on his Judaism and Yiddish to some of the local Inuit.
  • Dan Simmons' novel The Terror (2007), a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to the Arctic, in 1845–1848, to force the Northwest Passage. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and illness, and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, they are stalked across the bleak Arctic landscape by a monster. The novel has been adapted as an eponymous 2018 television series by cable TV channel AMC.
  • "The Erebus and the Terror," an instrumental piece composed by Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, is the third track on the 1987 album Something of Time by Nightnoise.
  • Erebus: The Story of a Ship (2018, published by Hutchinson, a division of Random House), by Michael Palin, is a historical account of the ships Erebus and Terror. The book was serialized on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.

In namesakes

  • Mount Terror on Ross Island, near Antarctica, was named after the ship by Captain Ross, who also named a nearby and slightly taller peak to the west, Mount Erebus.
  • Erebus and Terror Gulf, in Antarctica. Named after the vessels used by Royal Navy Captain Sir James Clark Ross in exploring the area in 1842–43.
  • Terror Bay on King William Island was named in 1910, long before the discovery of the wreck there.