24 Sep 2018

Michael Palin's story of HMS Erebus

From Nine To Noon, 10:07 am on 24 September 2018

One of the greatest exploratory ships in history - the Erebus, which disappeared in 1845 only to be found 169 years later under Canadian ice - is now the subject of a book by broadcaster and history buff Michael Palin. 

HMS Erebus was emblematic of the golden age of Victorian British exploration. 

She made it further south than any other ship before her, circumnavigated the Antarctic and ended up as flag ship on the doomed Franklin Expedition in the late 1840s - an attempt to find the last unnavigated section of the North West passage. 

Michael Palin

Michael Palin Photo: AFP / FILE

That expedition set off from England in 1845, but the Erebus, her 129 crew, and sister ship HMS Terror disappeared - and despite a massive search remained undiscovered until they were found trapped under ice in the Canadian Arctic in 2014. 

Comedian, broadcaster and inveterate explorer Michael Palin has long been fascinated with sea faring and when he heard the wreck of Erebus had been discovered, he decided to write a book about this richly-storied ship. Erebus: The Story of a Ship is the result.

"In 2014 I heard the ship had been discovered under the ice in the Canadian Arctic," Palin tells Nine to Noon's Lynn Freeman.

"Erebus was there, the hull almost intact, only about 12 metres under the surface so that was extraordinary - the ship was still there with secrets still to impart."

HMS Erebus was built in Wales in 1826 and Palin says the skill of the shipwrights at the time was extraordinary.

"She was designed as a warship of a class called bomb ships, these were very small, stout ships which had very strong decks on which were placed 13-inch mortars - two 13-inch mortars that lobbed shells from the ship and the idea was to lob into towns or fortifications to which they were laying siege, to soften up the enemy from the sea."

The ship was designed for strength, Palin says. The ship's builders in Pembroke, Wales would choose trees by eye.

"They would try and select trees that were already growing in a certain way, so you wouldn't have to cut them. They would form a keel and form natural strong points to the ship so selecting the timber was hugely important, and knowing how to cut the timber was vitally important, and yes of course all that would have been done by hand."

But Erebus was a warship built at a time when suddenly there was no war, Palin says.

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Photo: Random House Books

From then until the Crimean War in the 1850s, British ships, sailors and navigators were diverted towards exploring the world. This was the era of Darwin and Banks. The world, Palin says, "was their oyster".

"The Napoleonic Wars, which had involved enormous naval battles like Trafalgar and Battle of the Nile, that was all over so there were these ships that really had no purpose.

"She was eventually taken on a rather anodyne tour of the Mediterranean where she saw no action but checked on pirates and things like that."

After that it was another nine years before Erebus was used at all, refitted as an exploration vessel.

In 1840, she embarked on her most important voyage - departing Tasmania for Antarctica, captained by James Clark Ross,  accompanied by HMS Terror.

Over the next four years the expedition established that Antarctica was indeed a continent, discovered the Ross Ice Shelf, discovered islands, and named mountains - Mt Erebus and Mt Terror.

They took measurements, catalogued flora and fauna and did a lot of work on terrestrial magnetism.

"It was hugely successful. They had about four or five people die on the entire journey - mostly accidents at sea - there was no major illness on board which was most unusual in those days - although Cook was lucky there too.

"They were away for four years, made three separate journeys deep into the Antarctic, and came back mostly alive and healthy."

For his research, Palin drew heavily on the journals and letters of the ship's assistant surgeon and botanist, Joseph Hooker.

"Hooker kept a journal and wrote a lot of letters to his family and those became very important in research for the book - the more formal journals that James Clark Ross and other officers kept had to be returned to the admiralty at the end of the journey.

"Letters home, they did not have to be submitted so you had far more indiscretions, if you like, in correspondence to the families. A lot of Hooker's letters were to his father, and they are very valuable."

Hooker was a self-taught and brilliant botanist, Palin says.

"On Erebus' voyage they would come to islands right on the Southern Ocean and he would discover on the first day 22 species of plants that no one had ever discovered before this was thrilling for a young botanist."

Portrait of James Clark Ross by John R Wildman.

Portrait of James Clark Ross by John R Wildman. Photo: Public Domain

Captain Ross was a dashing man and accomplished sailor.

"He was quite a heroic figure, physically very dashing, Lady Franklin called him the 'handsomest man in the Navy'," Palin  says.

"He was quite a serious man, I don't think he liked being sent up. You read his journals and they're very straight really, and he had very high standards but was perhaps not the most imaginative or lyrical of writers, but definitely a brilliant navigator and a pretty remarkably successful leader of men."

One of his great achievements on the voyage was extricating Erebus from a disastrous collision with HMS Terror.

"The two ships collided whilst trying to get through a very narrow gap between icebergs on the second journey. The rigging was ripped apart, the sails were torn although the sister ship Terror managed to get through the hole and sail to safety," Palin says.

The Erebus was stuck, so Ross gambled on a risky escape strategy.

"He carried out what's known as a stern board manoeuvre - with a ship with 60 or 70 men on board it's a huge risk. It involves going out backwards and he achieved that and that's absolutely a remarkable feat."

But Palin says the incident scarred both Ross and his fellow captain Francis Crozier.

"There was a very nice observation by the daughter of the head of the Cape Town garrison when they arrive after four years away. She notices as she's sitting with the captains that both their hands are shaking and she asks, 'why are your hands shaking?'

"Captain Ross says to her 'that's what one night in the Antarctic did for us'."

Although not much of a sailor, Palin says he has been fascinated with the sea ever since he was a boy.

"When I used to go on my holidays to Norfolk the first sight of the sea was wonderful. There was the sound of the sea, and then just standing there at the edge of the sea. I was told when I was in Norfolk on my holidays if you went due north there would be no land before the North Pole.

"So, it's a great place of imaginings - the fact there was water between where I was standing on that beach and the North Pole … I think it was the immensity of it."

Erebus: The Story of a Ship is published by Random House.