The Tragic End of the Franklin-Crozier Arctic Expedition (North-West Passage)

Captain Sir John Franklin departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year, Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin himself, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished. Source: "Franklin's Lost Expedition" in Wikipedia. Submitted to the "Backlit by the Moon" Challenge hosted by Csf (