Ice, ice, more ice... and lead

A small plaque mounted by the entrance to the British Hotel in Simon's Town, setting for my novel The Girl from Simon's Bay, is a startling reminder of the great age of Polar exploration that captivated the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These are storied names: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, Robert Scott and the Terra Nova...

Of all the ships that called in to Simon's Town before sailing to the Polar regions, it was HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that caught the imagination of the public. It was not just for their Antarctic adventures of the early 1840s - first circumnavigation of the continent, the almost fatal collision between the two vessels as they avoided an iceberg - but for the mystery of their disappearance in the Arctic while searching for the North-West Passage in 1845. When nothing was heard from the expedition for several years, rescue missions were sent from Britain but failed to find any trace.

Even the appropriately-named HMS Investigator, dispatched on 1850, was itself stuck in ice and had to be abandoned. It was only some 150 years later that the mystery began to be solved. A team of hydrographers, archeologists and scientists assembled by Parks Canada discovered HMS Erebus on the seafloor in 2014, and HMS Terror in 2016. Both had been crushed by the ice and sunk. Evidence of human remains have also been found on land from the crew's desperate attempt to hike to safety. They sadly perished due to the intense cold, hunger and... lead poisoning. The new technology of tin canning had recently been invented and much of the men's food came from cans that were sealed with lead solder.

While we now know the fate of the ships, it may never be known whether Sir John Franklin and the Erebus and Terror ever found the elusive passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, before the ice claimed them.

Next time, perhaps the most famous explorer to stop in Simon's Town:
Robert Falcon Scott and his ship Terra Nova...