#Hms erebus book how to
#Hms erebus book full

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. In 1840, she embarked on her most important voyage - departing Tasmania for Antarctica, captained by James Clark Ross, accompanied by HMS Terror. '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.'Īfter that it was another nine years before Erebus was used at all, refitted as an exploration vessel. '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. The world, Palin says, 'was their oyster'.

#Hms erebus book how to

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.'īut Erebus was a warship built at a time when suddenly there was no war, Palin says.įrom then until the Crimean War in the 1850s, British ships, sailors and navigators were diverted towards exploring the world.

'They would try and select trees that were already growing in a certain way, so you wouldn't have to cut them. The ship's builders in Pembroke, Wales would choose trees by eye. The ship was designed for strength, Palin says. '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.' HMS Erebus was built in Wales in 1826 and Palin says the skill of the shipwrights at the time was extraordinary. ' 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.' 'In 2014 I heard the ship had been discovered under the ice in the Canadian Arctic,' Palin tells Nine to Noon's Lynn Freeman.

#Hms erebus book full

To help tell the story, he has travelled to various locations across the world - Tasmania, the Falklands, the Canadian Arctic - to search for local information, and to experience at first hand the terrain and the conditions that would have confronted the Erebus and her crew.Listen to the full interview with Michael Palin And he vividly recounts the experiences of the men who first stepped ashore on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic wastes as rescue missions desperately tried to reach them. He explores the intertwined careers of the men who shared its journeys: the dashing James Clark Ross who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier' and oversaw some of the earliest scientific experiments to be conducted there and the troubled John Franklin, who at the age of sixty and after a chequered career, commanded the ship on its final, disastrous expedition. Now Michael Palin - former Monty Python stalwart and much-loved television globetrotter - brings this extraordinary ship back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half.

It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. Categories Adult Non-Fiction, History, Travel, General Non Fiction