Posted on 09/13/2014 10:59:28 PM PDT by roses of sharon
Historically valuable items are continually being lost or destroyed or being found. For example, most R&L readers likely missed a two-paragraph item in the middle of page 10A of last Wednesday's edition. The title of the article was "Canada Finds One of Two Explorers Ships Lost in Arctic." I feel this discovery warrants more coverage.
The two vessels were the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, both lost during an expedition to determine the feasibility of traversing the "Northwest Passage," a route over the top of North America to link the Atlantic Ocean and Europe to the Pacific Ocean and Asia. The article did not state -- the discoverers have yet to determine -- which of the two ships has been found, but concluded that the finding at least one of them had "long been among the most sought-after prizes in marine archeology and the subject of songs, poems and novels."
(Excerpt) Read more at statesville.com ...
If the found ship is the HMS Terror, it will be a significant historical find for the United States as well as for Great Britain and Canada. The HMS Terror was one of the Royal Navy ships firing rockets at Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore on September 13-14, 1814. The red glare and bursting bombs of the British Royal Navy inspired a Baltimore lawyer named Francis Scott Key to write a poem that eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner." You may have heard Mr. Key's poem sung before a baseball game
shooting rockets of glare as I recall..
HMS Terror
Ping
Great names!
“Today, specially constructed ice-breaking ships can complete the Northwest Passage, but it is prohibitive to do so commercially.”
Thought Global Warming would have opened this sea lane up to about everyone. At least that is what Clive Clussler wrote.
That’s pretty spooky... for some weird reason I was fooling around on you tube this evening looking for math videos
and had a sudden inexplicable urge to see what was on there relating to the war of 1812, first thing I clicked on was the Battle of Baltimore.
The Royal Navy always named their bomb vessels for associations with explosive violence. Bomb vessels were the ship type of choice for voyages of discovery in Arctic regions because they were more sturdily built than other ships and during times of peace were surplus to navy requirements.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.