10 Shipwrecks That Became Time Capsules of History

From Bronze Age cargo to an Antarctic expedition, these ten shipwrecks preserve surprising evidence of how people traded, fought and lived.

8. HMS Erebus: A Discovery Guided by Inuit Knowledge

1845 newspaper illustration of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror before their Arctic expedition

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror sailed in 1845 as part of John Franklin’s attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage. Neither ship returned. Generations of searches followed, but locating Erebus in 2014 depended on more than increasingly sophisticated equipment.

Parks Canada describes a search informed by Inuit knowledge as well as archaeological investigation. A small fitting found on land helped direct attention toward the area where sonar revealed the wreck. The discovery showed the value of taking Indigenous accounts seriously as historical evidence rather than treating them as background to a European expedition.

Underwater investigation revealed features including anchors, pumps, cannon and the ship’s bell. Such remains let researchers ask detailed questions about the expedition’s final years, but finding the vessel did not solve every uncertainty about the fate of its men. The image here is an 1845 newspaper illustration of Erebus and Terror, not a photograph of their wrecks. It shows the ships as their contemporaries imagined the voyage beginning.

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