The Terror: The haunting true story that inspired BBC Two’s acclaimed horror series

Mystery of the doomed Arctic voyage was pieced together over many decades

Ridley Scott’s acclaimed horror series The Terror has finally arrived on UK screens, nearly three years after debuting in the US.

The programme, airing here on BBC Two, tells the story of an expedition to the Arctic in the middle of the 19th Century.

Led by Captains Sir John Franklin (played in the series by Ciarán Hinds) and Fracis Crozier (Jared Harris), two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, embarked on the doomed voyage in 1845. All 129 crewmembers vanished without a trace; the shipwrecks were not found until 2014.

Though much of The Terror is rooted in historical fact, it also contains supernatural elements, as the two vessels running afoul of an angry spirit.

Here’s a quick run-through of the true story that inspired The Terror’s horrifying first season...

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The purpose of the fateful expedition was to locate the non-existent “open polar sea”, a safe shortcut to the Pacific around the North Pole.

Franklin was a military veteran with a spotted history of expeditions – his attempt to traverse Canada’s northern coast in 1819 led to the deaths of 11 men. He was chosen after other more favoured explorers turned down the voyage, with Irish officer Crozier selected as his right-hand man, aboard the Terror.

The ships departed from Kent in May 1845, stopping in the Orkney Islands and passing by Greenland untroubled. They were seen in Baffin Bay, after which, they completely disappeared.

Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) and James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) in The Terror (BBC/AMC Film Holdings LLC/Aidan Monaghan)

A search expedition was sent out in 1948, at the behest of Franklin’s wife and others back in Britain, to no avail. The search for the missing crew became a public sensation, and the case gained notoriety in the press.

Subsequent searches managed to uncover relics and human remains, and authorities were gradually able to discern what had happened.

Their theory was the ships became icebound near King William Island in the Victoria Strait around 1847 and were unable to continue. Erebus and Terror were then abandoned in 1848, after Franklin and several others had died. Survivors made it to the Canadian mainland, led by Crozier and Erebus’s captain James Fitzjames, but disappeared.

In 1854, a report by Scottish surgeon Jon Rae shared some additional light on the mystery. Rae had purchased a silver plate belonging to John Franklin, and other items from the Terror and Erebus, from an Inuit tradesperson to the north of Canada.

Seafarers mourn during the first episode of The Terror (BBC/AMC Film Holdings LLC/Aidan Monaghan)

The Inuits told Rae that they had sold a seal to a group of Englishman three years previously, and had found more than 30 cadavers buried and spread across the ice when they returned to the area months later.

Cannibalism was suspected in Rae’s report, which was substantiated many years later by cut marks on some of the bones of bodies later recovered from the scene of the shipwrecks.

Some of the bodies showed evidence of lead poisoning, which is believed to be the result of shoddily made containers used to store provisions.

The wreck of the Erebus was located in 2014 by Canadian archaeologists, near the Queen Maud Gulf in Nanavut.

The Terror was discovered two years later, lodged in the ice roughly 60 miles away from its sister ship.

All episodes of The Terror can be watched on BBC iPlayer now.