In 1845 two 3-masted sailing ships of the Royal Navy, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, embarked on a journey under the command of Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage, the perhaps non-existent path connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans across the impenetrable ice of the Antarctica. Manned by veterans of many polar expeditions, they were equipped with steam engines, central heating systems, reinforced hulls designed to withstand the assaults of ice, a state-of-the-art medical laboratory, and enough food supplies stocked to last for 5 years. They sailed past Greenland, and then, despite the multiple rescue expeditions sent after them in the coming years, were never been heard from again.
