NEW TV drama recalls the daring efforts to conquer the Arctic

On Wednesday, a new Ridley Scott drama based on an ill-fated 1845 expedition will transport viewers to a frozen hell of 300ft icebergs and -40⁰ temperatures, with two missing ships and the determined search to find their lost crew.

The BBC2 series focuses on the mystery surrounding English explorer Sir John Franklin’s two vessels, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, and the 128 crew who became so desperate for survival that – much to Victorians’ horror - they resorted to cannibalism.

The search for the elusive Arctic Ocean link had been attempted before Franklin’s doomed venture – including by one daring Scot, Sir John Ross, whose efforts would first bring shame and then fame after an incredible four years trapped in the cruel Arctic seas.

It would be Ross, played in The Terror by Scots actor Clive Russell, who would be the first to dare to search for the Franklin and his lost crew.

Born in West Galloway in 1777, he was nine years old when he joined the Royal Navy. He sailed the globe, fought in the Napoleonic Wars and in one grim incident broke his arm and both legs, suffered a bayonet wound to the torso and three sabre blows to the head while boarding a Spanish ship.

He caught the eye of Admiralty chiefs as they sought to map a new trade route across the tip of the globe, the Northwest Passage.

Two merchant vessels, Isabella and Alexander, had their bows sharpened and internal structures reinforced with iron plating to help push through the ice. Below deck was loaded 3,000 feet of timber for repairs, fur blankets and a library packed with books on Arctic science, along with almost 130 gallons of gin and brandy.

Ross and his crew left London in April 1818. By June they were in the Arctic Circle, where he recorded: “the water was glassy smooth, and the ships glided gently among the numberless masses of ice…”

But trouble lay ahead.

Within weeks, the two vessels had come to a crunching collision in the ice, with the bower anchors of both locked and the vessels at risk of being pulled apart.

By luck, the ships righted themselves and, undeterred, sailed on to eventually encounter what Ross believed to be shipwrecked sailors stranded on the ice.

Splendid in full dress uniform, he grandly introduced himself to what transpired were the northernmost dwelling people on earth, the Inughuit.

The tribe had never before encountered other humans and, wrote Ross, “until the moment of our arrival, believed themselves to be the only inhabitants of the universe.”

Thrilled, he declared the region to be the Arctic Highlands, and the people Arctic Highlanders.

The expedition studied Baffin Bay to the west of Greenland, and pushed onto the Lancaster Sound, which explorers 200 years earlier had declared impassable.

There, through thick fog, Ross was convince he saw a range of mountains which barred further progress. The expedition was abandoned, and the Admiralty told no westward passage was possible.

His lieutenant, however, argued there were no mountains. The discrepancies led to suggestions Ross had quit too soon, and the expedition and its commander became an embarrassment to the Admiralty.

Desperate to clear his name, Ross raised £10,000 sponsorship from a gin distiller to captain an 85-ton oak-built former mail steamer, Victory.

Stocked with enough food to last 1000 days, the first steam-powered Arctic expedition ignited the public’s imagination and Ross left London in spring 1828 with cheers ringing in his ears.

In icy waters, however, the Victory’s engines failed. And passing whalers who spotted her in full sail slowly making her way into the Lancaster Sound, would be the last to see her or her crew for four long years.

Brutal winter conditions forced Victory to shelter in a bay for months, where religious services, exercise routines and literature classes passed the cold, dark days.

Unfortunately, it would be one of the harshest of winters, and by September the ship – now with troublesome engines removed – had made just three miles of progress.

There was little option but to hunker down for a second, equally vicious winter.

On board was Ross’s nephew, James Clark Ross, who would become one of the north and south poles’ great explorers. With Victory trapped, he set off on several overland expeditions, including one in which he reached magnetic north pole, and claimed it for the king.

However, hopes to continue the search for the Northwest Passage were blighted by dreadful weather which left Ross and his men trapped for a further two winters, living in igloos and surviving on what little they could hunt and kill for food.

It would be August 1833 – five years after they had set off and having been presumed dead – that they would be found by a passing whaler. Ross and all but just three of his crew arrived home to a hero’s welcome.

For Ross there was a knighthood, the North Pole had been claimed and many scientific experiments and Inuit studies had been carried out. But rumours swirled that key achievements were really his nephew’s, that islands added to maps to just to impress the king.

Meanwhile, the Northwest Passage had still not been found.

By 1845 and Franklin’s Arctic expedition, Ross was in his late 60s. But, says Jo, he had made a solemn pledge to his fellow explorer that he would lead a search for him should anything happen.

With no word from the mission for years, Ross received backing from Captain Franklin’s wife, Lady Jane, for a rescue mission.

Ross, now 72, again headed to the Arctic where, on Beechey Island at the entrance to Wellington Channel, he found tins, debris and graves related to Franklin’s expedition.

Convinced the crew was dead, he returned home, much to Lady Franklin’s despair and disbelief from a Victorian public who, having seen him and his crew survive four Arctic winters, refused to accept his theory.

“Ross was extremely loyal to Franklin,” says Jo Woolf, Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Writer-in-Residence. “He was the first to mount a search for him, and everyone was obsessed with news of the expedition.

“But he had already proved that he could survive for four years in the Arctic. People wanted proof, artefacts from Franklin’s expedition, and they felt it was too early to give up.”

Instead, it would be another Scot, Orkney-born John Rae who would solve the mystery.

His land-based search led him to an Inuit family with silver to trade and tales of white men trudging across the ice in search of deer.

They claimed they returned to the location the following year, to find around 30 men dead and obvious signs of cannibalism.

“The news so unwelcome that he was ostracised and never received the recognition for solving the mystery that he should have,” adds Jo.

Back in Stranraer, Sir John Ross decided to bring his 65-year naval career to an end.

He retired to North West Castle in Stranraer, which he built in 1820, incorporating elements of his cabin from Victory. He died during a visit to London in August 1856.

Adds Jo: “All of these characters who went to the Arctic were extremely strong and determined, with this sense of doing it for their country and the betterment of geographical knowledge.

“Ross survived four years in Arctic – to do that was remarkable, to only loss three crew was extraordinary.

“He was adaptable, he learned from the Inuit people, they negotiated, traded furs and fish. He did such a lot in pushing forward knowledge of the Northwest Passage.

“Unfortunately, he is mainly remember for his mistake, when he saw a mirage and imagined it was an island that blocked passage.

“He should have received more credit than he did.”

The Terror is on BBC2 on Wednesday (3 March) from 9pm.