Erebus and Terror in the Ice 1866
by Hakon Soreide
Title
Erebus and Terror in the Ice 1866
Artist
Hakon Soreide
Medium
Drawing - Steel Engraving
Description
A new addition to images I've posted on Fine Art that I have not created myself. This is a scan of a steel engraved illustration plate from the highly illustrated 1866 two-volume travelogue "All Round the World". Engraved by E.Grandsire, the image depicts a foreground of auks and walruses amidst icebergs, with the distant near-silhouettes of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, the two ships used by the arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin, on their unsuccessful quest to find the North-West Passage that ended with the tragic deaths of everyone on board. HMS Erebus was finally found only in September 2014, after more than 150 years of searching. Though poorly prepared and thus perhaps doomed to fail, Franklin has since been hailed as a great hero for his attempted expedition, unlike John Rae, surveyor of great parts of Canada, who got accounts of the expedition's fate from the Inuit he met along the northern coast. The mere suggestion that the crew of the lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism led to John Rae being denounced into infamy and nearly forgotten for his amazing efforts in exploring and opening up Canada for trade with his mapmaking and survival skills. The image is scanned in great detail, and uploaded as large as the file size limit on Fine Art America allows, for wonderful reproductions even at large sizes.
Uploaded
February 23rd, 2015
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