📷HMS Terror as seen in the Arctic, 1836John Smith contacted Peter Carney and me recently.
He's a ship modeller who is striving to create an accurate museum-quality model of HMS Terror as she was fitted in 1845 for the Franklin Expedition. As Peter and I did, he has discovered that the plans of the Terror, as held at the National Maritime Museum, can be confusing. In 1845 the Terror was over 20 years old and had undergone several extensive processes of modification, as well as being almost wrecked off the coast of Portugal in 1828. In addition to that, some of the plans have been reworked in different coloured inks at different times (and also in pencil, as Mr. Smith has spotted). This has always made their understanding difficult, especially for people who only buy monochrome copies of the plans!
I commend to you Mr. Smith's blog 'Building Terror' here. He presents some beautiful plans of his own drawn from his own research as well as a very interesting commentary on how he has developed them.
I'll certainly be following his blog and I am sure when it emerges his model will be a magnificent tribute to the lost Franklin Expedition as well as a great step forwards in scholarship.
Original post: https://web.archive.org/web/20140809195337/http://franklinexpedition.blogspot.com/