HMS Erebus and HMS Terror entered the Canadian Arctic in 1845 under Sir John Franklin while searching for the Northwest Passage. Both vessels became trapped in ice near King William Island, and all 129 expedition members died. Inuit testimony later proved essential to locating the wrecks and reconstructing the disaster.

Lady Franklin's Lament carried the expedition into popular ballad tradition, while later poets including Margaret Atwood revisited its imperial assumptions. The lost ships became images of obsession, silence and the failure of European knowledge in an environment long understood by Inuit communities.