http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Erebus_(1826)
Dear Franklin,
When you select ships named Erebus and Terror for your expedition, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for experiences like this:
Both ships had become icebound and had been abandoned by their crews, in total about 130 men, all of whom subsequently died from a number of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy, and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south. Subsequent expeditions up until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, also revealed that their shoddily canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century.