"HMS Phoenix and the Breadalbane at the moment when the latter was crushed and sunk. The field of ice, easing off from the Phoenix passed astern to the Breadalbane, and entering her bow, she filled and sank in less than 15 minutes, in 30 fathoms of water." by Edward Augustus Inglefield, ca. 1855
In the spring of 1853, the Royal Navy called the Breadalbane a three-masted merchant barque, into service to transport coal and other supplies to the North Star, a depot ship. She left the Thames River in 1853, accompanied by HMS Phoenix, a 6-gun steam paddle vessel, and arrived at a rallying point at Beechey Island later that year.
Her new mission would be to carry supplies to Sir Edward Belcher's high Arctic search expedition in the Resolute Bay area (now part of Nunavut). Since 1852, Belcher's expedition had been searching for the Franklin Expedition. The ship and crew had gone missing while searching for a passage through the Arctic seas. Belcher's expedition both the largest, and the last sent by the Royal Navy.
On 21 August 1853, Breadalbane was anchored to an ice floe half a mile south of Beechey Island in Lancaster Sound, approximately 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It had become surrounded by slow-moving ice. Shortly after midnight, a slab of ice penetrated the starboard bow.
About ten minutes past four a.m., the ice passing the ship awoke me, and the door of my cabin from the pressure opened: I immediately hurriedly put on my clothes, and on getting up found some hands on the ice, endeavoring to save the boats, but they were instantly crushed to pieces; they little thought, when using their efforts to save the boats, that the Breadalbane was in so perilous a situation. I went forward to hail the Phoenix, for men to save the boats, and whilst doing so, the ropes by which we were secured parted, and a heavy nip took the ship making every timber in her creak, and the ship tremble all over. I looked in the main hold, and saw the beams given away; I hailed those on the ice and told them of our critical situation, they not for one moment suspecting it. I then rushed to my cabin, hauled out my portmanteau on the deck, and roared like a bull to those in their beds to jump out and save their lives. The startling effects on them might be more easily imagined than described. On reaching the deck those on the ice called out to me to jump over the side, that the ship was going over ( Fawckner, W. H. (22 October 1853))
The crew quickly salvaged as many supplies and personal items as possible. The 21-man crew then abandoned the ship. Within fifteen minutes, the vessel sank to the floor of Barrow Strait. The crew was rescued by HMS Phoenix.
