I’ve been watching the TV Show The Terror, and I was curious as to how ships in that era (1800s) were able to keep warm or at least insulated against extreme temperatures.
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One, they dealt with it as much as possible. Sailors were often cold in the cold, they wore layers and moved around just like anyone working outdoors today.
Two, the heat from the sailors and fire would heat the ship. This second point was obviously something to be careful about, but you gotta cook and you don’t want to freeze to death, so there would be stoves for those purposes.
3 feet of wood can insulate pretty well. Below deck, enough people will heat a small insulated space with their own body heat. I’m just guessing but it could be downright humid down there.
In the 1880s sailors would wear several layers, typically wool clothes with a water resistant overcoat of oilcloth (canvas treated with linseed oil) or rubberized fabric after about 1834. Wool remains warm when damp and the water resistant outer covering could keep them relatively warm in bad condtions. While boats of the time weren’t perfect, they also offered some places you could get inside, out of the weather.
The interior of the ship was heated via iron stoves, while fire was carefully controlled for safety reasons these small heaters could do a lot to hold back the chill. They might be fed with wood, coal or, later in the 19th century, oil or kerosene.
Usually, sailors would wear warm clothes in the cold, used blankets, and ships would have braisiers/stoves/etc in living spaces.
However the Erebus and Terror, frankin’s ships, were equipped with a system that pipes steam from the boilers through the ship for heating.
The short version is, they didn’t.
They literally froze – frostbite and death from the cold were both common, the winter clothing they wore was ill-suited to the climate and often inadequate, and fires were extremely dangerous on wooden ships waterproofed with tar and pitch.
They kept from freezing to death by the most primitive means – huddling together to keep warm, packing lots of bodies in small spaces to maximize the effects of body heat, and getting help from the Inuit when they could.
Water is essentially a huge heatsink. It limits quite how cold the ship and the environment around it can get. So while it might get cold enough to require the other methods mentioned, it’s not quite as huge an issue as it can be on land. Assuming you are dry that is.
Basically they just wore a lot of clothes and used fire when neccesary, being below deck helped a bit but mostly they just endured it.
They didn’t.
Wooden ships were basically the ambient temperature.
Steam ships had a constant source of heat, bug wasting that heat by transmitting it around the ship just increased fuel consumption and reduced speed.
The book The Terror explains that they have a coal fired boiler that circulates warm water. But it gets colder as time goes on.
Erebus and Terror had been selected because they were Bomb Ships and massively built in thick strong wood which is quite a good insulator.
Terror was found in Terror Bay…… Crozier did have a sense of humour…….
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