It set sail on a wave of adventure during a golden age of exploration and ended in tragedy, with desperate men resorting to cannibalism in an ill-fated attempt to survive.
And now the disastrous attempt by the crews of the steamships Erebus and Terror to discover a sea route through the Canadian Arctic to the Orient has resulted in an unlikely family connection for a bus company boss in modern-day Fife.
A skeleton discovered in the northern wastes and long thought to belong to an officer from the south of England, have more recently been linked to an unfortunate Fifer named Harry Goodsir, whose descendants are still thriving within a few miles of his Largo home.
Davie Goodsir, 57, who runs A1 Coaches in Methil supplied DNA to Durham University researchers attempting to identify the remains.
He says he is now “80% certain” his ancestor was the man found in a shallow grave on King William Island,
Canada, in 1879 and believes photographs show a distinct likeness between the pair.
“In my own mind, I think there is a strong connection with Harry Goodsir,” he told The Courier. “I see the resemblance with other members of my family as well.
“It’s the shape of the nose and face.”
The expedition, led by illustrious explorer Sir John Franklin, was given a heroic send-off as it set off down the Thames from Greenwich in 1845.
To trade with China at that time involved a two-year voyage around the coast of Africa.
Finding a passage to the north through the pack ice and unchartered coastline of the Arctic could have reduced the journey by half.
Yet within three years the expedition had failed both ships encased in ice and all the crew were dead.
HMS Erebus was only found last year, lying in 36ft of water near King William Island, 1,242 miles north-west of Toronto, following an extensive search operation by the Canadian Government. The final resting place of HMS Terror remains unknown.
And mystery still surrounds the decision by Captain Crozier in April 1848 to abandon the vessels and take what was left of his crew on a doomed trek across northern Canada in search of food.
Records show they should have had enough provisions to survive longer on the ships, although scurvy and lead poisoning caused by poor canning techniques have been put forward as possible explanations for the men’s deaths.
In the decades that followed, dozens of bodies were found and analysis of the remains suggested that not only did the starving explorers hack flesh off the bones of their fallen comrades, they also cracked open the bones to suck out the marrow.
The body, which may or may not have belonged to ship’s surgeon Harry Goodsir, was found after an Inuit guide led explorers to a spot more than 120 miles from where the vessels were thought to be encased.
The remains were sent back to Britain, where the renowned 19th Century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley identified them as Lieutenant Henry Le Vesconte.
That presumption continued for more than a century. However, recent forensic analysis of the skeleton, which had been buried in the Franklin Memorial in Greenwich, tells a different story.
It is a connection which has captured the imagination of Largo author Leonard Low in his revised book Largo’s Untold Stories.
He told The Courier: “The skeleton had a gold tooth and it was known that Le Vesconte had a gold tooth.
“However, when scientists recently carried out an examination of the enamel of one of the man’s teeth, they found the unfortunate officer had not lived in Devon, as Le Vesconte had but had more likely come from Fife.”
The experts came to their conclusion after measuring the concentration of strontium and oxygen isotopes and matching them to the water supply in the Kingdom.
When the researchers performed a facial reconstruction from the skull, they found a deep groove under the lip that resembled an early photograph of Goodsir.
In their paper published in 2011, the authors stressed the identification was uncertain.
However, Leonard persuaded Davie to line up with the photo of his ancestor and believes the clues are there if you look for them.
“It’s not a bad match. You can see the similarities,” he said.
Davie said he was intrigued by the possible link.
“We’ve always known about Goodsir House in Lower Largo and had always been digging for information about the family name,” he said.
“But it was only when the connection was made a few years ago that we became aware of the wider story.
“My grandfather was a merchant seaman and members of my family have also been though the medical profession. There are definite connections there.”