NORTH WEST PASSAGE

Interrupted moonbeams

dance on icebergs

then trail their milk white fingers

in the icy sea accompanying

emerald rhythms of the Borealis

the blue-white stage emanates

a ghostly hue by turns evanescent and lambent

amid vast silence cathedral glaciers

tower in the midnight sky

Aboard the Erebus an old salt

inured to the show stamps frigid feet

breaths warmth into freezing hands

and dreams of his rum ration 

Two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, left England in 1845 in order to search for the North-West Passage - a vital sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. ... Both ships were lost, and all 129 men on board perished.