on the Ross expedition, as second-in-command of a four-year voyage to explore the Antarctic continent in the ships and . Crozier commanded Terror, and was appointed to the rank of captain in 1841. Erebus and Terror returned in 1843, having made the most significant penetration of the Antarctic pack ice and discovered large parts of the continent—including the Ross Sea and Ross Island, Mount Erebus and the Ross Ice Shelf. Crozier was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1843, in recognition of his outstanding work on magnetism. Franklin expedition In 1845, Crozier joined Captain Sir John Franklin as captain of the on the Franklin expedition to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage. Crozier was considered to lead this expedition, but his Irish ancestry and humble birth counted against him. The privilege of selecting subordinating officers, almost always given to the second-in-command, was given to James Fitzjames. After Franklin's death in June 1847, he took command of the expedition, and his fate and those of the other expedition members remained a mystery until 1859, when a note written by Crozier and James Fitzjames, captain of the Erebus, was discovered on King William Island during an expedition led by Francis McClintock. Dated 25 April 1848, the note indicated that the ships—stuck in thick pack ice—had been abandoned. Nine officers, including Sir John Franklin, and 15 crewmen had died. Also stated was their intention, on 26 April, to set out on foot for Back's Great Fish River on the Canadian mainland. Unverified Inuit reports collected between 1852 and 1858 indicate that Crozier and one other expedition member might have been seen in the Baker Lake area, about to the south, where, in 1948, Farley Mowat found "a very ancient cairn, not of normal Eskimo construction," inside which were fragments of a hardwood box with dovetail joints. McClintock and later searchers found relics, graves, and human remains of the Franklin crew on Beechey Island, King William Island, and the northern coast of the Canadian mainland. Ships' location In 2014, the Victoria Strait Expedition found two items on Hat Island, in the Queen Maud Gulf, near King William Island; part of a boat-launching davit bearing the stamps of two Royal Navy broad arrows, and a wooden object, possibly a plug for a deck hawse, the iron pipe through which the ship's chain cable would descend into the chain locker below.