After watching "The Terror" TV show recently, I was left wondering - what motivated people to join the Royal Navy to go on such long and dangerous missions, and how did officers maintain the motivation of their crews over multiple winters stuck in the ice?

Answer! (My first on this sub! Hurray!)

The events of the Franklin Expedition were fairly unique in terms of what Royal Navy personnel were asked to do. At the time of the expedition, many RN sailors and officers were out of work as the Navy wasn't engaged in any wars, arguably the biggest "hiring fair" for the Navy, as it were. The Admiralty turned its focus toward exploration and economic ventures, thus searching for the Northwest Passage. Multiple attempts had been made on the Passage, with varying success (although no one had succeeded in finding it). Franklin himself had made an overland attempt known as the Coppermine Expedition that ended disastrously enough that his tongue-in-cheek moniker became "The Man Who Ate His Own Boots".

All this to say that the British public were well aware of how potentially dangerous an Arctic mission could be. After Sir John Ross, Sir James Clark Ross, and Sir George Back (just to name a few; there were many more) made attempts, the British public was pretty much hungry for Arctic and Antarctic exploration stories, and thus it was all over the news. No one would be wrong in thinking the potential for death and destruction would put people off the attempt, but two factors negated this: adventure and money.

As to the adventure, I'll quote Sir John Franklin straight out of the TV show: "That's what we signed up for. An adventure for Queen and country. An adventure of a lifetime." For sailors who had missed the swashbuckling glory days of the earlier age of sail, and the medal-winning wartime era that made Horatio Nelson famous, adventure and potential success in the Arctic was a major draw. Lower-ranking officers could potentially earn promotions (in fact, First Lieutenant Edward Little of HMS Terror did get promoted to Commander in absentia), and higher ranking officers like Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames might be knighted and earn book deals that would catapult them into fame.

For sailors down the hierarchy, like the able-bodied seamen (or ABs as I'll refer to them from here on out), adventure might have been a draw as well. However, there was something far more enticing for them: double pay. Because the Franklin Expedition was under the Royal Navy's Discovery Service, and because of the inherent dangers of Arctic exploration, the Navy doubled salaries for everyone under their banner. As Sergeant Solomon Tozer gripes in the TV show, the Royal Marines had no bonus pay as they weren't Navy personnel. Cue large groups of sailors eager to earn extra pay and maybe some fresh stories to bring home. This became even more exclusive as the Royal Navy prevented anyone below the rank of AB to join the expedition (so an ordinary seamen couldn't join).

(One of the people from the expedition that I study is a really good case study for this exact situation, but for sake of answering this question, I'll hold off on talking about him for five hours.)

Anyway, as to keeping up morale in those dark and forbidding winter months, Erebus and Terror were well-prepared. As the expedition was just the most recent in a lineage of Arctic explorers, there were some tried and true methods for warding away the specter of boredom from the crew. The 1819 crew of the HMS Hecla under William Edward Perry penned the pun-filled North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle, a newsletter circulated to the tiny icebound reader base that definitely filled the ship with some giggles and guffaws. Sir James Clark Ross' crew of the Terror (one in the same, just on the other end of the planet) participated in New Years' masquerades, rehearsed plays and vignettes, and had a few singalongs. Dressing in drag had been a well-documented activity from days of piracy onward, and Francis Crozier was even purportedly roped into wearing a couple petticoats for the entertainment of his men.

The Franklin Expedition was also outfitted for less-raucous entertainment. Both ships boasted enormous libraries--Terror alone had 1,200 books ready to read. Also included were musical instruments, hand-cranked organs, tools for scientific study, a camera to produce daguerrotypes, and all the fittings for a shipboard school to teach literacy and other valuable skills. You can still see some of the objects associated with shipboard entertainment in this NY Times article about artifacts found during the search for the expedition.

As evinced by Sir John Franklin and Lieutenant John Irving's evident piety in the show, religion played a role in the lives of the expedition members. Divine mass was held every Sunday with expected full attendance save for people with watch duty or other scheduled chores. Prayer books and hymnals have been found among scattered artifacts, some with names of owners still written in the covers.

In fact, you can read Lieutenant John Irving's memoirs and letters here, which in the latter part of the book paints an incredible picture of shipboard life including his opinion of his captain, talk of scientific study, and the assurance that three years of victuals will be more than enough to assure his sister-in-law that, quote, "you need not think we have been eating our shoes".

Lastly: chores. The Royal Navy was adamant on keeping sailors from being too idle. Granted, most shipboard chores could only be performed in decent weather when the risk of exposure to subzero weather wasn't great. However, as I found in, for example, the ship's master's book of the HMS Volage (on which multiple Franklin Expedition alumni had previously sailed), chores including clothes washing on Mondays and Wednesdays, frequent upkeep in the form of painting and wood repairs, rope repair, holystoning, and personal hygiene. Sailors were punished for idleness, "uselessness", and being too dirty to pass muster. In the show, you'll hear passing references to "duty owing", meaning the duty or chores that a sailor owed due to whatever infractions they'd racked up.

Other fantastic examples of last letters are here, some of which describe those scientific forays, entertainments, and opinions of other crewmembers. And the entire website is just a good source for firsthand and contemporary accounts! Highly recommended!

All to say that as far as sailors and the general public were concerned, the Franklin Expedition was well-equipped to weather at least three years worth of icelocked boredom. Very, very few expected anything to go horrendously wrong.

(And I'm more than happy to source anything! I'll source the sources of my sources! I just shot out of bed when I saw this question was asked as it's my one huge historical niche! Just gathering up every source I have is a lesson in tedium and I do have to eventually go to work today. :'D)