The doomed 1845 voyage of Sir John Franklin to the Northwest Arctic Passage was one of the greatest disasters of British polar history, ending in the deaths of 129 crewmen.

Now the Inuit community where the wreckage of the HMS Terror and its sister the Erebus were found say its curse has been reawakened - and is claiming lives in the tiny indigenous settlement.

Fear has gripped the remote Arctic settlement of Gjoa Haven, on Canada's King William Island, amid claims of "non-human" beings stalking the ice.

The ships left England in 1845 on a mission led by the Victorian explorer, to navigate a route through the Northwest Passage.

They became frozen in near King William Island and none of the 129 men on board survived.

The wrecks of Franklin's "lost expedition" were only discovered recently by Canadian divers near Gjoa Haven - Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016.

Divers have been removing artifacts from the wrecks which are expected to go on show at a local museum.

But a spate of six unexpected deaths in the space of two weeks at Gjoa Haven has led to a belief among the 1,000 strong Inuit community that the wrecks should not have been disturbed.