It was caught in a wormhole and was knocked off course. The Betelgeuse crash landed on Henson's World and the survivors degenerated into a primitive culture without any memory or records of their origins from Earth. In 2239 the survivors were discovered but the Federation had decided to leave them alone due to the Prime Directive. This set a standard that the Tarn representative, Harna Karish, was able to claim that the survivors of the USS Verdun and the Tarn starship Rashasa on the planet Torgu-Va were now under the protection of the Prime Directive. (TNG novel: The Forgotten War)