Canada finds ship from doomed 19th-century Franklin expedition

[Buster's Uncle]

Canada finds ship from doomed 19th-century Franklin expedition
Reuters
By David Ljunggren  3 hours ago



Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper (L) applauds after unveiling an image showing one of two ships from the lost Franklin expedition as Parks Canada's Ryan Harris looks on, in Ottawa September 9, 2014. REUTERS/Chris Wattie



OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian explorers have found the wreck of one of two ships lost in the 1845 Franklin expedition to Canada's Northwest Passage, solving an enduring historical mystery and bolstering Canada's claim to the key Arctic trade route.

Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew in the British ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were seeking the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans when they became stuck in ice. The men all died and the ships vanished.

"I am delighted to announce that this year's Victoria Strait expedition has solved one of Canada's greatest mysteries, with the discovery of one of the two ships belonging to the Franklin Expedition," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement.

"Finding the first vessel will no doubt provide the momentum – or wind in our sails – necessary to locate its sister ship and find out even more about what happened to the Franklin Expedition's crew."

The mystery has gripped Canadians for generations, in part because of the crew's grisly fate. Tales handed down through the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen.



Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper (C) reacts while announcing the discovery of one of two ships from the lost Franklin expedition, in Ottawa September 9, 2014. REUTERS/Chris Wattie


Harper, who has visited the Arctic territory of Nunavut every year since taking power in 2006, said the discovery was an historic moment for Canada.

"Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty," he said.

Global warming is rapidly melting the Arctic ice sheets, opening up the possibility that ships travelling between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans could use the Northwest Passage as a short cut.

Canada says it has sovereignty over the passage but the United States does not acknowledge this, saying the channel lies in international waters.

This year's bid to locate the ships included money spent on seabed mapping to make "Canada's Arctic both safer and more secure," according to a Parks Canada release at the time of the expedition.

Parks Canada archaeologists discovered the wreck using a remotely operated underwater vehicle.

An image released showed a largely intact wooden ship resting upright on the sea bed only 11 meters (36 feet) below the surface. Some of the deck structures were still intact, although the main mast had been sheared off.

Harper said experts did not yet know whether the ship found was the Erebus or the Terror.

Canadian divers and archaeologists had been trying since 2008 to find the ships, which became ice-bound off King William Island in the Victoria Strait in Nunavut.

The search for Franklin started in the late 1840s and over the decades teams have discovered traces of 70 crew members, some of whom started trekking overland in desperation when it became clear the ships would never escape from the ice.

They proved hard to find because they drifted in ice for hundreds of miles and the Inuit gave conflicting accounts of where they sank.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Andrea Hopkins; Editing by James Dalgleish)


http://news.yahoo.com/canada-finds-ship-doomed-19th-century-franklin-expedition-165434660.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Canada locates British explorer ship lost in 1846
AFP
By Jacques Lemieux  5 hours ago



Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper address the media in Ottawa, Canada on June 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cole Burston)



Montreal (AFP) - Canada has located the remains of one of two British explorer ships lost in the Arctic in 1846, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday, hailing the find as historic.

The search for the ill-fated HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, headed by British explorer Sir John Franklin, involved six major expeditions since 2008 that scoured the seabed in the far-flung and frigid region.

Finally, on Sunday, a remotely operated underwater vehicle confirmed the discovery, Harper said in a statement.

"This is truly a historic moment for Canada," Harper said. "Franklin's ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada's Arctic sovereignty."

While enough information exists to confirm the authenticity of the find, it remains unclear which of the two doomed ships was actually detected.

Harper -- saying one of Canada's "greatest mysteries" has been solved -- was optimistic that the second ship will now also be uncovered.

"Finding the first vessel will no doubt provide the momentum -- or wind in our sails -- necessary to locate its sister ship and find out even more about what happened to the Franklin Expedition's crew."

At the time, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were the jewels of the British Navy.

Under the command of Franklin and Captain Francis Crozier, the two vessels, with a combined crew of 134, left the shores of England on May 19, 1845, to discover the Northwest Passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The last Europeans to have contact with the ships were crew members of two whaling boats that passed them in Baffin Bay in August 1845.

But as the explorers pushed into the Arctic archipelago, they soon ran into problems. And no one, aside from the occasional indigenous Inuit, ever saw them again alive.


- Cold, hunger, cannibalism -

The circumstances surrounding the fate of the Franklin Expedition didn't become clearer until 1859, when a vessel chartered by Franklin's widow, Lady Jane Franklin, came across a somber message on King William Island.

It turns out the sailors became trapped in ice for a year and half, and eventually ran out of supplies.

The message revealed that Franklin and 23 crew members died on June 11, 1847, in unspecified circumstances.

On April 22, 1848, 105 survivors left the ships in an attempt to reach solid ground on foot, but none of them survived.

In the 1980s, Canadian researchers said the remains of expedition members found on Beechey Island indicated they had died of cold, hunger and lead poisoning from canned food.

Bones discovered also showed signs of cannibalism.

The two vessels were ultimately engulfed by ice.

The wreck was found in Victoria Strait off King William Island, not far from the Inuit village of Cambridge Bay.


http://news.yahoo.com/canada-locates-british-explorer-ship-lost-1846-192146011.html