The location of the wreckage of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition remains a mystery over 150 years after the British ships set sail for the Arctic to find the Northwest Passage, the seaway over Canada and Alaska that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Canadian Minister of Environment Peter Kent and officials from the Canadian national parks service said that this summer’s archaeological surveys to find the wreckage covered over 50 square miles in Canada’s Arctic waters, but the wreckage of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were not found.
“Unfortunately we have not yet found those fabled vessels, but in our search this year we surveyed and mapped a large expanse of uncharted waters of Canada’s Arctic,” Kent told reporters.
This year’s research expedition involved taking a closer look at the wreckage of the 19th century British vessel HMS Investigator.
HMS Investigator was sent to search for Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition under the command of Captain Robert McClure but was abandoned after it became trapped in ice. McClure and his men continued their journey by sledge until they were rescued by another British ship. McClure is credited with discovering the Northwest Passage.
The wreckage of the Investigator was discovered in good shape last year by Canadian parks officials.
The images and artifacts collected in this summer’s expedition were retrieved by a team of six divers who made over 100 dives, said Marc-André Bernier, chief of Underwater Archaeology Service at Parks Canada.
“The wreck is obviously sound on the surface. However, you can see some of the ice damage that has been done on the top,” said Bernier.
Archaeologists also explored the sites close to the Investigator, including one paleo-Inuit site that contained artifacts from 2,000 years ago.
“These prehistoric sites are very rare. This one proved to be much larger and contained more artifacts than anyone had expected,” said Kent.
“The information gathered may change what we know about the people who inhabited Banks Island two millennia ago.”
The Lost Expedition
In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin set sail on an expedition to explore the Northwest Passage with around 130 men under his command aboard the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror.
The mission failed when the ships became trapped in Arctic ice and were subsequently abandoned. Franklin and his men were never rescued. Despite several search expeditions, the wreckage of the ships remains lost.
The search for the ships will continue, though at this point it is not clear what the next step is going to be.
“This isn’t only a mystery of the heroic tragedy for Canadians. This is an expedition that has fascinated people around the world over the century,” said Kent.
“There’s great interest in locating these designated historic sites, national historic sites, and actually providing the science and the interpretation of what happened in the end, not only to Canadians but to people around the world.”
