A Franklin Moment

"This is an expression of sincere interest. He [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] had more than a layman's knowledge of the history. He displayed a deep knowledge and his passion was genuine."
"The ice conditions were very severe. Victoria Strait was ice-clogged; it was heavy ice."
"It was an area where the Inuit oral tradition indicated one of the ships might have ended up."
"They [Parks Canada staff] said, 'That's it!' I think they celebrated. They hugged each other Everyone was very excited, but I felt personally a real sense of poignancy, because you look at that vessel and think about the fact that there are likely people on it. So many people died - 129 died -- the greatest disaster related to exploration [in Arctic history]."
"So to me, in thinking about how those lives ended in that situation is quite haunting."
"The main deck is largely intact. That's a very good sign that there's information within the hold."
"...There's all kinds of detail, right down to visible signal cannons on it. It's going to be at least another week. The divers are back in two days, and then you will see some close-up imagery."
John Geiger, president, Royal Canadian Geographical Society

A sonar image of the discovered Franklin vessel.
Parks Canada / Ottawa Citizen

"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 lost in 1846."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ryan Harris, Senior Underwater Archeologist for Parks Canada, stand in front of an image of one of the ships belonging to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition which was lost in 1846, eptember 9, 2014. (Jean Levac / Ottawa Citizen)

Historians muse over the fact that Sir John Franklin was given that fateful commission by the British Admiralty, to begin with, though he had been credited with three previous Arctic trips. At the point where he embarked on that ill-fated trip with the two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, he was overweight, not in the best of health, and fairly advanced in age to captain such an expedition.

When he failed to return, Britain sent out a series of expeditions to 'rescue' Franklin and his crew. And Lady Jane Franklin, his second wife, used all her elite social contacts to urge the government to commit to further searches, yet none revealed any substantial evidence of what had occurred to her husband and the 129 men who accompanied him.

Several days earlier, sea ice had intervened to push the expedition in search of Franklin's ships, headed by Parks Canada and joined by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, One Ocean Expeditions, Shell Canada and the Arctic Research Foundation off course.

The remotely-steered submersible with advanced sonar technology found itself suddenly directly over one of the very ships it was avidly searching for. The image of a ship's hull on the ocean bottom was clearly indicated to the two Parks Canada staffers on duty when the underwater drone made its discovery.

This was the sixth such expedition in search of the Erebus and Terror since it became a goal for the current government to solve the mystery, in 2008. Drones had already scanned kilometre on kilometre of ocean floor. But then and there, suddenly, and seemingly miraculously, there was a ship's hull directly before them.

The Parks Canada personnel intently searched to ensure it was indeed a Royal Navy ship. The ship's hold is thought to be intact with supplies of all kinds that the cold Arctic water has faithfully preserved. Archaelogists are prepared to find bodies of crew members below deck, as well.

Though many of the men had died earlier of scurvy, cold, starvation or other disease before the ships were lost, some must have endured, to die with the sinking of the ship. It is also well enough known that the desperate, starving sailors had succumbed to the practicality of prolonging life through cannibalism.

And some had set off across the sea ice, in a state of mental disequilibrium caused by advanced scurvy, hauling provisions laboriously in small heavy, cumbersome sledges pulled by hand despite their weakened condition.


The last people who were known to have witnessed the final hours and days of the remaining crew members were Inuit who had come across the ragtag remnants. An Inuit whose name was Iggiararjuk told his story in 1923, 77 years after the sinking of the ships:

"My father Mangaq was with Tetqatsaq and Qablut on a seal hunt on the west side of King William's Land when they heard shouts, and discovered three white men who stood on shore waving to them. This was in spring, there was already open water, and it was not possible to get in to them before low tide. The white men were very thin, hollow-cheeked, and looked ill. They were dressed in white man's clothes, had no dogs, and were travelling with sledges which they drew themselves.
"Father and his people would willingly have helped the white men, but could not understand them; they tried to explain themselves by signs. They had once been many; now they were only few."