Franklin Expedition
Ship Discovered in Arctic
(from
the Canadian Press & published in the Spectator September 10,
2014
The
key to unlocking the mystery of the missing Franklin Expedition came
just days ago when a coast guard helicopter pilot spotted a dark
U-shaped object in the Arctic snow the size of a man's forearm. The
time-ravaged orange-brown hunk of metal, vaguely in the shape of a
tuning fork, bore the markings of the Royal Navy. It was a davit ~
part of the lifting mechanism, likely for a lifeboat, for one of the
two lost Franklin ships.
On
Tuesday, the davit sat on display in Parks Canada's Ottawa
laboratory, the only tangible link to one of the most tangible
mysteries in both Arctic Circle and Canadian history. “That's the
clue that tells you: Look Here. That's the flag,” said John
Geiger, president of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. Geiger
was with the search team that finally confirmed the discovery of one
of two lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.
The
remarkable find completes one half of a puzzle that long ago captured
the Victorian imagination and gave rise to many searches throughout
the 19th
century for Franklin and his crew. The search team confirmed the
discovery in the early morning hours of Sunday using a remotely
operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. They
found the wreck 11 metres below the water's surface.
It
is not known yet whether the ship HMS Erebus ~ the flagship on which
Franklin himself was sailing and believed to have died ...or HMS
Terror.
Prime
Minister Stephen Harper who recently came close to the search area on
his annual northern trip, could barely contain his delight Tuesday as
he delivered news of the 'great historic breakthrough'. “For more
than a century, this has been a great story and mystery.” The ship
appears to be well preserved. A sonar image projected at a media
conference showed the ship five metres off the sea floor in the bow
and four metres in the stern.
Ryan
Harris, a senior underwater archeologist and one of the people
leading the Parks Canada search, said the sonar image showed some of
the deck structures are still intact, including the main mast, which
was sheared off by the ice when the ship sank. “The contents of the
ship are most likely in the same good condition,” Harris added.
“You can see the tackle from the ship...different riggings in the
centre.” 'This shows you how intact it really is,” added Andrew
Campbell, a vice-president at Parks Canada, as he screened the
underwater footage of the ship on a large flat screen television.
The entire profile of the ship is there!”
Campbell
said a combination of previous Inuit testimony, past modelling of ice
patterns by the Canadian Ice Service and the actual measurements of
the two lost ships ~ they are both so similar, they can't yet be told
apart ~ convinced the searchers that this was a Franklin ship.
The
discovery came a day after a team of archeologists found the tiny
fragment from the expedition in the King William Island search area.
Until Tuesday, those artifacts were the first ones found in modern
times. The two ships of the Franklin Expedition and their crews
disappeared during the 1845 quest for the Northwest Passage. They
were the subject of many searches throughout the 19th
century, but the mystery of exactly what happened to Franklin and his
men has never been solved.
“The
moment the ship was discovered this past weekend” said Geiger, “we
were surrounded by ice ~ we were in the noose of ice ~ and so it was
a real sense of connection, of immediate connection to Franklin and
the men on those two ships. A few of us said a prayer to sailors
lost at sea at that moment because we felt a real personal bond.”
Since
2008, Parks Canada has led six major searches for the lost Franklin
ships.
“Franklin
Expedition an Enduring tale of Misery, Death,”
writes
John Ward of the Canadian Press.
Expedition's
crew dealt first with crowding, terrible cold...and eventually
cannibalism.
The
ill-starred Franklin expedition was a quest for the Northwest
Passage, the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration for three centuries.
It ended in suffering, misery and death and has haunted Canadian
imaginations for almost 170 years. The saga resurfaced in dramatic
fashion, heralding the beginning of the end of one of Canada's
greatest mysteries. The Northwest Passage intrigued mariners since
the 16th
century when Martin Frobisher, John Davis and William Baffin made
tentative forays north. A northern route would have shaved months
from voyages to the Orient by avoiding the long southern loop around
either Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope.
In
1845, the British Admiralty decided the biggest and best-equipped
expedition ever! They gave the command to Sir John Franklin, a naval
officer, who as a young man, mapped hundreds of kilometres of the
Canadian Arctic coast. Franklin had two ships...HMS Erebus and HMS
Terror...small vessels of 372 and 325 tons, respectively. They were
specially strengthened for the ice and were each fitted with a
20-horsepower steam engine. Jammed to the gunwales with provisions
for three years, the ships captained by John Franklin and Francis
Crozier left England May 1845. At the end of July, they were seen by
whaling ships off the west coast of Greenland. Then, they turned
west and sailed into legend.
The
129 men aboard the ships would spend three winters in the Arctic,
crammed into claustrophobic lower decks of their ships. By modern
standards, the level of crowding would have been impossible for us
either to conceive or accept; the stench alone must have been
overpowering. But the hardships were always there. Men had to go in
the bitter cold and darkness to chop away ice and shovel snow from
the decks. The only communication from the expedition that survived
was a piece of paper tucked in a cairn on King William Island and
found by an 1859 search mission. The first message, dated May 1847,
said the two ships had wintered in the ice and were continuing.
Franklin and the crew were well.
The
second note, scribbled around the margin of the paper a year later,
was more dire. It said Franklin died June 11, 1847. The ships had
been locked in ice since September 1846 and the crews abandoned ship
on April 22, 1848. They were planning to head south for the
mainland. By this time, the note stated that nine officers and 15
men of the original complement had died. It didn't say how. Relief
expeditions found other relics, including bodies. One boat was found
with two bodies in it and a clutter of useless baggage, including
silver plates and spoons and a copy of the novel, 'The Vicar of
Wakefield'. It appears the last survivors did reach the mainland,
only to die at a spot later named, Starvation Cove.
What
happened to Captain John Franklin & Captain Francis Crozier was
tragic!
Still
a mystery...was the discovered wreck that of the 'Terror' or the
'Erebus'?
Be
sure to read Part 3 of this historic saga.
Merle
Baird-Kerr...written October 2, 2014
To
comment...e-mail to: inezkate@gmail.com
or mbairdkerr@cogeco.ca
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