A Canadian team has found the wreck of the 19th century Royal Navy ship HMS Investigator in the Canadian Arctic.
HMS Investigator left Britain in 1848, captained by Robert McClure, and made two attempts to find the ill-fated Franklin expedition.
But its crew abandoned the ship in Mercy Bay on the western side of the Canadian Arctic when it became trapped in pack ice. The ship's men were eventually rescued by another RN ship.
Canada's Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice, told the BBC: "You're looking at what people have not seen in 156 years, which is a remarkably intact British sailing vessel."
The Franklin Expedition was an attempt by the Royal Navy to find the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, were sent to the Canadian Arctic in an attempt to find the route. But they, along with their crew, mysteriously vanished. Since then, the well-preserved remains of many of the men have been found.
The British had been searching for the Northwest Passage for centuries. The world's first recorded attempt to find the Northwest Passage was in 1497 when King Henry VII sent John Cabot to look for it. In 1576, Martin Frobisher began his first of three attempts to find the passage. In the process he became the first man to chart a bay in the Canadian Arctic, now named Frobisher Bay in his honour. In 1583, Sir Humphry Gilbert also attempted to find the Passage, and claimed Newfoundland for England. The search was rekindled by the Victorians who were spurred on by British novels about polar settings and issues of survival, such as Frankenstein and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Canadian team finds 19th Century HMS Investigator wreck
BBC News
28th July 2010
HMS Investigator, shown in an 1851 illustration, settled on the Arctic seabed intact and upright
Canadian archaeologists have located a British ship abandoned in the Arctic while on a 19th Century rescue mission.
Parks Canada researchers found HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay this week.
Canada's government says the discovery bolsters its claim to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which is feared threatened by increased shipping.
The Investigator was abandoned while searching for the Franklin expedition, itself lost with all its crew during a mission to discover the passage.
"It's an incredible sight," Canadian Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice told the BBC by telephone from Mercy Bay.
"You're looking at what people have not seen in 156 years, which is a remarkably intact British sailing vessel."
The Investigator, captained by Robert McClure, left Britain in 1848, ultimately making two attempts to find the Franklin expedition.
Its crew abandoned the ship on the western side of the Canadian Arctic when it became trapped in pack ice.
Running low on supplies and food, Capt Robert McClure and his men were eventually rescued by another party from the Royal Navy.
'Largely intact'
Archaeologists discovered the ship under about 25ft of pristine, icy arctic water this week using sonar and metal detectors.
"You could make out all the planking on the deck, the details on the hull, all of the detail of the timber," Mr Prentice said. "It's sitting perfectly upright on the floor of the ocean."
The Canadian researchers also found three graves of British sailors who died of scurvy on the 1853 expedition.
Parks Canada, a government agency, will inventory and study the ship and other artefacts but will not remove them. It has been in touch with the British government regarding the sailors' remains.
Capt McClure is credited as the first European to discover the western entrance to the Northwest Passage.
Mr Prentice said the discovery of the Investigator supported Canada's historical claim to the region, which the country inherited when it gained independence from Britain.
The issue of sovereignty has become increasingly important to Canada as the melting of arctic ice has increased interest in marine shipping through the Northwest Passage.
The Franklin Expedition, 1845
The well-preserved remains of a Royal Navy sailor who died during the Franklin Expedition
The purpose of the Franklin Expedition was to map out the North-West Passage from Europe to Asia. This story can be linked to Victorian Britain's attempts to complete geographical knowledge of remote regions (in terms of the relief of the land and the climate), to fulfill the historical goals of Elizabethan navigators and explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, as well as to British Literature, in terms of its link to such stories involving polar settings and issues of survival as Mary Shelley's Romantic novel Frankenstein (1818 ) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's literary ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which opened the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads).
On May 19, 1845, 129 men and officers aboard the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus under the command of Sir John Franklin set sail to explore the Northwest Passage above what is now Canada.
The ship was well stocked with food, clothing, tobacco, liquor, and with many of the luxuries that many of the men had never encountered before. The ship was one of a kind - it contained mahogany writing desks, large amounts of school supplies for the men to learn while out at sea, an organ for entertainment and even a camera, which was state-of-the-art hi-tech in those days.
The expedition was to last 3 years, and the men were commissioned to find a safe and reliable route from Europe to the Orient. After 18 months at sea, the men astonishingly disappeared. The last people to come in contact with the ships were whalers off the coast of Beechy bay. As the world waited for any sign that the brave husbands, fathers and sons were safe nothing came.
Pressed by Franklin's wife and others, the Admiralty launched a search for the missing expedition in 1848. Prompted in part by Franklin's fame and the Admiralty's offer of a finder's reward, many subsequent expeditions joined the hunt, which at one point in 1850 involved eleven British and two American ships. Several of these ships converged off the east coast of Beechey Island, where the first relics of the expedition were found, including the graves of three crewmen. In 1854, explorer John Rae, while surveying near the Canadian Arctic coast southeast of King William Island, acquired relics of and stories about the Franklin party from the Inuit. A search led by Francis Leopold McClintock in 1859 discovered a note left on King William Island with details about the expedition's fate. Searches continued through much of the 19th century.
In 1981, a team of scientists led by Owen Beattie, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, began a series of scientific studies of the graves, bodies, and other physical evidence left by Franklin crew members on Beechey Island and King William Island. They concluded that the crew members whose graves had been found on Beechey Island most likely died of pneumonia and perhaps tuberculosis and that lead poisoning may have worsened their health, owing to badly-soldered cans held in the ships' food stores. However, it was later suggested that the source of this lead may not have been tinned food, but the distilled water systems fitted to the expedition’s ships. Cut marks on human bones found on King William Island were seen as signs of cannibalism. The combined evidence of all studies suggested that hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning, and disease including scurvy, and general exposure to a hostile environment lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition.
After the loss of the Franklin party, the Victorian media, notwithstanding the expedition's failure and the reports of cannibalism, portrayed Franklin as a hero. Songs were written about him, and statues of him in his home town, in London, and in Britain's penal colony of Australia credit him with discovery of the Northwest Passage. Franklin's lost expedition has been the subject of many artistic works, including songs, verse, short stories, and novels, as well as television documentaries.
news.bbc.co.uk
wikipedia.org
HMS Investigator left Britain in 1848, captained by Robert McClure, and made two attempts to find the ill-fated Franklin expedition.
But its crew abandoned the ship in Mercy Bay on the western side of the Canadian Arctic when it became trapped in pack ice. The ship's men were eventually rescued by another RN ship.
Canada's Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice, told the BBC: "You're looking at what people have not seen in 156 years, which is a remarkably intact British sailing vessel."
The Franklin Expedition was an attempt by the Royal Navy to find the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, were sent to the Canadian Arctic in an attempt to find the route. But they, along with their crew, mysteriously vanished. Since then, the well-preserved remains of many of the men have been found.
The British had been searching for the Northwest Passage for centuries. The world's first recorded attempt to find the Northwest Passage was in 1497 when King Henry VII sent John Cabot to look for it. In 1576, Martin Frobisher began his first of three attempts to find the passage. In the process he became the first man to chart a bay in the Canadian Arctic, now named Frobisher Bay in his honour. In 1583, Sir Humphry Gilbert also attempted to find the Passage, and claimed Newfoundland for England. The search was rekindled by the Victorians who were spurred on by British novels about polar settings and issues of survival, such as Frankenstein and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Canadian team finds 19th Century HMS Investigator wreck
BBC News
28th July 2010
HMS Investigator, shown in an 1851 illustration, settled on the Arctic seabed intact and upright
Canadian archaeologists have located a British ship abandoned in the Arctic while on a 19th Century rescue mission.
Parks Canada researchers found HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay this week.
Canada's government says the discovery bolsters its claim to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which is feared threatened by increased shipping.
The Investigator was abandoned while searching for the Franklin expedition, itself lost with all its crew during a mission to discover the passage.
"It's an incredible sight," Canadian Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice told the BBC by telephone from Mercy Bay.
"You're looking at what people have not seen in 156 years, which is a remarkably intact British sailing vessel."
The Investigator, captained by Robert McClure, left Britain in 1848, ultimately making two attempts to find the Franklin expedition.
Its crew abandoned the ship on the western side of the Canadian Arctic when it became trapped in pack ice.
Running low on supplies and food, Capt Robert McClure and his men were eventually rescued by another party from the Royal Navy.
'Largely intact'
Archaeologists discovered the ship under about 25ft of pristine, icy arctic water this week using sonar and metal detectors.
"You could make out all the planking on the deck, the details on the hull, all of the detail of the timber," Mr Prentice said. "It's sitting perfectly upright on the floor of the ocean."
The Canadian researchers also found three graves of British sailors who died of scurvy on the 1853 expedition.
Parks Canada, a government agency, will inventory and study the ship and other artefacts but will not remove them. It has been in touch with the British government regarding the sailors' remains.
Capt McClure is credited as the first European to discover the western entrance to the Northwest Passage.
Mr Prentice said the discovery of the Investigator supported Canada's historical claim to the region, which the country inherited when it gained independence from Britain.
The issue of sovereignty has become increasingly important to Canada as the melting of arctic ice has increased interest in marine shipping through the Northwest Passage.
The Franklin Expedition, 1845
The well-preserved remains of a Royal Navy sailor who died during the Franklin Expedition
The purpose of the Franklin Expedition was to map out the North-West Passage from Europe to Asia. This story can be linked to Victorian Britain's attempts to complete geographical knowledge of remote regions (in terms of the relief of the land and the climate), to fulfill the historical goals of Elizabethan navigators and explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, as well as to British Literature, in terms of its link to such stories involving polar settings and issues of survival as Mary Shelley's Romantic novel Frankenstein (1818 ) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's literary ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which opened the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads).
On May 19, 1845, 129 men and officers aboard the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus under the command of Sir John Franklin set sail to explore the Northwest Passage above what is now Canada.
The ship was well stocked with food, clothing, tobacco, liquor, and with many of the luxuries that many of the men had never encountered before. The ship was one of a kind - it contained mahogany writing desks, large amounts of school supplies for the men to learn while out at sea, an organ for entertainment and even a camera, which was state-of-the-art hi-tech in those days.
The expedition was to last 3 years, and the men were commissioned to find a safe and reliable route from Europe to the Orient. After 18 months at sea, the men astonishingly disappeared. The last people to come in contact with the ships were whalers off the coast of Beechy bay. As the world waited for any sign that the brave husbands, fathers and sons were safe nothing came.
Pressed by Franklin's wife and others, the Admiralty launched a search for the missing expedition in 1848. Prompted in part by Franklin's fame and the Admiralty's offer of a finder's reward, many subsequent expeditions joined the hunt, which at one point in 1850 involved eleven British and two American ships. Several of these ships converged off the east coast of Beechey Island, where the first relics of the expedition were found, including the graves of three crewmen. In 1854, explorer John Rae, while surveying near the Canadian Arctic coast southeast of King William Island, acquired relics of and stories about the Franklin party from the Inuit. A search led by Francis Leopold McClintock in 1859 discovered a note left on King William Island with details about the expedition's fate. Searches continued through much of the 19th century.
In 1981, a team of scientists led by Owen Beattie, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, began a series of scientific studies of the graves, bodies, and other physical evidence left by Franklin crew members on Beechey Island and King William Island. They concluded that the crew members whose graves had been found on Beechey Island most likely died of pneumonia and perhaps tuberculosis and that lead poisoning may have worsened their health, owing to badly-soldered cans held in the ships' food stores. However, it was later suggested that the source of this lead may not have been tinned food, but the distilled water systems fitted to the expedition’s ships. Cut marks on human bones found on King William Island were seen as signs of cannibalism. The combined evidence of all studies suggested that hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning, and disease including scurvy, and general exposure to a hostile environment lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition.
After the loss of the Franklin party, the Victorian media, notwithstanding the expedition's failure and the reports of cannibalism, portrayed Franklin as a hero. Songs were written about him, and statues of him in his home town, in London, and in Britain's penal colony of Australia credit him with discovery of the Northwest Passage. Franklin's lost expedition has been the subject of many artistic works, including songs, verse, short stories, and novels, as well as television documentaries.
news.bbc.co.uk
wikipedia.org
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