SHIP MISSING SINCE 1848 DISCOVERED: Parks Canadas Victoria Strait Expedition has found one of the two missing ships of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to find the Northwest Passage and thus partially solved one of Canada’s greatest mysteries. It is not yet clear whether its the Terror or the Erebus. Read more about the discovery at ottawacitizen/news/national/ship-from-lost-franklin-expedition-found-in-arctic Photos shown here courtesy Jean Levac / Ottawa Citizen; Parks Canada; and Wikipedia Both ships had become icebound in Victoria Strait before being abandoned in April of 1848 by their crews. In total, about 130 men, all of whom subsequently died from a number of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy, and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south. Subsequent expeditions up until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, also revealed that their shoddily canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century. HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was named after the dark region in Hades of Greek mythology called Erebus. The 372-ton ship was armed with two mortars - one 13 in (330 mm) and one 10 in (250 mm) - and 10 guns. HMS Terror was a bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in the Davy shipyard in Topsham, Devon. The ship, variously listed as being of either 326 or 340 tons, carried two mortars, one 13 in (330 mm) and one 10 in (250 mm). Side note: Among my other duties I serve as Oceans Expeditions Director (VP) for the Frozen Isthmuses Protection Campaign of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans (FIPC) and as Director of Underwater Archaeology for Ice Warrior Expeditions and we had been planning to do an expedition in search of these vessels. Congratulations to Parks Canadas Victoria Strait Expedition for finding them first.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:43:31 +0000