Franklin's ship found 169 years later!

[Glacier]

This has been one of the greatest Canadian mysteries, but it seems that they have found one of the two ships that had disappeared 169 years ago.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says one of Canada's greatest mysteries now has been solved, with the discovery of one of the lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.

"This is truly a historic moment for Canada," Harper said.

Harper made the announcement at Parks Canada's laboratories in Ottawa during a photo op after yesterday's announcement that two artifacts from the 19th-century Franklin expedition were found on an island in Nunavut.

At this point, the searchers aren't sure if they've found the HMS Erebus or HMS Terror. The wreckage was found on Sept. 7 using a remotely-operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada.

A team of archeologists from Nunavut found an iron fitting from a Royal Navy ship, "identified as part of a boat-launching davit, and bearing two broad arrows," on an island in the southern search area, the territory's government said.

A wooden object, "possibly a plug for a deck hawse, the iron pipe through which the ship’s chain cable would descend into the chain locker below," was also found.

"The iron fitting was lying on the shore, adjacent to a rock, a large rock, and the wooden artifact was a bit farther away, a bit farther from the shoreline," archeologist Doug Stenton told CBC News.

Stenton headed a three-member Nunavut team that found the objects on an island in the Queen Maud Gulf near Nunavut's King William Island on Sept. 1. The searchers say it's the first such artifact found in modern times.



"The beauty of where they found it is it's proof positive of Inuit oral history," CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge, who has covered the Franklin search for many years, said Tuesday.

"The Inuit have said for generations that one of their hunters saw a ship in that part of the passage, abandoned and ended up wrecking …. It's exactly where this guy said it was."

Mansbridge said the scheduling of an announcement in Ottawa on Tuesday may indicate something more has been found than just the two artifacts.



The question now is whether these discoveries bring the project closer to finding more evidence of what happened to the Franklin expedition.

"I think absolutely it takes us closer," said CBC Radio's David Common, who has also covered the search in the past.

"It has been … a personal priority, a personal interest for the prime minister. And that’s in part why we see so many more ships this year than in years past."



The two ships of the Franklin expedition disappeared during an 1845 search for the Northwest Passage. They were the subject of many searches throughout the 19th century, but the mystery of what happened to John Franklin and his men has never been solved.

The expedition has been the subject of songs, poems and novels ever since.

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and 128 sailors embarked from England to find the Northwest Passage aboard the ships Erebus and Terror.

Search parties later recorded Inuit testimony that claimed one ship sank in deep water west of King William Island, and one ship went perhaps as far south as Queen Maud Gulf or into Wilmot and Crampton Bay.

[bob vernon]

The Inuit were also amazed that these explorers from England perished the way they did. The English insisted on wearing English clothing and leather shoes with light socks, even in the winter. They refused to adapt to the Inuit diet of raw, or lightly cooked, meat. Imagine the Franklin expedition from the Inuit point of view. They saw these English sailors floundering around, eating food from tin cans, going crazy from lead poisoning, and wandering around lost refusing to eat local food, and finally committing cannibalism. Franklin and many other British explorers didn't see the utility of living the way that the locals did. Scandinavian explorers like Nansen and Amundsen adopted native ways and thrived. The English, like Franklin and Scott, couldn't fathom that heathen natives could possibly have anything to offer in the way of surviving in an extreme climate. And they paid for it with their lives. Franklin isn't some heroic figure. He was a tragic failure.

[Glacier]

It is also interesting how the Inuit legends had it that a hunter found the wreckage on this island, but the whiteman didn't put much faith in oral stories to start looking in the correct area. It was only after exhausting all the whiteman's guesses that they decided to try the Inuit's advice.

[OREZ]

Such a fascinating story!

I'm looking forward to more news on this coming out.

[Glacier]

[Atomoa]

In other news, Stephen Harper almost had a medical condition scare when scientists discovered massive oil reserves underneath Franklin's ship.

Scientists also found a letter hand written by Mikhail Gorbachev frozen in a bottle in the snow around the dig site. The letter apperently clearly states the Russian Empire had no intentions or drilling for oil in "Canadas arctic".

"This is the greatest discovery in the history of Canada" the Prime Minister expressed to a group of reporters.

When reporters asked about Franklin's ship and its implications and effect on Canadian History, the PM responded "Indeed, the ship is a great discovery too".

[Fancy]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/new ... e20497763/
video showing the ship

[rustled]

Bump!

Marvelous.
https://www.castanet.net/news/Business/ ... nklin-ship

[The Green Barbarian]

[rustled]

I have a signed copy of the book "frozen in time" from 1985? I think. I'll have to dig it out as it might be worth something now.
Betcha there are some really nice black powder guns in that wreck that would be worth a lot$ to collectors.

Looking forward to watching that.

Here's a shorter one: