Sir John Franklin: Fabled Arctic ship found

[Ghost Dog]

- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29131757

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One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found, Canada's prime minister says...

... Sir John Franklin led the two ships and 129 men in 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The expedition's disappearance shortly after became one of the great mysteries of the age of Victorian exploration.

The Canadian government began searching for Franklin's ships in 2008 as part of a strategy to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which has recently become accessible to shipping because of melting Arctic ice...

... The find has been described as "the biggest archaeological discovery the world has seen since the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb almost 100 years ago" by a British archeologist, William Battersby, who has written extensively about the Franklin expedition...

/More... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29131757

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(Edit: See also: http://www.democraticunderground.com/122832162 ; http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14847091 )

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[BillZBubb]

1. The Franklin expedition is still a huge mystery.

If I recall correctly, they got iced in for two winters and all eventually perished. Interesting stuff.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Yeah. Harsh.

See (from 2011) here: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14847091

... Explorers have found rock cairns with messages from sailors who abandoned ship. They've taken oral history from Inuit people whose ancestors saw the ships get stuck in giant ice floes. In several cases, they've dug up the bones and preserved bodies of the ship's crew. But they've found no ships, no logs, and no sign of Franklin himself.

In subsequent years, a rough sketch of the troubles emerged. During the first winter, the crew disembarked, travelled south to hunt. Franklin left a reassuring message in a rock cairn, signed "All well". A month later, he was dead.

A year later, the crew returned to the cairn and updated the note. By that time, 15 sailors had died.

"If it had just been that, it would have been one of the biggest disasters of Arctic exploration," says Ted Betts, a Toronto lawyer and author of the blog Franklin's Ghost. But it wasn't just that.

From that time on, things only got worse. The men, sickened from scurvy, tuberculosis and lead poisoning, got weaker and weaker. They reportedly abandoned ship in 1848, only to meet a cold death elsewhere...

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Franklin search: Canada confirms ship as HMS Erebus (BBC)

A shipwreck uncovered beneath the icy wastes of northern Canada has been identified as long-lost HMS Erebus.

The Victorian-era vessel became part of nautical folklore after it vanished in the mid-19th Century.

Its captain, Sir John Franklin, had been searching for the fabled Northwest Passage.

Experts on Thursday confirmed that the wreck, discovered last month, was indeed the celebrated Royal Navy vessel.

"It is in astonishing condition,'' said search team member John Geiger, president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. "We're over the moon."
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29457728