Franklin’s Last Voyage
After 170 years and countless searches, archaeologists have discovered a famed wreck in the frigid Arctic
By ALLAN WOODS
Monday, June 27, 2016
An underwater archaeologist from Parks Canada clears kelp from the wreck of one of the ships from Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage. Both rescuers and archaeologists have sought the wrecks of his two ships, Erebus and Terror, for nearly 170 years.
Aboard the Canadian Coast Guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier, a team of marine and terrestrial archaeologists, hydrographers, the ship’s captain, and a helicopter pilot gathered to finalize the day’s plan. It was September 1, 2014, and they were in the waters of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, searching the west coast of King William Island and the eastern part of Queen Maud Gulf—some 540 square miles of sea. The team, led by Ryan Harris, a senior underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada, had been looking since 2008 for signs of perhaps the two most famous ships lost in the search for the Northwest Passage: the reinforced British bomb vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, led by Sir John Franklin and missing since the late 1840s.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/220-1607/features/4559-canada-erebus-discovery
