#Erebus shipwreck windows#
The location surprised Woodman, whose book Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, published in 1991, urges careful study of Inuit testimony to try to narrow down where the ships would be.Ī Parks Canada underwater archeologist at the stern of the HMS Terror wreck looks through one of the windows of the captain's cabin. "I guess the major takeaway of Terror being in Terror Bay is that, unless you believe in fairies, somebody must have gone back after the 1848 abandonment to get her there." Wrong bay Relative of HMS Terror captain reacts to discoveryĪuthor and longtime Franklin sleuth Dave Woodman thinks so."Was indeed re-manned at some point, as would appear to be the case with the Erebus?" wonders Harris. It's certainly not where they had been looking for several years, with efforts concentrated further north in Victoria Strait.Īccording to a note left by the expedition crew in a cairn on King William Island, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were trapped in ice in 1846 and abandoned two years later off the island in Victoria Strait, a place north of where Terror was found. "I think our initial questions relate to why it's there."Įfforts to locate the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition had included several years of searching in the deep waters of Victoria Strait and in the Queen Maud Gulf. "It's an extremely exciting wreck site to contemplate," Ryan Harris, senior underwater archeologist at Parks Canada, told reporters on a conference call recently. The possibility that artifacts inside might be well-preserved holds out hope that researchers could learn more about how the expedition met its end. While the wreck of Erebus is somewhat exposed to the underwater elements in Wilmot and Crampton Bay, the relatively pristine nature of the Terror wreck is especially tantalizing for those who have been pursuing the Franklin mystery for years. "Two ships we thought might have been parted by some distance - yet they're not that far apart, as it turns out." 'Extremely exciting wreck' "The two ships are almost on the same line of longitude," says Potter, "exactly north and south of one another, so that's also something we're just starting to soak in…. Nunavut shipwreck confirmed as HMS Terror.
HMS Terror was found in the appropriately named Terror Bay, off the shore of King William Island, about 100 kilometres north of the wreck of the other ship lost in the Franklin Expedition, HMS Erebus. The nine newly recovered artifacts, as well as any artifacts found in the future, will be jointly owned and managed by Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust.Parks Canada underwater archeologists diving to the HMS Terror wreck found many elements still in their original location, including the ship’s wheel on the upper deck, astern of the skylight of the captain’s cabin. Those 65 objects are owned by the United Kingdom. The objects will then undergo conservation.ĭivers had previously recovered 65 artifacts from the HMS Erebus, including buttons, dinner plates, a boot, medicine bottles, the ship's bronze bell and part of the vessel's wheel. The nine artifacts are now at a laboratory in Ottawa, Canada, where they will undergo chemical analysis and sampling the archaeologists said they hope residues inside the pitcher, for instance, will reveal what the officer was drinking. The team also found a piece of tarred felt used for waterproofing the vessel, and the material still had the impressions of wooden planks. In addition to the pitcher and the artificial horizon, the divers found metal parts of rigging instruments. This is part of an artificial horizon that would have been used with a sextant to determine latitude when the horizon was obscured by obstacles like sea ice.
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