Canada to Search Arctic For 1840s Wreck

Officials Fear Global Warming Could Entice Others To Find, Plunder British Explorer's Ships

(AP)  Canada said Friday it will search for two fabled British explorer ships that disappeared in the Arctic more 160 years ago, fearing melting ice caused by global warming could entice others to find and plunder the underwater tombs.

Environment Minister John Baird announced the Parks Canada-led search for British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin's ships. The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the late-1840s.

Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men vanished mysteriously on an expedition that began in 1845 to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Franklin's disappearance prompted one of history's largest rescue searches, from 1848 to 1859, which resulted in the discovery of the passage.

The route runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago. European explorers sought the passage as a shorter route to Asia, but found it rendered inhospitable by ice and weather.

Robert Grenier, a senior underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada, will lead the search for Franklin's ships aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

"It's very exciting. It's like an Indiana Jones adventure. It's searching for a lost under water tomb," Baird told The Associated Press.

The mission comes as Canada moves to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting ice has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin's men were after.

Grenier said Hollywood producers and others have offered local aboriginal Inuits money to help search for the ships.

"Our objective is to find and protect the wreck, because they are in danger of being found by people who don't have the know-how and the same intention and preoccupation that we have," Grenier said.

The six-week Franklin mission begins Aug. 18. If the expedition fails to find the lost ships, two more six-week expeditions are scheduled for the next two summers.

Franklin's vessels are among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology.

Tantalizing traces have been found over the years, including the bodies of three crewmen discovered in the 1980s.

The bodies of two English seamen - John Hartnell, who died at age 25, and royal Marine William Braine, 33, were exhumed in 1986 - and an expedition uncovered the perfectly preserved remains of a petty officer, John Torrington, who was 20 when he died, in an ice-filled coffin in 1984.

The ships have never been located.

Experts believe the ships came to grief in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island and that the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety.

Grenier and his team will use sonar to cover the search area and send teams to nearby islands to look for clues.

Inuit researcher Louie Kamoukak will aid the team in their search with accounts passed down from 19th-century ancestors who witnessed the lost Franklin crew's forlorn end.

"For the first time in over 160 years, I feel that the witnesses of (the) Franklin tragedy events have a chance to really contribute to an important search party," he said.

Author Dorothy Harley Eber gathered Inuit oral accounts in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, while researching an upcoming book on the Northwest Passage.

Inuit lore tells of "white men who were starving" as late as the winter of 1850 on the Royal Geographical Society Island, she said, meaning some of Franklin's crew may have survived longer than previously thought.

Inuit elders believe greasy patches on the islands' shores mark the spots where the stranded crew used seal oil blubber for cooking and warmth, she said.

The search for a passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497. Eventually it became clear that a passage did exist, but was too far north for practical use. Cabot died in 1498 while trying to find it and the shortcut eluded other famous explorers including Henry Hudson and Francis Drake.

No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway, who took three seasons to complete his trip from 1903-1906.

[scone47]

So, um, how did these ships from the 1840s happen to get through this "ice bound" realm? Seems that 1840 would be way too early to blame "global warming" on their demise? And if it took "global warming" to open the channel to locate these ships, then what opened the passage in 1840??? Yet another "global warming" myth busted.

[alphaa10-2009]

scone47 said, "So, um, how did these ships from the 1840s happen to get through this "ice bound" realm?... Yet another "global warming" myth busted."
---
The ships did not "get through"-- normal, seasonal accumulation ice was the reason the ships were lost. The Franklin expedition began its perilous journey, hoping against hope it might find the rumored Northwest Passage before the ships were crushed by advancing arctic ice.

Interestingly, the ship carried some of the first "canned" foodstuffs- metal cylinders sealed with lead solder.

Not surprisingly, lead poisoning was found in tissues of the recovered dead, and there were reports some of the men were so diseased (presumably scurvy as well as lead poisoning) their skin had turned black.

Groups of men from the ships are reported to have attempted to find their way south, but food was scarce, and the journey much too long under the worst conditions imaginable.

All this sacrifice makes clear the strategic value of a waterway Canada must rush to claim formally.

[jmurrieta1]

"Seems that 1840 would be way too early to blame "global warming" on their demise? And if it took "global warming" to open the channel to locate these ships, then what opened the passage in 1840??? Yet another "global warming" myth busted. "==Posted by scone47


Au contraire--it is a strong piece of evidence showing global warming. Ships in the 1800s, as is well documented, could push up into the higher latitudes only during certain summers, then could become icebound for several years when the following summers didn''t serve to melt the ice. Now the ice is melting every summer.

There are none so blind as those who WILL not see.

[haoli25]

I doubt if they anyone still alive. lol

[tom_gwynn]

The Northwest Passage is an international waterway, and always has been. For Canada to attempt to claim exclusive control of it is disrespectful to all the men of many nations who labored and sacrificed so much to find it.

[ciscoxing]

Tom_gwynn says that the northwest passage is an international water way , perhaps he should take out a map and see how deep inside canada it in fact is, it would be the same as calling the mississippi an international waterway.........

[donnie10008]

Watch out. There are a lot of hungry polar bears up there.

[smurfcrusher]

"So, um, how did these ships from the 1840s happen to get through this "ice bound" realm? Seems that 1840 would be way too early to blame "global warming" on their demise? And if it took "global warming" to open the channel to locate these ships, then what opened the passage in 1840??? Yet another "global warming" myth busted."

Posted by scone47

The explorers'' ice-locked ship caused starvation and death. That''s why it was a failure. Even in the hottest part of the year, ice was everywhere.

Contrast with today, when millions of square miles are ice-free. Why do you think Canadians are looking for the ships, now? Because global warming has gotten rid of the ice.

You''ll have to try harder to disprove reality. Good luck with that.

[tom_gwynn]

I am fairly familar with maps of the area, ciscoxing. The NW passage "looks" deep within Canada on a flat map due to the distortion of making a globe into a flat map, but if you look at it on a globe, it is really not all that deep. The major route through McClure Straight is over 24 miles at all points (12 miles territorial waters on each side) making it very much an international waterway, even ignoring its unique history. The Mississippi, BTW, is not 24 miles wide at any point. If, however, you want to say that a nation is entitled to claim all waters between its mainland and outlying islands as territorial waters that would suit the US just fine. Between Hawaii, Guam, Midway, the Marshalls and the Aleutians, we''d own most of the Pacific. I would agree Canada has a unique stewardship role in regards to the Passage, but too many men of too many nationalities were involved in discovering and conquering the Passage for any one nation to assert exclusive control over it.

[smurfcrusher]

"The reality is that those ships sailed to their final destination unless the crews picked them up and carried them. Ships in those days didn''''t have engines like the Ice Breakers today. That means the ice fields were not as large as they are today."

posted by DMW1167


No, it doesn''t mean that at all.
The fact that the ships lacked engines as we have today, means they were taking considerable risks by trying to navigate the Northwest Passage (since they could, and did, get trapped in ice). More ice = more danger.

Now, there is far LESS ice, and if you say global warming is not man-made perhaps you can tell George Bush that.
"Humans cause global warming, US admits"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2023835.stm

p.s. This is OLD news - 2002 to be exact.

[viscor]

Nobody is saying that %u201Cthere%u2019s no such thing as global warming%u201D. There is, in fact, plenty of precedent for global warming in the history of the Earth. Both global warming and cooling have occurred many times. What is, however, very debatable is how much influence human activity has on the rate at which it occurs. No climatologist will say that humans are solely responsible for global warming nor will they say that human activity has no effect on the global climate.

In other words, if human%u2019s were not on Earth global warming would still be occurring. It is a natural part of the cycle of the climate on Earth. Human activity does, however, affect the climate. The trick is that we just don%u2019t know how much influence we have and that%u2019s were the battle lines between the ecological alarmists and the %u201Chead in the sand%u201D people lies. The answer, as always, lies somewhere in between. If we could just get past the agenda%u2019s of both camps and let the science tell the story we%u2019d have had the answer by now.

As usual hysteria reigns supreme.

[rf35]

Canada races to find, plunder British explorer''s ships before someone else beats them to it!