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Canada: Franklin ships located

Ian JohnsonSeptember 9, 2014

Canada says underwater archeologists have located one of the Franklin Expedition ships lost more than 160 years ago. Their disappearance in the Arctic in 1848 became one of the great mysteries of the 19th century.

https://p.dw.com/p/1D9WK
Schiffsfund in Kanada
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a breakthrough on Tuesday in the latest search for the ill-fated British ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

They disappeared in 1848 during a British search for the potentially lucrative Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific. Expedition leader Sir John Franklin had a crew of 134 with him.

Harper said in a statement released in Ottawa that it remained unclear which of the two doomed ships was actually located using a remotely operated underwater vehicle on Sunday.

The vessels had drifted hundreds of kilometers from the sites where ice first entrapped them.

He said he was optimistic that archeologists involved in the current six-year search would find the second ship.

Canada had given the search priority to assert its sovereignty over the vast Arctic region.

Mast sheared off

Archeologist Ryan Harris said although the ship's main mast was sheared off, its under-deck contents appeared intact.

The two vessels left England in May 1845, commanded by Sir John Franklin, an explorer, and Captain Francis Crozier.

They became trapped in ice and eventually ran out of supplies.

A message discovered in 1959 revealed that Franklin and 23 crew members died on June 11, 1847, in uncertain circumstances.

In April 1848, 105 survivors left the ships hoping to cross the ice and reach solid ground.

None of them survived. Local Inuit said some resorted to cannibalism before they died. The frozen bodies of three seamen were exhumed in recent years.

Focus around King William Island

The Franklin Expedition's disappearance led to a series of British search bids during which large portions of the Arctic were mapped.

The search, begun in 2008 by Canadian divers and archeologists was focused around King William Island and the Victoria Strait in the Arctic territory of Nunavut.

ipj/sb (AP, dpa, AFP, Reuters)