Bones and artifacts found, but so far no ships
Archeologists involved in the hunt for the wreckage of the Franklin Expedition in Canada’s Arctic have discovered human remains they believe are from a member of the doomed crew.
Despite bad weather that has hampered some of their plans, the journey has been a productive one so far, says the chief of underwater archeology for Parks Canada, and it should get even better with the addition of an automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria.
“Work is going well … (but) we haven’t found the ships yet,” Marc-Andre Bernier said in a telephone interview after leaving the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier last week.
What they have found in a search on land are more artifacts from the ill-fated expedition. At Erebus Bay, where at least a dozen members of the Franklin crew are known to have died, more human remains have been recovered. Read more.
Franklin ships remain unfound
Archeologists in the Arctic hoping to find Sir John Franklin’s long-lost ships neared the end of their latest search Friday with no shipwreck in sight.
It appears HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, two of the most sought-after wrecks in Canada, will remain undiscovered for now.
Parks Canada archeologists spent the last six days combing an area west of King William Island, where explorers seeking the Northwest Passage stopped or, in the case of Franklin, got stranded in ice.
Erebus and Terror vanished in the High Arctic 160 years ago, along with the famous British explorer and 128 crew.
This was the third year of a three-year-program to find Erebus and Terror, but searches for the two ships and remnants of Franklin’s failed 1945 expedition began almost immediately after he disappeared. Read more.
