In a blog story he posted today, Potter said “All the Inuit I know on King William Island have hoped, over many years, for a find like this, not simply because it would vindicate their ancestors’ stories or bring media attention – but because it would bring economic growth, which is so sorely lacking in the North”. Engraving by George Back.
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(Coincidentally, it was found in Terror Bay.) The ship and its sister vessel, the HMS Erebus, went down in 1848 when an expedition led by British explorer John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage got stuck in ice.
“This discovery changes history”, Canadian philanthropist and Arctic Research Founder Jim Balsillie told The Guardian.
“Given the location of the find in Terror Bay and the state of the wreck, it’s nearly certain that HMS Terror was operationally closed down by the remaining crew who then re-boarded HMS Erebus and sailed south where they met their ultimate tragic fate”.
“The well-preserved wreck matches the Terror in several key aspects”, the Guardian states, “but it lies 60 miles (96km) south of where experts have long believed the ship was crushed by ice, and the discovery may force historians to rewrite a chapter in the history of exploration”. Tales handed down from the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen. Researchers with the Arctic Research Foundation say they have located the HMS Terror off King William Island, reports the Ottawa Citizen.
He took a picture but lost the camera.
It was all part of Harper’s plan to boast Canadian nationalism and a sense of ownership of the north.
The Terror’s final resting place is almost 100 kilometres away from the established search grid released by Parks Canada for its 2016 expedition in the Victoria Strait. The US and others say it is worldwide territory.
The search for an Arctic passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot’s voyage in 1497.
Inuit lore tells of “white men who were starving” as late as the winter of 1850 on the Royal Geographical Society Island near Prince William Island.
For many years afterward, Franklin was celebrated as a Victorian-era hero.
No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip in 1903-06.
Dozens of searches by the British and Americans in the 1800s failed to locate the wrecks, and some of those expeditions also ended in tragedy.
That’s in part because the wreck of the Erebus, and now the Terror, are in dramatically different locations from their last-recorded positions in Victoria Strait.
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Parks Canada’s mission brief for this year’s search says a small flotilla of ships sailed for the Arctic at the end of August and were to return by mid-September.
