![]() Doors and drawers were closed, everything squared away.Ī total of 275 artifacts were recovered. Harris said the ship seems to have been left in good order. Each dive lasted about two hours - possible only because the divers used suits heated by warm water pumped from the surface. ![]() The divers and conservators had just 11 days moored over the site of the wreck with their tender barge and the RV David Thompson, Parks Canada's 29-metre research ship.īut over that time the team squeezed in 56 dives. That vessel, down twice as deep as Erebus, is deemed more secure and the archeologists wanted excavate the more vulnerable wreck first.Īfter two seasons lost because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a busy summer.įield seasons in the Arctic are brief. Since then, Parks Canada has been working to understand what is down there and what light it could shed on a story that has become part of Canadian lore.ĭivers didn't visit Terror in 2022. The discoveries made headlines around the world. A few artifacts, graves and ghastly tales of cannibalism is all they uncovered.īut with a blend of Inuit oral history and systematic, high-tech surveys, Erebus was found in 2014, just off the northwest coast of King William Island in Nunavut and Terror two years later. More than 30 expeditions tried to find them. Commander Sir John Franklin and his 129 men never returned. "It's being analyzed in the lab now."Įrebus and HMS Terror set out from England in 1845. "We're quite excited at the tantalizing possibility that this artifact might have written materials inside," Harris said. Maybe it's just an inventory of stores or someone's laundry list. It actually has the feather quill pen still tucked inside the cover like a journal that you might write in and put on your bedside table before turning in." "We came across a folio - a leather book cover, beautifully embossed - with pages inside. "It's probably the most remarkable find of the summer," said Harris, one of the Parks Canada team of archeologist divers who have been excavating Franklin's two lost ships since they were found under the Arctic seas. The team had been hauling dozens of artifacts to the surface - elaborate table settings, a lieutenant's epaulets still in their case, a lens from someone's eyeglasses.īut this, sitting within the steward's pantry, was something else. Harris was in the middle of the 2022 field season on the wreck of HMS Erebus. John Franklin's doomed ships, something caught the eye of diver Ryan Harris. “One thing we can say: if the ice and the weather co-operate, we fully expect next season to be even more productive.Eleven metres below the surface of the Northwest Passage, deep within the wreck of one of Capt. “It’s going to be a challenge to apportion our time between these two amazing shipwrecks,” Harris said. Meanwhile, they are being guarded by local Inuit. “Dusting the shelves and raising things to the surface.”įuture plans for both ships will be decided between Parks Canada, the government of Nunavut and Inuit. ![]() And there’s always a return to the Terror, where officers’ cabins are so well-preserved that Harris jokes the excavation will be more like housekeeping. ![]() They’ll try to map the lower spaces on both wrecks. Next year, the team plans to expand excavation into neighbouring cabins of the Erebus. The hairs from the brush, for example, have been extracted and will go for DNA analysis. Parks Canada’s conservation lab is deciding which objects are in most urgent need of preservation or study. “That’s why there’s this urgency,” said Bernier. One storm this season had three-metre swells - large enough for the troughs to nearly expose the wreck. Article contentĮrebus is in shallower water than Terror, and shrinking ice cover may no longer be protecting it from storms, which seem to be getting larger. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. ![]()
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