This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The long-lost ship of British polar explorer Sir John Franklin, HMS Terror, has been found in pristine condition at the bottom of an Arctic bay, researchers have said, in a discovery that challenges the accepted history behind one of polar exploration’s deepest mysteries.

HMS Terror and Franklin’s flagship, HMS Erebus, were abandoned in heavy sea ice far to the north of the eventual wreck site in 1848, during the Royal Navy explorer’s doomed attempt to complete the Northwest Passage.

British ship from 1845 Franklin expedition found by Canada Read more

All 129 men on the Franklin expedition died, in the worst disaster to hit Britain’s Royal Navy in its long history of polar exploration. Search parties continued to look for the ships for 11 years after they disappeared, but found no trace, and the fate of the missing men remained an enigma that tantalised generations of historians, archaeologists and adventurers.

Now that mystery seems to have been solved by a combination of intrepid exploration – and an improbable tip from an Inuk crewmember.

On Sunday, a team from the charitable Arctic Research Foundation manoeuvred a small, remotely operated vehicle through an open hatch and into the ship to capture stunning images that give insight into life aboard the vessel close to 170 years ago.

We found the food storage room with plates and one can on the shelves. Adrian Schimnowski, Arctic Research Foundation

“We have successfully entered the mess hall, worked our way into a few cabins and found the food storage room with plates and one can on the shelves,” Adrian Schimnowski, the foundation’s operations director, told the Guardian by email from the research vessel Martin Bergmann.

“We spotted two wine bottles, tables and empty shelving. Found a desk with open drawers with something in the back corner of the drawer.”

The well-preserved wreck matches the Terror in several key aspects, 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.

The 10-member Bergmann crew found the massive shipwreck, with her three masts broken but still standing, almost all hatches closed and everything stowed, in the middle of King William Island’s uncharted Terror Bay on 3 September.

The bell of HMS Terror on the deck of the sunken vessel. Photograph: Arctic Research Foundation

After finding nothing in an early morning search, the research vessel was leaving the bay when a grainy digital silhouette emerged from the depths on the sounder display on the bridge of the Bergmann.

“Everyone was up in the wheelhouse by that point in awe, really,” said Daniel McIsaac, 23, who was at the helm when the research vessel steamed straight over the sunken wreck.

Since, then, the discovery team has spent more than a week quietly gathering images of the vessel and comparing them with the Terror’s 19th century builders’ plans, which match key elements of the sunken vessel.

At first, the Terror seemed to be listing at about 45 degrees to starboard on the seabed. But on the third dive with a remotely operated vehicle, “we noticed the wreck is sitting level on the sea bed floor not at a list - which means the boat sank gently to the bottom,” Schimnowski said Monday.

About 24 metres (80ft) down, the wreck is in perfect condition, with metal sheeting that reinforced the hull against sea ice clearly visible amid swaying kelp.

A long, heavy rope line running through a hole in the ship’s deck suggests an anchor line may have been deployed before the Terror went down.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crew of the HMS Terror, stuck in the ice and commanded by the British admiral George Back (1796-1878), salvaging lifeboats and provisions east of the Frozen Strait, during the Frozen Strait Expedition, 1836-1837. Yellowknife, Prince Of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. Photograph: De Agostini/Getty Images

If true, that sets up the tantalising possibility that British sailors re-manned the vessel after she was abandoned at the top of Victoria Strait in a desperate attempt to escape south.

One crucial detail in the identification of the ship is a wide exhaust pipe rising above the outer deck.

It is in the precise location where a smokestack rose from the locomotive engine which was installed in the Terror’s belly to power the ship’s propeller through closing sea ice, said Schimnowski in a phone interview.

The ship’s bell lies on its side on the deck, close to where the sailor on watch would have have swung the clapper to mark time.

An image from the deck of the wreck of HMS Terror as it lies on the seabed. Photograph: Arctic Research Foundation

And the majestic bowsprit, six metres (20ft) long, still points straight out from the bow as it did when the crew tried to navigate through treacherous ice that eventually trapped Erebus and Terror on 12 September 1846.

The wreck is in such good condition that glass panes are still in three of four tall windows in the stern cabin where the ship’s commander, Captain Francis Crozier, slept and worked, Schimnowski added.

“This vessel looks like it was buttoned down tight for winter and it sank,” he said. “Everything was shut. Even the windows are still intact. If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would probably float.”

If you could lift this boat and pump the water out, it would probably float. Adrian Schimnowski, Arctic Research Foundation

The Arctic Research Foundation was set up by Jim Balsillie, a Canadian tech tycoon and philanthropist, who co-founded Research in Motion, creator of the Blackberry.

Balsillie, who also played a key role in planning the expedition, proposed a theory to explain why it seems both Terror and Erebus sank far south of where they were first abandoned.

“This discovery changes history,” he told the Guardian. “Given the location of the find [in Terror Bay] and the state of the wreck, it’s almost 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 21st-century search for Franklin’s expedition was launched by Canadian former prime minister Stephen Harper as part of a broader plan to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and promote development of its resources – including vast reserves of oil and natural gas, which will be easier to exploit as the Arctic warms and sea ice disappears.

Uncovering the secrets of John Franklin’s doomed voyage Read more

Parks Canada underwater archeologists have led the mission since it began in 2008. Now they must confirm the wreck is Terror, either by examining the foundation’s images or visiting the site themselves. With the first winter snow already falling in the High Arctic, Terror Bay will soon be encased in thick sea ice.

The latest discovery was made two years and a day after Canadian marine archeologists found the wreck of Erebus in the same area of eastern Queen Maud gulf where Inuit oral history had long said a large wooden ship sank.

The same stories described startled Inuit stumbling upon a large dead man in a dark room on the vessel, with a big smile. Experts have suggested that may have been a rictus smile, or evidence that the man had suffered from scurvy.

Parks Canada archeologists found Erebus standing in just 11 meters of ocean. Sea ice had taken a large bite out her stern, and more than a century of storm-driven waves had scattered a trove of artifacts around the site.

So far, archaeologists have brought up the bell from Franklin’s flagship, a cannon, ceramic plate and other objects.

Inuit knowledge was also central to finding the Terror Bay wreck, but in a more mysterious way. Crewman Sammy Kogvik, 49, of Gjoa Haven, had been on the Bergmann for only a day when, chatting with Schimnowski on the bridge, he told a bizarre story.

The double-wheeled helm of HMS Terror. Photograph: Arctic Research Foundation

About six years ago, Kogvik said, he and a hunting buddy were headed on snowmobiles to fish in a lake when they spotted a large piece of wood, which looked like a mast, sticking out of the sea ice covering Terror Bay.

In a phone interview, Kogvik said he stopped that day to get a few snapshots of himself hugging the wooden object, only to discover when he got home that the camera had fallen out his pocket.

Kogvik resolved to keep the encounter secret, fearing the missing camera was an omen of bad spirits, which generations of Inuit have believed began to wander King William Island after Franklin and his men perished.

When Schimnowski heard Kogvik’s story, he didn’t dismiss it, as Inuit testimony has been so often during the long search for Franklin’s ships.

Instead, the Bergmann’s crew agreed to make a detour for Terror Bay on their way to join the main search group aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Shawinigan, at the north end of Victoria Strait.

That is where the only known record of the Franklin expedition provided coordinates for what experts now call the point of abandonment.

A scrawled note dated 25 April 1848, and concealed in a stone cairn at Victory Point on northern King William Island, said Erebus and Terror had been abandoned three days earlier, stuck in sea ice.

Crozier was in command of “the officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls”, because Franklin had died on 11 June 1847, the note continued, “and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men”.

Crozier and Captain James Fitzjames signed the note, which had what seemed a hurried postscript, scrawled upside down in the top right corner: “and start on to-morrow 26th for Back’s Fish River”.

Survivors apparently hoped to follow the river – now known as Back river – south to safety at a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading outpost.

None made it, and for generations, the accepted historical narrative has described a brutal death march as the Royal Navy mariners tried to walk out of the Arctic, dying along the way.

Now Franklin experts will have to debate whether at least some of the dying sailors instead mustered incredible strength, fighting off hunger, disease and frostbite, in a desperate attempt to sail home.</s>(CNN) HMS Terror, a long-lost ship that vanished while searching for the Northwest Passage, sparking one of the world's great maritime mysteries, is believed to have been found, almost 170 years on.

The Arctic Research Foundation said it spotted the vessel, part of Sir John Franklin's polar expedition , on the sea bed off King William Island in the Canadian Arctic.

"If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would probably float." foundation spokesman Adrian Schimnowski said.

Schimnowski said the ship was found in nearly pristine condition in about 80 feet of water, with most windowpanes still intact.

"Everything points to HMS Terror," he said.

The discovery came with the help of an Inuit ranger who told Schimnowski about seeing a mast protruding through the ice one day while on a fishing trip seven years ago.

"What's great about this discovery is that the search for this vessel was led by an Inuit story that had great validity and truth to it," Schimnowski said.

Forensic archaeologists will study images and film of the wreckage to confirm it is the HMS Terror.

"We do not take anything away from the site," Schimnowski said. "It is a sacred site. It has to be respected."

HMS Terror and its sister ship, HMS Erebus, together with a total of 129 men, disappeared in the late 1840s while under the command of British explorer Sir John Franklin.

The Franklin Expedition set sail from England on May 19, 1845, planning to search for, and sail through, the Northwest Passage, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago.

But the voyage was to end in tragedy.

The vessels became stuck fast as the icy seas froze around them. With supplies running low, their crews abandoned ship in April 1848.

Already thought to have been weakened by badly preserved tinned food, the men died one by one, on an ill-fated attempt to walk south to safety, across the vast and unforgiving Arctic wastelands.

Search parties were sent out year after year, but found only the skeletons of some of the sailors, and diaries explaining what had happened to them.

"The discovery of HMS Terror would be important for Inuit communities and Canada, reflecting the ongoing and valuable role of Inuit traditional knowledge in the search and making a significant contribution to completing the Franklin story."

"Parks Canada is currently working with our partners to validate the details of the discovery," it added.

John Geiger, CEO of Canadian Geographic and author of "Franklin's Lost Ship: The Historic Discovery of HMS Erebus" tweeted his congratulations to all of those involved in the latest find.</s>The second of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago during an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage has been found.

The crew of the Arctic Research Foundation’s Martin Bergmann research vessel found the shipwreck, with all three masts standing and almost all hatches closed, on September 3.

“Resting proud on 24 metres of water, we found HMS Terror — 203 years old, it is perfectly preserved in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage,” Arctic Research Foundation spokesman Adrian Schimnowski says in the video.

John Geiger, the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, congratulated the crew of the Martin Bergmann in a statement.

“This is tremendously exciting news,” said Geiger. “After the discovery of HMS Erebus two years ago, the Terror remained the largest missing piece of the puzzle. Together, these discoveries have the potential to alter forever our understanding of the Franklin expedition’s disastrous end,” Arctic Research Foundation spokesman Adrian Schimnowski says in the video.

Last seen in the 1840s while under the command of Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus – which was found in 2014 and HMS Terror have inspired marine archaeologists and have been the subject of songs, poems and novels.

In 1846 Sir John, born in Spilsby, hand-picked 128 officers and men and set out to find the Northwest Passage, the long-sought shortcut to Asia that supposedly ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of the harsh, ice-choked Arctic.

HMS Terror was found in Nunavut’s Terror Bay, north of where the wreck of HMS Erebus – the expedition’s flagship- was found.</s>Explorers in Canada have found the wreck of HMS Terror, the second of two British ships lost in the disastrous 1845 Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

The Arctic Research Foundation, a private group that sent a vessel to help look for the ship, found it in pristine condition at the bottom of a bay earlier this month.

Sir John Franklin and his 128-member crew in the Terror and HMS Erebus all died after the vessels became stuck in ice during a search for the fabled Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The fate of the ships remained one of the great mysteries in history for almost 170 years until a team found the wreck of the Erebus in September 2014.

The expedition has become part of Canadian folklore, in part because of the crew's appalling fate.

Tales handed down from the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen.

Adrian Schimnowski, the foundation's operations director, told The Guardian: 'We have successfully entered the mess hall, worked our way into a few cabins and found the food storage room with plates and one can on the shelves.

'We spotted two wine bottles, tables and empty shelving. Found a desk with open drawers with something in the back corner of the drawer.'

He said: 'This vessel looks like it was buttoned down tight for winter and it sank. Everything was shut. Even the windows are still intact. If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would probably float.'

HMS Terror is believed to have been found about 50 miles north of where HMS Erebus was discovered. Both wrecks had been moved considerable distances by the ice over the years.

Canada's federal parks ministry - which is coordinating the search for the Terror - said it had no details of the discovery.

Ever since the discovery of the New World - North and South America - in 1492 explorers had been seeking ways to travel beyond the continent to reach Asia.

In 1578 Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Pacific Ocean via Cape Horn, but that route was a huge detour for ships seeking to reach the trade routes to China and what were known as the Spice Islands, in modern day Indonesia.

The discovery of Australia and New Zealand in the 18th century and the conquest of India by the British-owned East India Company renewed the need for a quicker marine route to the Pacific.

The Northwest Passage became a holy grail which numerous British and other explorers searched for in the mid 19th century.

Sir John Franklin, an experienced explorer, volunteered to lead an expedition to find the Northwest Passage and he commanded two state-of-the-art ships which were even fitted with early steam engines.

But the ship ventured two far south and became trapped near King William Island.

Legend has it - backed up by folktales from the Inuit people who lived in nearby Nunavut - the stranded sailors tried to escape by crossing the ice and perished but only after some had resorted to cannibalism.

With no news of the expedition, his wife Lady Franklin, urged the Royal Navy to send a rescue mission but they were confident he was still alive and even promoted him to Rear-Admiral five years after he had died.

In 1850 a new expedition, under Robert McClure, was finally commissioned. It finally found the Northwest Passage and its crew shared a £10,000 reward given to them by Parliament.

But pack ice made the passage not suitable for navigation and it never gained the status its proponents had hoped for. In recent years, with global warming, the passage has become more navigable.

It was only later, in 1914, that the opening of the Panama Canal enabled ships to pass safely from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa without a huge diversion.</s>The second of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago during a storied expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage has been found.

The Arctic Research Foundation said Monday that the HMS Terror has been located by a research ship. Last seen in the 1840s while under the command of Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror have long been among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology and the subject of songs, poems and novels. The wreck of the Erebus was found in 2014.

"Terror was found on Sept 3. It is a perfect time capsule," said Adrian Schimnowski, the expedition leader of the research ship that located the HMS Terror.

The Terror was discovered in 24 meters (26 yards) of water in Terror Bay, a small indentation on the coast of King William Island west of the community of Gjoa Haven. It was located right where an Inuit hunter said it would be. Canadian Rear-Admiral John Newton said the two Franklin ships were found about 50 kilometers (31 miles) apart from each other.

Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men had set out in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage, the long-sought shortcut to Asia that supposedly ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of the harsh, ice-choked Arctic. The death of all 129 men made the Franklin expedition the worst tragedy in the history of Arctic exploration.

Schimnowski said that mystery might have remained if not for a late-night conversation on one of the search vessels between himself and Sammy Kogvik, an Inuk and Canadian Ranger from Gjoa Haven. The two were on the bridge of the Martin Bergmann, a research vessel, and Kogvik was telling Schimnowski about the history of the shorelines they were sailing past. He started talking about something he had seen seven years ago while snowmobiling across the sea ice of Terror Bay.

Kogvik recalled how he had looked behind him to check on his hunting partner when he spotted a large pole sticking up out of the ice. The two Inuit stopped and took pictures of what looked like a ship's mast.

But when Kogvik got home to Gjoa Haven, he found he had dropped his camera and lost the shots. "He kept the story secret because he didn't want people not to believe him," Schimnowski said.

"We listened to Sammy's story on the bridge of the Bergmann and changed course to take a look," he said.

In a news release, Kogvik said he was delighted to see the vessel again.

In the days since the discovery, the crew has identified a number of the Terror's features. There is video of the ship's bell. A cannon similar to those on the Erebus has been spotted. The ship's helm is still there "in perfect condition," said Schimnowski. A windlass, used to haul up an anchor, still has heavy rope wrapped around it as if moored to the bottom of the sea.

Newton called it an historic site for Canada and said there are no current plans to raise the two ships.

John Geiger, president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, called the discovery of the HMS Terror the missing piece of the puzzle and historically significant for Americans given the role of the HMS Terror in the War of 1812. HMS Terror was one of the British naval bomb ships that took part in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814. The attack was the inspiration for the poem by Francis Scott Key that eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Those bombs could have very well been lobbed from the Terror," he said. "It's fundamental to the Star-Spangled Banner and the origins of the anthem of the United States. From a pure historical standpoint what an exciting find."

The confirmation of the HMS Erebus find in 2014 was made by underwater archaeologists, following a meticulous review of data and artifacts observed from the Arctic Ocean's seabed and using high-resolution photography, high-definition video and multi-beam sonar measurements.

Canada announced in 2008 that it would look for the ships, and the Canadian government has poured millions of dollars into the venture, with former Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself taking part in the search. It was all part of Harper's plan to boast Canadian nationalism and a sense of ownership of the north.

Harper's government made the project a top priority as it looked to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting Arctic ice in recent years has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin was seeking. Canada says it owns the passage. The U.S. and others say it is international territory.

The well-preserved wreck of HMS Erebus was found 11 meters (12 yards) below the surface, near King William Island, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) northwest of Toronto.

Historians believe that the ships got trapped in thick ice in 1846 off Prince William Island, and Franklin and some other crew members died in the ensuing months. The survivors apparently abandoned the two ships in April 1848 in a hopeless bid to reach safety overland. 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.

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. But they opened up parts of the Canadian Arctic to discovery and ultimately found a Northwest Passage, though it proved inhospitable to shipping because of ice and treacherous weather.

The search for an Arctic passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497. The shortcut eluded other famous explorers, including Henry Hudson and Francis Drake.

No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip in 1903-06. The exact location of Erebus was not disclosed for fear of looters.

The research ship was part of a small flotilla organized by the Canadian government and its partners that sailed for the Arctic at the end of August to search for the HMS Terror.</s>OTTAWA, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Explorers have found the wreck of HMS Terror, the second of two British ships lost in the disastrous 1845 Franklin expedition to Canada's Arctic Northwest Passage, Britain's Guardian newspaper said on Monday.

The Arctic Research Foundation, a private group that sent a vessel to help look for the ship, found it in pristine condition at the bottom of a bay earlier this month, a spokesman told the paper.

Sir John Franklin and his 128-member crew in the Terror and HMS Erebus all died after the vessels became stuck in ice during a search for the fabled Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The fate of the ships remained one of the great mysteries in Canadian history for almost 170 years until a team found the wreck of the Erebus in September 2014.

Canada's federal parks ministry - which is coordinating the search for the Terror - said it was working to verify the report. Reuters was not immediately able to contact the foundation.

The expedition has become part of Canadian folklore, in part because of the crew's appalling fate. Tales handed down from the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Matthew Lewis)</s>Ryan Harris has spent six summers working in the Canadian Arctic hunting the two most sought-after wrecks in marine history: the lost ships of British explorer Sir John Franklin. In those years, on remote islets to the west and south of the frozen wastes of King William Island, Harris and his team have found tantalising items including pieces of iron embossed with Royal Navy markings, which clearly came from 19th-century sailing ships.

Everything suggested these could be parts of Erebus or Terror, the ships in which Franklin sailed, in 1845, to find the fabled Northwest Passage between the North Atlantic and the Pacific before vanishing with all his crew. However, the precise location of the shipwrecks eluded Harris’s team, despite their trawling more than 1,600 sq km of seabed with sonar detectors between 2008 and 2013.

Then, in early September this year, Harris and his colleagues, who were working with “a substantial array of craft” in the region, hit pay dirt. “I was working in our ship, which was towing a sonar detector in order to survey an area of relatively shallow seabed around Queen Maud Gulf, one of the southern areas we had marked as promising search zones,” says Harris. “I was worried we were getting too close to an undersea ridge and had turned away from our monitor. Then I looked back and there it was: a clear image of a shipwreck with exposed beams lying on the sea floor. I just stabbed my finger on the screen and started shouting, ‘That’s it, that’s it. We’ve found it!’”

The sharply outlined image, which made headlines around the world when released a few days later, shows a relatively undamaged ship settled upright on the sea floor at a depth of about 11 metres. Subsequent dives by Harris and colleagues confirmed the wreck was in a good state of preservation.

As to the ship’s identity, Harris, who is senior marine archaeologist for Parks Canada, which manages the nation’s wilderness areas, is emphatic. “Erebus and Terror were bomb ships built to fire mortars and are often described as sister vessels. In fact, they were of different classes. From plans provided by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, we can tell – from the wreck’s length and breadth, and [the] positions of its main hatch and masts – that it is Erebus.”

Harris added that the reason Erebus, in which Franklin had sailed while his second-in-command, Francis Crozier, captained Terror, is well preserved has much to do with the cold and dark of the Arctic, which keeps biological and chemical processes in check on the sea floor. “We stand to find almost anything inside the wreck: leather, textiles – even paper and documents are a distinct possibility. And, of course, papers would be really useful. They might tell us exactly what happened to the expedition.”

Other clues to be sought when the Parks Canada expedition returns to the Erebus next year will include analysis of the ship’s rigging and propeller, as well as levels of coal and food on board. These will provide clues for archaeologists who want to know if the crew was trying to get closer to land in a desperate bid to hunt – and thereby supplement their dwindling provisions – or if they still had some distant hope they might be able to complete their journey to the Western Pacific. “That’s just two scenarios,” said Harris. “There are many more to be tested.”

Franklin had set off from Greenhithe in Kent with 129 men to find the Northwest Passage in well-provided sail ships that had been fitted with steam-driven propellers to help them manoeuvre in pack ice. The holds were filled with a three-year supply of tinned provisions. Franklin’s two ships were observed, by whalers, sailing into Lancaster Sound in late July 1845. They were never seen again. After several years of mounting concern for Franklin and his men, Britain became obsessed with his disappearance and more than 40 expeditions were launched to find him. For each mission, his widow, Jane, wrote a letter to be handed to her husband on his rescue. Each time, it was returned unopened.

The truth was uncovered by the Scottish explorer John Rae in the 1850s. After interviewing Inuits, he learned that Franklin had died in 1847, two years after his ships became trapped in ice. Later, his men, by now starving, started to eat each other. Not surprisingly, Victorian society was appalled by the story and Rae was denounced in a campaign instigated by Lady Jane and waged by Charles Dickens as chief propagandist. Rae had no right to believe “a race of savages”, Dickens claimed. It was far more likely the Inuits had killed Franklin’s men themselves.

The issue was not fully resolved until 1997, when blade marks on the bones of crew discovered on King William Island were found to have cut marks consistent with the men having been cut up and eaten. Trapped in ice for years, and afflicted by scurvy, starvation and possibly lead poisoning from their poorly preserved tins of food, the men had died the grimmest of deaths.

The story is “a unique, unquiet compound of mystery, horror and magic”, as Franklin’s biographer Andrew Lambert puts it. The exact sequence of events remains a mystery. However, thanks to Harris and his team, it may soon be possible to outline the terrible chain of circumstances that eventually claimed the lives of Franklin and his men. “We always knew it would take years to find these ships,” said Harris. “However, this story is so embedded in Canadian culture, the task was irresistible. It wasn’t an obsession, however, just a matter of persevering.”

The work ahead will be anything but easy. Accessing the tight spaces inside the Erebus will be arduous for divers, for example. So would it be possible to lift the ship from the seabed? Harris is cautious. “It is one thing to raise a ship like the Mary Rose in English waters. This is the Arctic and the site is covered in ice for most of the year. We have only a few weeks access a year. On the other hand, the idea should not be ruled out of hand.”

One clear factor in the team’s favour is climate change, which has kept the Arctic clear of sea ice in summer for longer and longer periods as greenhouse gas emissions have inexorably warmed up the planet, though this year saw relatively high levels of sea ice return to the region. Nevertheless, most experts expect that ice cover to continue dwindling, easing search conditions.

One intriguing aspect of the discovery of Erebus in Queen Maud Gulf is the fact that its location fits in neatly with Inuit testimony about Franklin’s expedition. “Their stories about the expedition were vivid and detailed but were dismissed in the 19th century because Inuits were considered to be savages,” said Harris. “In fact, they were providing extremely accurate information, we now realise. The discovery of Erebus in our southern search area completely vindicates what they had been saying. The ship is exactly where they said it had sunk. They also reported that Erebus’s masts were still visible after it had gone down, and again that fits in with the shallowness of the waters in which the ship settled. That means we can re-examine their testimony in greater detail and be more confident of getting more clues about the fate of the rest of expedition.”

Then there is the issue of Franklin’s body. “It may well be on the Erebus,” said Harris. “He could be on board in a casket in the hold. That is certainly something we will be looking for when we carry out dives when we return to the site next September.”

Ryan Harris will be discussing his role in the search for Franklin’s ships at the British Library at 6.30pm on 1 December as part of the library’s Lines of Ice exhibition (runs 14 Nov-29 Mar 2015). The Search for Franklin’s Lost Ships will be chaired by the Observer’s science editor, Robin McKie. Inquiries: +44 (0)1937 546546 boxoffice@bl.uk

The deadly hunt for the Northwest Passage

The search for the Northwest Passage retains a mystique possessed by no other quest in modern history. Apart from the loss of Franklin’s expedition, the hunt to find a passage through Canadian waters to the Pacific claimed countless other lives and defied the best efforts of 19th-century explorers. In the end, its conquest had to wait until 1906 when Roald Amundsen sailed its length in a fishing boat, Gjøa, a task that took him three years to complete.

Only now, as global warming opens up Arctic waters, have archaeologists had a chance of uncovering this intriguing history, a story that will be outlined in Lines in the Ice: Seeking the Northwest Passage, at the British Library, which opens on 14 November .

The story of the hunt to find the passage, as seen through maps, books and other artefacts, is still one driven by riches, says exhibition lead curator, Philip Hatfield. “In Elizabethan days, it held out the promise of gold. Today it is black gold, oil from the Arctic seabed that is turning people’s heads,” he said.

An example, to be displayed at the exhibition, of how important the region was rated in the past is provided by a circumpolar map of the Arctic that was owned by Charles II. A 19th-century vision of the region’s worth is revealed in the words of Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, which begins with a ship’s captain dreaming of bringing “inestimable benefit to all mankind… by discovering a passage near the pole”.

“The idea that open waters existed near the pole divided expert opinion in those days,” adds Tom Harper, the exhibition’s co-curator. Some, such as Sir John Barrow, held that sea water could not freeze and that open seas must therefore exist beyond north Canada. All sailors had to do was persevere. Others, such as William Scoresby, a whaling captain and a veteran of the Arctic, argued vehemently that open sea water could freeze. He had seen it do so many times, he pointed out. The fact that Scoresby was ignored while the wrong-headed views of Barrow, a promoter of Franklin’s expedition, gained acceptance was just one factor in the chain of events that would lead Sir John Franklin’s expedition to its icy doom.</s>The Arctic Research Foundation, a private group that sent a vessel to help look for the ship, found it in pristine condition at the bottom of a bay earlier this month, a spokesman told the paper.

Sir John Franklin and his 128-member crew in the Terror and HMS Erebus all died after the vessels became stuck in ice during a search for the fabled Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The fate of the ships remained one of the great mysteries in Canadian history for almost 170 years until a team found the wreck of the Erebus in September 2014.

Canada's federal parks ministry - which is coordinating the search for the Terror - said it was working to verify the report. Reuters was not immediately able to contact the foundation.

The expedition has become part of Canadian folklore, in part because of the crew's appalling fate. Tales handed down from the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen.
The Arctic Research Foundation discovers the wreck of the Royal Navy's HMS Terror almost completely intact off the southern coast of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, 168 years after being abandoned during Franklin's lost expedition in 1848.