"It's actually a set of drafting implements - the professional tools of the trade for a ship's officer. "My partner and I realized that it's not a book at all," Harris said. Henry Thomas Dundas le Vesconte, whom Franklin charged with map-making, they found a green box that at first looked like a book. In the one that would have been occupied by 2nd Lt. The divers also began excavating the officers' cabins. The steward's pantry was a main focus of the summer and much of what was recovered from there is tableware - stoneware plates, platters and serving dishes. 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. (Aimie Neron/Parks Canada via CP)Īfter two seasons lost because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a busy summer.įield seasons in the Arctic are brief. Parks Canada archaeologists sit at the dive control console as the Deep Trekker ROV is seen in the diving hole at the HMS Erebus ice camp in the Northwest Passage in April. "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 archaeologist 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. The ships were locked in a destructive stranglehold at the foot of the iceberg until eventually Terror surged past the iceberg and Erebus broke free.Eleven metres below the surface of the Northwest Passage, deep within the wreck of one of Capt. The impact floored the crew members while masts snapped and were torn away. The ships crashed violently together and their rigging became entangled. Terror couldn't clear both Erebus and the iceberg, so a collision was inevitable. The ice smashed against them so violently that their masts shook in a beating that would have destroyed any ordinary vessel.Įven more dangerously, in March 1842 the Erebus and Terror came close to destroying each other.Įrebus was suddenly forced to turn across Terror's pass in order to avoid crashing headlong into an iceberg which had just become visible through the snow. In one incident, they were caught in a stormy sea full of fragments of rock-hard ice. The ships sailed into the Antarctic – which was just as perilous as the north – for three successive years in 1841, 18. Together, they circumnavigated the continent and the expedition did much to map areas of Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf and set the scene for future polar exploration in that area. The ships were completely refitted with additional strengthening and an internal heating system. The Erebus joined the Terror for the next expedition – to the opposite end of the Earth, the Antarctic – under the command of James Clark Ross (1839–43). 'HMS Erebus in the Ice, 1846' by François Etienne Musin ( BHC3325, © National Maritime Museum)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |