Underwater treasure trove

A series of dives last month to the rediscovered Arctic Ocean wreck of HMS Investigator has revealed glimpses of what Parks Canada archeologists believe to be an unprecedented "treasure" of historical artifacts preserved in silt below the deck of the sunken 19th-century British ship, Postmedia News has learned.

The July expedition to the vessel's resting place in Mercy Bay, a frigid patch of water off the shore of Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, saw divers collect a handful of evocative relics - including a sailor's shoe and a largely intact rifle - that lay "in plain sight" and were at risk of disappearing in the seabed sludge.

But their key finding was confirming the likelihood that "thousands" of other objects - scientific specimens, crewmen's personal belongings, architectural fixtures, a stash of vintage booze in the ship's "spirits room" - have remained entombed and protected in the Royal Navy vessel since it became trapped in ice, was abandoned and then sank during a failed search for the lost Franklin Expedition in the early 1850s.

"We were blessed with really exceptional weather and very, very cooperative ice conditions," Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada underwater archeologist, told Postmedia News. "There's a very high level of siltation inside the hold and that actually bodes quite well for preservation of what will probably amount to thousands upon thousands - or hundreds of thousands - of artifacts that are likely inside the vessel."

He said the ship itself is in remarkably good condition and described the "surreal" experience of seeing a ship so rich in history coming into view with each dive.

The Investigator, captained by Irish-born Robert McClure, had left a British port in 1850 to join what had become a desperate search for the lost ships and missing 129 men from Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Arctic expedition with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

McClure entered the Arctic from the Pacific but was forced to leave the ship when it became locked in ice at Mercy Bay in 1853. He ordered the creation of a cache of supplies on the nearby shore of Banks Island, then led his men on a sledge journey across the sea ice to their rescue by another British ship at Melville Island.

The crew's eastward route back to Britain marked the first recorded transit of the Northwest Passage - a combined voyage by ship and sledge that won McClure everlasting fame despite his failure to find Franklin and the loss of the Investigator, which sank in 1854.

Last summer, Harris and his Parks Canada colleagues became the first people to set eyes on the Investigator in 156 years and earned international acclaim for the feat.

But this year's dives offered the first close look at the 36-metre-long ship, which Harris said appears to have held up well despite being submerged for more than a century-and-a-half and suffering regular grindings from the seasonal ebb and flow of sea ice in Mercy Bay.

Key to that preservation, said Harris, was the copper cladding on the hull of the Investigator that was applied to protect all Royal Navy vessels - including the Erebus and Terror - bound for ice-choked Arctic waters in Canada.

New phase of search for Franklin expedition's lost ships announced

A 160-year-old mystery could be solved this summer as the search resumes to find the doomed ships of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition to discover the Northwest Passage.

The voyage was the demise of Franklin and the 128 men he took to the Canadian Arctic after the Royal Navy ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus he led became trapped in ice, where it is presumed they sank somewhere off Nunavut's King William Island.

"We are continuing our search for an as yet undiscovered national historic site," Environment Minister Peter Kent said Thursday in announcing the resumption of the search. "This is the year I hope we will solve one of the great mysteries in the history of Arctic exploration."

The graves of Terror and Erebus are designated together as Canada's only national historic site with no known location, as they are considered to be integral to the country's northern history.

Kent said the resumption of the search will be on Aug. 21, if the weather co-operates.

Kent's announcement was attended by British High Commissioner Andrew Pocock and Parks Canada officials.

"The search for these historic vessels by Parks Canada does not date from this year or the last couple of years, we've been involved since 1997," Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's chief of underwater archeology said. "We've been looking for these wrecks for a long time. It's really a historical quest to (find them)."

In the past 160 years, there have been several attempts to find Terror and Erebus, the first in January 1850 when HMS Investigator and HMS Enterprise set out to locate Franklin.

Enterprise and Investigator became separated and, in 1851, the latter was locked in ice, much like the ships it was sent to locate. The crew of the Investigator abandoned ship and eventually were rescued by another British vessel after four winters in the Arctic.

In July, there will be a dive to the wreck of Investigator — off Banks Island, N.W.T. — where it finally sank in 1854.

Parks Canada found the vessel last summer using side-scan sonar technology at the bottom of the bay, now a part of Aulavik National Park.

If Erebus and Terror were to be discovered this summer, it would be an achievement for archeology. "It would close one chapter of Canadian history. It would answer the questions that have existed over the centuries, the uncertainty over exactly where (Terror and Erebus) ultimately foundered and sank," Kent said.

Interest in the vessels is not exclusive to Canada. According to Pocock, there is "genuine historical interest" in the United Kingdom, as well.

"Franklin was a considerable figure in Arctic exploration," he said. "We've been looking for Franklin for 160 years."

While Pocock said the dive on Investigator would be of interest, the real prize would be finding Franklin's vessel. "The ships themselves were quite well-known — there are two volcanoes in Antarctica called Erebus and Terror," Pocock said. The volcanoes were named by British Antarctic explorer Sir John Clark Ross, when he captained the ships in exploration of the frozen south in the early 1840s.

"Their profile and reputation — if that's the right word — are rather higher than the Investigator."

Should the three-year search by Parks Canada and the government of Nunavut for Franklin's fabled expedition comes up short, it will not be considered a failure.

"Every expedition that we do actually helps us to get closer (to finding the wreckage). We see it as a contribution to the effort to find them," Bernier said.

Even if Terror and Erebus aren't found, the search would be narrowed further: next time, the team will know where not to look.

Dives on Investigator will take place from July 10 to 25, assuming the weather is favourable.

From The Vancouver Sun

Ten longhouses discovered in Ontario

A few hundred people lived in long houses, made pottery and grew corn in a medium-sized village on the banks of Strasburg Creek that was thriving 100 years before Samuel de Champlain set foot in Ontario.

“It is probably the most interesting site I have encountered in 24 years of doing this work,” archeologist Paul Racher said.

Racher found the remains of at least 10 long houses, including one 90 metres long, ancient piles of garbage, pieces of pottery, pipes, spear tips and arrowheads. A short distance away from the main village, archeologists found summer houses where corn was grown.

“It is a village site, which is kind of a rarity in archeological circles,” Racher said.

The archeological heritage site is in the Huron Natural Area off Trillium Drive and will be protected by a city bylaw. The site is also registered under the Ontario Heritage Act. Anyone removing artifacts or otherwise damaging the site can be charged and fined up to $1 million.

First Nations in the Grand River watershed did not start living in villages until about 1,000 years ago, “so you don’t get a lot of them,” Racher said.

Some of the artifacts are about 500 years old. Others go back 4,500 years and the oldest is estimated at 9,000 years old.

“It’s a form of spear point that has an indentation at the base that we know was popular 8,500 to 9,000 years ago,” Racher said of the oldest artifact.

Racher, of Archeological Research Associates Ltd., said the village was inhabited by Algonquian-speaking people 100 years before Champlain ever came to what is now Ontario in the early 1600s.

That means the creekside village was bustling 100 years before their way of life was disrupted by the fur trade and the war between the English and French. The village was occupied by what is called the Neutral Tribe, which did not take sides in the war.

English allies included the Iroquois of the Five Nations, which later became the Six Nations. French allies included the Huron.

“The descendants of the people from that site are now among the Six Nations today,” Racher said.

“There is a clear archeological connection that goes back 12,000 years,” Racher said. “There is an intimate connection between aboriginal peoples and the land in the Grand River watershed.”

From GuelphMercury.com

Franklin Expedition documents discovered in Arctic? Perhaps.

Just when you think it's over, another story pops up in the news.  It seems the mystery of the Franklin expedition has more chapters than the latest Stieg Larsson novel.

An Inuit family claims that a box that was hidden for over 80 years in the Arctic contains documents linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition.

Over the weekend, the Porter family in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, dug up the small box with the help of an archeologist.

"We knew we were looking for a wooden box, not a particularly large box. We worked our way down and sure enough, about two feet down, we got to the top of some wood," said Doug Stenton, director of culture and heritage for Nunavut.

The exact contents of the unopened, sand-filled box will not be known until the Canadian Conservation Institute carefully examines it, which should take about three weeks.

"When I get it back to Ottawa, I will be photographing it, X-raying it to see what's in the box before we start to dig the sand out," said Tara Grant of the Canadian Conservation Institute.

The box was buried years ago by George Washington Porter Jr. below a large stone cairn. Inside, he carefully placed some documents believed to be connected to the British Franklin Expedition - Sir John Franklin's attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage in the 1840s.

"The day my dad told me, I knew it was very important," said Chester Porter, the son of George Washington Porter Jr.

Chester Porter said he kept the secret to himself for 30 years.

"I think it was time to let my brothers know what my dad did, where he buried the Franklin records," he said.

Franklin's entire crew perished from starvation, scurvy and lead poisoning. Countless attempts to find any trace of Franklin have come up empty and documents are very rare.

"I'm very relieved. I feel human again, not have to think about what's under the ground," Porter said.

From CBC News

*See UPDATE on September 30, 2010*

Failed Search Deepens Mystery of Vanished Explorers

Canadian scientists' announcement Monday that they failed to find the final resting place of British naval hero Sir John Franklin deepened one of the most enduring mysteries of the Arctic.

In May 1845, Franklin set sail from England with 134 men aboard two ships, the Terror and Erebus, to search for the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Five sailors left the ship in Greenland. The rest were never heard from again.

Last week, a six-man government survey team, supported by the Canadian Coast Guard vessel the Sir Wilfrid Laurier and its near 50-man crew, surveyed hundreds of square miles of frigid sea floor hoping to succeed where some 100 other expeditions failed—discovering the fate of the ships and a crew whose demise has been attributed to factors from lead poisoning to cannibalism.

For Canadians, the disappearance is "a Victorian gothic horror story that played out across the Arctic," said Ryan Harris, a government archeologist who is leading this summer's search.

Their government believes that locating the expedition's resting place will bolster its sovereignty over the sea lane Franklin sought. Though the Franklin expedition was British, London has signed over caretaker rights to Canada.

Franklin, the veteran of two Arctic expeditions and the Battle of Trafalgar, was from a line of British explorers seeking a northern link to the Pacific. The then-global superpower kitted his ships with the latest technology, including a water-distillation system and heating.

On July 26, 1845, a whaler made a last sighting of Franklin's ships as they hovered at one entrance into the Arctic. Experts believe the expedition journeyed on for more than a year, becoming trapped in ice off King William Island the next September.

Victorian England idolized explorers, and Franklin's disappearance inspired plays, songs and a 12-year search. Financed mostly through Franklin's wife and the British Navy, some 36 expeditions sought the lost crew.

Early searchers found the bodies of some sailors, some in formal graves that identified the crew members by name. They also recovered sailors' possessions and other relics among native Inuits.

In 1859, a Royal Navy search party found a message under a cairn on King William Island that detailed how the crew had abandoned their ships after being trapped in ice for a year. Its writer said Franklin had died in 1847 and remaining crew would head to Back's River, hundreds of miles to the south. The British gave up looking.

Canada's search continues. In the 1960s, it has sent its army to look. Amateurs have put fortunes and lives on the line after catching what they call the "Franklin bug."

At age 17, David Woodman packed hiking boots and a sleeping bag and headed north from his home in London, Ontario, to begin a search that has spanned 30 years and 10 expeditions. For the past three summers, he has remained in Vancouver, as he and other explorers say they have been unable to obtain government permits to search. Recently, Mr. Woodman bumped into members of the current expedition and tried to muscle in. "I told them, 'I would come and wash socks,' " he said.

Louie Kamookak, an Inuk hunter raised in the region where the ships are believed to have disappeared, has been advising the Canadian government in their searches. He said his interest began when he was told by his great-grandmother of a silver teaspoon and grave she had seen when young, which he believed were Franklin expedition relics. Mr. Kamookak has been looking ever since.

Many mysteries remain. High levels of lead were found in sailor's bodies, leading to theories that their deaths were hastened through poisoning from lead-sealed canned food or via the water-distillation system. Blade cuts on bones have been interpreted as a sign of Inuit attack; native testimony backs up claims of Inuit cannibalism.

But all theories have counterarguments. Even the note's claim that the crew would break for Back's River is disputed, given how far away it is.

One hope is to garner clues from the ship's log, which Mr. Woodman and others believe would be sealed on a ship or in Franklin's grave. Archeologists believe that if the wrecks are found they will be well preserved, given the depth they are expected to be submerged at will have protected them from the sea's ebb and flow.

"There are thousands of theories to grasp onto the Franklin story, because we don't really know what happened," said Mr. Woodman.

Mr. Harris's survey, working from Inuit testimony from the time, searched just east of O'Reilly Island, north of the Canadian mainland.

On Monday, Mr. Harris said they came back empty-handed, after scouring about half of the area they had pinpointed. His next trip, he said, would have to wait for another year.

From The Wall Street Journal