Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
August 15, 2008
OTTAWA - The Canadian government confirmed Friday it will embark on the most extensive search ever for the fabled British shipwrecks Erebus and Terror, with Environment Minister John Baird saying the hunt led by Parks Canada scientists will boost "our case for sovereignty" in Arctic waters.
The ships were lost in the Canadian Arctic in the 1840s during the ill-fated Franklin Expedition and are today ranked among the greatest undiscovered prizes of international marine archeology. Believed to lie in waters off King William Island, the ships were under the command of legendary Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin when they became locked in heavy ice that eventually doomed the entire crew of 129 men.
The six-week search - the first season in what could be a three-year project headed by Parks Canada's senior underwater archeologist Robert Grenier and Inuit historian Louie Kamoukak - is set to get under way within days aboard a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker.
Both of the expedition leaders attended a news conference Friday in Ottawa with Baird, who described the lost Franklin ships as something akin to an "Indiana Jones mystery," adding: "We want it to be a Canadian mission. We don't want Hollywood to get there first."
But Baird stressed repeatedly that the search aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier is intended to not only locate an "exciting" piece of global maritime heritage, but also to reinforce Canada's Arctic sovereignty - an issue Prime Minister Stephen Harper flagged earlier this week as a key component of his party's re-election strategy.
"We think every bit of weight we can put behind our case for sovereignty is important," Baird said. "Adding history to that equation can only enhance that case."
Pressed for more details about how a search for two 19th-century British shipwrecks can bolster the country's polar claims, now being sorted out under UN rules related to seabed geology, Baird stated: "We certainly think by establishing a long-standing presence in the Arctic that can enhance issues of sovereignty ... Look at the strait (the Northwest Passage) not far from where this ship is.
"It's certainly part of what we call Canada; others don't necessarily recognize that claim. So we're committed to doing everything we can to have a presence in the north - environmentally, whether it's establishing a long-standing presence and history, whether it's resource-based, whether it's militarily..."
Baird also referred to the Russian government's growing interest in Arctic resources as a sign of the urgency needed in asserting Canada's territorial and economic interests in the North.
Grenier - who gained global acclaim as the lead archeologist in the discovery of two 16th-century Basque whaling vessels at Red Bay, Labrador - has described the Franklin vessels as the 'Holy Grail' of North American shipwrecks.
He said Friday that he has "waited 25 years" to mount a scientific search for the wrecks and that Parks Canada has now found a willing sponsor in Harper's government.
He added that the costs of the project are minimal - just $75,000 this year beyond the usual cost of having a icebreaker in the King William Island region, a committed expenditure anyway for the Coast Guard.
"I cannot promise to find the ship," Grenier said. "But we have a decent chance, that's all I can say. And one thing I will promise you, when we are finished the work there, we should cover between 400 and 800 square kilometres during these weeks. Once we have covered a certain area, it will be marked finished. Nobody has to go there again, which is not the case for many of the searches done before, which were more haphazard, with not as good equipment and not as good expertise."
The prime search area was identified on Friday as the southern waters of Victoria Strait and the eastern part of the Queen Maud Gulf, including O'Reilly and Kirkwall Islands north of the mainland Nunavut coast that have been targeted in previous searches.
The disappearance of Franklin and his men caused a sensation around the world at the time, and rescue ships were dispatched from Britain throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
Terror and Erebus were never found, but the tragic fate of the expedition was eventually confirmed with the discovery of the graves of several sailors and a single page from a log book placed in a cairn at a site called Victory Point.
The log recorded Franklin's death aboard Erebus in June 1847 and the abandonment of the two ships, which had become stranded in the ice near King William Island a year later.
It was clear that the surviving crew faced impenetrable pack ice, dwindling supplies and near-certain starvation.
The new Canadian underwater survey will be accompanied by land-based archeological work, raising the possibility that material relics or even human remains from the Franklin Expedition could be discovered, as well.
Franklin's failed attempt to cross the Northwest Passage and the rescue missions that followed played a key role in Canadian history, helping to chart the country's Arctic waters and cementing Canada's later claim over the entire Arctic archipelago.
''A tragedy can sometimes turn into an amazing gift,'' Grenier said.
Several 20th-century searches for the lost ships failed to find them, although the shoreline gravesites of a crewman was excavated in the 1980s by researchers seeking clues about the expedition's fate.
A 1997 expedition, which included Grenier and B.C. Franklin enthusiast David Woodman, turned up several copper sheets on a small island off the Adelaide Peninsula. The copper sheets - shown to reporters on Friday by Grenier - appeared to be ship cladding, and tests conducted by government scientists point to a strong possibility that the metal came from one of Franklin's lost ships.
In a 1997 agreement between the British and Canadian governments, Britain effectively gave Canada ownership rights over Franklin's ships should they ever be found. British High Commissioner Anthony Cary attended Friday's announcement in a show of support for the new Canadian search.
Franklin's disappearance made him the most famous in a long line of British explorers who attempted to find and traverse the fabled Northwest Passage sea route through Canada's northern frontier. The prospect of a navigable conduit from Europe to Asia across the top of North America was the original impetus for exploring Canada's Arctic waters more than 400 years ago.
Seeking an Arctic sea passage remained an obsession for British, American and Scandinavian explorers throughout the 1800s. The passage, finally completed in 1906 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, is again drawing international attention because a record-setting retreat of Arctic ice has been creating a reliably open navigation route for several summers running.
Earlier this week, the Canadian Ice Service declared the passage "navigable" for the third year in a row.
The retreat of Arctic ice and the opening of the Northwest Passage have increased the sense of urgency among polar nations - including Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway and the U.S. - to secure rights to seabed territory and a potential bonanza of undersea oil under the terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Next week, another Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker - the Louis S. St-Laurent - will begin a seabed survey in the Beaufort Sea to collect data in support of Canada's seabed claims, to be submitted to the UN by 2013.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=147541d1-0d04-445c-963a-f9c498b32883
OTTAWA - The Canadian government confirmed Friday it will embark on the most extensive search ever for the fabled British shipwrecks Erebus and Terror, with Environment Minister John Baird saying the hunt led by Parks Canada scientists will boost "our case for sovereignty" in Arctic waters.
The ships were lost in the Canadian Arctic in the 1840s during the ill-fated Franklin Expedition and are today ranked among the greatest undiscovered prizes of international marine archeology. Believed to lie in waters off King William Island, the ships were under the command of legendary Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin when they became locked in heavy ice that eventually doomed the entire crew of 129 men.
The six-week search - the first season in what could be a three-year project headed by Parks Canada's senior underwater archeologist Robert Grenier and Inuit historian Louie Kamoukak - is set to get under way within days aboard a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker.
Both of the expedition leaders attended a news conference Friday in Ottawa with Baird, who described the lost Franklin ships as something akin to an "Indiana Jones mystery," adding: "We want it to be a Canadian mission. We don't want Hollywood to get there first."
But Baird stressed repeatedly that the search aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier is intended to not only locate an "exciting" piece of global maritime heritage, but also to reinforce Canada's Arctic sovereignty - an issue Prime Minister Stephen Harper flagged earlier this week as a key component of his party's re-election strategy.
"We think every bit of weight we can put behind our case for sovereignty is important," Baird said. "Adding history to that equation can only enhance that case."
Pressed for more details about how a search for two 19th-century British shipwrecks can bolster the country's polar claims, now being sorted out under UN rules related to seabed geology, Baird stated: "We certainly think by establishing a long-standing presence in the Arctic that can enhance issues of sovereignty ... Look at the strait (the Northwest Passage) not far from where this ship is.
"It's certainly part of what we call Canada; others don't necessarily recognize that claim. So we're committed to doing everything we can to have a presence in the north - environmentally, whether it's establishing a long-standing presence and history, whether it's resource-based, whether it's militarily..."
Baird also referred to the Russian government's growing interest in Arctic resources as a sign of the urgency needed in asserting Canada's territorial and economic interests in the North.
Grenier - who gained global acclaim as the lead archeologist in the discovery of two 16th-century Basque whaling vessels at Red Bay, Labrador - has described the Franklin vessels as the 'Holy Grail' of North American shipwrecks.
He said Friday that he has "waited 25 years" to mount a scientific search for the wrecks and that Parks Canada has now found a willing sponsor in Harper's government.
He added that the costs of the project are minimal - just $75,000 this year beyond the usual cost of having a icebreaker in the King William Island region, a committed expenditure anyway for the Coast Guard.
"I cannot promise to find the ship," Grenier said. "But we have a decent chance, that's all I can say. And one thing I will promise you, when we are finished the work there, we should cover between 400 and 800 square kilometres during these weeks. Once we have covered a certain area, it will be marked finished. Nobody has to go there again, which is not the case for many of the searches done before, which were more haphazard, with not as good equipment and not as good expertise."
The prime search area was identified on Friday as the southern waters of Victoria Strait and the eastern part of the Queen Maud Gulf, including O'Reilly and Kirkwall Islands north of the mainland Nunavut coast that have been targeted in previous searches.
The disappearance of Franklin and his men caused a sensation around the world at the time, and rescue ships were dispatched from Britain throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
Terror and Erebus were never found, but the tragic fate of the expedition was eventually confirmed with the discovery of the graves of several sailors and a single page from a log book placed in a cairn at a site called Victory Point.
The log recorded Franklin's death aboard Erebus in June 1847 and the abandonment of the two ships, which had become stranded in the ice near King William Island a year later.
It was clear that the surviving crew faced impenetrable pack ice, dwindling supplies and near-certain starvation.
The new Canadian underwater survey will be accompanied by land-based archeological work, raising the possibility that material relics or even human remains from the Franklin Expedition could be discovered, as well.
Franklin's failed attempt to cross the Northwest Passage and the rescue missions that followed played a key role in Canadian history, helping to chart the country's Arctic waters and cementing Canada's later claim over the entire Arctic archipelago.
''A tragedy can sometimes turn into an amazing gift,'' Grenier said.
Several 20th-century searches for the lost ships failed to find them, although the shoreline gravesites of a crewman was excavated in the 1980s by researchers seeking clues about the expedition's fate.
A 1997 expedition, which included Grenier and B.C. Franklin enthusiast David Woodman, turned up several copper sheets on a small island off the Adelaide Peninsula. The copper sheets - shown to reporters on Friday by Grenier - appeared to be ship cladding, and tests conducted by government scientists point to a strong possibility that the metal came from one of Franklin's lost ships.
In a 1997 agreement between the British and Canadian governments, Britain effectively gave Canada ownership rights over Franklin's ships should they ever be found. British High Commissioner Anthony Cary attended Friday's announcement in a show of support for the new Canadian search.
Franklin's disappearance made him the most famous in a long line of British explorers who attempted to find and traverse the fabled Northwest Passage sea route through Canada's northern frontier. The prospect of a navigable conduit from Europe to Asia across the top of North America was the original impetus for exploring Canada's Arctic waters more than 400 years ago.
Seeking an Arctic sea passage remained an obsession for British, American and Scandinavian explorers throughout the 1800s. The passage, finally completed in 1906 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, is again drawing international attention because a record-setting retreat of Arctic ice has been creating a reliably open navigation route for several summers running.
Earlier this week, the Canadian Ice Service declared the passage "navigable" for the third year in a row.
The retreat of Arctic ice and the opening of the Northwest Passage have increased the sense of urgency among polar nations - including Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway and the U.S. - to secure rights to seabed territory and a potential bonanza of undersea oil under the terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Next week, another Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker - the Louis S. St-Laurent - will begin a seabed survey in the Beaufort Sea to collect data in support of Canada's seabed claims, to be submitted to the UN by 2013.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=147541d1-0d04-445c-963a-f9c498b32883
