Ottawa to make ‘important announcement’ about Franklin Expedition
Environment and Parks Canada Minister Leona Aglukkaq is to make what Ottawa is calling “an important announcement about the lost Franklin Expedition” this morning.
The announcement is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at the Royal Ontario Museum.
The Franklin expedition shipwreck was discovered in early September after years of dogged pursuit, opening a historical window into the 19th century and bringing one of the world’s most-enduring mysteries closer to being solved. The research team had searched more than 1,200 square kilometres of the Arctic before finally finding locating the doomed HMS Erebus with sonar.
A remotely operated underwater vehicle confirmed that it was one of the Franklin ships.
Two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were part of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845-48 expedition to find the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to Asia. The ships, with 129 crew members, disappeared after they became locked in ice in 1846 and were missing for more than a century and a half until this fall’s discovery by a group of public-private searchers led by Parks Canada.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper later announced that the ship found was the HMS Erebus, the ship Franklin commanded the expedition from. He is believed to have been on board when he died.
The ship was discovered somewhere in Queen Maud Gulf west of O’Reilly Island
The wreck of HMS Terror has not yet been found.
Aqlukkaq grew up in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, where the Inuit population passed down lore about the lost ships for generations.
The Star’s Paul Watson was aboard Canadian icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier when the announcement was made and he wrote extensively on what went on behind the scenes. As he reported then, the involved did not say when, or where, the discovery was made, because they want to keep what is now one of the hottest sites in marine archeology safe from looters.
Arctic ice will keep underwater archeologists away from HMS Erebus for close to another year, but before they left in early October, divers were able to peek just inside the wreck.
When they return in 2015, they plan to go deep inside, the first humans to do so since the ship foundered in the High Arctic more than 160 years ago.
