Private group to search for Franklin ships
Updated Sat. Jul. 11 2009 8:18 AM ET
The Canadian Press
Privately funded archeologists will head to the Arctic this fall to search for the lost ships of the fabled Franklin expedition.
"I'm very excited to be doing this project," says Rob Rondeau, marine archeologist and head of Procom Diving Services.
Procom will conduct the survey early this September in the waters of Larsen Sound, between King William Island and Prince of Wales Island in the central Arctic archipelago.
"You can't be a marine archeologist anywhere in the world and not know about the Franklin story."
The Franklin expedition, immortalized by generations of writers and singers in both Canada and the United Kingdom, set off from England in 1845 in an effort to map the Northwest Passage.
The 134 sailors and officers sailed to the Arctic in two of the most advanced ships of their time, the Erebus and the Terror, which featured strengthened hulls and steam-driven propellers to drive them through the ice. The expedition represented the apotheosis of the Victorian passion for science and exploration and was the most determined effort up to that point to open up what was then seen as the globe's final frontier.
"It was the space shuttle of the time," says Rondeau.
But neither ship and none of the men ever returned. Search-and-rescue missions, while making large contributions to Arctic exploration, located only scattered artifacts. Oral accounts from Inuit hunters eventually told a tale of a mission collapsing into starvation, desperation and cannibalism.
Last summer, Parks Canada set out on what was to have been a three-year effort near King William Island to find the ships. The search area was based on Inuit oral history that told of starving groups of European sailors. But this year's search was cancelled after the coast guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier was assigned other duties.
Enter Alberta-based Procom and its corporate partners, which include Canadian North Airlines, Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping and Discovery Channel Canada.
"No public funds are going to support this mission," says Rondeau, who has been planning the project for four years.
His group, taking its guidance from a letter found in a cairn on King William Island's northwest coast, is searching waters farther north than Parks Canada did. Written in 1848 by James Fitzjames, captain of the Erebus, the letter describes the last known position of the ships after they were abandoned by their doomed crew.
"We're going to where the note tells us those ships were when they last saw them," Rondeau says. "I've come up with a theory that's different than most other archeologists and I'm going to go out and try to prove it."
Rondeau is to be accompanied by British archeologist and Franklin expert William Battersby. The two will have at their disposal tools and equipment that Rondeau says have never before been used in a civilian expedition, including a set of unmanned submarines that will be able to rove freely above the ocean floor.
The expedition's goal is simple -- to find and photograph the hulks.
"No divers will enter the water."
The ships have officially been signed over to Canada by the Royal Navy. Although they haven't been found, they've been designated national historic sites and have been nominated for inclusion on UNESCO's list of world heritage shipwrecks.
The Franklin expedition pops up everywhere in Canadian culture, from the novels of Mordecai Richler to the songs of Stan Rogers. Finding the Erebus and the Terror would have immense resonance both here and in the U.K., said Whitney Lackenbauer, an Arctic historian at the University of Waterloo.
"This is very central to both of our national narratives," says Lackenbauer, who welcomed both the British involvement and the private-sector funding.
"To me, it seems quite fitting. Private money, much of it raised by Lady Franklin, funded the searches in the first place."
Rondeau says he hopes the expedition, if successful, will raise Canadians' awareness of their maritime history.
"People forget, in Canada, that we have one of the richest maritime histories in the world."
