RETURN TO FRANKLIN WRECK
Parks Canada archeologist Charles Dagneau, part of the team that located HMS Erebus of the famed Franklin Expedition, returns to the site of the discovery in the Victoria Strait.
When Charles Dagneau first swam down to HMS Erebus, he tried to not let on his hands were freezing. The underwater archaeologist for Parks Canada was on the third dive to the wreck, one of two ships lost in the 1845 Franklin Arctic Expedition.
Dagneau borrowed a colleague’s gloves for the unplanned dive. They were too tight, allowing in the chill from near-freezing waters. Lest his supervisors cut short his 70-minutes, he kept it to himself.
“I thought I’d be warmer. It was a big mistake,” says Dagneau, 39, of Quebec City. “I was freezing, but I didn’t want to go out, so I just toughed it out.”
A year later, Dagneau would still endure nearly any discomfort to visit the nearly-pristine wreck. With the location finally free of ice, Parks Canada divers have begun a 30-day dive session, an embarrassment of riches compared to the 14 plunges squeezed in those two days last year, or the seven days and 88 dives spent under the ice in April.
Like a forensic crime scene, the wreck is being scrutinized, mapped and documented. Portions of the deck will likely need to be removed to explore lower levels. If old Inuit accounts are accurate, divers might come across human remains.
As Dagneau and his colleagues probe Franklin’s flagship, they know they could also stumble on a clue that would crack a 170-yearold mystery wide open: how could a well-equipped expedition of 129 men be completely wiped out so soon, before their food supplies should have been exhausted? Archaeologists might find unopened tin cans to test theories about severe lead poisoning. There might be sealed ship records, a definitive first-hand account. They may even learn the precise whereabouts of HMS Terror, the other missing ship.
They might not get that far this summer. Dagneau and his colleagues are excavating portions of the ocean floor near the wreck. The discovery of anchors and chains could solidify a working theory Erebus was sailed and brought here purposely.
As in previous years, Parks Canada might be centre stage, but they’re flanked by a consortium of government and private partners.
It’s a slightly smaller cohort this year. Scientists diving at Erebus will live and work on the Martin Bergmann, a converted trawler with a dozen or so beds, owned by the not-for-profit Arctic Research Foundation. Others from their crew will be aboard ships some 600 kilometres to the north, on a needle-in-haystack quest to find Erebus’s smaller sister.
The Terror is believed to lie in the Victoria Strait, the turbulent 160-kilometre-wide channel where the two icebound ships were first abandoned. According to Inuit tradition, one of the ships sank there.
Capt. John Franklin undertook his third and final Arctic voyage in 1845. Erebus and Terror were Royal Navy bombers refitted with the finest available technology for an Arctic sojourn. They were equipped with patented pumps and heating systems, rudimentary I-beams and a retractable propeller, metal plating and an extra layer of Canadian elm as a sacrificial hull.
The Northwest Passage was the elusive, sought- after shortcut to eastern riches and glory back home. But when word of Franklin failed to materialize after three years, a reward was offered. Multiple ships answered the call.
On Beechey Island, three graves were left the first winter. In May 1847, an “all well” note was left inside a cairn on King William Island, but by the next April, officers had returned to leave an erratic, scrawled addendum. It was the last known word from the group.
Franklin died on June 11, 1847, two weeks after the first note. Erebus and Terror were abandoned in the Strait that following April. The remaining crew of 105, having lost a remarkable 24 men, planned to march on foot to “Back’s Fish River.” None survived.
Inuit accounts spoke of one ship moving south and the discovery of dozens of corpses and evidence of cannibalism on the island. Bones, mementoes and stories were scattered throughout the region.
By the 1980s and ‘90s, researchers fine-tuned theories about what went wrong. Mummified remains from Beechey Island showed evidence of severe lead poisoning, possibly linked to soldered tin cans. Cut marks and polishing of bones found on King William Island vindicated the accounts of cannibalism. But despite many attempts to find them in the intervening years, the ships’ location remained elusive.
In 2008, Parks Canada revived the quest for Erebus and Terror, thanks in part to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s personal interest, but also improved technology. Efforts focused mostly on the Victoria Strait, the area of final abandonment noted in that vague and ominous note.
The Arctic Ocean is still one of the most poorly known places on Earth, with only a fraction of the underwater landscape charted. Every summer since 2008, crews have scanned 200-metre swaths of ocean floor using side-sonar scanners pulled on cables. Combing the depths like Prairie combines, they flag and revisit unusual patterns. Before the Erebus discovery, crews charted a tedious 1,500 square kilometres without a shred of timber.
The Franklin story is a gnawing mystery. Through sheer repetition, the tale of loss and doom has solidified into Canadian myth, where old and new worlds meet in forbidding, treacherous territory.
The Erebus discovery — so far from that initial point of abandonment — points to a contingent of survivors returning to the icebound ship, sailing south in a final quest for survival.
Adrian Schimnowski never figured the Franklin story would dovetail with his own. Following an early childhood in Churchill, Manitoba, he was fascinated with the north, then caught his first glimpse of the story in a National Geographic when he was in Grade 2 or 3.
“I held on to that magazine for a month, I didn’t want to give it back,” says Schimnowski, now the operations director for the Arctic Research Foundation.
Schimnowski’s job in this quest, like so many others, is to dive deep into the cloudy, subterranean realm of logistics.
“Canada’s Arctic is one of the few places where you are part of the en- vironment, you are at the environment’s whim,” he says.
Founded in 2011 by Jim Balsillie, the ex-BlackBerry CEO, the Arctic Research Foundation has played multiple roles in the annual searches, even “milk runs” to keep crews supplied in the chaos after the Erebus discovery. Its converted fishing trawler has mapped more terrain than all the other vessels combined.
Between two underwater shoals in freezing waters, Erebus is further protected by islands in the eastern Queen Maud Gulf. It sits upright in 11-metre waters. The top deck — about five metres tall — is so close to the surface, a plane might have spotted a silhouette by fluke.
On Sept. 9, 2014, a visibly excited Harper proclaimed the discovery as a “great historic event.” A detailed sonar scan would become the world’s first glimpse of Erebus.
The news was preceded by an act of God, a stroke of luck and a near disaster. The Victoria Straight had clogged up with ice that summer, so the flotilla of seven search vessels were forced south, to the bearded seal territory prized by Inuit hunters. It was Inuit hunters in the 1840s who spotted and later boarded an icebound ship, then in subsequent years, saw a mast poking out from the surface.
The 2014 search was serendipitous. Camped on an island in the area, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot spotted a large iron prong while walking along the shoreline on Sept. 1. Identified as a davit, part of a pivot from ships from Franklin’s period, it was too unwieldy for Inuit hunters to have carried far. Royal Navy markings narrowed it even further. Along with a wooden deck fragment found nearby, the find shaved years off the search.
Six days later, the Parks Canada research vessel was just a few hundred metres from Stirling’s find when it approached an unexpected shoal, forcing the crew to speed up and winch back the sonar equipment to prevent potential damage. When the Investigator slowed and the gear dropped back, they were atop the Erebus.
“At the very moment the boat settled down a little bit, boom, the wreck appeared,” Dagneau says. “If they had not encountered that shoal, they would have probably driven the sonar right into it.”
The Erebus is in remarkable condition, intact apart from a bite missing from the stern and a crushed portion atop the deck. It’s a perfect match with drawings of the ship. Among the earliest pieces retrieved were the ship’s bell, a brass six-pounder cannon, dining plates and pins belonging to one of the seven marines on board. In the spring, Dagneau spotted a pair of knee-high leather boots and an intriguing 12-pack crate with several bottles still intact inside.
“You see some very interesting artifacts through openings here and there,” Dagneau says.
The Nunavut government will conduct its own search of nearby islands for other artifacts.
Terror may have been chopped into matchsticks by the conveyor belt of ice running through Victoria Strait, but Dagneau hopes it’s safely tucked away in some nook. Either way, Dagneau will be ready for that next dive, this time with gloves of his own.