Search Restarts for the Terror, Erebus and HMS Investigator

July 2, 2010 · Filed Under Current, History, Lore of the Sea, Ships 

After a season’s delay due to lack of access to icebreakers, Parks Canada is renewing its search for Franklin’s ship’s Erebus and Terror.  They will also be searching for the HMS Investigator, a ship which was caught in the ice and sank when sent to search for Franklin.

Parks Canada mounting summertime search for three storied Arctic wrecks


Already on the hunt in the Canadian Arctic for two of the world’s most storied shipwrecks — the lost Terror and Erebus of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated polar expedition in the 1840s — Parks Canada is now preparing to search this summer for another famed vessel from that era, Canwest News Service has learned.

HMS Investigator, among the most famous of the ships sent to look for the Franklin Expedition after its disappearance gripped a distraught British public in the mid-1800s, became locked in the ice itself in 1851 and eventually sank in Mercy Bay, off Banks Island, in 1854.

Now, with Parks Canada planning to resume its search for Franklin’s ships in August near Nunavut’s King William Island, the federal agency has also scheduled a late-July probe for the Northwest Territories wreck site of the Investigator — a vessel with immense significance in polar history and in the establishment of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.

Using side-scan sonar technology, heritage experts plan “to go and see if there are remains of the ship” in Mercy Bay, Marc-Andre Bernier, chief of underwater archeology at Parks Canada, said Friday.

The project will also include archeological excavations along the shore of Banks Island. That’s where the Investigator’s commander, Capt. Robert McClure, and his crew deposited a cache of supplies before abandoning their ice-locked vessel in 1853.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for pointing out the article.

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One Response to “Search Restarts for the Terror, Erebus and HMS Investigator”

  1. HMS Investigator Abandoned in 1854 Found in Arctic : Old Salt Blog – a virtual port of call for all those who love the sea on July 28th, 2010 1:51 pm

    [...] this month we posted about a new expedition by Parks Canada to search for Franklin’s ships, the Terror and the Erebus.  Parks Canada also intended to [...]

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