Arctic remains believed to be Franklin crew

ARCHEOLOGISTS involved in the hunt for the wreckage of the Franklin Expedition in Canada's Arctic have discovered human remains they believe are from a member of the doomed crew.

Despite bad weather, the journey has been a productive one so far, says the chief of underwater archaeology for Parks Canada, and it should get even better with the addition of an automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria.

"Work is going well... (but) we haven't found the ships yet," Marc-Andre Bernier said in a telephone interview after leaving the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier last week.

What they have found in a search on land are more artifacts from the ill-fated expedition. At Erebus Bay, where at least a dozen members of the Franklin crew are known to have died, more human remains have been recovered.

"They did find a human tooth, and some bone and a toothbrush," Bernier said. "These were really exciting finds."

Sir John Franklin set out from England on May 19, 1845, on a mission to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic. He had two ships -- the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror -- a crew of 135, and provisions for a three-year journey.

In August 1845, two European whaling ships had a chance meeting with the Franklin Expedition as they waited to cross Baffin Bay. It was their last contact with the outside world.

In 1859, a search party hired by Lady Jane Franklin found a message left in a cairn on Victory Point, King William Island. The ships had become trapped in the ice in Victoria Strait in late 1846, and remained there for a year and a half.

The message said Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847 -- by spring 1848 another 24 members of the crew had perished. In April 1848 the rest of the crew left a note saying they were setting out on foot, for a destination they never reached.

There have been many efforts to find the ships, to no avail.

The 2012 Expedition being led by Parks Canada is a continuation of surveys conducted in 2008, 2010 and 2011.

Bad weather in recent days has hampered this year's search somewhat, but the automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria will help, Bernier said.

"Because of the nature of the environment, they had to do a lot of testing. That testing is done so it's ready to join in the search," he said Friday. "We're in full operation now, and things are going well."

Dr. Colin Bradley, director of the University of Victoria's Ocean Technology Lab, said the torpedo-shaped robotic vehicle is equipped with downward-looking sonar to map the sea floor and detect anything of archeological interest. At about the halfway point, things are going well, he said.

"From time to time we've had to pull the vessel in because the weather's been very rough," he said. "It's been an interesting couple of weeks."

The high-tech equipment has had to be adapted to the realities of the Arctic. "There've been some minor problems but nothing that has halted progress, so we're very happy about that," Bradley said.

Whether or not the ships are found, there is a lot of progress being made in mapping the sea floor in that region -- an important task of the expedition, he said.

"As we know, unfortunately, with the variability and the changing of the climate in the North, the ice coverage seems to be diminishing which means that there are more areas becoming exposed that are uncharted," Bradley said. "And with more vessels being used in the North, the requirement to map the sea floor becomes even greater.

The Sir Wilfrid Laurier is expected to continue with the search until the middle of this week, while the Martin Bergmann, a research vessel belonging to the private, non-profit Arctic Research Foundation, will continue.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 10, 2012 A9