A Parks Canada team of archeologists has found the wreck of the ship abandoned 157 years ago by the crew credited with discovering the Northwest Passage.
“The ship is standing upright in very good condition,” Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's head of underwater archaeology, said Wednesday. “It's standing in about 11 metres of water.
“This is definitely of the utmost importance. This is the ship that sailed the last leg of the Northwest Passage.”
The remains of the HMS Investigator were detected eight metres below the surface of Mercy Bay, off the shores of Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, where Capt. Robert McClure and his crew were trapped by ice in the mid-1850s for two winters.
McClure had been dispatched from England to rescue the missing Sir John Franklin and his two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, but found neither vessel, Franklin nor any trace of his 128 crewmen.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice is at the site and sailed overtop the sunken ship Tuesday night.
“It's incredible,” he said from Mercy Bay. “You're actually able to peer down into the water and see not only the outline of the ship but actually the individual timbers.
“To actually be on a zodiac last night and look down into the water and see not just the outline of the ship but actually the ship itself and the timbers and all of the woodwork in immaculate detail was an indescribable experience.
“This ship has not been seen for 156 years. It's an incredible site and it's a privilege to be here.”
The next step will be to send down a remotely controlled video camera to get actual pictures of the wreck. There are no plans to bring it to the surface, and all legal steps will be taken to ensure the site remains protected.
This summer’s Arctic exploration is part of a two-pronged Parks Canada plan. After this current 12-day search for Investigator and artifacts left in an on-shore Banks Island cache by McClure’s crew, Canadian archeologists will again attempt to locate Terror and Erebus farther south, off O’Reilly Island, for three weeks in August. It will be the second attempt to find Franklin’s vessels after a 2008 trip was fruitless.
Prior to leaving for the Investigator expedition, Parks Canada marine archeologist Ryan Harris said finding McClure’s ship would validate Inuvialuit oral history. The western Arctic people had long known where the largely intact ship sank after McClure abandoned it in 1853.
McClure, who was himself rescued by another British ship, ultimately sailed up the Thames a hero for doing what Franklin could not: He charted and then traversed (by ship and sledge over ice) the Northwest Passage.
Though their lives diverged dramatically — Franklin and his men died on frozen Canadian tundra while McClure was knighted and showered with cash — the legacies of both are bound by a watery historical note: Their ships lie on the ocean floor beneath Canada’s Arctic Archipelago.
With files from The Canadian Press