Nineteenth-Century Shipwreck Found in Arctic Waters

News September 13, 2016

(George Back, Public Domain)
SHARE:
Canada Franklin shipwreck
(George Back, Public Domain)

VANCOUVER, CANADA—A team from the Arctic Research Foundation claims to have found the wreckage of HMS Terror about 31 miles from the site where the wreckage of HMS Erebus was discovered in 2014, according to a report in The Guardian. Both ships and all 128 members of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to search for the fabled Northwest Passage to Asia were lost in 1848. The ship thought to be Terror was found standing upright and in pristine condition in Terror Bay, near the coast of King William Island, after Sammy Kogvik, a Canadian Ranger and Inuk hunter, told operations director Adrian Schimnowski that he had spotted what looked like a large pole—perhaps a ship’s mast—sticking up out of the sea ice while snowmobiling. The location is about 60 miles from the area where historians thought Terror had been crushed by ice. “Given the location of the find and the state of the wreck, it’s almost certain that HMS Terror was operationally closed down by the remaining crew who then re-boarded HMS Erebus and sailed south where they met their ultimate tragic fate,” said philanthropist Jim Balsillie, founder of the Arctic Research Foundation. Parks Canada has not yet confirmed the identity of the ship. For more on the discovery of Erebus, go to "Franklin’s Last Voyage."

  • Features July/August 2016

    Franklin’s Last Voyage

    After 170 years and countless searches, archaeologists have discovered a famed wreck in the frigid Arctic

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Parks Canada, Photo: Marc-André Bernier)
  • Letter from England July/August 2016

    Stronghold of the Kings in the North

    Excavations at one of Britain’s most majestic castles help tell the story of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom

    Read Article
    (Colin Carter Photography/Getty Images)
  • Artifacts July/August 2016

    Spanish Horseshoe

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Peter Eeckhout)
  • Digs & Discoveries July/August 2016

    Is it Esmeralda?

    Read Article
    (Courtesy David Mearns)