The mystery of the Arctic

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Franklin's lost expedition was a British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845. A Royal Navy officer and experienced explorer, Franklin had served on three previous Arctic expeditions, the latter two as commanding officer. His fourth and last, undertaken when he was 59, was meant to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage. After a few early fatalities, the two ships became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. The entire expedition, 129 men including Franklin, was lost.

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One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago during a search for the fabled Northwest Passage has been found, Canada's prime minister announced Tuesday in a discovery that could unlock one of history's biggest mysteries and swell Canadian pride.

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In an August 24, 2014 photo, a crew member of the HMCS Kingston loads a remote underwater vehicle part of the Victoria Strait Expedition, west of Pond Inlet on the Eclipse Sound. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014 that one of the two lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition that disappeared in the Arctic more 160 years has been found. The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the late 1840s. Harper, speaking in Ottawa, said it remains unclear which ship has been found, but images show there's enough information to confirm it's one of the pair. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld)The Associated Press Last seen in the 1840s while under the command of Rear Adm. Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror have long been among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology and the subject of songs, poems and novels.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said the well-preserved wreck of one of the vessels was found Sunday with the help of a remotely operated underwater vehicle. It was 11 meters (yards) below the surface, near King William Island, about 1,200 miles northwest of Toronto.

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Harper said that it is unclear which ship it is, but that sonar images yielded enough information to confirm it was one of Franklin's."This is truly a historic moment for Canada," said Harper, who was beaming, uncharacteristically. "This has been a great Canadian story and mystery and the subject of scientists, historians, writers and singers, so I think we really have an important day in mapping the history of our country."

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Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew.Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men disappeared after setting out in 1845 for the Northwest Passage, the long-sought shortcut to Asia that supposedly ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of the harsh, ice-choked Arctic.Historians believe the ships were lost in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island and the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety. Inuit lore tells of "white men who were starving" as late as the winter of 1850 on the Royal Geographical Society Island.

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For many years afterward, Franklin was celebrated as a Victorian-era hero.Dozens of searches by the British and Americans in the 1800s failed to locate the wrecks, and some of those expeditions ended in tragedy, too. But they opened up parts of the Canadian Arctic to discovery and ultimately spied a Northwest Passage, though it proved inhospitable to shipping because of ice and treacherous weather.

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Canada announced in 2008 that it would look for the ships, and Harper's government has poured millions into the venture, with the prime minister himself taking part in the search.Harper's government made the project a top priority as it looked to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting Arctic ice in recent years has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin was after.

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Canada says it owns the passage. The U.S. and others say it is international territory.Ryan Harris, an underwater archaeologist helping to lead the Parks Canada search, said a sonar image shows some of the ship's deck structures, including the main mast, which was sheared off by the ice when the vessel sank. He said the contents of the ship are most likely in the same good condition.

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The next step is to send divers to explore the ship and any artifacts. There is no current plan to raise it. Divers will see what kind of condition the hull is in. The exact location of the wreck was not disclosed for fear of looters.

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The discovery came shortly after a coast guard helicopter pilot spotted a dark, U-shaped object in the Arctic snow. The orange-brown hunk of metal bore the markings of the Royal Navy. It was a davit — part of a lifting mechanism, likely for a lifeboat, for one of the two lost Franklin ships, the search team said.

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In 1854, explorer John Rae, while surveying near the Canadian Arctic coast southeast of King William Island, acquired relics of and stories about the Franklin party from the Inuit. A search led by Francis Leopold McClintock in 1859 discovered a note left on King William Island with details about the expedition's fate. Searches continued through much of the 19thcentury. Finally, in 2014, a Canadian search team located HMS Erebus west of O'Reilly Island, in the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, in the waters of the Arctic archipelago.

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In 1981, a team of scientists led by Owen Beattie, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, began a series of scientific studies of the graves, bodies, and other physical evidence left by Franklin's men on Beechey Island and King William Island. Seeking information about the Franklin crew's health and diet, he sent bone samples to the Alberta Soil and Feed Testing Laboratory for trace element analysis and assembled another team to visit King William Island. They concluded that the men whose graves had been found on Beechey Island most likely died of pneumonia and perhaps tuberculosis and that lead poisoning may have worsened their health, owing to badly soldered cans held in the ships' food stores. However, it was later suggested that the source of this lead may not have been tinned food, but the distilled water systems fitted to the expedition’s ships. Cut marks on human bones found on King William Island were seen as signs of cannibalism. The combined evidence of all studies suggested that hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning and disease including scurvy, along with general exposure to a hostile environment whilst lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition in the years following its last sighting by Europeans in 1845.

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Andrew Campbell, a vice president at Parks Canada, said a combination of previous Inuit testimony, past modelling of ice patterns by the Canadian Ice Service, and the measurements of the two lost vessels -- they are so similar they can't yet be told apart -- convinced the searchers that this was a Franklin ship.