31–40 of 77 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Given the location of the find [in Terror Bay]" I tried hunting around online to find out how Terror Bay got its name after I saw this article on another site last night, but I couldn't find anything. Makes you kind of wonder whether the location of the wreck was known at some point, but nobody bothered to write it down.
I wondered about the same thing. Weird it's not remarked on more in the article.
There was an earlier excavation of some of the frozen corpses as well and they were taken to laboratories to be studied. After thawing some of the gut bacteria, some were still alive. One of the scientist was smart enough to experiment with how the old bacteria handled modern antibiotics. Strangely many already had resistance[1]. And this discovery was largely unreported. [1] http://tinyurl.com/z9sy2qn
In case anyone else was confused, those corpses retrieved and studied in the above article were bodies buried from the same expedition, not bodies recovered from the sunken ship. Thanks for sharing the clipping though, very fascinating.
Unfortunately, they anchored the ships for the winter, shortly after those men died, in pretty much the worst place possible, on the western side of King William's Island.[1]
This is a spot where all the pack ice from the north west flows to, forming a huge towering jumble of ice. They fully expected their ships to be iced in for the winter, this was normal.
They expected to get underway again once the ice cleared in the spring.
But the winter was exceptionally harsh and the ice so thick that they remained trapped for much longer than they expected.
[1] Known as King Williams Land in those days, the remaining portion of the northwest passage, ironically, was just to the south of where the doomed ships were iced in. It would be John Rae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rae_(explorer) ) who would truly discover the final link.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Given the location of the find [in Terror Bay]" I tried hunting around online to find out how Terror Bay got its name after I saw this article on another site last night, but I couldn't find anything. Makes you kind of wonder whether the location of the wreck was known at some point, but nobody bothered to write it down.
It was, it was just thought to be in a different part of the bay (if I understood things correctly), 96km north of where it actually was.
"Over the next 150 years, other expeditions, explorers, and scientists would piece together what happened next. Franklin's men wintered in 1845–46 on Beechey Island, where three crew members died and were buried. Terror and Erebus became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and never sailed again. According to a note dated 25 April 1848, and left on the island by Fitzjames and Crozier, Franklin had died on 11 June 1847; the crew had wintered on King William Island in 1846–47 and 1847–48, and the remaining crew had planned to begin walking on 26 April 1848 toward the Back River on the Canadian mainland. Nine officers and fifteen men had already died; the rest would die along the way, most on the island and another 30 or 40 on the northern coast of the mainland, hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization."
So, the location were the ships were abandoned was roughly known.
There's a fun Dan Simmons book "The Terror" that tells a (very) fictional account of what happened to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(novel)
edit: it also made me much more excited for this discovery than I would have been otherwise!
Does it have a pair of glasses that are the key plot device in a Michael Bay movie?
There was an earlier excavation of some of the frozen corpses as well and they were taken to laboratories to be studied. After thawing some of the gut bacteria, some were still alive. One of the scientist was smart enough to experiment with how the old bacteria handled modern antibiotics. Strangely many already had resistance[1]. And this discovery was largely unreported. [1] http://tinyurl.com/z9sy2qn
Reminds me of when the military dug up corpses from the artic so they could get at the 1917 Spanish flu
"Ah for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage / to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea..."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was, it was just thought to be in a different part of the bay (if I understood things correctly), 96km north of where it actually was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition#L... : "Over the next 150 years, other expeditions, explorers, and scientists would piece together what happened next. Franklin's men wintered in 1845–46 on Beechey Island, where three crew members died and were buried. Terror and Erebus became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and never sailed again. According to a note dated 25 April…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Given the location of the find [in Terror Bay]" I tried hunting around online to find out how Terror Bay got its name after I saw this article on another site last night, but I couldn't find anything. Makes you kind of wonder whether the location of the wreck was known at some point, but nobody bothered to write it down.
I wondered about the same thing. Weird it's not remarked on more in the article.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-ed...