In the desolate reaches of the Canadian Arctic Circle, a mystery that has long baffled archaeologists and historians alike, is slowly unravelling. This is the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition. But to follow the full story, we must return to 1845.
The Expedition
On 19 May of that year, two ships of the British Admiralty, HMS Erebus at 370 Imperial tons and HMS Terror at 340 tons, were slowly departing Greenhithe on the Thames, downstream from London. Commanded by Sir John Franklin, a fifty-nine-year-old veteran of two previous arctic explorations, their objective was to find and navigate the elusive North West Passage. During the previous quarter century much progress had been made in exploring the Polar passages connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and only about 100 kilometres of unknown channels needed to be explored to successfully complete the navigation of this Passage. Considered to be the best equipped Arctic expedition yet, it was inconceivable that it would fail in its given task.
Prior to departure Franklin received information from whalers that the previous winter in the Arctic had been exceptionally cold, but unable and unwilling to delay departure, he could only hope the following winters would be milder.
Quite recently scientists determined that the Franklin era was climatically one of the least favourable periods in the last 700 years to have explored the Arctic, which explains the thick pack ice encountered by Franklin off the north-west coast of King William Island. In Inuit folklore it is referred...
