5/19/2023 0 Comments Wand of preservation erebus wikiAfter moving some timbers and pieces of the hull, they targeted an undisturbed, sediment-covered area about one meter wide and five meters long. The archaeological team focused on an area that would have been the lower-ranking officers' cabins and storage areas. In this relatively shallow resting place, storms and surface waves have smashed up parts of the ship, and recovering objects from the sediment isn't always so straightforward. Erebus sits in about 30 feet of water in Wilmot and Crampton Bay. The 2019 field season yielded such a huge haul of objects in comparison because it marked the first time the researchers could conduct a systematic excavation of the site. "When you find a shipwreck, you have to really understand what you're faced with before you really start doing some intrusive work on the site," Bernier said. Officers may have used this pencil case and its pencils for scientific work and for teaching lessons aboard HMS Erebus.īefore last year's campaign, just over 50 artifacts total had been recovered from Erebus, as previous seasons were mostly devoted to assessing the delicate wreck. (In the past, divers could typically stay down at the icy wreck for only 40 minutes at a time.) This combination greatly increased the efficiency of the dives, and some divers were even able to stay underwater for up to 3 hours without coming up, Bernier told reporters. They also had special hoses that fed warm water to the divers' suits, as sea water temperatures could drop to 28 degrees. The team set up a special platform directly over the wreck, so that instead of scuba, they could use another technique called surface supply diving that allowed divers to get an unlimited air supply through an umbilical cord-like hose. But over nearly four weeks in late August and September, the crew had exceptionally clear conditions and they were able to spend a total of 110 diver hours at the Erebus site, Bernier said. The Parks Canada team has been stymied by bad weather in the past during this short window of study. Parks Canada and its Inuit partners i dentified the wrecks Erebus and Terror, in 20, respectively, marking a major turning point in the cold case.įorbidding Arctic conditions mean that the wrecks are totally inaccessible for all but five to six weeks out of the year. Over the decades that followed, search parties and sleuths discovered deserted campsites, graves and artifacts in the region that hinted at the misery and desperation of the crew as they dispersed and tried to find safety. The loss of the crew was sensational news in the mid-19th century. None of the men were ever found alive, and the expedition is considered one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration. These scant details were gleaned from a note the crew left in a cairn. By 1848, Franklin was dead and the surviving men abandoned their still-trapped ships. A year and a half later, their ships became trapped in ice near King William Island. In May 1845, Franklin and his 128 crew members set sail on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror from England on a quest to find the sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific through the Arctic Ocean. The final days of the Franklin Expedition have been shrouded in mystery for nearly two centuries. Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team The 2019 field season yielded such a huge haul of objects because it marked the first time the researchers could conduct a systematic excavation of the site. "The preservation of the objects is quite phenomenal." "We have had the most successful season since the discovery of the wreck," Marc-André Bernier, manager of Parks Canada's underwater archeology team, told reporters in a press conference Friday. Among the objects brought to the surface were kitchen wares, wine bottles, a wax seal with a fingerprint, and a hairbrush with hair strands that could contain clues about the fate of Arctic explorer John Franklin and his crew. This week, the team unveiled more than 350 artifacts they recovered from just a small area of the wreck. The ship sank during the doomed Franklin Expedition of the 1840s, when British naval captain Sir John Franklin and his crew searched for the Northwest Passage. Braving water temperatures that dipped below freezing, divers spent nearly four weeks off the coast of Nunavut in northern Canada last summer exploring the HMS Erebus.
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