Mercy Bay

Transcription

Parks Canada locates HMS Investigator and the graves of three sailors [Marc-André Bernier - Chief of the Underwater Archeology Service] When the team arrived in Aulavik National Park they were quite disappointed to see the ice had come back into Mercy Bay. Fortunately there was a moment where the ice was moving around, shifting around, and there was an opening in the area where the ship had been abandoned, which was the starting point that we wanted. Amazingly, within fifteen minutes of the start of the search the team located the remains of HMS Investigator. So basically, the ship was very close to where it had been abandoned. What we can see from the side-scan sonar image at this point indicates that the ship is sitting on the bottom. We don't have any visual confirmation at this point of the wreck. We can't see images of it. But what we see of the side scan image is that the ship would be standing up to the upper deck. This type of preservation of ships for shipwrecks of the 19th century is relatively unusual. Under optimal conditions, for example in the Great Lakes, you will have some very good preservations where the ships are sitting upright on the bottom of the sea floor, if it's deep enough. Another significant find is that the archaeologists were able to locate the grave sites of men who died while wintering in Banks Island which is now part of Aulavik National Park. These graves sites are in the vacinity of the cache site and are significant because they are the remains of men who died giving their lives trying to find the Franklin ships and the North-West passage. So, following the project in Aulavik National Park, two members of the archaelogy team, Ryan Harris and Jonathan Moore will join the coastguard vissel Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the central Arctic and with the team from the Canadian hydrographics service will continue the project to search for the Sir John Franklins ships, the Erebus and the Terror.