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Dive crew exploring Franklin wreck

1845: The ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror used in Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to discover the Northwest passage. Original Publication: Illustrated London News pub 24th May 1845 (Photo by Illustrated London News/Getty Images)

A dive team is finishing up a challenging expedition to explore the wreck of the HMS Erebus where it lies on the floor of the Arctic Ocean.

A team of eight Parks Canada underwater archeologists and 20 navy divers are working with the Department of Defence and the Canadian Rangers on the current expedition to explore the ship abandoned by Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew in 1845.

“There are folks on the ice as we speak,” Martin Magne, director of the archeology and history branch of Parks Canada, said in a recent interview.

Weather has been a complicating factor, he says. During the last expedition to the wreck last fall, divers faced three-metre swells on the surface that forced them to take shelter from being bounced around even deeper under the surface.

They were forced to wait out three days of their five-day window for the dive because of the conditions.

“This is the high Arctic. The weather is very unpredictable,” Magne says.

Franklin and his crew of 129 men left England on May 19, 1845, in search of a Northwest Passage. The HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were last seen entering Baffin Bay in August that year.

They never returned.

The mystery of Franklin’s lost expedition has endured. Parks Canada has led six major searches since 2008 and last October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the Erebus had been found.

The search for the Erebus’ companion ship, HMS Terror, will continue.

Earlier this week, Parks Canada offered a surprise video update from the sea floor but Magne says exploration of the wreck will be a long and painstaking process over the coming years.

So far, one diver has been able to lower himself into an upper portion of the deck to have a look around but they can’t yet explore the interior.

“It’s a shipwreck. We don’t know what kind of stability it’s in and there are definitely reasons to be concerned,” he says.

“A big part of what they’re doing now is assessing what they have more carefully so they can plan properly how to dive and record what’s inside.”

The dive team was able to poke a camera into spaces in the deck and have a very preliminary look.

“They want to be able to look at the exterior of the wreck and ascertain the condition of it,” he says.

One of the main goals of the current expedition is to gather a 3D laser scan of the ship that will provide a blueprint for future explorations.

Every artifact will help tell the story, Magne says.

“Where the artifacts are found will be part of the story. Is material just strewn everywhere? Did they pack stuff away properly so they were prepared to move along?

They had a locomotive steam engine on board, had coal on board to operate – did they use? Did they pilot to this location or did they drift?”

The dive is dependent on weather and the team is expected to continue their exploration through this weekend.

The ship was stocked to sustain 130 men for three years.

“How much is left? What did they use? What did they take away when they started trekking across the landscape? What did the Inuit probably take that they thought they could use? We don’t know,” Magne says. “There’s all these things that we hope to learn.”

The crew may have had a daguerreotype – an early photographic device – on board. A ship’s log or sealed container with a note would be extremely valuable, he says.

Even if those artifacts are found, they will present an incredible challenge to conserve.

Like the brass bell from the ship that is the only artifact so far brought to the surface, every item on the ship risks immediately deteriorating if removed from its seabed grave.

“These things deteriorate very, very quickly…. As soon as they’re exposed to the air it’s immediate. Even in 12 to 24 hours, you could have very serious deterioration,” Magne says.

The bell is now in the hands of conservationists at Parks Canada’s specialized lab in Ottawa.

Divers have identified items of great interest but the agency is not ready to reveal yet what they are, Magne says.