Discovery of one of Sir John Franklin's ships

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Barr, William
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Northwest Passage; Great Slave Lake; King William Island; William Island; Fort Resolution; Victoria Strait; Arctic Research Foundation; Back River; Northwest passage; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247414000758; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247414000758

In the summer of 2014 a major search was mounted in the Canadian Arctic for H.M.S. Erebus and Terror , the ships of Sir John Franklin's expedition, the aim of which was to make a transit of the northwest passage. Beset in the ice to the northwest of King William Island in the summer of 1846, they were abandoned there by the 105 surviving members of their crews in the summer of 1848. The officers and men hoped to walk south to the mouth of the Back River, presumably to ascend that river in the hope of reaching the nearest Hudson's Bay Company's post at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. None of them survived. The 2014 expedition, the Victoria Strait Expedition, mounted by a consortium which included Parks Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard, the Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Arctic Research Foundation, and One Ocean Adventure, had four ships at its disposal including the Canadian Coast Guard's icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Captain Bill Noon) and the Navy's HMCS Kingston .