Researchers Follow Hunch, Find Long-Sought Shipwreck

The vessel, HMS Terror, vanished almost 170 years ago with another ship, HMS Erebus, and a crew of 129 men during an Arctic expedition to search for the fabled Northwest Passage to Asia.

While the Erebus was located in 2014, the whereabouts of the Terror were unknown until September 3 when it was discovered by scientists from the Arctic Research Foundation, which showed the sunken ship in a video that aired on Monday on public broadcaster CBC.

The Franklin mystery gave rise to many searches throughout the 19th century and the story has inspired a number of songs, poems and novels.

The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom first reported Monday, later confirmed in Canadian media, that the ship had been found on September 3 in Terror Bay off of King William Island in Nunavut, in 24 m of water.

The ship, under the command of Sir John Franklin, had set out to find the long-sought shortcut to Asia that ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the ice-choked Arctic.

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HMS Terror, the long-lost ship of British polar explorer, Sir John Franklin, has been found at the bottom of an Arctic bay.

But, researchers say the shipwreck matches key elements of the plans, despite being found 60 miles away from where HMS Terror is believed to have sunk.

Ownership of both the Erebus and Terror has been transferred to the Canadian government. Canada says it owns the passage.

The two ships were believed to have been abandoned after getting trapped in ice in the Victoria Strait, to the northwest of King William Island.

Other countries, including the United States, claim the passage lies in worldwide territory.

The well-preserved wreck of HMS Erebus was found 11m below the surface, near King William Island, about 2000km northwest of Toronto.

On April 22, 1848, 105 survivors left the ships in an attempt to reach solid ground on foot, but none survived. The first crossing of the passage entirely by sea was an expedition led by Roald Amundsen, from 1903 to 1906, though the first deep-draft ship to make the trip with a significant amount of cargo did not make the crossing until decades later. The exact location of Erebus was not disclosed for fear of looters.

For many years afterward, Franklin was celebrated as a Victorian-era hero.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had championed his nation’s exploration of the Arctic as a way of asserting Canada’s sovereignty in the region while searching for deep-sea resources, the Associated Press reported.