Funding gives group 'better chance' to find Franklin's ships: lead searcher
As the latest attempt by Canada to find the lost ships of Sir John Franklin began Monday in the Arctic, the archeologist leading the six-week mission says it will be worth the government's money.
The federal government has contributed $75,000 to the latest search by Parks Canada for Franklin's ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, which have been missing since Franklin set sail from England in 1845, bound for the Northwest Passage.
The funding, announced Friday by Environment Minister John Baird, sparked criticism from some who said the the expedition is a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
But Robert Grenier, the Parks Canada senior underwater archeologist leading the six-week expedition, said he is confident his team will find artifacts from Franklin's doomed ships — artifacts, he said, that play a major role in charting Canada's history.
"We feel that we have [a] better chance, but that's as far as we can go," Grenier told CBC News Monday morning from Gjoa Haven, Nunavut.
"I found that these vessels were instrumental in a major way in getting Canada to be as large as it is today. Their demise, their mysterious disappearance, led to the longest and largest search and rescue operation at sea."
Grenier and his team will spend the next six weeks aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He said an arrangement between his team and the coast guard is making the trip cost-effective.
"We got an agreement with the Canadian Coast Guard and Hydrographic Service of Canada, which allowed us to use the icebreaker as a floating station [at] a very, very, very low cost," he said.
"We pay on the icebreaker $75 a day, room and board and that's normal for these vessels of opportunity. So the six weeks on the icebreaker will cost altogether $75,000."
If the current expedition fails, two more six-week trips are scheduled to take place over the next two summers.
But Grenier said that he is confident some Franklin artifacts will be found, thanks to newer equipment they didn't have before.
His team is also relying on Inuit oral histories from the area, many of which are collected by Gjoa Haven historian Louis Kamookak.
"In the case of the Inuit, the oral tradition is quite valuable," Grenier said. "Not much was happening here; these were the first large ships of white men coming this way."
Grenier's previous trips to find the lost vessels include trips in 1983 and 1997. In the latter expedition, scientists found sheets of copper that correspond to the right time period when Franklin and his crews set sail towards the passage.
Grenier added that the copper sheets "correspond to the Inuit traditions telling us about one ship ending in that vicinity, being discovered by Inuit hunters in the spring, floating on fresh ice."
"The chance over three seasons are pretty good, but that's as far as I can go," he said. "It's still a big ocean, and I know in marine archeology there are some strange things happening. So we will see, but I am quite confident that we will make something."