Ellesmere Island
Ellesmere Island is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Lying within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, it is considered part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, with Cape Columbia being the most northerly point of land in Canada, it comprises an area of 196,235 km2 and the total length of the island is 830 kilometres, making it the world's tenth largest island and Canada's third largest island. The Arctic Cordillera mountain system covers much of Ellesmere Island, making it the most mountainous in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; the Arctic willow is the only woody species to grow on Ellesmere Island. The first human inhabitants of Ellesmere Island were small bands drawn to the area for Peary caribou and marine mammal hunting about 2000–1000 BCE; as was the case for the Dorset hunters and the pioneering Neoeskimos, the Post-Ruin Island and Late Thule culture Inuit used the Bache Peninsula region extensively both summer and winter until environmental and social circumstances caused the area to be abandoned.
It was the last region in the Canadian High Arctic to be depopulated during the Little Ice Age, attesting to its general economic importance as part of the Smith Sound culture sphere of which it was a part and sometimes the principal settlement component. Vikings from the Greenland colonies reached Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island, Ruin Island during hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups. Unusual structures on Bache peninsula may be the remains of a late-period Dorset stone longhouse; the first European to sight the island after the height of the Little Ice Age was William Baffin in 1616. Ellesmere Island was named in 1852 by Edward Inglefield's expedition after Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere; the US expedition led by Adolphus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west, establishing Fort Conger in the northern part of the island. The Greely expedition found fossil forests on Ellesmere Island in the late 1880s. Stenkul Fiord was first explored in 1902 by Per Schei, a member of Otto Sverdrup's 2nd Norwegian Polar Expedition.
The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was documented by the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich's party went from Cape Sheridan west to Cape Alert, including the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. In 1906 Robert Peary led an expedition in northern Ellesmere Island, from Cape Sheridan along the coast to the western side of Nansen Sound. During Peary's expedition, the Ice Shelf was continuous. Ellesmere Island is separated to the east by Nares Strait from Greenland, to the west by Eureka Sound and Nansen Sound from Axel Heiberg Island, to the south by Jones Sound and Cardigan Strait from Devon Island. Ellesmere Island contains Canada's northernmost point, Cape Columbia, at 83°6′41″N. More than one-fifth of the island is protected as Quttinirpaaq National Park, which includes seven fjords and a variety of glaciers, as well as Lake Hazen, North America's largest lake north of the Arctic Circle. Barbeau Peak, the highest mountain in Nunavut is located in the British Empire Range on Ellesmere Island.
The most northern mountain range in the world, the Challenger Mountains, is located in the northeast region of the island. The northern lobe of the island is called Grant Land. In July 2007, a study noted the disappearance of habitat for waterfowl and algae on Ellesmere Island. According to John P. Smol of Queen's University in Kingston and Marianne S. V. Douglas of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, warming conditions and evaporation have caused low water levels and changes in the chemistry of ponds and wetlands in the area; the researchers noted that "In the 1980s they needed to wear hip waders to make their way to the ponds...while by 2006 the same areas were dry enough to burn." Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south. The northwest coast of Ellesmere Island was covered by a massive, 500 km long ice shelf until the 20th century; the Ellesmere Ice Shelf shrank by 90 percent in the twentieth century due to warming trends in the Arctic in the 1930s and 1940s, a period when the largest ice islands were formed leaving the separate Alfred Ernest, Milne, Ward Hunt, Markham Ice Shelves.
A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km2 or 3.3 km3 of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick landfast sea ice along the northern coastline of Ellesmere Island, lost 600 km of ice in a massive calving in 1961–1962, it further decreased by 27% in thickness between 1967 and 1999. The breakup of the Ellesmere Ice Shelves has continued in the 21st century: the Ward Ice Shelf experienced a major breakup during summer 2002; the piece is 66 km2. In April 2008, it was discovered that the Ward Hunt shelf was fractured, with dozens of deep, multi-faceted cracks and in September 20
Clive Cussler
Clive Eric Cussler is an American adventure novelist and underwater explorer. His thriller novels, many featuring the character Dirk Pitt, have reached The New York Times fiction best-seller list more than 20 times. Cussler is the founder and chairman of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, which has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and numerous other notable underwater wrecks, he is the sole lead author of more than 70 books. Cussler is considered, alongside Wilbur Smith, to be the greatest adventure novelist in history, his novels have inspired various other works of fiction in the form of films, TV, other novels and video games. Clive Cussler was born in Aurora and grew up in Alhambra, California, his mother Amy's ancestors were from England and his father Eric was from Germany. He was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout when he was 14, he attended Pasadena City College for two years and enlisted in the United States Air Force during the Korean War. During his service in the Air Force, he was promoted to sergeant and worked as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer for the Military Air Transport Service.
After his discharge from the military, Cussler went to work in the advertising industry, first as a copywriter and as a creative director for two of the nation's most successful advertising agencies. As part of his duties Cussler produced radio and television commercials, many of which won international awards including an award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Following the publication in 1996 of Cussler's first nonfiction work, The Sea Hunters, he was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree in 1997 by the Board of Governors of the State University of New York Maritime College who accepted the work in lieu of a Ph. D. thesis. This was the first time in the college's 123-year history. In 2002 Cussler was awarded the Naval Heritage Award from the U S Navy Memorial Foundation for his efforts in the area of marine exploration. Cussler is a fellow of the Explorers Club of New York, the Royal Geographical Society in London, the American Society of Oceanographers. Clive Cussler began writing in 1965 when his wife took a job working nights for the local police department where they lived in California.
After making dinner for the children and putting them to bed, he had no one to talk to and nothing to do, so he decided to start writing. His most famous creation is government agent and adventurer Dirk Pitt; the Dirk Pitt novels take on an alternative history perspective, such as "what if Atlantis were real?" or "what if Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated, but was kidnapped?" The first two Pitt novels, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, were conventional maritime thrillers. The third, Raise the Titanic!, made Cussler's reputation and established the pattern that subsequent Pitt novels would follow: a blend of high adventure and high technology involving megalomaniacal villains, lost ships, beautiful women, sunken treasure. Cussler's novels always begin with a chapter taking place in the past; these contain none of the novel's main characters and seem disconnected from the plot until the main characters discover a mystery or secret connecting the events in the first chapter to the rest of the story.
This always comes in the form of a long-lost artifact which holds the key to the villain's or hero's objectives. In the first chapter, a ship or plane carrying a top-secret, important, or dangerous cargo is lost and never found, until it is recovered by a modern character in the book. Cussler's novels, like those of Michael Crichton, are examples of techno-thrillers that do not use military plots and settings. Where Crichton strove for scrupulous realism, Cussler prefers fantastic spectacles and outlandish plot devices; the Pitt novels, in particular, have the anything-goes quality of the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, while sometimes borrowing from Alistair MacLean's novels. Pitt himself is a larger-than-life hero reminiscent of Doc Savage and other characters from pulp magazines. Cussler has had more than seventeen consecutive titles reach The New York Times fiction best-seller list; as an underwater explorer, Cussler has discovered more than sixty shipwreck sites and has written non-fiction books about his findings.
He is the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs Dirk Pitt. Important finds by Cussler's N. U. M. A. Include The Carpathia; the ship famed for being the first to come to the aid of Titanic survivors. The Manassas; the first ironclad of the civil war the icebreaker Enoch Train. The H. L. Hunley; the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel - during the American Civil War. A visual and interactive depiction of Cussler's NUMA Foundation Expeditions has been made available as an extension of NUMA's original website. Finds believed to be important include: The Mary Celeste; the famed ghost ship, found abandoned with cargo intact. ’’ Sea of Greed'’, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018 In what started as a joke in the novel Dragon that Cussler expected his editor to remove, he now writes himself into his books. At first he wrote himself simple cameos, but as something of a deus ex machina, providing the novel's protagonists with an essential bit of assistance or information.
The character is given an alias and not revealed as Cussler until his exit with the characters remarking on his odd name. The cameos include the P
Queen Elizabeth Islands
The Queen Elizabeth Islands are the northernmost cluster of islands in Canada's Arctic Archipelago, split between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories in Northern Canada. The Queen Elizabeth Islands contain 14% of the global glacier and ice cap area.. The islands, together 419,061 km2 in area, were renamed as a group after Elizabeth II on her coronation as Queen of Canada in 1953; the islands cover an area approximating to the shape of a right triangle, bounded by the Nares Strait on the east, Parry Channel on the south and the Arctic Ocean to the north and west. Most are uninhabited although the Natural Resources Canada's Climate Change Geoscience Program Earth Sciences Sector, has monitors on the islands. In 1969 Panarctic Oils, now part of Suncor Energy began operating exploration oil wells in the Franklinian and Sverdrup basins and planned on establishing its resource base in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, it ceased production in the 1970s. At the 2013 GeoConvention the Arctic Islands region were called Canada's perpetual "last petroleum exploration frontier".
Hogg and Enachescu argued that the development and implementation of advanced marine and land seismic technologies in Alaska, Northern Europe and Siberia could be modified for use in the Queen Elizabeth Islands. First sighted by Europeans in 1616, the Queen Elizabeth Islands were not explored and charted until the British Northwest Passage expeditions and Norwegian exploration of the 19th century; these islands were known as the Parry Archipelago for over 130 years. They were first named after British Arctic explorer Sir William Parry, who sailed there in 1820, aboard the Hecla. Since the renaming of the archipelago in 1953, the term Parry Islands continued to be used for its southwestern part; the regional break down of the archipelago is therefore as follows: Ellesmere Island Sverdrup Islands Parry IslandsEllesmere Island is the northernmost and by far the largest. The Sverdrup Islands are located north of Norwegian Bay; the remaining islands further south and west, but north of the Parry Channel, have been carrying the name Parry Islands, which name until 1953 had included the Sverdrup Islands and Ellesmere Island.
South of Lancaster Sound, Viscount Melville Sound and M'Clure Strait are the remaining islands of the Arctic Archipelago. Many of the islands are among the largest in the largest being Ellesmere Island. Other major islands include Amund Ringnes Island, Axel Heiberg Island, Bathurst Island, Borden Island, Cornwall Island, Cornwallis Island, Devon Island, Eglinton Island, Ellef Ringnes Island, Mackenzie King Island, Melville Island, Prince Patrick Island. Other smaller but notable islands include, they consist of Carboniferous rocks covered with tundra. With a population of less than 400, the islands are nearly uninhabited. There are only three permanently inhabited places in the islands; the two municipalities are the hamlets of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, Grise Fiord, on Ellesmere Island. Alert, is a weather station staffed by Environment and Climate Change Canada, a Global Atmosphere Watch atmosphere monitoring laboratory on Ellesmere Island and has several temporary inhabitants due to the co-located CFS Alert.
Eureka, a small research base on Ellesmere Island, has a population of zero but at least 8 staff on a continuous rotational basis. Abandoned Permanent Settlement Seasonally Occupied Formerly manned stations were Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island, Isachsen on Ellef Ringnes Island, Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island. Abandoned settlements are Craig Harbour on Ellesmere Island; until 1999, the Queen Elizabeth Islands were part of the Baffin Region of the Northwest Territories. With the creation of Nunavut in 1999 all islands and fractions of islands of the archipelago east of the 110th meridian west became part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the new territory, the major portion of the archipelago; the rest remained with the now-reduced Northwest Territories. Borden Island, Mackenzie King Island and Melville Island were divided between the two territories. Prince Patrick Island, Eglinton Island and Emerald Island are the only notable islands that are now part of the Northwest Territories. Below the level of the territory, there is the municipal level of administration.
On that level, there are only two municipalities and Grise Fiord, with an aggregate area of 450 km2, but with most of the population of the archipelago. The remaining 99.89 percent are unincorporated area, with a census 2006 population of five, all in Alert. According to the Atl
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage is, from the European and northern Atlantic point of view, the sea route to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage; the various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages. For centuries, European explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia. An ice-bound northern route was discovered in 1850 by the Irish explorer Robert McClure; until 2009, the Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year. Arctic sea ice decline has rendered the waterways more navigable for ice navigation; the contested sovereignty claims over the waters may complicate future shipping through the region: the Canadian government maintains that the Northwestern Passages are part of Canadian Internal Waters, but the United States and various European countries claim that they are an international strait and transit passage, allowing free and unencumbered passage.
If, as has been claimed, parts of the eastern end of the Passage are 15 metres deep, the route's viability as a Euro-Asian shipping route is reduced. A Chinese shipping line is planning regular voyages of cargo ships using the passage to the eastern United States and Europe, after a successful passage by Nordic Orion of 73,500 tonnes deadweight tonnage in September 2013. Loaded, Nordic Orion sat too deep in the water to sail through the Panama Canal. Before the Little Ice Age, Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit and people of the Dorset culture who inhabited the region. Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe dispatched explorers in an attempt to discover a commercial sea route north and west around North America; the Northwest Passage represented a new route to the established trading nations of Asia. England called the hypothetical northern route the "Northwest Passage".
The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America. When it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the continent, attention turned to the possibility of a passage through northern waters. There was a lack of scientific knowledge about conditions. Explorers thought; the belief that a route lay to the far north persisted for several centuries and led to numerous expeditions into the Arctic. Many ended in disaster, including that by Sir John Franklin in 1845. While searching for him the McClure Arctic Expedition discovered the Northwest Passage in 1850. In 1906, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen first completed a passage from Greenland to Alaska in the sloop Gjøa. Since that date, several fortified ships have made the journey. From east to west, the direction of most early exploration attempts, expeditions entered the passage from the Atlantic Ocean via the Davis Strait and through Baffin Bay. Five to seven routes have been taken through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, via the McClure Strait, Dease Strait, the Prince of Wales Strait, but not all of them are suitable for larger ships.
From there ships passed through waterways through the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Bering Strait, into the Pacific Ocean. In the 21st century, major changes to the ice pack due to climate change have stirred speculation that the passage may become clear enough of ice to permit safe commercial shipping for at least part of the year. On August 21, 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker. According to Nalan Koc of the Norwegian Polar Institute, this was the first time the Passage has been clear since they began keeping records in 1972; the Northwest Passage opened again on August 25, 2008. It is reported in mainstream medias that ocean thawing will open up the Northwest Passage for various kind of ships, making it possible to sail around the Arctic ice cap. and cutting thousands of miles off shipping routes. Warning that the NASA satellite images indicated the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by climate change, Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the U.
S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said: "The passages are open. It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by."On the other hand, some thick sections of ice will remain hard to melt in the shorter term. Such drifting and large chunks of ice in springtime, can be problematic as they can clog entire straits or damage a ship's hull. Cargo routes may therefore be slower and uncertain, depending on prevailing conditions and the ability to predict them; because a plurality of containerized traffic operates in a just-in-time mode and the relative isolation of the passage, the Northwest
Petty officer
A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in many navies and is given the NATO rank denotion OR-5. In many nations, they are equal to a corporal or sergeant in comparison to other military branches, they may be superior to a seaman the lowest ranks in a navy, subordinate to a more senior non-commissioned officer, such as a chief petty officer. The modern petty officer dates back to the Age of Sail. Petty officers rank between most enlisted sailors; these were men with some claim to officer rank, sufficient to distinguish them from ordinary ratings, without raising them so high as the sea officers. Several were warrant officers, in the literal sense of being appointed by warrant, like the warrant sea officers, their superiors, they were among the specialists of the ship's company; the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the title derives from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French "petit", meaning "of small size, little". Two of the petty officer's rates and master's mate, were a superior petty officer with a more general authority, but they remained no more than ratings.
However, it was quite possible for a warrant officer, in his role as a superior officer, to be court-martialed for striking a midshipman. This is because both were regarded as future sea officers, with the all-important social distinction of having the right to walk the quarterdeck. Midshipmen wore distinctive uniforms, master's mates dressed respectably, both behaved like officers; the master's mate rating evolved into the rank of sub-lieutenant, midshipman evolved into naval cadet. There are two petty officer ranks in the Royal Canadian Navy. Petty officer, 2nd class is equivalent to a sergeant and petty officer, 1st class is equivalent to a warrant officer. Petty officers are addressed as "Petty Officer Bloggins" or "PO Bloggins", thereafter as "PO"; the "1st class" and "2nd class" designations are only used when such a distinction needs to be made, such as on a promotion parade or to distinguish two petty officers with similar names but different ranks. The NATO rank denotion for "petty officer, 2nd class" is OR-6.
The NATO rank denotion for "petty officer, 1st class" is OR-7. A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in the Indian Navy, equivalent to the NATO rank enlisted grade of OR-5, they are equal in rank to a sub inspector of police in the Indian Police Services, or sergeant in the Indian Army and Indian Air Force. A petty officer is superior in rank to a leading rate and subordinate to a chief petty officer, as is the case in the majority of Commonwealth navies. A petty officer has the ability to work as a leader, capable of taking charge of a group of personnel, taking roles in the training and recruitment of new members of the Indian Navy. In the Royal Navy, the rate of petty officer comes above that of leading rating and below that of chief petty officer, it is the equivalent of sergeant in British Army and Royal Air Force. Petty officer is the lowest of the senior rating grades. Petty officers, like all senior rates, wear "aft" rig; the title of petty officer in the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard has three separate "classes" and three senior grades.
Petty officer, first class is equivalent in paygrade to staff sergeant in the United States Army and Marine Corps, technical sergeant in the United States Air Force. Petty officer, second class is equivalent in paygrade to sergeant in the United States Army and Marine Corps, staff sergeant in the United States Air Force. Petty officer, third class is equivalent in paygrade to corporal in the United States Army, corporal in the United States Marine Corps, senior airman in the United States Air Force. Enlisted rank has two components: rating. Both components are reflected in the title. A sailor in the rate of petty officer first class with a rating of yeoman, would be a Yeoman 1st Class. In the Navy, it is acceptable to refer to Petty Officer as such, while in the Coast Guard, rating is always used. In some countries the same term is used as for a non-commissioned officer in land forces, e.g. "suboficial" in some Spanish-speaking countries. The Russian equivalent is Glavny Starshina. Boatswain List of United States Navy ratings Royal Navy ratings rank insignia United States Navy enlisted rates
Joseph René Bellot
Joseph René Bellot was a French Arctic explorer. Bellot was born at Paris, the son of a farrier, but moved to Rochefort with his family in 1831. With the aid of the authorities of Rochefort he was enabled at the age of 15 to enter the Ecole Navale at Brest, in which he studied two years and earned a high reputation, he took part in the Anglo-French expedition of 1845 to Madagascar, received the cross of the Legion of Honour for distinguished conduct. He afterwards took part in another Anglo-French expedition, that of Parana to South America, which opened the Río de la Plata to commerce. In 1851 he joined the Arctic expedition under the command of Captain William Kennedy in search of Sir John Franklin.. In February 1852, Kennedy and Bellot set out from their winter quarters in Batty Bay on a dog sledging journey, travelling south to Brentford Bay, where they discovered Bellot Strait, they continued west to cross Prince of Wales Island to Ommanney Bay, returning to Batty Bay via Peel Sound and Cape Walker — a total trek of 1,800 km.
Early in 1852 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, in the same year accompanied the Franklin search expedition under Captain Edward Inglefield. As on the previous occasion, his intelligence, devotion to duty and courage won him wide admiration. While making a perilous journey with two comrades for the purpose of communicating with Sir Edward Belcher, he disappeared in an opening between the broken masses of ice in the Wellington Channel. A memorial grave was built on nearby Beechey Island. A pension was granted to his family by the emperor Napoleon III; the young explorer was mourned and £2,000 was raised by a Royal Geographical Society committee after his death of which £500 went towards a granite memorial obelisk in his memory on the Thames riverside in front of Greenwich Hospital. The remainder of the money went towards supporting his five sisters. A nearby Greenwich street, Bellot Street SE10 carries his name. In 1935 a crater on the Moon was named Bellot in his honour. Coleman, E C, The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration from Franklin to Scott, Tempus PublishingAttribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Bellot, Joseph René", Encyclopædia Britannica, 3, Cambridge University Press, pp. 704–705 Bellot, Joseph René, Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot, with his Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John Franklin, London: Hurst and Blackett "Joseph René Bellot", Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online "Bellot Strait", the Canadian Encyclopedia "William Kennedy", the Canadian Encyclopedia
HMS Erebus (1826)
HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was the second in the Royal Navy named after Erebus, the dark region of Hades in Greek mythology; the 372-ton ship was armed with 10 guns. The ship took part in the Ross expedition of 1839-1843, was abandoned in 1848 during the third Franklin expedition; the sunken wreck was discovered by the Canadian Victoria Strait Expedition in September 2014. After two years' service in the Mediterranean Sea, Erebus was refitted as an exploration vessel for Antarctic service, on 21 November 1840 – captained by James Clark Ross – she departed from Van Diemen's Land for Antarctica in company with Terror. In January 1841, the crews of both ships landed on Victoria Land, proceeded to name areas of the landscape after British politicians and acquaintances. Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, was named after Mount Terror after the other; the crew discovered the Ross Ice Shelf, which they were unable to penetrate, followed it eastward until the lateness of the season compelled them to return to Van Diemen's Land.
The following season, 1842, Ross continued to survey the "Great Ice Barrier", as it was called, continuing to follow it eastward. Both ships returned to the Falkland Islands before returning to the Antarctic in the 1842–1843 season, they conducted studies in magnetism, returned with oceanographic data and collections of botanical and ornithological specimens. The plants were described in the resulting The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. Birds collected on the first expedition were described and illustrated by George Robert Gray and Richard Bowdler Sharpe in The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus & HMS Terror. Birds of New Zealand, 1875; the revised edition of Gray. The future botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker aged 23, was assistant-surgeon to Robert McCormick. In 1845, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left England on a voyage of exploration to the Canadian Arctic, under Sir John Franklin. Both ships were outfitted with steam engines from the London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives.
That of Erebus could propel the ship at 4 knots. The ships carried 12 days' supply of coal; the ships had iron plating added to their hulls. Sir John Franklin sailed in Erebus, in overall command of the expedition, Terror was again commanded by Francis Crozier; the expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and to complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, charted from both the east and west but had never been navigated. The ships were last seen by Europeans entering Baffin Bay in August 1845; the disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic. The broad circumstances of the expedition's fate were first revealed when Hudson's Bay Company doctor John Rae collected artifacts and testimony from local Inuit in 1853. Expeditions up to 1866 confirmed these reports. Both ships had become icebound and had been abandoned by their crews, totaling about 130 men, all of whom died from a variety of causes, including hypothermia and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south.
Subsequent expeditions until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members revealed that Erebus and Terror's shoddily canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century. In April 1851 the British transport ship, spotted two ships on a large ice floe off the coast of Newfoundland; the identities of the ships were not confirmed. It was suggested over the years that these might have been Erebus and Terror, though it is now certain they could not have been and were most abandoned whaling ships. On 15 August 2008, Parks Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada, announced a Can$75,000 six-week search deploying the icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with the goals of finding the ships and reinforcing Canada's claims regarding sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic.
The search was headed by underwater archeologist Robert Grenier, of Parks Canada, local historian Louie Kamookak, who had collected Inuit oral histories related to the wreck, as well as working with the written records. Kamookak, who died in 2018 at the age of 58, was made an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Nunavut for his work; the wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 2 September 2014 by a Parks Canada team led by Ryan Harris and Marc-André Bernier. On 1 October 2014, it was announced. Recovery of the ship's bell was announced on 6 November 2014. On 4 March 2015, it was announced that a diving expedition on Erebus, by Parks Canada and Royal Canadian Navy divers, would begin in April. On 12 September 2016, it was announced that the wreck of HMS Terror had been found submerged in Terror Bay, off the south-west coast of King William Island; the wrecks are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the precise location of the designation in abeyance.
On 23 October 2017, it was announced by the UK's defence minister, Sir Michael Fallon, that the British government would be giving HMS Erebus and its sister ship HMS Terror to Canada, retaining only a few relics and any gold, along with the right to repatriate any human remains. HMS Erebus is featured alongside
National Historic Sites of Canada by location
