The search for Sir John Franklin's lost ships is scheduled to proceed this summer, according to the project's senior archaeologist.
The search, which began in 2008, was called off last year because Parks Canada could not secure time on a coast guard or military ship, Ryan Harris, senior marine archaeologist with Parks Canada said.
"Essentially, we didn't have the ship time we needed to do the work," he said.
This year, researchers are scheduled to board a coast guard vessel in Kugluktuk on Aug. 10 and will spend the next three weeks scanning the Queen Maud Gulf using sonar equipment.
"We're hoping to cover as much of the sea floor as possible within our survey window and what I would like to find is a relatively intact ship that we can identify as either Erebus or Terror that will lead for very fruitful future investigations," Harris said.
In the 1850s, Inuit began telling explorers searching for the lost Franklin expedition about a ship they had seen while hunting bearded seal west of the Adelaide Peninsula. The ship had been abandoned and had no crew.
"There was a ship that was still floating for a few years, according to some stories," Gjoa Haven resident and historian Louie Kamookak said.
After being stuck in ice for two years, Sir John Franklin and his crew had abandoned their ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, off of King William Island in April, 1848.
Franklin and his crew then disappeared.
When search crews arrived and began looking for the 129 crew members, Inuit in the area told them about seeing one of the ships floating near the Adelaide Peninsula, approximately three kilometres away.
Inuit knew the area as Urulik, a place to hunt bearded seal.
"All of those searchers gleaned stories from the Inuit that suggested one of the ships made it to the area called Urulik," Harris said.
More than 160 years later, those stories are helping to pinpoint where researchers will look, Harris said.
The Inuit in the area were known as Urulikmeot. They were the last to see Franklin's ship, Kamookak said.
Kamookak has been interviewing and recording elders' stories for over 20 years. He said the stories describe how one of the abandoned ships was destroyed by ice.
"According to a lot of oral history, the other ship was crushed in ice and a lot of wood drifted to the shore and people used to go get wood from there," Kamookak said.
But the other ship remained intact and floated in the passage for years before finally sinking.
"I think the other ship is still under the water," he said.
Kamookak said when the ship sank, its mast was still visible above the water, according to Inuit oral history.
"I could believe that because these ships, from the bottom to the top of the mast, were about 200 feet high," he said. "The area we're concentrating on right now, it's ideal for that amount of water, over 100 feet."
Kamookak said when Inuit originally told the searchers what they had seen, it was often misinterpreted and information recorded in the searchers' journals was sometimes inaccurate.
"In the 1800s, where an Inuk has never seen a white man and trying to communicate, I see a lot of journals and books that put things together and don't make sense," he said.
He said when he began researching, he interviewed elders first, then double-checked the information.
"I went ahead with the taping to get the Inuit stories and through the years I went back and did the research about who they were talking about," he said.
Kamookak said the information has provided a clearer understanding of the events the Inuit described.
"This theory is based on understanding the people, who they were, how they travelled, how much they know," he said.
Harris said Kamookak's work has been invaluable.
"We always bounce ideas off Louie and he tries to make sense of some of the historical testimony," he said. "So he's a prized project partner for us."
Harris said even if a ship is found, it will stay where it is.
"If possible, we like to leave things where they lie," he said.
Kamookak said Gjoa Haven residents are pleased the search will continue this year.
"They're pretty excited," he said. " The community is fully behind the search."
Author: Kassina Ryder | Source: Northern News Services [July 12, 2010]