Canada finds lost ship from ill-fated 19th century Arctic expedition

Ryan Harris of Parks Canada, left, briefs Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on efforts to find the Franklin expedition aboard the search ship Kingston in the Arctic. The two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, disappeared in the late 1840s. (Adrian Wyld / Associated Press)

By Christine Mai-Duc

Oct. 3, 2014 10:13 AM PT

Canadian officials announced this week that they had located the Erebus, one of two ships in the ill-fated 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin. Franklin had been in search of a Northwest Passage when his ships became trapped in ice.

In image from video shows two small cannon lying on the sea floor off northern Canada among the scattered timbers of the shipwreck of an ill-fated 1845-48 British expedition seeking the Northwest Passage. (Parks Canada / EPA)

A crew member loads a remote underwater vehicle used in the search searching for the ships of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition that disappeared more than 160 years ago. (Adrian Wyld / Associated Press)

This “all well” document was signed by explorer John Franklin in 1847 during his ill-fated expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. A more ominous message, scrawled in the margins, suggested that the ships had wrecked, the captain was dead, and surviving crew members had deserted the vessels. (Rischgitz / Getty Images)