Photo source: https://www.wikigallery.org/

Sir John Franklin Photo source: https://www.wikigallery.org/

The ABC is today reporting that “the remains of one of two ships used by a former governor of Tasmania on a doomed Arctic mission in 1846 have been found….HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, led by Sir John Franklin, a former governor of Van Diemen’s Land, disappeared on a expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic.  Now Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper has announced that the wreck of one of the ships has been found on the seabed.”

Parks Canada has published some wonderful sonar and underwater images.

Franklin’s wife, Lady Jane Franklin, was indefatigable in her search for the lost ship.  Obviously she never found it but I dare say she’d be thrilled by these recent events.  Her recent biography The Ambitions of Lady Jane Franklin won the 2014 Australian National Biography Award.

 

Update 25 September 2014:  More information about the ship-finding expedition in this article in the New Yorker.