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Interesting story from the Arctic North of Canada

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 00:23:46 +0100
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

HMS Investigator, abandoned in the Arctic 155 years ago during a search for
Sir John Franklin's expedition, has been found. Parks Canada archeologists
looking for the ship found it 15 minutes after they started a sonar scan of
Banks Island's Mercy Bay in the Northwest Territories, said Marc-André
Bernier, chief of Parks Canada's underwater archeology service.
"When the team arrived [on July 22], the whole bay was covered in ice,"
Bernier said. "On July 25, the team had an opening in the ice.. It happened
to be where the ship had been abandoned." They started a sonar scan of the
area identified by British navy accounts as the spot where the ship had been
left. They used a torpedo-shaped scanner, towed behind a Zodiac inflatable
boat, which sends out sound waves and produces images of the floor of the
bay. "After 15 minutes, they basically had an image of the wreck," Bernier
said."It's in good condition," he said. "Very good condition, actually -
surprising condition."

The ship is upright in about 11 metres of water, its bottom buried in
sediment if it's still there, and the upper deck under about eight metres of
water."Apparently, you can see some of it from the surface when the water is
clear," Bernier said. While the masts are gone and the bulwarks - the sides
of the ship that extend above the deck - are mostly gone, likely damaged by
ice, there is potential to find smaller artifacts, Bernier said. "This is
very cold water. That helps preservation as well," he said. One of the masts
appears to be on the deck of the ship, he added. If the masts had still been
in place, they would have stuck out of the water. The archeology crew has no
plans to raise the ship. They will do a thorough sonar scan of the area,
then send a remotely operated vehicle, similar to the ROVs used to take
pictures of the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, to take pictures. They
will analyze the condition of the ship, the environmental impacts that could
cause further damage, and the potential to find further artifacts - though
they will remove nothing at this point.

HMS Investigator was lost in 1853, Captain Hatteras went looking for the
North Pole in 1861, possible connection?
Received on Sun 01 Aug 2010 - 02:23:51 IDT

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