Abandoned British ship found after 157 years in arctic waters
Over 157 years ago, the crew of the HMS Investigator were forced to abandon their ship after being trapped in the ice of the ironically named “Mercy Bay” for nearly three years. Now, archeologist have located the nearly perfectly intact and preserved ship within the cold and clear waters of Canada’s Northwest Territories. The discovery is the first for the Canadian team which is searching for all of the lost vessels associated with the John Franklin’s Lost Expedition of the Northwest Passage in which the HMS Erebus and Terror became entrapped and lost in their search for the Northwest Passage. The HMS Investigator was one of the vessel’s dispatched to search for the lost expedition, but ironically became victims of the ice themselves.
Parks Canada base camp on Mercy Bay from the air (Parks Canada)
Search for Franklin Vessels: The Story of HMS Investigator
By 1847, fears that Sir John Franklin and his 1845 expedition to the North-West Passage had met with tragedy prompted a flurry of rescue efforts from Britain and the United States. One of these was a Royal Navy effort deployed in January 1850 that teamed Royal Navy Captain Robert John LeMesurier McClure, of the 66-man strong HMSInvestigator, with Captain Richard Collinson of the HMS Enterprise. The two ships separated in the Pacific and went their own way.
McClure’s first discovery was ‘Baring’s Land,’ but as he sailed its south and east coast through Prince of Wales
Strait,McClure soon suspected that these shores were in fact part of the ‘Banks Land’ noted during the Parry expedition of 1819-1820. When McClure eventually saw the outline of Melville Island on the northern horizon, he realized he was witnessing the final link of the North-West Passage. Yet before he could be the first to momentously sail the Passage, the Investigator encountered impenetrable pack ice and was forced to winter among the drifting floes (conglomerated sea ice blocs) in Prince of Wales Strait. Once freed, McClure all but gave up the search for Franklin and attempted the Passage again. The Investigator again faced heavy ice, so hoping to find a safe anchorage as winter approached, McClure navigated his ship into a large bay on the north coast of Banks Island. Optimistically, McClure called the Investigator’s surroundings the Bay of Mercy.
Survival in Mercy Bay was relatively comfortable, but when pack ice failed to clear from the Bay during the summer of 1852 and until the Spring of 1853, the crew’s situation became critical. Scurvy affected several crew members and killed the three crewmen whose grave site was found on the island, food rations became critically scarce. Before finally abandoning ship, McClure had his men land some of the ship’s provisions to a cache site, and then began evacuating his crew across the ice to HMS Resolute. Sometime after McClure and his men returned to England, the Investigator and its provisions were discovered by Copper Inuit groups travelling to Banks Island to hunt and fish. In the years that followed, Inuit from Victoria Island made annual visits to Mercy Bay to salvage metal and wood from the cache, and may have even been able to use material from the Investigator itself.
Despite the Investigator’s importance to both European polar exploration and Inuit cultural history, little is known about the expedition’s land sites, or the vessel’s final position. Archaeologists have visited the land sites since the 1980s, but Mercy Bay’s remoteness has prevented thorough investigations or mapping of the sites’ features. In the 1990s, Parks Canada established a monitoring program for what remains of the cache, but this too was based on a cursory visit and only addressed the most visible features. As for the wreck itself, there has not been a confirmed sighting since Krabbé’s account in May 1854.
Read More
Parks Canada 2010 Arctic Surveys – Official website
National Post Article - Scientists wrap up Arctic HMS Investigator exploration
