Ideas - Reimagining Franklin's quest for the Northwest Passage

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

When Sir John Franklin set out to find the Northwest Passage in 1845, he never returned. From that mystery, began the stories. But why do we keep coming back to these Franklin stories? What do they say about us? And what does it mean today to seek a Northwest Passage? *This episode originally aired on April 19, 2022.

I am an actor, fresh out of theater school with big dreams and an even bigger drug habit. But things are pretty good. That is until my best friend is set up on a date with David Lee Roth. Yeah, from Van Halen. If you know, you know. From CBC's personally, this is Discount Dave and the Fix. The true-ish story about how a fake rock star led me to a real trial that held up a mirror to me. And okay, let's just say that not everyone in this story is who you think they are.

Personally, discount Dave and the Fix. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. One of the most interesting things about HMS Aribus. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. It's that along with HMS Terror, it was one of the first two ships to be modified to have a screw propeller for polar. navigation. Ryan Harris is a senior underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada. Here he's scuba diving in the Arctic Ocean at the wreck site of the ship, Erebus. So what we see in here is the mechanism

by which the propeller can be raised and lowered in and out of position. The Erebus was lost in the 1840s during the Franklin expedition, which had set out to find the Northwest Passage. The expedition is still shrouded in mystery, because it went missing in such a remote part of the world. Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage to find. This well-known Stan Rogers' song is only one element in the Franklin Expedition mythology. There are Franklin Relics, as well as the wrecks of the Erebus and its sister ship, the Terror, both found with the help of local Inuit communities. This documentary is by contributor Mena Karaman Wilms, and it's called Reimagining the Northwest Passage.

My name is Pamela Hakunga Gross. Pamela is the deputy premier of Nunavut, representing Cambridge Bay. So Iqalakduyak is our Inuitanakun name for Cambridge Bay, which means fair fishing place. And it's a community that's about 1,800 people located on Kila Nip, which is Victoria Island. And we're a remote community along the Northwest Passage. A majority of our population is Inuit. Over about 80% of our population is Inuit. Many Northwest Passage stories are about explorers from elsewhere, trying to travel through the region, the place where Pamela grew up.

The term Northwest Passage for me is for Inuit, it's a way in which we've always traveled amongst our people. We've traveled to the eastern part of our territory to the west, and we've used the waterways to get around. And for us, it's our homeland. and for us it's just a navigational area, hunting area. I'm wondering, do you remember the first time you heard about explorers coming through, and maybe specifically, do you remember when you first heard about John Franklin in particular? Yeah, so Sir John Franklin has been a name that I've known since childhood. My dad, Tom Gross, is an avid Franklin searcher.

And, yeah, I mean, it's always been a topic of conversation anytime, my dad would get together with his friends talk about the different theories and I was small enough to be sitting on his lap when he's talking about them. So I grew up very immersed in the topic and I was always eager to go out with my father and my dad says I was probably one of the youngest ones to travel up that way to do this kind of Franklin searching. But I grew up with it. So I grew up quadding and being out on the land, traveling since infancy. And, you know, for me, being outside is a happy place. Traveling our tundra, our beautiful landscapes is always so beautiful. There's navigational challenges in terms of maneuvering the quad in different terrain. But it was something that I was

happy about and accomplished when I was still in high school, actually grade 11. And, um, I look back at those memories and think today, well, if I got through it back, then I can get through it again today. And I really enjoy going out there and seeing the familiarity of the land and the different things that are out there with our archaeological sites and different things that we might come across along the way. Sir John Franklin led an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the top of North. America. He left Britain in 1845 and traveled past Greenland into Arctic waters north of what's now the Canadian mainland. He had 128 men on two ships. But Franklin and his crew were never seen again. And that's when the quest to find out what happened began. The one summer that I went out in the beginning, we actually found the scientific

observatory for the Franklin Expedition. The scientific observatory was known about that it was somewhere on King William Island. And to be with my dad when that was found was so fascinating, there was small clues of evidence that showed that this was probably the site where they were, they hosted the observatory. Just to find anything out on the tundra is always fascinating. It just brings you back to a time. where your mind thinks about, you know, how this could have been or how long ago it was and so amazing to be a part of.

And it's a memory that I'll share forever with my dad. How do you know you're coming along the tundra that you're coming to that place of significance? What were the, I guess, the visual cues that told you that's where it was? I guess it's just because we happened to be at the right place at the right time. And we stopped there to have a little bit. break and we're looking around and looked on the ground and there was some things on the ground. One of them was a really old piece of glass, probably like the bottom of a wine glass or wine bottle or something, and it was just kind of hollowed out.

And there was some musket balls and stuff like that, which are so fascinating to begin with and to know that that is from Franklin is just so cool. We just kind of happened to stumble across it, and it's a big piece of evidence. Pamela's also been to the location that revealed what we now know about the fate of the Franklin expedition. I remember when my dad took me there for the first time, there's, of course, the victory point, Karen,

and the victory point document that came from there. The Victory Point Cairn on King William Island was where the expedition left a note. Actually being at that physical location was just so exciting because I had grown up hearing a lot about that document. The Victory Point document is the only account we have from the crew after they entered the Arctic. 28 May 1847, HMS ships Erebus and Terror wintered in the ice in latitude 70 degrees, five minutes north, longitude 98 degrees, 23 minutes west, Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well. But by the following year, things had taken a turn for the worse.

At that point, the ships had been locked in ice for two winters, and those crew members who were still alive were abandoning them and starting to walk south in hopes of rescue. This was explained in a later addition to the note. 25th April 1848. HMS ships' terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April, five leagues north-northwest of this, having been beset since 12th September 1846. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June 1847,

and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date nine officers and 15 men. And start on tomorrow, 26th, for Bax Fish River. We still don't know how Franklin died, or how far members of his crew made it on their southward walk. None of them were ever heard from again. More than a decade later, a search expedition found a ship's boat on King William Island. The boat was on a sledge and filled with supplies and objects, which the men walking south would have pulled with them. And inside the boat, the expedition reported, there were also two skeletons. It's been a challenge to trace those specific skeletons through time,

but those are far from the only remains discovered. In the more than a century and a half that's followed, numerous bones and objects from the crew have been found along the landscape. We know Inuit saw the Franklin crew and the ships and different things like that, and our ancestors were a part of it, And at that time, probably the first Southerners that they interacted with and language barriers and a lot of different things, challenges, disease, you know, things that we might not always know about happened. It always blows my mind to think about my ancestors and what they went through without any technology or heat or. anything like that and to think about, you know,

Southerners coming up here, exploring and not having the proper footwear or clothes and not being able to communicate with Inuit, know how to hunt or fish or do those things that my ancestors had accumulated wisdom of. It's no wonder that they all sadly passed away is because, you know, they just didn't really know how to live up here. they weren't well equipped for the life that our cold winters have what we endure every year. The expedition led by Sir John Franklin was one of several that sought the Northwest Passage. My name is Janice Cavell. I'm an adjunct research professor of history and Northern Studies at Carleton University.

And my research focuses on various aspects of Arctic history from 19th century exploration up to Arctic sovereignty issues. Why did people want to find a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic? Well, at first it seemed as though it would actually have practical applications. They had no idea that you'd have to go so far north to get to a passage. You have to go up there around the Melville Peninsula, the Boothia Peninsula, Somerset Island, and so forth. So if they had been able to go more or less directly west from Hudson Bay, there could possibly have been commercial voyages or naval voyages during the summer.

The northern route would have been much shorter than going all the way down around the south of Africa or South America. After that, there was a scientific value in that the North Magnetic Pole was known to be in that vicinity, and that was of not just sort of purely scientific interest, though there was that, but since Britain was the world's leader in commerce and naval power, having this knowledge would help them make navigation more accurate, more safe. And it was just seen as a thing that a powerful nation should do, that when you had so much power and so much money, you could use some of the excess to do things that were simply considered

sort of enlightening to all mankind, to use the phrase that would have been used back then. We talk about the Northwest Passage, but really we should probably be saying a Northwest Passage. Would that be more accurate then? Yes, absolutely, because if you just look at a map, you can see that our Arctic Archipelago is an incredibly geographically complicated place. And there are so many islands and so many passages. And if you were just drawing lines on the map, there's all sorts of ways you could go through. Now, there are limits and there were even greater limits back then because of ice. but there are basically three main ones and all kinds of lesser ones. So, yes, you do have to speak of the Northwest Passages, not Passage. So let's start talking about 19th century Britain

when this idea of finding a Northwest Passage was really in the air there. How was the British public seeing these expeditions to the Arctic? Generally, very favorably. My first Arctic research was on the rest. representations in the popular press and public reactions as far as you can determine it, although, of course, there's not a whole lot of evidence on that. They seem to see it as this long-drawn-out sort of epic story where you couldn't necessarily expect a payoff right away.

And perseverance was one of the great Victorian qualities. So if you tried and tried and tried again, then that showed your perseverance. And that was definitely a good thing. It was a quest or an epic. Those words were, you know, specifically used. And if you're talking about the upper classes, these would be people with classical educations, you know, Greek, Latin, and so forth. So they knew the ancient myths. And they would draw comparisons.

And it seemed very much like a modern day epic. And it would be so exciting because you could pick up your newspaper in the morning and read a new installment. You didn't have to go to these dusty old books. It was right there in front of them. It was their contemporaries doing it. Let's talk about Sir John Franklin in particular then. His name often comes to mind when people think of the Northwest Passage. Why is Franklin so well known of all these explorers who went up there?

Why is he the one that we tend to remember? Because he got lost, because there was a mystery about him, because he died in mysterious circumstances. All these things are very appealing, I think, to anybody. I mean, who isn't intrigued by a mystery? So he had people going out looking for him for 10 years. And even when certain records were found and there was a little bit of evidence as to basically what had happened, it was known that they had all died, but exactly where, exactly how, what did his men do as they tried to escape from the Arctic?

How far did they get? All these things kept the story alive. And we are a long, long way from knowing exactly what happened to Sir John Franklin. Who is actually credited with finding a Northwest Passage? That is a complicated question. Different people have been credited at different times and in different ways. I think you can kind of divide it up the way the British government did initially when they offered the first awards for finding a Northwest Passage. The way it was phrased was to find out and sail through a passage.

So you would have the geographical aspect of simply finding out where this waterway is. And then you would have to prove that it was a navigable passage by actually sailing through it because obviously the British Admiralty had no particular interest in any passage that you couldn't take ships through. So if you look at geography, at simply proving that a passage existed and showing on a map where it is, then the answer would be Franklin, but there was someone else who was credited before it was known that Franklin had done that, and that was Robert McClure.

By a completely different route, he had taken his ship in, through Bering Strait, through the Western Arctic, rather than starting from the east, as most people had done. So McClure's ship was frozen in on the north coast of Banks Island. And since his ship was frozen in, and he couldn't take it through the Northwest Passage,

so he couldn't claim to have navigated it. But he did go by foot over to other search ships that were in the Eastern Arctic and came out by that route. So he did go from the Pacific to the Atlantic, across the top of North America. He did show on maps that there was a water connection. So there was a parliamentary committee that looked into this. They decided that they would give McClure and his crew a financial reward anyway.

So he was formally credited. But then along came the evidence that Franklin had also nearly met up with other explorers' work. And what was the evidence that they were considering at that point? Because no one from the Franklin expedition had made it back. So what were they looking at there? Well, that was when they had found records and bodies, actually. The critical point was a place called Cape Herschel on King William Island, because two other European explorers had been there.

Thomas Simpson and Peter Warren D's. They had come to that point from the Western Arctic. And Franklin's ships were abandoned some way north of Cape Herschel, but as they tried to escape, Franklin's men passed that point, which was proved in a rather gruesome manner because the bodies of one of his men was found a bit south of Cape Herschel. So this was clear. The Franklin Expedition had done this,

and they had done this a few years before McClure. So along came this rival claim, and of course the famous Lady Franklin. Franklin's wife. Yes, with her great concern for her husband's reputation, was sort of all out that Franklin instead must be recognized as the true discoverer, the first discoverer of a Northwest Passage. And in the geographical sense, that's true. His expedition did that, but since we know Franklin's date of death

from a written record that was left. In the victory point, Karen there. Yes, exactly. So it was June 11th, they, 1747. And this group that went past Cape Herschel, that must have been some time afterwards. So the big question became, did Sir John Franklin know what he had done? And he obviously sent out small sledging parties. Well, his ships were trapped in the ice. And there is a theory that one of them came back in time to tell the dying Sir John Franklin that we have been to Cape Herschel and you are the official discoverer of the Northwest. passage. Now, that would be very nice if it happened, and maybe it did. It's not impossible

that it happened, but there's no proof that it did. So you can say the Franklin expedition was the geographical discoverer. But then you come to the question of navigation, since obviously they did not navigate their ships through this passage. The ships sank. Right. So the first person to actually sail through a different Northwest Passage, Roald Amundsen, sailed through that. So he was the first to navigate it, but he did not do any finding out to use that old language. Well, he did a little bit of geographical discovery, but it wasn't related to the passage that his ship went through. So in a weird sense, nobody discovered the Northwest Passage. Wow. Okay, yeah. Let's talk about this statue. So there's the Statue of Franklin in London, England, and you mentioned this in your paper who discovered the Northwest Passage.

Can you describe the statue for us, Janice? What is it depicting? Well, actually, when I saw it myself for the first time many years ago, I didn't realize that it was supposed to depict a particular moment. It just looks like Franklin standing there, actually, looking, you know, pleased. But when I read the newspaper accounts of the unveiling of the statue, they said that it was supposed to show Franklin at the moment when he was announcing to his men that the Northwest Passage was discovered.

That's fascinating. I mean, do we know if such a moment ever actually existed? No, absolutely not. As I said before, it's possible, but I don't think it's actually even all that probable. So it's likely very much a part of the myth that Lady Franklin created around her husband. She even apparently took the attitude that, well, okay, there's a parliamentary report that says, McClure is a discoverer. But if you put up a statue, that's going to be around for a long time after people have forgotten.

gotten about this report. That's just a piece of paper. We've talked about explorers coming through a part of the world, the Arctic, where, of course, people were living. We use the word discover a lot when these waterways were probably used already before these European men came up there. Do we, I guess, do we need to think about that use of that word, Discover, when talking about this and the way that it shapes the way we think about it? Yes. Yes, we definitely do. Although you also have to realize, I think, that it's very complicated as relates to the Arctic. There is a bit of a tendency now to emphasize very much the fact of the Arctic being inhabited, but it isn't, and it wasn't entirely inhabited. And the people who used the passage certainly used the sea ice on it for

hunting, very much as they would be being part of their own territory, really, as much as the land. I think you can speak of discovery if you want to, not that I particularly think it's important to do it or not do it, but in connecting the various waterways. Certainly these explorers were in many ways dependent on Inuit knowledge, and they didn't deny that, actually, at the time. They certainly asked the indigenous people they encountered for their knowledge. but the Arctic is a complicated place. So the way they saw it as sort of inhabited and sort of not inhabited,

would change from one region to another. One thing that I've been quite interested in my own research in looking at the ways that these different so-called heroes are perceived, the whole story you can sort of reconfigure it around the idea of racism with the notion that Franklin failed because he was more racist and less open to indigenous knowledge and that Ray succeeded and came back alive because he accepted this. But when you look at the things that Ray wrote,

some of them by today's standards are just unbelievably racist. And you also need to consider that the place where Franklin's ships were caught in the ice is one of the worst hunting areas in the entire Arctic. and there is good evidence that the Inuit themselves did not spend very much time there. They might pass through, but it wasn't where they would choose to spend their summers. I certainly don't think it's true that if Franklin had had that opportunity, he would have turned it down. So I would say that today's stories suit our society, just like the Victorian stories suited their society. You're listening to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on SiriusXM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.ca.

You can also hear us on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyed. Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war. It has shaped the world around us. And if it somehow feels like we've been here before, it's because we have. I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian. And on my new podcast, Hostile History, I take us inside history's most defining wars and rebellions. From Genghis Khan to the war in Iran, find out how the past can explain the present.

Search for and follow hostile history on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. The Northwest Passage runs through the Arctic archipelago. But many of us have encountered the famous sea route through an iconic Canadian song. Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage. Northwest Passage was released in 1981 by Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers. Roger's song quickly became popular, and it stayed. popular. In 2005, on the CBC Radio series 50 Tracks, the Canadian version, Northwest Passage,

was voted the fourth greatest Canadian song. It's often called our unofficial national anthem. Rogers died not long after writing the song, but in the following decades, it's been covered by other musicians and is still sung in pubs and bars around the country. So why do we like this Stan Rogers song so much? And how has it shaped how we think about the Northwest Passage? This documentary is called reimagining the Northwest Passage. My name is Chris Cutchin. writer in Toronto. Chris wrote a book about the life and music of Stan Rogers. Do you remember

the first time you heard the Stan Rogers song, Northwest Passage? I don't remember specifically, but I do remember my response to it, which was just kind of blown away with the sound and the emotional intensity of the song. Westward from the Davis Street is there. It was said to lie, The sea root to the Orient For which so many died. It's a really deceptive song Because it sounds impersonal.

It sounds emotional but impersonal Almost like an anthem. But it's a very personal song. And that's, I think, what I connected to was the intensity of the personal vision that Stan was relaying. Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered broken bones and a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

It's hard to describe music sometimes, but if someone were to ask you, you know, what is the song about? What would you say? What is the song about? This song is about failure. Stan's singing about a bunch of people who tried to do something and never succeeded and in fact died along the way. As much as it's a song about the explorers who try to get through the Northwest Passage,

it's also a song about this guy driving in his car across Canada and kind of a bit of a background to the song. Stan didn't like to fly, which is ironic in many ways, but he did die in a plane fire. He didn't like to fly. And so he drove. He drove everywhere to perform. And through the night behind the wheel,

the mileage clicking west. I think it's really interesting that we, as a country, have kind of embraced this myth of the Northwest Passage. Our myth is about a kind of impossibility and a kind of failure. And I think that's really curious. I mean, to me, it's maybe failing in terms of not achieving a stated goal, but they succeed in the fact that they try. It's interesting you talk about the emotional response people have to this.

And I myself am a singer and I like performing this song too. And I know it's one of those songs that almost immediately sometimes people are in tears. There's something very visceral about this song. Can we dissect that a little bit? Like what is it about this song, even from its kind of opening lines, that really elicits that kind of response? Ah, for just one time,

I would take the Northwest Passage to... It sounds really old. It has a really sad, really moody, really haunting tone. So Stan, if Stan was writing a song that was talking about how great the Northwest Passage, passages and how great Canada is and how simple it is to be explorers and push our way across the country and open up new vistas. It would have started in something much more elevated and upbeat.

So I think he sets it off right away and the lyrics in the verse and the lyrics of the chorus are a big contrast. Like in the chorus, The lyrics are very powerful and appear to be very positive, you know, tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage. Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage. It sounds positive, but they're undercut by the verses, which are really about people, and it comes down to the individual songwriter stand himself, commenting on we're all trying to do our best. I think upon McKenzie,

David Thompson and the rest who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me. The song does reference all these explorers, right? We've got McKenzie, we've got David Thompson, Henry Kelsey. And at this moment, in time.

You know, many of us are more aware of the relationship that a lot of European explorers had with indigenous people here. And so taking into consideration knowledge around that, is there any part of that you think could potentially alienate the modern listener or maybe it doesn't relate the same way that maybe it once did? Oh, I think it does reflect a very old way, a very Eurocentric, a very central Canadian way of thinking. It marginally glorifies them, but not in a hugely nationalistic sense. So I think, I mean, it is a folk song. It's written in a very traditional style. And I can't imagine that Stan would

much care if we changed some of the lyrics to the verses over time, made them contemporary, because that's what he was doing. He was taking a situation that is timeless in a certain sense, but making it as contemporary as possible. There's always an opportunity to change and to adjust your vision. And certainly a song is one of the easiest things to change. All you have to do is cut the words out you don't like and put the words in you do like. And you hear that all the time. I remember that when the first men through this way. I remember that when I was growing up, my parents used to listen to Stan Rogers. And that's how I learned to sing Northwest Passage.

My name is Jonathan Moore, and I'm the acting back home again for just one time to fight. My name is Jonathan Moore, and I'm the acting manager of the underwater archaeology team of Parks Canada. After being lost in the 1840s, the Franklin ships were finally located only a few years ago. Jonathan was part of the team that found Arribus and Terror. He was also one of the first people to dive down to the wrecks. When we consider our part in the search, we really have to kind of look back to the first news from Inuit, who reported on the fact that the crew members had perished. The Inuit knowledge that really laid the groundwork for the discovery of the Erebus

was gathered by searchers in the 19th century. So this information was really rich, and it even demonstrates the Inuit found this vessel, went aboard it. It was deserted at the time before it sank. And in the case of what later turned out to be the Arabian, We had information from Inuit in the 19th century that identified an area or a zone in a place called Ujjjulik, or the place where there are bearded seals, which gave researchers kind of a starting point for search.

So in 2008, when we resumed the search for Arabis in terror, we already had a fair amount of information to go on that denoted a general area or a region that had to be searched, or where this wreck would be located. And so what we set about was conducting kind of blanket coverage of this area using boats. So really the approach was to what we called mow the lawn. So go back and forth in a very methodical way with our sonar systems on the boats. So this is a process that really took six seasons. So it's back and forth, back and forth day after day during the open water navigation. season. There were times when we questioned certainly whether we were actually going to find a wreck,

given the sheer size of the area we searched. And knowing that even a vessel of just over 30 meters long is still a relatively small target, if you consider the vast area involved. So collectively the team spent many, many days, weeks mowing the lawn. going back and forth, back and forth. What are you looking at then when you are mowing the lawn, as you say there, John? What are you actually seeing on the, I guess it's a screen where you're getting the sonar scans coming up on the boat? Yeah. So the main search tool we used was a side scan sonar and ultimately a computer display that we look at.

It depicts in a general way that the overall shape of the seafloor. So if there's anything out of the ordinary or unnatural, assuming that it's large enough, we can detect that. Now, you're seeing all kinds of bottom features like rocks and outcrops and depressions. So the challenge is really hour after hour, day after day, to maintain focus and watch the screen very carefully. So that was challenging for hours on end. And then there was, of course, one day where across that, screen, you saw something very different. Can you tell me about that day? Yeah, that day was September 2nd, 2014. What really transpired was that on September 1st, our partner team and the Governor

Nunavut found a couple of objects, artifacts on shore, in our general search area, which could really only have come from a rural Navy vessel. One was what is called a Davit Pintel, and this is a kind of a fancy technical term for a metal brace. So it's a fairly sizable object. It was found behind a boulder. And it was also found in association with a circular wooden object, which would have been used to kind of plug an opening in the upper deck of a ship called a Haas scuttle. The Davit Pinto was actually marked with Royal Navy identifiers called Broad Arrows.

So this was a really important smoking gun, really. So the next day, I think at noon we moved over to an area which was much closer to where those two artifacts had been found on land. And the day was incredible in that it was bright and sunny and the water was flat calm. It was a gorgeous day. Ryan Harris, who's our lead on the project and is our lead on the sonar systems, actually established a new search block. and we began surveying the block. Ryan took the first little shift there. We surveyed one line heading north.

At the end of that line, we switched over, so I took over the sonar operations. And Ryan went down into the cuddy at the bow of the boat, and we started to head south. And Ryan had warned me that there were a number of reefs or shallows in the immediate area. So I was really quite cautious about not, hitting the sonar toefish on the seafloor.

So as it turns out, just after I started, we went over one reef and then another. And in the moment where I had reeled in the towfish almost to the surface, it turns out we actually went over the wreck, which would later turn out to be HMS Aribus. So as I was looking away from the screen, Ryan actually came up from the cuddy and the investigator

and looked at the screen, noticed that there was actually an entire shipwreck on the screen, and he exclaimed at the time, that's it, pointed to it. And at that time, I was looking at the screen too. Indeed, everyone else on the boat within seconds was gazing at the screen really in disbelief. Some high-fives and some hugs ensued. And then we actually got back down to business

and actually started further sonar-serving of the actual wreck itself. Ryan and I both had the honor of actually making the first human dive to the wreck. At the time, we didn't know that it was error, as we hadn't confirmed its identification yet. So to us, we were diving on either of the two. We didn't know. And we referred to it as the Ujjulik wreck, the Inuit name for the region. As is our standard procedure in cases like this, we carefully installed a marker buoy on the wreck off the bow. Ryan and I suited up, jumped in the water, swam over to that marker buoy, descended down the

marker buoy to the bow of the aribus, which was just an incredible experience. You can't really get a measure of the wreck really until you're actually on it. So it is a huge structure that looms over the seafloor. It's around 11 meters deep, 30 feet deep. But the wreck itself is largely intact. So it's almost like diving on a building with straight vertical sides. So when we dive down to the bow, we can look up and see this, you know, towering structure above us. It was really impressive in that regard.

The wreck is festooned with marine life. So it's the upper part of the wreck is draped in kelp or vegetation. So much of the upper structure is really obscured from. from view. The sides generally didn't have, at that time, didn't have a lot of vegetation on them. So you could see the planking, you could see anchors, you could see artifacts in the debris field immediately around the wreck. We got to the stern and I could actually see two guns, two cannons. So, you know, you've got a vessel that is intact, stands proud of the seafloor. It's not like many wrecks that we find that are kind of broken apart and flattened out.

I think Ryan and I would both say that it was probably the best dives of our lives. Certainly after spending so many seasons searching for the wrecks, it was certainly, you know, a dream come true in a way. And as archaeologists, to see firsthand the site, and, you know, we could look down into the lower deck, into the accommodation space through the gaps in the upper deck and see things that no one had seen for well over 150 years. bottles and we could see parts of furniture,

we could see collapsed partitions, ceramics, we could see one of the really striking objects that we observed during the first dive was a seaman's chest in the bow area of the vessel, and this was divided in two. So this would have held the personal possessions of two sailors. It was intact, and so we can imagine that this has a potential

to tell us something about the, personal lives and experiences of the crew members, at least archaeologically. We found that the stern was quite damaged, quite broken up. So Franklin's cabin, for instance, was quite heavily damaged we saw. So we moved from stern towards the bow. Ryan took the port side of the upper deck. I took the starboard side. So he took the left, I took the right.

We're kind of moving along in parallel on the deck, moving aside the kelp to be able to see down into the wreck. We both had lights, underwater lights, so we're shining them all around, looking inside the wreck. And as I move forward, I actually caught a glimpse of something green out ahead of me. And as I moved forward, it was pretty obvious. It was a bell. And because it was made of bronze, it did not have attached vegetation. And as I move forward closer, I could see that it was marked with that distinctive broad arrow. And as I moved even closer, I could see the date 1845. If there was any doubt as to whether this was either Arabis or terror,

that was certainly dispelled when that 1845 date came into view. Well, the finding of the ships was joyous. Pamela Gras from Cambridge Bay. Inuit have a lot of traditional knowledge about the area that has been passed. down from generations just to know that a lot of that traditional knowledge can be accurate is always so rewarding because it is a part of our history, a part of our identity as well, because our ancestors lived it. And it's nice that there's the Franklin Advisory Committee and also the guardians inuit who are protecting those sites and are employed to be out there and ensure that

there's a safekeeping of of the sites and that parks Canada has been working with the Inuit Heritage Trust to go and excavate part of the ships and that artifacts are coming up There's also Inuit that are employed and Parks Canada hired someone to be on the dive crew, which is something that we've advocated for with the Inuit Heritage Trust and makes me proud and happy to know that we have Inuit that are gaining new skills and can be a part of that team and potentially go down and extract different pieces. you know, will be so exciting and I hope that that one day happens. The Inuit Guardians program, based in Johaven Nunavut, involves Inuit in the protection and monitoring of the rec sites. The Heritage Trust ensures Inuit cultural heritage is considered in decisions about the wrecks

and objects that are raised from them. Those objects are shown first to the community and elders, and it's meaningful that we're basically able to, see them first and have that opportunity with them and to know that it's part of a bigger picture and that these are our objects, you know, Inuit own them with the Inuit Heritage Trust and the government of Nunavut and they're in our safekeeping. Well, I have gotten to see all of them actually. I don't know what it is, but there's something about the China that really sticks out to me to hold these pieces of, you know, platters that Franklin and his crew ate off of and the

intricate details that are on them is just so beautiful and fascinating. And for me, that just sticks out. It's an Asian pattern and it's blue and white on the plate. And yeah, it's just, they're really pretty. There has been some clothing and also different instruments for navigation. Everything that they've brought up is just basically a wow because it's first of all been down under the ocean, Arctic Ocean, for a number of years. And that some items are still intact without a crack or without any breaking after being excavated and brought up and, you know, carefully packed and preserved and then brought into the community to show. Like, it just, wow.

what that object saw to get where it is today. The second ship of the Franklin expedition, the Terror, was located two years after the Aramis. It was found in 2016. The Inuit knowledge that led to the discovery of the terror was gathered in the present day. So when we were in Job Haven, we would often talk to community members

and reach out to knowledge holders such as Louis Kamika, they would come to us sometimes with information or we would seek out that information. And by 2013, we had received information for the community of a wreck in Tara Bay. We and our partners had done a little bit of follow-up immediately after learning of that in 2013. But it really wasn't until 2016 when that local knowledge actually led to the discovery of the terror in Terror Bay, as it turns out, quite coincidentally, with the information provided by Semicogovic. Apart from the note in the victory point, Karen,

we really have no documentation directly from the Franklin expedition. The expedition itself would have kept, of course, very detailed charts and records. Is there any chance, even though these wrecks have been underwater for over 170 years now, is there any chance that you could potentially find records aboard these vessels? You know, that's a million-dollar question. It's definitely possible that there are written records on board either vessel. We've seen it on other

archaeological sites with the right conditions, the right, if you will, physical protections within either wrecks, such as the writ material being in, say, a book that's bound, which may in turn have been wrapped or protected in some way, which in turn may be in some kind of a container, such as a case or a desk or other piece of fitted furniture. There's certainly the conditions, the environmental conditions that could be conducive to the preservation of written records, written materials. And there would have been many, many, many types of records on these vessels from logs, financial accounts, records from the sick birth, day-to-day records, whether it's

it's meteorological observations or scientific observations or some of the basic administrative records of the vessel. We've got very, very cold water temperatures at the rec sites. The fact that the vessels are largely intact, which would potentially promote that physical preservation. I would say in particular on the terror in that the terror is in better physical condition, structural condition than the aribus. The interior is more encapsulated than the arabus, which has broken up a little bit more. So it's a little more exposed to the elements. Now, you mentioned a bit before that the captain's cabin, which you saw on the arabis, Franklin's cabin, was maybe not quite intact.

But what about the captain's cabin on the terror then, the one that would have belonged to Captain Crozier? We were able to capture some quite remarkable interior video of terror in 2019. showing the preserved conditions inside Crozier's cabin on the terror. So we have an environment inside, which is where a lot of the furniture, a desk, other cabinetry is largely intact. The interior space is blanket in silt, so it has every appearance of being what we would term a preservation environment. We cannot, of course, be absolutely certain about the preservation of written material, papers and such on the other wreck.

But every indication is that it's a possibility and certainly something that we are mindful of. We plan to go back. It's our earnest wish to go back and to continue the archaeological work at the Arabis and terror as soon as we can. Westward from the Davis Street is there twas said. You've been living The sea root to the Orient for which so many died. You've been listening to

Reimagining the Northwest Passage. Guests in this episode include Nunavut politician Pamela Gras, Adjunct professor at Carlton University, Dr. Janice Cavill, writer Chris Gudgeon, and Parks Canada underwater

archaeologist Jonathan Moore. To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea. Special thanks to Ryan Harris, also with Parks Canada, and to Kelly Dexter and Eric Tesier at CBC, Ottawa. Greetings in this episode by Greg Kelly. This episode was produced by contributor Maynika Ramon Welms. the hand of Franklin. Technical production, Danielle Duval.

Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyed. And make a northwest passage to the sea. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.