Canada Ping!
Posted on 09/09/2012 2:29:34 PM PDT by Squawk 8888
Archeologists involved in the hunt for the wreckage of the Franklin Expedition in Canada’s Arctic have discovered human remains they believe are from a member of the doomed crew.
Despite bad weather that has hampered some of their plans, the journey has been a productive one so far, says the chief of underwater archaeology for Parks Canada, and it should get even better with the addition of an automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria.
“Work is going well… (but) we haven’t found the ships yet,” Marc-Andre Bernier said in a telephone interview after leaving the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier last week.
What they have found in a search on land are more artifacts from the ill-fated expedition. At Erebus Bay, where at least a dozen members of the Franklin crew are known to have died, more human remains have been recovered.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Canada Ping!
I’m looking to buy any commercial movie about the original expedition. Can anyone point me to a source?
This deal was a totally doomed suicide mission from hell from the get-go. They must have been motivated by greed; otherwise what could they have been thinking?
I was assigned to the UN in Egypt a bunch of years ago and my commanding officer was a Canadian Lieutenant Colonel and he was a fine, even-tempered guy to work with. The only really weird thing was his unshakeable belief that the US was planning to invade Canada. At first I thought he was kidding but he wasn't. I told him that as far as I knew, we gave up after 1812 and lately we had better things to do, eh?
No matter what reasoning I applied, he would get more and more insistent that we had plans to head North and start stealing snow, any day. I finally ended his fevered rantings by telling that we didn't have any intentions of seizing Cnaada because "then we'd be stuck with Quebec". That shut him up.
Well, in a way it was motivated by greed; that is, trade routes to Asia. The search for a “North West Passage” (and other routes to Asia) was in part motivated by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 since the trade fees charged by the Turks became exorbitant. Also, the Pope divided the world up between Spain and Portugal (Treaty of Tordesillas (sp?)) and kind of left England and the Dutch out. A couple of good histories:
“The Arctic Grail”, Pierre Berton
“The Search for the North West Passage”, Ann Savours.
Second Vote for Arctic Grail. Best book I’ve read about Franklin.
It was more than greed. It was British Pride. They HAD to be first. Same reason Scott went off like he did.
The money offered by the Royal Society wasn’t bad either.
Funny, funny, funny..
But you guys are still stuck with Quebec..
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