Megatron looked pretty awake against the Giants the other night.
Posted on 09/10/2014 7:27:52 AM PDT by centurion316
One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago during a search for the fabled Northwest Passage has been found, Canada's prime minister announced Tuesday in a discovery that could unlock one of history's biggest mysteries and swell Canadian pride.
Last seen in the 1840s while under the command Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror have long been among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology and the subject of songs, poems and novels.
Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew.
Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men had set out in 1846 to find the Northwest Passage, the long-sought shortcut to Asia that supposedly ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of the harsh, ice-choked Arctic
Historians believe the ships were lost in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island, and the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety. Inuit lore tells of "white men who were starving" as late as the winter of 1850 on the Royal Geographical Society Island.
Dozens of searches by the British and Americans in the 1800s failed to locate the wrecks, and some of those expeditions ended in tragedy, too. But they opened up parts of the Canadian Arctic to discovery, and ultimately spied a Northwest Passage, though it proved inhospitable to shipping because of ice and treacherous weather.
Canada announced in 2008 that it would look for the ships, and Harper's government has poured millions into the venture, with the prime minister himself taking part in the search.
(Excerpt) Read more at mashable.com ...
Everything should be perfectly preserved (the fellow whose coffin was discovered 10 years or so ago was so well preserved he could have been identified in a lineup . . . ) and because the ships were abandoned in a hurry there should be many informative items on board.
An observation I can't help making is that Global Warming just isn't what it's cracked up to be . . .
This happened to many of the expeditions at that time. The US had a couple which were basically abandoned due to lack of funding.
I'm fascinate,. but have no time now
Alert Dirk Pitt!
ping
The full name of such a ship was “bomb ketch” and, as you said were dedicated naval bombardment vessels. I remember this from the “Horatio hornblower” novels.
CC
The bomb ketch was so named for its rigging. It was ketch rigged with two masts. The Franklin Expedition vessels were ship rigged, three masts. They also were fitted with two mortar wells, each mounting either a 10 inch or 13 inch mortar. Bomb ketches had but one mortar well, usually mounting two smaller mortars. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, most bomb ketches had disappeared in favor of bombs.
Better be careful they don’t wake up Megatron.
Megatron looked pretty awake against the Giants the other night.
Sorry, I don’t watch football so I don’t get it... ;)
CC
Holy freeping cow!!
If you haven’t read The Terror by Dan Simmons, I definitely recommend it.
Note: this topic is from 9/10/2014. Thanks centurion316.
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