*Pic: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, as they appeared in Illustrated London News
One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found, Canada’s prime minister says.
Stephen Harper said it was unclear which ship had been found, but photo evidence confirmed it was one of them.
Sir John Franklin [a former Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania); and husband of Lady Jane] led the two ships and 129 men in 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic.
The expedition’s disappearance shortly after became one of the great mysteries of the age of Victorian exploration.
The Canadian government began searching for Franklin’s ships in 2008 as part of a strategy to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which has recently become accessible to shipping because of melting Arctic ice.
Expedition sonar images from the waters of Victoria Strait, just off King William Island, clearly show the wreckage of a ship on the ocean floor.
1836: Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)
Franklin was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land in 1836, but was removed from office in 1843. He did not endear himself with the local civil servants, who particularly disliked his humane ideals and his attempts to reform the Tasmanian penal colony. His wife, Jane, was quite liberated for a woman of her day, known for “roughing it” to the extent that an expedition had to be mounted after she and Franklin were delayed in their crossing of Tasmanian south-west wilderness. Such exploits further distanced the couple from “proper” society, and may have contributed to Franklin’s recall. Nevertheless, he was popular among the people of Tasmania.
He is remembered by a significant landmark in the centre of Hobart—a statue of him dominates the park known as Franklin Square, which was the site of the original Government House. On the plinth below the statue appears Tennyson’s epitaph:
Not here! The white north hath thy bones and thou
Heroic sailor soul
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole
His wife worked to set up a university, which was eventually established in 1890, a museum, credited to the Royal Society of Tasmanian in 1843 under the leadership of her husband. Lady Franklin may have worked to have the Lieutenant-Governor’s private botanical gardens, established in 1818, managed as a public resource. Lady Franklin also established a glyptotek and surrounding lands to support it near Hobart; it was her intent to civilise the colony. The village of Franklin, on the Huon River, is named in his honour, as is the Franklin River on the West Coast of Tasmania, one of the better known Tasmanian rivers due to the Franklin Dam controversy.[7][8]
