Team finds ship missing in Arctic for over 150 years

A British ship that had been missing in Canada's Arctic waters for over 150 years was found in just 15 minutes by a team of Canadian archaeologists.

A nine-member Parks Canada team discovered the wreck of HMS Investigator on Sunday when ice cleared temporarily on Mercy Bay.

The Investigator, under the command of Capt. Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, had been dispatched from Britain in January 1850 on a mission to rescue an earlier expedition led by Sir John Franklin, which had gone missing after setting sail from Britain five years earlier.

Like Franklin's earlier mission, the 122-ton Investigator became stuck in the ice and the crew was forced to abandon it after two years -- though the expedition was later miraculously rescued.

Parks Canada's chief of underwater archaeology Marc-Andre Bernier told reporters on Wednesday that the Parks Canada team landed on the shores of Mercy Bay on July 22, a remote site in what is now Aulavik National Park on Banks Island to begin their search for the Investigator.

They set up camp near a supply cache that had been set up by the Investigator's crew when the ship became stuck.

Mercy Bay -- so named by McClure -- is often covered in ice, sometimes all year round, adding to the difficulty of the search. When the Parks Canada team arrived on July 22 the bay was iced-over, Bernier said.

But on Sunday night a brief window opened when the ice cleared, and the team quickly got to work.

"They started the search using side-scan sonar which to simplify is a tool we tow, a torpedo-shaped piece of equipment we tow behind the vessel which sends a sonar signal and creates a picture of the bottom," Bernier said in a Wednesday conference call with reporters.

"We had an opening, the lead archaeologist Ryan Harris and his team were on the boat with the fish in the water, the side-scan in the water, and according to what he said after 15 minutes they had an image of the wreck."

Arctic waters preserved wreck

The wreck, which appears to be in reasonably good condition, was found in about 11 metres of water, and parts of it were actually visible from the surface when conditions were calm and the light was right, Bernier said.

He said the Investigator appears to be sitting upright on the bottom. The rigging is no longer standing, likely taken out by the ice, but traces of it appear to be present on the ship's deck.

"Once the ship was located a few more images were taken to try and get a better picture and then unfortunately the ice came back and it was impossible to do anything until yesterday afternoon," Bernier said.

The team hopes to soon have an opportunity to send down a remote operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with a camera, in order to get a better look at the wreck.

He said the ship has barely moved from the place it is believed to have been abandoned, contrary to early Inuvialuit reports that the ice had carried the vessel out to sea.

Brian Payton, the author of an authoritative book on the Investigator's final voyage, called the shipwreck "a wonderful relic of the Arctic past and of Canada's past."

"They were our first eyes on this Arctic environment that we're about to lose," he said.

Three grave sites discovered

Bernier said the team intends to continue to gather information, and piece together a more complete history of the ship and its crew.

The team also found what it believes are graves belonging to three of the members of the Investigator's crew, who did not survive the ordeal.

The Investigator's story is particularly important, Bernier said, because McClure was credited with discovering the final leg of the Northwest Passage.

The cache left by the crew also had a significant cultural impact on the native population, a generation of whom continued to visit the site in search of copper, iron and other materials.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice visited the site of the archaeological find, which he said represented "a story of the history of our country."

Another trip is planned later in August to locate Franklin's two lost ships, HMS Terror and Erebus -- both of which have been deemed National Historic sites -- off the coast of Nunavut.

With a report from CTV's Scott Laurie