Globe Now: The Franklin ship, its artifacts and how it will shape Canada’s future narrative

a historic discovery but is the mystery of the Franklin expedition solved we look at how the search continues and what comes next also the technology that is driving the underwater search I'm a faun jewelry welcome to globe now there were two ships and for nearly a hundred and seventy years the fate of the Franklin expedition has been a mystery until now that's one of the ships you can see there but still lots of questions remain to help us answer them is John Geiger he is the CEO of the Royal Canadian geographical society which brought together private and nonprofit partners to help in the hunt welcome John thank you and congratulations thank you so much looking at this footage what tells you that this is one of the Franklin ships well I mean it's size shape all the characteristics you know we have the deck plans the plans for the ship so you know there's no question that it's it's a Royal Navy vessel of that vintage the question is which of the Franklin Exhibition ships is it and that's a question that is yet to be answered they're very similar but there are distinguishing characteristics so in the next week I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to determine whether it's Erebus or Terror I mean walk me through the steps in terms of what happens next for this particular ship well what happens next is within 48 hours from now the divers are back on we've got a team of divers will be on on this sir wilfrid laurier Canyon Coast Guard ship and they will be returning to the site of the find and if the weather is cooperating they will actually dive on the ship it's actually an incredibly shallow water it's only about 11 meters deep so you know this is an easy dive for them there they're capable of doing it working under much greater depths than that so no not to say everybody's in the Arctic but but certainly this is a ship that they can reach and and document and they'll have you know cameras with them what do you expect to find on this ship well it's hard to say but I think what we're we are gonna find her a lot of artifacts of great historical interest related to the Franklin exhibition obviously they the ship hull is largely intact and so you know the contents of that ship are likely to be largely present the Inuit we know likely visited the ship and room moved materials from it so so certainly not everything is there but I think that you're gonna see an astonishing array of artifacts collected and and some of these will help shed some you know some light on the final months weeks and days of the expedition we're talking about one chip but there's a second chip and I wonder the likelihood of finding that second ship well so you got an awfully long time to find this one you know the searches began in the in 1848 and and here we are today finally we have a ship so you know it may not happen overnight on the other hand you know we threw a lot of resources at this this search this summer as you mentioned the rockin a geographical society they'll be of garfield' Weston foundation when ocean expeditions shell Canada Arctic research foundation joining parks and thirteen other agencies the federal government and the government of nunavut so it's a huge huge undertaking and you know there were four platforms or ships involved in searches in smaller vessels so you know there was a lot of capability up there I was feeling pretty confident going into the field season that we you know that would have some success this year although there's no guarantees and the other ship could well be very distant from this one I wonder what was the most important factor that made 2014 the breakthrough year I think it just is a capability that we had up there you know we had a lot of resources we had it to a you v's you know for ships smaller launches so there was a lot of capability a lot of sonars going and a lot of coverage and just more coverage than we've seen in any of the previous years but there's been lots of reaction and I want to share one from a global reader this is from Lisa Delorme when will the government quit wasting money on things that really don't benefit this country what do you say to people like that well I say she's wrong in terms of her facts the the government hasn't spent actually very much money on this relatively speaking the much of the funding was it came from our private partners supporters like the W Garfield Weston Foundation and Arctic Research Foundation was Jim Bell sillies and Tim McDonald's operations so so a lot of it was outside funding the the presence of the sir wilfrid laurier and and you know the government capability that was there there there anyway they're they're doing the the usual work of you know and monitoring traffic through the ice and so forth so they're you know the costs are remarkably low for the for the government this is not at at you know a tax boondoggle roughly what are we talking about I think for on the government side it's a couple hundred thousand dollars and when you think about the per year yes exams if it's well yeah probably for this I mean I don't really know I don't have it cause I'm but I would ballpark it with that so and when you look at that and look at the you know the benefits of find of this kind to help us understand our history help us to understand why Canada exercises sovereignty over the Arctic you know its willfully blind to ignore the importance of the Arctic to Canada into our future and surely it's important for Canadians to understand how we came about owning that part of the world well it's interesting you should say that because you know this is very much part of our history but it's also about our future and this is a government that will argue that you know this find this ship represents Canada's moral authority in the Arctic when it comes to the sovereignty issue do you think that should be the legacy and the Franklin expedition well I think the legacy of the brown exhibition you're right in part it is to assert the presence of Canada in the Arctic I mean we we are inheritors of this golden era of British exploration but I think this the current government has been very wise to pay attention to the North it there there's tremendous economic you know future in the north there's there's a lot of resources there's a lot of activity up there and so I think that you know it would be foolhardy to to ignore it there's been a sort of you know we as Canadians have this love of the idea of the north where northern people you know we love hockey and we you know we define ourselves by the north but in fact and many Canadians haven't experienced the true north which is the Arctic the Canadian Arctic and so this I think brings the Arctic closer to to you know many many people and they can begin to relate to that part of the world but you want people to get excited about this find you want people get excited about Canadian history and there is a political element and agenda to this early wandering and sometimes that gets in the way of generating that excitement cuz people are wondering you know what is the political agenda here I you know I there's always cynicism I mean I I you know I've spoke to the Prime Minister about this his interest in this is absolutely sincere you know he's a student of the north he loves that part of the country he travels as you know extensively more than any Canadian political leader has in our history and is that a bad thing is it a bad thing to have political leadership that is interested in a part of the country that represents very much the economic future and in some respects the cultural future of our country I don't think so you have a passion you know for the Franklin expedition you've cool written a book about the expedition describe that moment when you realized that's it you know I was euphoric obviously I was extremely excited very happy you know there was a toast proposed very shortly thereafter but I was also you know haunted by it a little bit as I've always been by the exhibition by the fact that 129 men died and you know when we were there you know I had the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with me and I cited a prayer for those lost at sea as well I had a few moments to reflect on the fact that there may well be human remains on that ship and there are many of the many of the members of the expedition have never been found so you know it's a really mixed emotions great excitement I think this is a great moment for Canada but I also think we need to remember what we're talking about here we're talking about a terrible disaster that's unprecedented really an exploration history thank you so much John thank you well we want to hear from you Prime Minister Harper has called the discovery of one of the Franklin ships a historic moment for Canada what does it mean to you tweet us a globe now staying with the story of the Franklin expedition ships technology has played a massive role and that includes underwater technology which looks a lot like a mini submarine it's being used to map the ocean floor and a search for clues the company behind it is based in st. John's we caught up with a team member here in Toronto as he was returning from the Arctic to Newfoundland and Labrador my name is Dave Shea and I'm the engineering manager with Kraken sonar systems there were two systems a toad sonar on board one of the Parks Canada vessels and a autonomous underwater vehicle that we were using with our sonar system the sonar the side scan sonar that they're using as a side looking sonar system that they tow through the water so as the vehicle is moving along it's sending out pings sideways and producing these little slices of imagery on the seabed and they recombine all those slices together to produce an image of the seabed a whole bunch of those pings are added together to produce that large image Parks Canada has been looking for these wrecks for a number of years now and this year is probably the largest effort they've ever made the survey area that we were looking for was over 1200 square kilometers which is larger than all the other years surveyed combined so it's taken them but the better part of the year to get a coordinate all these different parties with the technology that Parks Canada is using currently it's a typical side-scan sonar system they're very lucky to have been operating in the right area and been able to locate those cracks that's all for today's show if you've got a moment hop onto Twitter does the discovery of one of the Franklin expedition ships give Canada moral authority in the Arctic tweet us at globe now I'm Afonso 3 thanks for watching

Channel: The Globe and Mail

Views: 21,462

Keywords: Artifact, Canada, History

Id: L1gQB896vgI

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 12 2014