HMS Investigator was a merchant ship purchased in 1848 to search for Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition. She made two voyages to the Arctic and had to be abandoned in 1853, after becoming trapped in the pack ice.
She was strengthened for Arctic service by William M. Rice, master shipwright of Woolwich Dockyard. She was extensively strengthened with timber—teak, English oak, Canadian elm—and 5⁄16in (8mm) steel plating. Ten pairs of wrought iron diagonal riders were set in the hold, with ten pairs of diagonal plates on the sides of the vessel between decks.
To cope with snow and ice loads, the upper decks were doubled with 3in (76mm)fir planking. Preston's Patent Ventilating Illuminators were installed to improve light and ventilation. Charles Sylvester's warming apparatus, a modern stove system capable of warming the entire ship, was also employed with good results.[3] The same or similar device had been used by William Edward Parry in 1821, to prevent condensation and aerate the lowest deck.
Career
HMSEnterprise and HMS Investigator (right), by Lieutenant W.H. Browne
In 1848, she accompanied HMSEnterprise on James Clark Ross's expedition to find Franklin's lost expedition. Also aboard Investigator on this expedition was naturalist Edward Adams. On their return journey she was commanded by Robert McClure,[4] but the ship became trapped in the pack ice at Mercy Bay adjoining Banks Island. The decision was eventually taken to abandon her on 3June 1853, after she had been stuck for nearly three years.[2]
The following year, she was inspected by crews of HMSResolute, still frozen in, and reported to be in generally fair condition despite having taken on some water during the summer thaw.
Unlike the loss of Erebus and Terror, the events surrounding Investigator's abandonment are not a mystery. McClure provided an official account of the journey, and the ship's surgeon, Alexander Armstrong, published an unofficial account in 1857.[5] However, the exact location of her wreckage remained unknown for over 150years because of difficulties in reaching the area, which is extremely inhospitable and frequently iced over.[6]
Legacy
Invalids are evacuated from HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay, by Samuel Gurney Cresswell, the ship's artist, who commanded the sledge party depicted.
Oral traditions of the Inuit tell stories of the ship. The abandoned ship was a source of copper and iron for the indigenous people in the area; metal nails were missing from smaller boats on the shore when they were discovered.[6] One Inuit account from 1910 noted that "one year she had still been on the beach and the next year she was gone without a trace."[7] When Canadian anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson reached Mercy Bay during his 1915 voyage to the Arctic, he failed to find her remains.
After meeting the Inuit who made pilgrimages to the wreckage, he suggested a link between the Investigator's stranding and the absence of muskoxen on Banks Island. He speculated that the Inuit had killed off the animals for food during their journeys to and from the wreckage over the 40years since abandonment. The muskoxen have since repopulated the island and now number nearly 50,000.[8]
Discovery of wreck
In July 2010, a team of Parks Canada scientists, archaeologists, and surveyors began searching for the sunken wreck of the Investigator in Mercy Bay at the northern tip of Aulavik National Park. It was the first expedition to specifically search for the ship.[9][10] The team arrived on Banks Island in the Beaufort Sea on 22 July and began a sonar scan of the area three days later, based on the original Royal Navy records of the position of the ship when it was abandoned.[6][11] Its remains were quickly discovered, 150m (490ft) off the north shore of Banks Island, with the deck of the ship about 8m (26ft) below the surface.
According to a superintendent with Parks Canada, the ship was found "sitting upright in silt; the three masts have been removed, probably by ice."[12] Her hull lies partially buried in silt and the cold Arctic water has prevented the outer deck from deteriorating quickly. There are no plans to raise the ship's remains, although the team did send a remotely operated underwater vehicle to take photos and assess the wreckage.[6]
Payton, B. (2009). The ice passage: a true story of ambition, disaster, and endurance in the Arctic wilderness. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. ISBN9780385665322.
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages, Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters.
Banks Island is one of the larger members of the Arctic Archipelago. Situated in the Inuvik Region, and part of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, of the Northwest Territories, it is separated from Victoria Island to its east by the Prince of Wales Strait and from the mainland by Amundsen Gulf to its south. The Beaufort Sea lies to its west, and to its northeast M'Clure Strait separates the island from Prince Patrick Island and Melville Island.
HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales, in 1826. The vessel was the second in the Royal Navy named after Erebus, the personification of darkness in Greek mythology.
HMS Resolute was a mid-19th-century barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy, specially outfitted for Arctic exploration. Resolute became trapped in the ice and was abandoned in 1854. Recovered by an American whaler, she was returned to Queen Victoria in 1856. Timbers from the ship were later used to construct the Resolute desk which was presented to the President of the United States and is located in the White House Oval Office.
The last voyage of the Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–16, ended with the loss of the ship in the Arctic seas, and the subsequent deaths of nearly half her complement of 25. In August 1913, Karluk, a brigantine formerly used as a whaler, became trapped in the ice while sailing to a rendezvous point at Herschel Island. After a long drift across the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, in January 1914 the ship was crushed and sunk. In the ensuing months, the crew and expedition staff struggled to survive, first on the ice and later on the shores of Wrangel Island. In all, eleven men died before rescue. The Canadian Arctic Expedition was organised under the leadership of Canadian anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and had both scientific and geographic purposes. Shortly after Karluk was trapped, Stefansson and a small party left the ship, stating that they intended to hunt for caribou. However, the ice carried Karluk westwards, far from the hunting party who found it impossible to return to the ship. Stefansson reached land and then devoted himself to the expedition's scientific objectives, leaving the crew and staff on board the ship under the charge of its captain, Robert Bartlett. After the sinking, Bartlett organised a march across the ice to Wrangel Island, 80 miles (130 km) away. Conditions were difficult and dangerous; two four-man parties were lost before the island was reached.
Vice-Admiral Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure was an Irish explorer of Scots descent who explored the Arctic. In 1854 he traversed the Northwest Passage by boat and sledge, and was the first to circumnavigate the Americas.
Sir Alexander Armstrong was an Irish naval surgeon, explorer, naturalist and author. After obtaining a medical degree he joined the Royal Navy and was stationed on board HMS Investigator, tasked with finding the lost expedition of explorer Sir John Franklin. Investigator was trapped in the ice at Mercy Bay in 1851 and Armstrong spent several winters in the Arctic before he returned to London.
Aulavik National Park ; from the Inuvialuktun for "place where people travel") is a national park located on Banks Island in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is known for its access to the Thomsen River, one of the most northerly navigable rivers in North America. The park is a fly-in park, and protects approximately 12,274 square kilometres (4,739 sq mi) of Arctic Lowlands at the northern end of the island. The most practical way to visit the park is to charter a plane, and currently the park has four landing sites. Aulavik is considered a polar desert and often experiences high winds. Precipitation for the park is approximately 300 mm (12 in) per year. In the southern regions of the park a sparsely vegetated upland plateau reaches a height of 450 m (1,480 ft) above sea level.
HMS Terror was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry. She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with HMS Erebus.
Sachs Harbour is a hamlet located in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. Situated on the southwestern coast of Banks Island in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, the population according to the 2021 census count was 104 people. Sachs Harbour is the only permanent settlement on Banks Island.
Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was an Irish officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who participated in six expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. In May 1845, he was second-in-command to Sir John Franklin and captain of HMS Terror during the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
Admiral Sir Richard Collinson was an English naval officer and explorer of the Northwest Passage.
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point Franklin and nearly two dozen others had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.
Copper Inuit, also known as Kitlinermiut and Inuinnait, are a Canadian Inuit group who live north of the tree line, in what is now the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut and in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories. Most of them historically lived in the area around Coronation Gulf, on Victoria Island, and southern Banks Island.
Mercy Bay is a Canadian Arctic waterway in the Northwest Territories. It is a southern arm of M'Clure Strait on northeast Banks Island. The mouth of Castel Bay is less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the west. These bays are a part of Aulavik National Park.
Nelson Head is a Canadian Arctic hypsographic cape in the Northwest Territories. The most southerly point of Banks Island, it protrudes into the Amundsen Gulf.
Karluk was an American-built brigantine which, after many years' service as a whaler, was acquired by the Canadian government in 1913 to act as flagship to the Canadian Arctic Expedition. While on her way to the expedition's rendezvous at Herschel Island, Karluk became trapped in the Arctic pack ice and, after drifting for several months, was crushed and sank in January 1914. Of the 25 aboard, eleven died, either during the attempts to reach land by marching over the ice, or after arrival at the temporary refuge of Wrangel Island.
The McClure Arctic expedition of 1850, among numerous British search efforts to determine the fate of the Franklin's lost expedition, is distinguished as the voyage during which the Irish explorer Robert McClure became the first person to confirm and transit the Northwest Passage by a combination of sea travel and sledging.
Samuel Gurney Cresswell, was a Royal Navy officer. He was technically the first naval officer to cross the entire Northwest Passage. Robert McClure was in charge of the expedition but Cresswell reached England first.
Terror Bay is an Arctic waterway in the Kitikmeot Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the south western side of King William Island. The entrance to the bay is marked by Fitzjames Island on the west and Irving Islands to the east. The Bay opens to Queen Maud Gulf.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
United Kingdom
