natural treatment for the disease scurvy

>> from the library ofcongress in washington, d.c. >> jennifer harbster: so, goodmorning and good afternoon. this is always thetime where it's both. i'm jennifer harbster. i'm a reference and researchspecialist here at the library of congress with the science,technology and business division. i'd like to welcome youguys to today's program, discovering the north-west passage,the four-year arctic odyssey of the h.m.s. investigatorand the mcclure expedition .

as i said before, we have alot in store for you today. author, glen stein, will betalking about his recent book, which i'd like to note has beenplaced in the royal library of her majesty, queenelizabeth ii at windsor castle. we also have a special presentation by parks canada senior underwaterarchaeologist, ryan harris, who dove on the wreckof the hms investigator. we have extended the timetoday for this program to allow these two speakers, alsoa question and answer period,

which will be after each speaker. glenn will start first and thenwe'll have a question/answer period that we need to limit toabout maybe 10 minutes or so, and then ryan will speak andthen we'll have a question and answer period after that. and then, following all of that,we're going to have a book signing. so to keep us on track,i really need to keep this introduction short,but i want to let you know about our speakers a little bit.

so it is definitelymy great pleasure to introduce our speakertoday, glenn marty stein, who has been researchingand writing about maritime and polar history since 1975. he is a fellow of the geography-- the royal geographical society. he's a life member of theamerican polar society, a member of the orders andmedals research society and lifesaving awardsresearch society. so in 2006, stein began to doin depth research for this book

and he published a two part article,the voyage of hms investigator 1850 to '54, which was awarded the orders and medals research societyjournal prize in 2008, '09. this is not glenn's first visitto the library of congress. in february of 2013, glenn was aco-presenter for a program by -- a program called, by endurance weconquer, shackleton and lessons of leadership from the imperialtrans-arctic centenary expedition. glenn is also a formaleditorial cartoonist for the newspaper la prensa.

and the library recently acquiredsome of his drawings to add to our amazing cartoonand caricature collection. so anchors away and joinme in welcoming back, author and historian, glennstein to the library of congress. [ applause ] >> glenn stein: well, thankyou very much, jennifer. i appreciate that introduction. and also too, i want to makea little announcement here about the room we'rein because it --

it somewhat has a connection towhat i'm going to talk about. we of course, are in the mumfordroom and one of the investigators on the expedition wasnamed james nelson. and in the arctic, hebecame quite friendly with a gentleman namedwilliam mumford, who was on -- on one of the rescue shipscalled h.m.s. resolute. so they actually stayed friends after they came homefrom the arctic. so there's a little bitof serendipity there.

but thank you to the library ofcongress and to everyone involved with this production today. i appreciate the welcome very much. and of course, to ryan harrisfor so graciously coming down and presenting with me today. and i also want to mention thetremendous support i received for many years now inresearching and producing the book from my editor, layla milholenand everyone at mcfarland books. i also wanted to thank you forbeing here today and also, my wife,

marsha, for her kind supportall throughout these years. and also have mentionedthat our twin daughters, aliyah and rebeccawould be here today, except their college studiestrumped even dad's book launch. that's okay, that's okay, i --i can appreciate that and -- and i respect them for that. there's also a coupleanniversaries of sorts that i would like to mention. i have a slight connectionwith exploration myself.

in fact, 26 years ago this monthwhen i was working at cape kennedy, i used to work in securityout there. i supported my first space mission and it was the galileospacecraft that went to jupiter. so at that time, theylaunched the spacecraft and it took six years beforeit reached the planet. so there's a connection therebetween the length of time and the days of oldexploration and space travel. there's also anotheranniversary of sorts today,

it was 20 years ago this monthwhen fellow polar historian, a.g.e. jones wrote to me and putit -- things in perspective here. jones and i have becomevery friendly and corresponded quite a bit. and he wrote to me once that hehad seen charles lindberg land in croydon, england in 1927. so, jones had been at it alittle bit longer than i had and in the last letterof the line -- last line of the letter that hewrote to me on this occasion,

he wrote, "carry on wondering asthat is the way to get to the bottom of a story that everybodyhas taken for granted." i've always remembered that. four years after this time, i was ata convention in san jose, california and i had seen a womannamed diana birch, who i had never personally met, butwe had corresponded over the years and i went up and introduced myself. well, as my name left my lips sheshouted, "oh, you're the polar man." and this is the kind of responsei often receive from people.

in part, because i'm anative floridian, so -- so nobody ever puts thattogether, they never quite expect that when i tell them i --i research polar history. they -- they look at me ratherstrangely and i have to explain it. and then afterwards, i actually cameacross a man named john tamplin, who is medal -- was a medalcollector and researcher himself, who i again, had nevermet face-to-face, but we had correspondedquite a bit over the years. at this time, john was in his early70's and i was 36 years of age.

and i when i introduced myself,this huge grin swept across his face and he took me by myshoulders and shook me and exclaimed how wonderfulit was to meet me. and i found out later that johnwas shocked at my youth for someone who was interested inpolar exploration and -- and had the knowledge thati had acquired at that time. he just couldn't believethat i was that young. so this is -- the experiencesi've had on occasion from people that i've run across overthe now almost 41 years

that i've been doing research. what i'm going to do to start offwith is i'm going to read part of the preface from my book, discovering the north-westpassage . it gives you something of a --of a overview of what i had hoped to achieve when i startedthe book and of course, what i did eventuallyi hope achieve. the story that follows is true. this is a balanced account

of the human story behind thefour-year arctic odyssey of the men of her majesty's shipinvestigator, during their search for the missing franklin expeditionin the north-west passage. through an unfiltered lens, i havegone to great lengths to understand and accurately depictthe events and the people in which they were involved. on april 11, 1970, i stood inamazement on a florida beach, gazing upon apollo 13 asshe hurdled to the moon. two days later, hundreds of humanand computerized minds melded

in a race to save threeexplorers trapped within the frigid void of space. to the victorian mind,the arctic was the moon. like outer space, the polarregions offer life and death. and the difference betweenthem hangs by a thread. exploration has always beenas much about, if not more, the human species'struggle with itself as its struggle withthe natural world. with the investigators, i focusedon seeking out possibilities

and then finding answers. in the following pagesunderstanding emerges through the carefulpeeling away of layers of reality these menconfronted during the expedition. as i immersed myself inthe journals, documents, and letters of the investigators andother polar explorers of the period, their words washed over me. i delved into naval customs,ship construction, oceanography, ice navigation and the effectsof extreme cold and starvation

on the human body, anythingthat allowed me to inch closer to their 19th century world. at the same time, i strived tounderstand the indigenous peoples with whom the sailors andmarines came into contact and obtaining a sense of theirculture and in particular, their relationship with europeans. what i'd like to do is give you anoverview of how this book evolved and some of the highlights, some ofthe things that i actually was able to discover during my research andvery much focus on the word evolve

because the book did changeas i wrote it and grew. and i was very, very pleasedwith the result in that regard because i was able, i think, tobring out even a richer story than i had intended to or foresaw. and perhaps there's no betterway to begin than the end. after the book was finishedand it went to press, i remarked to my wife one night, "ifi never write another word again, it will have been worth it." and a word about writing, ithink is very appropriate here.

i often tell people that the -- thething that really should be kept in mind is that i spend a lot moretime thinking about what i'm going to write than actually writing. so -- so that has really remaineduppermost in the whole process. and this along with theself editing that i did through the whole process meant that there was a tremendoustimesaving in the long run. another example is, i built mybibliography as i went along, so i had a quick referencemyself and i was able

to actually make correctionsin it at the end because i had already built a fullbibliography instead of trying to create one at that time. from the beginning, i was veryconcerned about getting it right and preserving the memoriesof the investigators, that was extremely important to me. i've been in contact with a lotof descendents of the expedition and i certainly did notwant to write things that were not trueabout these people.

and one of the things that i did wasi wrote a letter to the historian, david mccullough andexpressed my concern. and he was very gracious in writingback that in part, "what a fine and engaging letter from you. thank you very much for your goodspirits and understanding of what's at stake in writing a book. gives me a great lift." so from that, i thought, well, i'mprobably on the right track here. i probably -- i'm probablyheading the right direction.

so, one of the things thatreally impressed me in going into this was -- or made animpression on me i should say, is how i needed to make the writingand the experience for the reader as authentic as possible. and in a way, what i wanted to do was use the investigatorswords as much as possible. and i found a lot of unpublishedmaterial that was out there and fortunately, i wasable to really go through and juxtapose all the publishedand unpublished material

and hopefully come up witha really authentic idea of what occurred inmany circumstances. these are typical sailorsof the time period, although there was nobody as youngas the boy you see right here. let's see here -- rightthere, that's a boy, small boy who was not uncommonduring victorian days aboard ship. they could be as youngas nine or ten years old. but these other sailors reallyrepresent very typical sailors of the period.

also, these are royal marines fromthe same time period and again, very, very typical of who youwould see except for again -- whoops, sorry about that, the drummer boy righthere -- the drummer boy. now in order to dowhat i set out to do and really present anauthentic narrative, i needed to create an infrastructure and i knew this rightfrom the very beginning. and by that, i assembled a wholehost of folders in my computer,

anything from the franklinsearch expeditions all the way through to something like specialized medical informationrelated to the polar regions. so i set everything upand i was able to easy -- easily juxtapose all thisinformation and move forward in my writing and explain things, hopefully in a veryclear way to the reader. also too, i knew illustrations weregoing to be extremely important, so i began gathering as manyillustration as i could related

to arctic scenes, ships tovarious people, anything i could which i felt was goingto be important. and i figured that the bestthing to do was to infuse these in the text relative tothe subject matter at hand, so the reader would see the subjectmatter that i was writing about or was being writtenabout and relate to it. also too, i wanted to bringpeople as close as i could to the investigators themselves andthis meant displaying and writing about particular artifacts, thevery, very personal artifacts

like -- whoops, this one here, okay. this is a naval generalservice medal, which was given to private first class,george parfitt. he was one of the eight royalmarines who was board investigator and the medal was given tohim only in the months prior to leaving for the expedition. now, the marines in particularwere required to wear these medals on formal occasions and sincethe ship was going to be away for several years, every reason tobelieve that medal was with parfitt

through the entire voyage and wentthrough the north-west passage. i also set about to createindividual biographies of all 66 men onboard. and in this regard, a lot ofthings came to the surface. one of the things that came tothe surface is that over 39 -- sorry, 39 men over -- outof the 66 who were onboard, actually had served together in thenine years prior to the expedition. this meant that there was a certainunity among the crew before the expedition ever began andthat was very, very important

for the cohesiveness of the ship. in assembling the biographies,i also investigated the ships that the men had served onbefore and after the expedition. i created physical profiles forthem and i even compared them by the counties fromwhich they were born. as you can see, many of the -- many of the men actually came from the southern countiesof england here. now this only represents england andwales, there were people represented

from ireland as well, and scotland. two of the men actuallystood out in particular because they were men of color. they were of african descent. one of them was born in england,the other claimed to have been born in british north america ortoday as we know, canada. i looked into him much more closelyand i was able to actually come up with a good bit ofcircumstantial evidence, very strong circumstantial evidencethat he wasn't canadian at all,

he was a runaway american slave, orat the very least, his parents were. and again, there was a lotof circumstantial evidence that pointed to this fact. so, i was very, very pleased with-- with that because it's very hard to actually come acrossthat sort of individual and that sort of information. certainly a lot of men of colorserved in the royal navy for -- for many years throughout the years,but to find that sort of information and connect it to a particularindividual and a particular place

and time is very difficult. now, the driving force behind theship was of course, the captain, robert john le mesurier mcclure. there were portions of hischaracter that can be explained in different ways and -- letme get to him, there we go. and what is so important aboutmcclure is the more i looked into his family records -- and therewere quite a few different family records from differentpeople throughout the years, the more contradictionsi ran across.

so, i really had to-- to work those out, i had to find out whatwas true and what was not. and some of these things were --were innocent things, things to -- just mistakes of years, mistakesof locations and things like that. but it's very difficult with mcclure because his father diedbefore he was even born. he died when he wasserving in egypt, in the early part ofthe napoleonic wars. so it -- it was very difficult tocome across some information in part

because of that, but also becausehis mother was a wife, a mother and a widow all within a year. so she went through atremendous experience. the baby mcclure was actuallygiven up to his godfather to raise. now, this in and ofitself, was not unusual, but what was reallyinteresting was the fact that mcclure was the only childof that household for many, many years before his godparentshad children of their own. i think this had a big effect on him

because he wasn't thegolden child anymore. and his godfather was aformer army officer -- former general, and when mcclurerejected going into an army career and chose a naval career instead, he was behind the curveby several years. so he actually joined thenavy at a much later age in his youth than normal. so again, these thingshad a cumulative effect on mcclure gettingahead, making rank,

and progressing in a naval career. i'll read briefly from my bookand it will give you an idea about mcclure's navalenvironment and some of the things that had a direct impacton the expedition. "the post-napoleonic warnavy was spit and polish. and the naval officer prided himself in the keen ship handlingthroughout harnessing -- through harnessing the wind. mcclure was caught in the midstof this transition from sail

to steam propulsion thatbegan in fits and starts in the 1820's and 1830's. but the steam engine was aninefficient and unsightly thing. steam, whose grotesqueand clumsy engines, whose monstrous smokestacksthere belched from -- belched forth the smuts,the constant traded mess from the combustion of filthy,newcastle coal and the smell -- first smell in contaminationof oil." so, steam was seen as an uglything, something to be [inaudible].

and that was the environmentthat mcclure knew. it wasn't just mcclure whowas affected, there were many, many other people, includingone of his commanding officers, who impressed this uponmcclure quite heavily. his name was john ross. the way this played into the storywas mcclure had a bitter conflict from the very start withhis second in command, lieutenant william h. haswell. again, from my book.

"while mcclure's crewmen werebounding through the renewal of old acquaintances,a grave fracture in his command was taking place, threatening the ship beforeshe ever left england. and the problem started at thetop, during the tow down river, lieutenant samuel creswell'spen painted an ugly scene for his parents. the captain continuesto be very civil to me, but poor haswell catchesit on every occasion.

yesterday the captain went onin a most foolish way with him, saying he should not be in thisship, that he was incompetent to be first lieutenant, that hewould write to i don't know whom. so why did mcclure insist onhumiliating his first lieutenant, a man who's support wouldbe crucial during the long and difficult voyage ahead bydeclaring haswell should not be in this ship and thathe was incompetent? to some degree, theanswer as wrapped up in haswell's previous postings,

the devastation andpenelope steamships. haswell had served in several --several sailing ships before this and had been successfully promoted,but he was now well on his way to becoming investigator'spersona non grata because of the stern warnings johnross has repeatedly given mcclure against ever taking anyone with abackground in steam propulsion." so this had a tremendouseffect on the structure of the expedition again,before it ever left england. one of the things that i was veryconcerned about in my writing was

to appeal to the broadestpossible audience. and when i say that, i'mtalking about anybody from the lay person allthe way to the scholar. so bridging that gap as you were, was going to be somethingof a challenge. and what it meant was i neededto make the text very readable and i also need to set the stage in the first two chaptersfor what lay ahead. what lay ahead was a tremendousamount of unpublished information

that was very detailedand as time went on, i realized there were certain thingsthat would never be understandable within that framework, so i hadto create indexes or indices in order to deal with them. one of these indices, for instance,was the primary sources indices and this was so important becausethere was a web of intrigue and unanswered questions amongthe journals that i had read from the captain, from theassistant surgeon peers, even from the carpenter ford.

there were a lot of thingsthat weren't adding up, a lot of missing parts,literally missing parts. let me give you an example. i was able to prove beyond a doubtthat mcclure kept two journals. so this is a multipartjournal and there was a copy. and what happened is throughtime as far as i know, there's only one volume ofthat journal in existence. the question comes, is that thecopy or is that the original? and this sort of thingactually reverberated

through the other journals as well, particularly the surgeon'sjournal, dr. armstrong. i also created an indexof notable sled journeys. and the reason i did this is because when you canattach a particular person to a particular place at aparticular time, you can track them and you can associate thosepeople with specific events or disassociate themwith other events. so i created an entire index so youcan go back and you can see who was

where and when they wereparticipating in various events. these sled journeys actuallycreated stories within themselves because you see certainpeople appear again and again. in other words, they werefavorites among the officers. this isn't unusual because there'sa certain connection that you get with someone when youspend days, weeks, months on the sleddingtrail with the same people. you get to know them,they get to know you, you get to trust them,they trust you.

and it also played intothe story very much because haswell being somebody whowas desperately hated by mcclure, was kept out of thepicture more and more. so he doesn't show up a lot of timesin the writings or he's referred to only slightly, sometimesnot even by name. several years ago, i began work ona two-part article about this award, the arctic medal, 1818, 1855. and i had intended to --to publish it eventually, but as i did the research forthe book, it became obvious

that this award isactually an integral part of the overall story, here's why. the reverse of themedal itself -- whoops. the reverse of the -- of theactual award here was designed by samuel creswell. and that was no mistake. creswell had been called toan audience of queen victoria and had done paintingsduring the expedition and she was very impressedwith them.

so he had an inn right there. the other thing is that hermajesty, queen victoria herself, since she was a princess, had agreat interest in exploration, particularly polar exploration. and she became convinced thatthe shape of the medal needed to be octagonal, not round likewar medals before and after it. so it stood out. she wanted something thatwas going to stand out, it was going to bedifferent and recognizable.

for that information, i'm verygrateful to the royal archives at windsor castle because i wasable to get special permission to actually access letters to and from queen victoriaon this very subject. now, for all this rich detailand explanations and there -- believe me, there's a lot more,there's so much that's new in regards to this expeditionthat i have in my book. i have to tell you, i'm actuallygoing through the book now and making my own notes because i-- i can't even keep up with it all,

so i want to have my ownnotes on some of this and where it actuallyfalls in the book and -- and that is an ongoing process. but for all this detail andall the richness of the story, it's important to step back andtake a look at the big picture and the big picture is this. there is no one route throughthe north-west passage, it's actually several routes. mcclure discovered two of them.

and through the years while theseguys were out there exploring, the ice conditions made it so that things could changetremendously year to year. in one year, an explorer may have alot of luck getting through the ice, a lot of ways to go through the ice, and another year, beentirely blocked. so you're really atthe mercy of nature. that's very important to remember. the other thing is, noone man can actually claim

to have found the north-westpassage. mcclure's experience has reallycapped 30 years of experiences of many other men whohad gone before him, most of them british explorers, infinding a way through the arctic. and during this time,these men relied very, very heavily on native peoplesfor guides and assistance. perhaps most importantly in thisregard, mcclure's experiences and those of his fellowinvestigators really can be used as a yardstick and understandingwhat happened to sir john franklin

and the men of themissing erebus and terror. and it is my earnest wish that my writings will beapplied to that very end. thank you. >> jennifer harbster: sonow, we can do a question and answer period beforewe have ryan harris come up from parks canada. so, are there questions for glenn? >> glenn stein: yes?

>> jennifer harbster: andoverly repeat the question for the cameras so we know -- >> glenn stein: repeat the question? >> jennifer harbster: -- yeah. >> glenn stein: sure. yes? >> mr. stein, i enjoyedyour book very much. >> glenn stein: thank you. >> there -- the question ihave about lieutenant haswell,

what is your judgmentof lieutenant haswell? did he merit the condemnation andcriticism of his commanding officer? >> glenn stein: well, it was --it was -- for what i could find, it was very, very enlightening toshow that there was an incident where one of the masts wasdamaged in a storm, for example, and haswell was indifferentabout inspecting the damage. and mcclure was furious aboutthis and -- and literally wrote -- wrote him up to the admiralty. and mcclure rode him veryhard, so at one point,

haswell supposedly saidto him, "i've been told by people much your superior thati'm a very good naval officer." so -- so it's hard to understandwhether haswell was saying that because he was being arrogantor he was saying that because, "look i'm really tired of you-- you riding my back, okay. and i can do my job." and i think when you consider the -- the situation and the confines ofa ship, that haswell had a really, really difficult time staying on-- on even civil grounds with a man

who went out of his wayto humiliate and hate him. i mean, mcclure tried toget the guy off the ship; he tried to kick himoff the ship in hawaii. and he was basically told by -- byother naval officers on the scene, "you really don't want todo this, you know, you -- you don't want to kick yourfirst lieutenant off the ship." for one thing, there wasnobody to replace him. the other thing too is haswellwas actually the flag lieutenant of the commanding officer inhis prior command, prior ship.

now that meant that he wasbasically a political officer, he was the guy's right arm. and i think very much haswell hadsome sort of political connections that probably irritated mcclure. he probably didn't like thatbecause mcclure was not someone that had grown up with theseor gone through his service with political connections. he got them only very late. so -- so it's a goodquestion as far as, you know,

was haswell really deservingof mcclure condemnation because it's reallya double edged sword in those -- those circumstances. one of the things by theway, i would love to find, anybody finds it i'll giveyou a million dollars, i kid you not, is haswell's journal. haswell's journal was actuallyretrieved from the investigator after it had been abandoned, buti've never been able to track it. and i even went to the -- to thelengths of going to the wills

of his descendants to try to see ifit was passed down in the family. i could never find a trace of it. i get the impression that henever wanted it to be shown, he never wanted it to get outthere, certainly never published, so it's possible it was destroyed. but as far as i can tell, it wasnever passed down in the family. but stranger things havehappened, so you never know. another question? anybody?

>> jennifer harbster: onto the next. >> glenn stein: okay, ohand then there -- thank you. >> jennifer harbster:all right, oh wow, that did that without even -- magic. so our next speaker is ryan harris. he is a senior underwaterarcheologist with parks canada. ryan received his bachelor's degreein anthropology from the university of toronto and a master'sdegree in maritime history and nautical archaeology fromeast carolina university.

he has been working with parkscanada since 1999 and has taken part in more than 50 underwaterarchaeology projects. his archaeology work hashelped to locate the wreck of the h.m.s. investigatorof which he then dove onto conduct a survey of the vessel. just recently the parks canadaunderwater archaeology team located one of franklin's vessels,missing vessels, the h.m.s. erebus. so today, ryan is going toshare with us some of his work that he's done with the investigator

and i think some updatesof the erebus work too. i should also note outside at thebook display, we have a book called, lost at sea -- lost in sea . >> lost beneath the ice . >> jennifer harbster:lost beneath the ice , which has actually documentssome of the work that he's done. it's a beautiful, colorful book. so please join me in welcomingryan to the library of congress. >> ryan harris: good afternoon.

thank you for the warm introduction. more or less, i'm just going tooffer some eye candy here to -- to support the launchof glenn's book, something i've been lookingforward to with anticipation myself. and i think that's --in the close of time, i think this book mightstand as the -- the authoritative history ofh.m.s. investigator, perhaps for -- for generations in the same waythat richard cyriax's seminal work on the franklin expeditionremains the --

the authority since itspublication in 1939. it is, i think in 2010 ormaybe 2011, where glenn and i first began to communicate. we had just recently discoveredthe wreck of h.m.s. investigator in canada's high arctic andso we had a mutual interest in the -- one another's research. and fairly early on, i wasable to come to a sense of -- or come to respect glenn'smeticulous research nature, his thoroughness and hishumility in which is quite a --

quite an attractive trait, whichis a pleasure to work with. and yeah, i look forwardto getting back to ottawa and dissecting this workwhich will be instrumental in our ongoing research on thewreck site of h.m.s. investigator. i'll provide a bit ofhistorical background just to facilitate my talk, but it'llinclude a lot of images of -- of these two ratherextraordinary wreck sites which hope you'll take interest in. of course, in broad strokes,

the franklin expeditiondeparted greenhithe county kent in england in may of 1845. with a significant fanfare and --and seemingly justified optimism that finally this sublimely equippedexpedition would finally, you know, find the elusive north-west passage,something that had been the -- the object of the englishmariners since elizabethan times and the times of frobisherand -- and hudson later on. and so the -- the two shipserebus and terror with 129 men that ultimately entered thearctic, including franklin himself.

obviously, things didn't work out sowell and all of these men perished under certainly, rathergrim circumstances. this of course, launched -- i'llstart with the investigator, but this launched whatis often described as the largest rescue operationthat's ever been staged in human history. countless expeditions werelaunched by the royal navy, privately thereafter,american expeditions as well, to try to locate these two missingships and -- and the missing men.

h.m.s. investigator among its-- amongst its claims to fame, of course, that it was part of thefirst royal navy expedition to -- to look for franklin and his men. in fact, it was three years inthat the admiralty, i think started to grow apprehensive as to the --the wellbeing of the expedition and gave clark ross,who actually was offered but declined the command. and probably feeling acertain tinge of guilt perhaps, started to develop a rescue planand it's under ross's recommendation

that the investigator waspurchased into the royal navy. it was actually building ingreenock, scotland we believe as -- as a -- as a whaler. and it was converted forarctic service and along with h.m.s. enterprise, made thefirst search expedition in 1848, heavily modified towithstand arctic conditions. in fact, the -- also under thesupervision of william rice, a master shipwrightin the royal navy -- heavily reinforced with iron platingin the bow and very thick deck beams

and all kinds of internal iron work. and so in 1848, enterprise andinvestigator, under the command of james clark ross -- i thinkhe took it upon himself to try to spearhead the -- the search. they essentially followed inthe wake of franklin essentially where he was ordered toproceed into lancaster sound. and that's where they themselvesencountered impenetrable ice and they were [inaudible]winter, the northern end of somerset island at port leopold.

by the time they did send asledge expedition down peel sound and finding absolutelyno concrete trace of the franklin party havingventured in that direction, that may in fact have sealed thefate of franklin and his men. the -- given that -- itpersuaded the -- the -- the admiralty that franklin didnot proceed in that direction and it really refocused a lot of their search effortsfarther west and -- and north. that said, franklin was certainlyup against a ticking clock

and it ultimately may havenot have made a difference. so returning to [inaudible] 1849, investigator enterprise werehastily outfitted again, reprovisioned for a return trip. this time anticipating as we said, that franklin must have made it muchfarther west, they were sound -- sent around south america andthrough the straits of magellan, stopping at the sandwich islandswhere hawaii is as glenn mentioned. where the -- by this time, thetwo ships had been separated

in a storm off of -- off ofsouth american and in 1850, mcclure led the investigator aloneand plunged into the western arctic and automated into fame and infamy. so he made very steady progress in 1850 following along thenorth american mainland. again, with the explicit ordersto try to locate some trace of -- of the franklin party. so in late 1850, they hadidentified prince of wales strait, one of the -- one of the arteriesof the north-west passage now.

and sending a sledge team by october26, they had identified the -- in fact, this communicatedwith this open body of water that had been surveyed by sir william edwardperry many years before, identifying indeedas a navigable route. over wintering in the open pack,the following navigation season, investigator proceededclockwise around banks island and encountering treacherousconditions such as this. this is a -- one of left-tenantcreswell's iconic paintings

and ironically is almost alwaysused in the context of talking about franklin, not aboutinvestigator itself. and i -- hopefully the --this book and the discovery of the wreck site will help to -- to properly restore thesignificance of this work. but as the navigationseason drew close to an end, as dusk was descendingand with a driving snow, the investigators werefollowing along the northern end of banks island and inadvertentlyblundered really into the confines

of -- of what is nowcalled mercy bay. they -- stranded on a -- on a sandbar and spent much ofthe next day lightening ship and were able to getit off and that's where mcclure madethe often criticized, but somewhat logical decision notto press their luck any further and that they wouldoverwinter in mercy bay. ultimately, they spent twoincreasingly harrowing winters with their provisionsand rations being reduced

and their health failing. and when things were lookingrather grim and mcclure had to -- hatched a plan to send half ofthe ship's company off to try to secure rescue, which would-- is generally admitted -- have amounted to a deathsentence for all of these men. and would simply have delayed the -- the demise of everyoneelse left onboard the ship. when a solitary figure appeared overthe horizon coming across the strait that now bears mcclure name, andleft-tenant pim from h.m.s. resolute

which just happened tobe across the strait. and this ultimately is what sparedthe investigators the same fate that franklin had bythen experienced, just the serendipitousrescue that came from another royalnavy ship in the area. so, of course, we start -- wehad already started on the -- the more -- more recent searchfor the franklin wrecks, erebus and terror, when wetook a parallel interest in h.m.s. investigator.

this shows banks islandthat we had mentioned and our interest was supportedby the fact, in parks canada that we happened tohave a national park that borders mercybay here on all sides. this aulavik national park or secondnorthern most park in the country, which gave us something of a -- of a pretense to go andsearch for the ship. given that much of the ship'sstores, spars, ship's boats, significant number ofprovisions were landing on shore

as an emergency depot by thecrew and a subsequent party, after the ship was abandonedin 1853, and after the rescue. beyond that, we had a certainamount of useful information to go on archeologically as to where wemight find this ship and this coming to us by the hands of frederickcravay [assumed spelling], who was the master ofh.m.s intrepid in company with -- with the resolute. and he was sent by theresolute's captain, captain kellett to conduct a conditionassessment of investigator,

a year after it had been abandoned. and his sledge team arrived and encountered investigatorlooking much like this with significant amount ofwater, solid ice actually in the forward hold washing overthe freshwater holding tanks, down by the head andlisting to starboard. and that convinced them thatthe ship would soon flounder. so he, and his men, and thesledge team took the opportunity to batten the hatches, but onlyafter removing what remained

of the ship's storesthat were firmly frozen in the ice in the hold. and they were added to the -- the depot of stores on thewestern side of mercy bay. so in 2010, our team, the underwaterarchaeology team working closely with our western arctic field unit,undertook a fairly ambitious search for this ship in hopes thatit might be found close to where it was leftat anchor by the crew. that said there were competingpossibilities, different hypothesis

as to what may have befell theinvestigator after it was abandoned. the inuvialuit, which to say the -- the indigenous peopleof the western arctic, their reports to the canadianarctic expedition in 1915 suggested that in fact the ship had eitherbeen broken apart on shore or that it had driftedout into the open -- open strait and hadsank in deep water, which for us wouldnot be very good news. but we went to mercy bay anyway.

and so in july, this is what -- whatthe site appeared like after all of the ice had cleared fromthe harbor, sort of the -- from the -- from the bay. and in fact as we flew over it for the first time it wascompletely stogged with -- with ice. that's what my newfoundlandwife would say. and so after a year of preparation, we thought that we mightnot stand any chance to look for it at all -- after all.

but we spent some time setting upa base camp on the western shore, slinging load after load byhelicopter from a nearby airstrip, the ominously named polar bearcabin and the northern part of aulavik national park. and while we readied ourmarine survey equipment and inflated our zodiac boats, a [inaudible] archaeology teamundertook a detailed study of the depot or cache siteas it's generally known. this is henry carrie from ourwestern arctic field unit,

an archeologist looking atthe most prominent feature that survived onshore from theinvestigator expedition prior to the discovery ofthe wreck site that is. and that's what -- that's whatremains of the seven tons of coal that was landed on shore, as well asa large scattering of barrel staves, hundreds and hundreds from theprovisions that were put there. this is something that really speaksnot just to the nautical nature of -- of the cache, butthe fact that the -- the -- the inuvialuit made repeatedvisits to mercy bay to make use

of these materials forupwards of 60 years it is said. and this is actually a frame fromone of the investigator's boats, from one of the ribs so to speakof the boat, and we can tell that it's a lapstraker, aclinker built boat given the -- the edges of this frame. but every piece you'd find isbroken into links no longer than -- than let's say a foot andthat's so they could harvest and extract every single copperand iron fastener from all of these boats to assist,you know, their --

survival really, whichaffected their material culture. there are many, many interestinghistorical, archaeological and anthropological parallels thatcan be drawn between investigator and franklin's ships and thisis one of them in a small way. right on top of the cache site faceddown was this bit of boat timber, this is actually the stemof one of the bow timber from -- from one of the boats. and as you turn it over, you canactually see that it's engraved, there's a w that stands for thewoolwich dockyard, where the --

the ship outfitted in 1850. a royal navy broad arrow mark --this is government property mark which you'll see repeatedly in thispresentation, as well as the length of this particularboat, likely 22 feet. this immediately remindedus of a find made by the mcclintock expedition, 1859. all kinds of mcclintockexpedition maps and books on display here today. and by his subordinateleft-tenant hobson

on king william island found theremains of one of the ship's boats from erebus or terror withthree skeletons in -- inside. and ultimately, the boat's stem wasrecovered by the schwatka expedition in 1879 and now is on -- visible at the national maritimemuseum in greenwich, london. here we see again, the wfor woolwich, the date april of 1845, length of the boat. and this was actuallybuilt by contract, it didn't have a broad arrowmark, so this a carvel built boat,

which was often provided to thenavy -- sorry, a clinker bit -- built boat that was providedto the navy under contract because the doctorswere doing this anymore. also the analysis of the cacheincluded a systematic magnetometer or walking gradiometer survey, which identified all the magneticanomalies from the cache -- hoops from the -- the [inaudible],small nails, whatever the -- the inuvialuit didn't-- didn't detect. but also these three anomalies hereand at east of western [inaudible]

of western ontario suspected thesemight in fact represent the graves of the three investigatorcrewmen who were not rescued. we know their names, johnboyle, john ames and john kerr, who also come to scurvy just beforethe -- the resolute rescued them. and actually john moore,my colleague in the unit -- oddly enough, he waseating a lot more -- more oranges, not wanting to sufferthe curse of johns in mercy bay. and ultimately, if you go exact tothat point on the magnetometer map, well, you see them,these outlines of --

of three graves where the permafrosthas not slumped because it's held up by a coffin, these arecoffin shaped outlines, which makes us think of the threebeechey island graves that were from the h.m.s. erebusand the terror. so as the [inaudible] team didtheir work, we took to our -- our 19 foot zodiac and conducted atowed side scan sonar survey to try to locate the wreck site. and in contrast to what you'll seewith the search for erebus later in this presentation, thisactually went very, very quickly.

and after a year ofpreparation and the effort of getting all this equipment to -- to the arctic, ultimatelyit took us three minutes to locate this wreck site. i wish it was always that -- thateasy and it certainly is not. but this is one of theearlier images, the showing -- showing the investigator wreck site,this being the stern and the bow. we could tell right away that itwas in remarkably sound condition, still preserved to, really to theheight of -- of the weather deck,

the upper deck, althoughimpacted by the ice. and you see ice scouring allabout the perimeter of the site. and this is a little sketch by --by john, showing the ice conditions and we weren't really evenintending to survey that day, we were just testing theequipment because the -- the bay was still solidlyfull of ice. we just had this small serpentineroute that we could follow to test the equipment and that justhappened to be exactly where -- where the wreck was locatedand generally very close

to where frederick cravay pinpointedit for us kindly enough in 1854. so it was a follow -- it wasanother year before we can return to the wreck site of theinvestigator to dive it, a very long year for us in the unitto waiting within anticipation. and the -- just anextraordinary experience of diving a pristineshipwreck site this far north, at 74 degrees northern latitude. and only when you see itup -- up close can you -- can you really appreciatejust the magnitude of it,

but really just howwell preserved it is. this is a close up looking atthe stern and the entire hull of the ship is clad withcopper because the ship went around south america throughthe tropics, stopping at hawaii, it was clad in copper to deter shipboring teredo navalis, a shipworm and gribble and that sort ofthing, which would eat the wood. and we could still see the copperand draft marks, which here shows that we're 12 feet above -- abovethe keel and the [inaudible] upon which the rudder would have --

the hinges essentially thatthe rudder would have swung on. so we had a very productive time,we made over 100 dives on the site or nine intense day of diving,often diving until 4 o'clock in the morning becauseat this time of -- of the summer, we enjoyedperpetual daylight. and here we're insertinga high definition point of view inspection camera into thenooks and crannies below the decks, trying to identify whatspaces would preserve their archeological integrity.

ultimately what we found is thatthe entire ship was silted -- silted in, which was disappointingin a way, but actually bodes very, very well for the preservation of --of materials down in the lower deck. and here we see the 20 oddcabins for the ship's officers and including the great cabin for -- for mcclure in the stern withhaswell and creswell and armstrong and -- and everyone else. and we think that many of thesespaces will actually survive intact representing small time capsules,representing the shipboard life

of those specific individualswhich is very exciting for us as archaeologists. and then deeper down intothe bows of the ship, beyond what we can glimpse, certainly there's just enormouspotential, the botanical and biological samplesthat are preserved, probably with their labels evenintact down in the bread room, whatever would perhaps remain inthe spirits locker down below. but other structures like mr.sylvester's patent heating

apparatus, a coal fired heater for warming the shipin arctic conditions. and we had enough timeto have a good look and to recover a certainnumber of representative and diagnostic artifacts, notsure you can see it in this light, but the entire site iscovered by a thin lens of silt. here you see the outline of a -- of a boot, which upon recovery youcan see is a typical square toed arctic sea service bootvery, very much like finds

that have been contributedto the erebus and the terror. this arctic boot from starvationcove where the final survivors at that time succumbed we believe. and really demonstratingjust the very close parallels and material culturethat we stand to identify between the two shipwreck sites. probably the most [inaudible] factthat was recovered from investigator in 2011, and you can just seeit as it was lying in situ, there's the triggerand over here the --

the butt plate for this verywell preserved 1839 pattern, procession-sidewall musket. which we carefully wrapped up andwere able to recover to the surface and now it's in conservationtreatment at our labs in ottawa. and again, we can find closeparallels to this sort of firearm in the relic collection atthe national maritime museum. from all these implementsfrom the erebus and terror that were recovered by theinuit and ultimately purchased by various search partiesin the mid-19th century.

in fact, the -- the brass tangplate on this particular firearm is so well preserved, itpreserves a lot number or a -- or perhaps even a serial number. the date likely of assembly in 1842and a wxd, which during this period of time, actually stands for the woolwich divisionof the royal marines. so we can actually attribute thisparticular firearm to the handful of royal marines thatwere garrisoned to -- to investigator for thissecond arctic voyage.

so in broad strokes, of course,we can see the progress of -- of the investigatorswhere they overwintered, ultimately where the shipwas abandoned in 1853. and they made their wayacross the north-west passage, ultimately largely on foot. as the resolute and the intrepidwere ordered to be abandoned when they got trappedon the ice by -- by commander belcher off ofcape covern [assumed spelling], but eventually they all piled ontoa small number of transport vessels,

including the h.m.s. north starand made their way back home again. so discovering thenorth-west passage, but also affecting the firsteuropean, let's say, transit. although largely onfoot and in the process, really the first circumnavigationof all of north and south america at the same time. here of course, is thereconstructive route taken by the franklin party just tochange gears, which obviously ends in a dead end here off of-- of king william island.

where the two ships, erebus andterror, are last seen by whalers in baffin bay, where they firstoverwintered in 1845 to 1846 off of beechey island, wherethose three graves from -- from that party are located. and the following navigationseason 1846, we believe they descended peelsound, were beset in ice or trapped in ice, the grip of which wouldnot release these two ships for the following two years. so we know from this rathericonic [inaudible] note that's now

on display at the national maritimemuseum in greenwich, which tells us until the discovery really of theerebus wreck site of really the most of what we -- we know atleast from european sources. so in this note, this is kind ofa terse form letter that announced that things were goingreasonably well. in 1847, where they overwintered ,was signed by left-tenant gram gore of -- of the erebus, but theyreturn to this note a year later and left a far more chillingaccount in the marginalia. this signed now by a -- bycaptain crozier of h.m.s. terror

who now had assumed the -- the command of the overallexpedition announces in typically terseroyal navy style that -- that franklin had diedthe previous year and they don't botherto say why or how. and announced their intention to desert the two shipsfive leagues northwest -- north north west of this point,giving us sort of a last report of position of wherethe ships were last seen

by their european cruise,supposedly. and that's really wherethe historical record ends when it comes to erebus and terror. so what we had to relyon archaeologically in the search was acorpus of inuit's testimony from mid-19th century thatwas recorded by a succession of search parties and includingmcclintock we mentioned, in 1859, 10 years later, charles francishall, an american publisher who felt he was on a missionfrom god to -- to save these men.

ten years late -- sorry,10 years after mcclintock and certainly 20 years too late. and frederick schwatka, a u.s.army cavalry officer who was -- in around 1879 whoprobably maintained no hope of actually finding survivors, but the hope that theymight find some -- some telling, written record. so, all of this evidence iskind of [inaudible] captured in this uk admiralty chart --

chart 5101, which in red showsobservations of skeletal remains, the -- the sun bleached bones of thefranklin crew as -- as they are -- now are strewed acrossthe landscape. but in blue, and this isall color coded and -- and mentioned in the legend,which i've dropped off here for display purposes, but theblue is the inuit accounts and actually specificallysays in the -- in legend that they're notinherently trustworthy given the source.

ironically, with benefit ofhindsight, we now see that in fact, it was inuit testimonythat was instrumental in -- in our ability to locate the wreck of h.m.s. erebus just thelast september in 2014. let this shows two possibletrajectories for on one of the ships that end up in the -- the southernqueen [inaudible] gulf area. the inuit's suggest thatthe fate of the two ships after they're abandonedsomehow parted ways. that one of the shipssomehow made it farther south,

the other ship sunk earlieron in deeper water, they claim and that they weren't ableharvest any materials from it. so we've been looking for both -- inboth areas since 2008 and by 2014, we had amassed over 1200 square --actually, 1400 square kilometers of side scan sonar coverage, anarea significantly larger even in the area of losangeles, substantial area. typically using this tool as themainstay of our toolbox in searching for shipwreck targets, this isa toad side scan sonar system, which produces acoustic twodimensional images of the sea floor,

identifying superpose objectsincluding hopefully shipwrecks. so, over the course of six years,towing a side scan sonar system all over the place and staring atthe monotonous flow of the data down the sonar screen,something called a waterfall. we had not encountereda single solitary trace of anything cultural,not a log, nothing. it is a very barrenlandscape, at least to our eyes and there was justnothing, no promising leads. finally in 2014, weactually caught a break

and actually our trustworthyarchaeology counterparts have been working with us sideby side since 2008 -- came across this objectduring their effort to set up a gps reference stationwith our hydrographic service on a nearby island. and the helicopter pilot, andrewsterling, came across this object, which was brought back to the ship and pretty quicklywe were actually able to identify what specificallyit -- it represented.

and i don't think you cansee it in this lighting, but there are two broad arrow marks of these ubiquitousgovernment property marks that clearly told us this objectcame from one of franklin's ships. there are only so many royal navyships sunk in the area after all. and in consultation with the ship'splans of erebus and terror, in fact, it is only a coupleof hours before john, he was able to decipherwhat exactly this was. and that was a lower pintle,the anchor point for one

of the ship's davits for deployingand recovering the ship's boats over the quarter -- thestring quarters of the ship. so this also told us that a large,heavy iron object likely indicated that a wreck was close at hand. something that the inuit[inaudible] who had cached that behind a large boulder wouldnot want to carry with them all across the arctic, being ratherheavy and not terribly useful. so it appears that they broke offthe pintle end and probably fastened that into something useful, andthen dumped it where it was found.

so excitedly the next daywe took to the water again and shifted our survey areaa little bit to the east. and with our survey vessel, the [inaudible] researchvessel investigator, where h.m.s. investigator wasunsuccessful in locating any sign of the ship's investigator, the -- the second got luckyon september 2, 2014. and under absolutelysublime surveying conditions, at long last we foundthe first images

and it was absolutely unmistakable when it first appearedon the screen. this is actually a few passes laterafter we approached it differently, but just the cathartic,you know, release -- relief really, that after six yearsof searching with growing comments from the -- the media that,why were we wasting our time, suggestions that even if we foundsomething, it would be nothing but toothpicks on the bottom. why were you bothering?

finally, this remarkably intactroyal navy shipwreck appeared on our screen. at this time, we didn'tknow which ship it was, that would take quitea bit of research as subsequent investigation. but from the initial sonarimages, we're able to tell that it was intact again, to the-- the height of the weather deck, that it was standing given theacoustic shadow, a full four and a half or five metersproud of the seafloor.

and we could actually see telltalesigns of the royal navy modification for arctic service, so we -- we were absolutely convinced thatwas the ship we were looking for, as if there's much doubt. so excitedly after the announcementsmade by our prime minister, in ottawa we were allsent back to the site and our entire dive team deployedand excitedly made the first dives on the wreck of -- of the --well, we now know it to be erebus. but i would certainly describeas the most remarkable sensation

of my professional career. there's no doubt about that. as everywhere, your eyes were dark, there's something remarkablejust lying there, tucked in amongst thecollapsed timbers. and it was one of the firstthings you could see are these two beautiful brass sixpounder canon just lying on the seafloor rightstern of -- of the wreck. and this is something i findinteresting is someone who's

interested in -- in steam propulsion in the royal navy inthe mid-19th century. this is the outer stern postand the inner stern post to get excessively tactical, but you'll see these cast bronzerailings, these are tracks that actually allowed the ship'stwo bladed propeller to be lowered into position and thenretracted again. the erebus and the terror werethe first ships to be outfitted with a steam driven screw propeller

for the purposes ofpolar navigation. and so, we're very interestedin studying this as -- this time marines -- the marine'ssteam power was still very much at its infancy. and here you can actually see the-- the tracks and the little slot, this is where the propeller shaftwould've -- would've rotated. and we have, of course, thereference from the ship's plans, the national maritime museum, and this shows this rather crudelooking two bladed propeller,

they didn't even havethe terminology set yet. they called it the -- the fan bladesof the -- of the -- of the screw. and this does detail what boththe tracks, but the mechanism that they would -- they would -- when retracted, they wouldlower these chalks wooden and access the tank,to stop up the plate -- the space because they wouldn'twant the ice to get a purchase on where the propeller wasand -- and rip the stern off. and we actually have referencedthis interesting sketch

by left-tenant irvingfrom the expedition, actually during their dispatchessent home from greenland. and in a letter to his sister,katie, he, you know, shows a sketch and this is one of the-- the steam engines. and worth mentioning, of course, these were not purpose-builtmarine steam engines, they were adapted locomotiveengines from the greenwich railway. basically dropped into the aft hold,turned sideways and with the -- the wheels removed todrop the propeller shaft,

so really, really interesting. something that is interesting aboutboth ships again, is that they're -- they represent theserather unique repositories of a very obscure victorianindustrial technology. these are the shipsmain bilge pumps, these are patented massey doubleaction lift and force bilge pumps. something you can't find anywhereelse in the world, you can't even go to the science museum and --and see what these look like and how they operate, reallywe only have recourse done

through the -- our archaeology here. there is a close up ofthe -- these are the -- the pump heads to be turnedwith a big bell crank to -- to siphon the waterout of the ship's hold. they wanted to outfitthese ships with the -- the most capable technologyavailable given the difficulty of the task that was hand to them. so this is a plan ofthe upper deck of -- of the erebus, tryingto build pumps there.

and these illuminatorsor deck prisms that would filter ambientlight below decks to make the place a bit morehospitable during the long winter months. and this is actually kindof hard to see i got to say, but here i'm actually lookingthrough a deck combing, so right on top ofthe -- the upper deck. this is a skylight that would'vebeen situated directly over top of the -- the ward room, so i canimagine the sailors casually walking

by here and eavesdroppingconversations just below here between the seniorofficers, where probably a lot of significant decisions were-- were -- were mulled over. and this is the -- somethingwe don't commonly see on -- on shipwrecks, certainly in canada. this is the ship's tiller, butit's actually solid bronze, usually be somethingmade out of wood. and there's the end of its12 feet long and this is where we would notchinto the rudder.

essentially this is a bigbeam that allowed the -- the rudder to articulate. it's bronze, we think,because the -- the ship's hull was lengthened toaccommodate the propeller, so now -- all of a sudden the rudder's nowat several feet farther raft, so they need a really strongrudder, this is maneuvered by the ship's helm, thetiller -- or the wheel. so they -- like many features ofthese ships, they are heavily, heavily overbuilt towithstand arctic conditions.

the -- certainly themost iconic artifacts that we encountered right away,on actually the very first dive, this is the ship's bell, theonly artifact we recovered in the first seriesof dives in september. and again, it's emblazed into the-- or embossed actually with the -- the royal navy broad arrow. and very conveniently, thedate 1845 that would -- archaeology should alwaysbe that straightforward. so quickly, we wanted to get back tothe site, we only had two days to --

to reconnoiter the site before the-- the season ended in september, so we went back with our departmentof national defense in april. as you could see, it's solidice in this point in time. and the department of nationaldefense set up an ice camp for about 50 people rightover top of the wreck site. and by boring these large holes,we're able to dive through the ice and access the wreck undervery, very stable conditions. one of these blocks would take aboutfive hours to painstakingly melt with -- with a special tool andthen to lift clear of the surface.

and so working closer with ourfleet diving units of halifax and elsewhere in pacific region, weconducted 80 dives over the course of five days and got to know thewreck site a little bit better. i should mention this iscalled operation inuvialuit, who was supported bythe united states in -- in one respect, thatthe camp was demobilized by two ski equipped c130 hercules from the new york internationalguard. and so, these poor guys builta runway on the ice for weeks,

just plowing snow for weeks on end. and finally, they were able to landthese gigantic hercules planes to -- to load all the camp in, whichmade things much easier at the end. so after the april dives, westarted preparing again for a return to the site this lastaugust and september, a year after the wreck discovery. and enjoying some of the bestweather conditions we have ever seen working in the arctic. our team made in excess of 150dives, clearing the overgrowth

of kelp, which concealed alot of the ship's structures. and here you can see justthe remarkable water clarity that they were enjoying at the time. this is like diving the caribbeanin terms of how far you can see. so this is a view of theport side of the erebus with the exposed upperdeck beams where the -- the deck planking has peeled away. and looking up at thebow and you can get a -- get a sense of how closeis just the surface,

the wreck being only 11 meters deep, the top being six meters belowthe -- below the surface. and along the port side, this again,after all the kelp has been removed, you -- you really get a sense ofhow well preserved the ship is, the ice channels on eitherside of the hull, typical of -- of royal navy shipsof arctic exploration. and subtle details we canfinally see with the kelp removed, including the draft marks. here you see this coppercutout roman numerals,

showing 20 feet thisheight above the keel. and what's neat is that they'rehalf obscured by this iron plating. like investigator, erebusand terror were both fitted with a five-sixteenths layer of-- of plating of the bow to -- to help protect the bowsfrom -- from ice damage. but it's really the -- the artifactsthat tell an evocative story. only after they were cleanedin the lab, could you make much out of these two buttonsrecovered from the lower deck, from actually insidethe ship and it --

it is hard to see unlessyou're holding it in your hand, but both show a fouled anchorover the crown over top of it, symbol of the royal navy. and the lettering which took us awhile to make out, royal marines. so both these buttons wouldapparently derive from one of the -- the jackets or tunicsfrom one of the -- could be any from either ship, so one of the 13 royal marinesthat entered the arctic. and also really delicateartifacts which tell us something

about life onboard the shipwould only scratch the surface, but this is a patentedmedicine bottle and it's embossed the name samueloxley and the other side, london. and mr. oxley was a royal chemist who at this time hadpatented concentrated essence of jamaican ginger, which apparentlycould cure just about anything, including arthritis and seasickness,which makes sense given the ginger. but also is a cure forhypochondria ironically enough. and then the artifactsjust lying in plain view,

here you see from [inaudible]ceramic plates. over here is a -- either a pewter or even perhaps a silverplate, serving platter. and this is the circulardeck illuminator, one in which has fallendown into the ship. after cleaning someof the -- the poor -- some of the ceramicsis really quite vivid. and actually it preserves the -- thestamps on the back and even the -- the type, which is a whampoapattern, which a lot of --

of officers servingin the -- in the -- in the orient of wouldreturn back to england with their own personal collections. and this is where -- make referenceto when the ship was last seen, really before -- before westumbled upon it in 2014. and the inuit's specificallymention going onboard this ship, that they saw four setsof footsteps trialing off to adelaide peninsula nearby,perhaps the final survivors. that finally after the ship wasdeserted, we think it would seem

for a second time [inaudible]that they went onboard and found everythingin complete order -- the china plates that we seethere, spoons and knives and forks, likely which if they saw them, theyprobably would have taken them, being quite usefulto modify the tools. and this rather interestingartifact, this is a turned wooden table leg, it's mahogany with a detach-- attached stretcher. and clearly, a table,of -- but we --

we suspected it mightin fact be this table. this is an illustration from -- ofthe illustrated london news of 1845, during the month of departure. and actually, purports to show franklin's owncabin and this table here. and actually the -- the sonarimagery shows that a big bite of the stern, the great cabin wasbitten away by the ice and a lot of these materials now have beendeposited straight to the seafloor. so, it's quite possiblywhat we see right there.

so this is the area in the -- in the lower deck where we areencountering a lot of these plates and -- and other scientificinstruments and some other things i'll show you. but this is the area where thecommon sailors would sling -- sling their hammocksand take their meals. in fact, if you look up at the-- the upper deck beams overhead, you can see the hammock tags withthe numbers on them showing you where your particularallotted space is.

this is incredible detail. again on the lowerdeck inside the ship, this is a large chestapparently some of the contents preserved inside. this we believe would have doubledas the seats that they used for -- at the mess tables asthe ship's plans show. this very delicate thing hereis -- you can see it here. this is a sword hilt or thehandle of a -- of a naval cutlass, which still preserves the --all these subtle details, the --

the sharkskin grip, the lion head-- the [inaudible] and the -- even the gold wire braid that kindof holds the -- the grip together. very, very ornate and reallyinteresting to us archaeologically, but quite possibly of nointerest whatsoever to the inuit who quite possibly snapped off the-- the steel blade and discarded, you know, this piece of, you know,useless junk, as they would see it. so as we go ahead withthe archeological study of the wreck of the erebus. we now go through -- we now enterin to a very interesting stage

where this is showing howwe've divided the area into [inaudible] areasin order to contextualize where artifacts come from, to helpus identify associations with -- with other finds to learnmore about the ship. and it's where we'll be in -- in a position to answer some of these more interestingarchaeological questions. we believe that the ship was likelyre-manned, as the inuit's suggest. we hope to go and identifyand show how it sank.

we note that there's a [inaudible]nearby with some materials lost or -- or deposited nearbywhich possibly means that they may have escapedthe clutches of the ice only to run aground andhave the ship sink. perhaps they didn't have enoughmanpower at this point to -- to adequate man the ship's pumpsand/or to lighten to get it off. hopefully we'll find out. in the case of -- of the investigator whereyou can start seeing the --

the tensions simmering asmen who are on short rations and the officers are startingto second guess, perhaps the -- the command decisionsor at least privately. did the discipline of thefranklin expedition breakdown? if the men came back to theship, was it because the -- the party had fractured or wasit all survivors at that point who returned to the ship? we don't know. is -- anthropologically, is thereevidence of the inuit going onboard

and harvesting useful rawmaterials, sifting through materials on the lower deck, collecting theknives and discarding the ship's, you know, portraits andpaintings and that sort of thing? we have to be able to test someof the prevailing hypothesis about what happened tothe franklin expedition, inuit reports seeingunopened tins of -- of meat. maybe we'll find them, maybewe'll be able to test the quality. the theory of lead poisoning beinga longstanding contributing factor, as -- as has been hypothesized.

so we'll beable to testsome of these views. and ultimately, archaeologicallywe want to figure out what happened in the final stages ofthe franklin expedition and what really causedthe expedition to fail. although i -- i think that'sreally [inaudible] question because i think the franklinexpedition failed on may 1845, when they received theirorders from the admiralty. and really that's whenthey were directed into one of the worst ice choke pointsin the canadian arctic.

a place situated along the westcoast of king william island where the inuit wouldalmost never travel because there's nothingto subsist on. what we can tell from the -- the [inaudible] note left onking william island recovered by the mcclintock party, asfranklin apparently ordered his -- followed his orders to the letter. he was proceeding after tryingto identify a north polar sea, which doesn't exist, but proceedingsouthwest to the surveyed part

of the north american mainland. i'm not sure that -- that franklin and his men reallyever stood a chance, no matter what they would havedone, which as most brings us to this interesting question of thediscovery of the north-west passage, which -- which glennwas speaking to. and i can't help but think of the --the franklin monument that is placed in waterloo place in london, wherereally at the assistance of his wife or widow, lady jane franklin,the credit was given to franklin

and his men for forgingthe last link of the north-west passagewith their lives. this years after the investigator and the crew had been awardedthe 10,000 pound admiralty prize for accomplishing that feat. of course, they liveto tell the tale and that really is thefundamental difference. significantly whoever --finding erebus where it lies, and given the possibilitythat we might be able

to test archaeologicallythat it had been re-manned. there's every possibility that themen onboard that ship new exactly where they were and in fact,knew that they had affected that last link and hadlinked up with the -- the shoreline survey bysimpson [inaudible] in 1839. it was probably a smallconsolation for the fate that would surely befall on whoever. i'll leave it at that and in hopes that we might have someinteresting questions and discussion

with whatever time remains. and i thank you verymuch for your interest. cheers. >> jennifer harbster: if you can-- if you can repeat the questions. >> ryan harris: yes. >> jennifer harbster: do wehave any questions for ryan? sir? >> i'm surprised canada [inaudible]analysis of the erebus site or search for the terror[inaudible] before?

the question is whether we'regoing to concentrate our efforts on steadying the wreck site ofh.m.s. erebus or also continue in searching for thesecond ship, the terror. and yes, last summer wedid both concurrently, which is quite a challenge. and we have instructionsto continue to -- to try to locate thesecond wreck as well. and ultimately we look at it as together these ships are adesignated national historic site

in canada. and really together, we need to haveboth to flush out all the details of what happened to the-- to the franklin party. also, first to protect and preservethat second wreck site for -- for posterity, for the benefit of -- of canadians and people whoare interested worldwide. we have to identify thewreck site and figure out what sort of condition it's in. so yes, we will be continuing thateffort for the foreseeable future.

>> two things on the demisethat came to my detection. could franklin had backedout when he hit that ice that you and i were discussing? i had an impression that he had ashot at getting out [inaudible]. and the second thing, the foodpoisoning, hadn't it already set into the extent that withoutsome alternate source of food, they were going to die anyway? >> ryan harris: yes,very good questions. i wish i could say demise withthat sort of a dramatic emphasis

that you were capableof, and that's great. you has asked when -- when theships became beset in larson sound, so north of king william islandin 1846, was that avoidable? ultimately, was -- wasthat an error in judgment? well, we don't necessarily know,i mean, that's sort of difficult to reconstruct those moments, but what we certainly can sayhaving surveyed in those waters for several years now, that theice conditions can change very, very quickly.

particularly late in theseason, come late september, there's an almost inexhaustiblesupply of ice constantly coming down mcclintock channelto the northwest. and that if the wind -- the wind hadbeen blowing easterly and then all of a sudden swung to the northwest,very quickly there would be a wall of ice right on top of them. you can also experienceflash freezes where a change in wind direction will bringremarkably colder temperatures and you can have dramaticfreezing right away.

a lot of this informationcomes to us from a historical ice climatologystudy that was conducted for us by tom zagonoff -- zagon ofour canadian ice service, trying to reconstruct the prevailingpatterns of ice formation drift and breakup in victoria strait tohelp us try to narrow our search, because otherwise we're leftwith a considerable area. also a -- yeah, it's -- it's -- it's [inaudible] safe if theywould have had anywhere else to go, they couldn't necessarilyhave just doubled back

and gone up peel sound again. >> [inaudible] yousay they could not -- >> ryan harris: we don't know, butit's almost amazing that they got down peel sound in the first place. in the same way that unusual iceconditions allowed investigator to enter mercy bay in lateseptember, which we never see today. somehow peel sound happened to benavigable for franklin and his men when it hadn't been forany other expedition prior. so really, the ice it sortof set the -- the trap.

i think you might have used thisreference in your book, but yeah, they kind of blunderedinto it in both cases and then couldn't getout, it's like a snare. also they didn't know at thattime, unless they explored it, that there was water to theeast of king william island, what is now james clark ross strait. this was still perceived to be a peninsula attachingto -- to boothia. so yeah, it's a difficultquestion, but it's tough -- it's --

i don't think we can secondguess what happened to them, i -- i'm sure they were making everyeffort to avoid being beset in the ice if theycould possibly help it, but i doubt it was avoidable. and the second part of yourquestion, sorry i -- i -- >> food poisoning -- >> ryan harris: -- food poisoning. which of course, relates to the work of forensic anthropologist owenbeattie from the university

of alberta, who disinterred thethree graves on beechey island, was able to collect tissuesamples from -- from hair and -- and what have you, and was able to identify a significantlyelevated concentration of lead in those tissues. and that led him to hypothesize that lead poisoning not necessarilywould've been the fatal outdoing of the expedition, but it may havebeen a significant mitigating factor that would've clouded theirjudgement and made these --

well would've made it even moremiserable than it already was. the theory of lead poisoning hasbeen subjected to a lot of scrutiny in recent years and it might be aprevailing view that we really need to revisit that -- that hypothesis. i think the research needs to bedone to identify whether their level of lead poisoning was inany way unusual for people from victorian england,where lead was ubiquitous. used in pencils andpaint, and tobacco tins, and lead crystal, lead pipes.

it was used everywhere and theydidn't know the pernicious effects at the time. so were these leadlevels any different from anyone else at the time? it's tough to say. but if it was a problem, then itwould've been exasperated over time. it would have theoreticallyhave worsened. but no doubt there are other thingsthat would have been at play. scurvy being the typical ailmentthat befalls most artic expeditions

that happen to lingerpast three years. and three years really seems tobe this kind of pivotal moment where in mercy bay, in 1853,under shortened rations, where your body is weaker andweaker, you hear a concept called "artic scurvy," i think thatandrew lambert talks about. where you're even more subject tothe debilitating effects of scurvy when you're on shortenedrations and your body is cold, and you just never get achance to recover fully. so yeah, i think there's a lotof research to do to figure

out really what happened. in the back? >> i'm curious about your minimumsources and what form those take, and what sort of records[inaudible]? >> ryan harris: yeah, witha bit more time to drone on, i would've gone intosome of those details. really, the search parties in themid-19th century, so john rae, mcclintock, hall, schlaka [phonetic]they all interviewed inuit informants, often with thequestion, "do you know anything

about these kabloonak,these white men that appeared howevermany years ago?" do you know where they went? do you know where these ships are? and in some cases thoseaccounts are amazingly detailed. i mentioned mr. petorak [phonetic],who gives clear indications that as they saw, the ship hadbeen remand in the queen mont gulf. that there were fresh sweepingsfrom under a ship's doors that were still being maintained.

ultimately, they founda corpse on board. that a heavyset individualthey had difficulty removing, so they just left himon the cabin floor. an individual we may have comeacross archeologically and be able to figure out who it wasthrough dna sampling, and surely that possibility. and -- but a fairly substantialof corpus of inuit observations that have been pickedover through the years. certainly david woodman, the authorfrom victoria, british columbia,

has probably done the most to tryto weave all of this information into a coherent narrative. as he will point out, the challengefor historians and archeologists in trying to inuit testimonyis that it has been filtered through several differentlenses by that time, and then well we haverecorded references to a shipwreck being gasunken[phonetic] in schlaka's [phonetic] and his party's account eightmiles west of grant point. the inuit would not have been west.

they wouldn't have said grant point. they wouldn't have said easteither -- or west rather. that a completely differentworld view that makes these observationsdifficult to decipher. when they talk about days'travel -- well a day of travel -- in terms of gauging distance -- is a very different thing fora well navy sled party as it with a lightly laden and experiencedgroup of inuit who habituated to arctic travel fortheir entire lives.

>> okay, thank you. >> yeah, i was going to say onemore, because i know we have to do the book signing and wehave a lunch reservation at 1:30. >> really quickly, down at thenational archives we're working on digitization project where weare digitizing all the us navy, coast guard vessel log books,[inaudible] and posting them online. and [inaudible], i was hoping youcould comment on how these types of projects -- although manyare going on here at the library as well -- how thoseprojects impact you

as an underwater archeologistand [inaudible]? >> ryan harris: yes, i couldcertainly say that i wish that the smithsonian haddigitized the manuscripts of the charles frances hall, becausethey would've saved us the effort of coming down andcopy them in facsimile. yes, these are incrediblerepositories. research afoot to reallypour into the log books of all these expeditions to try to recreate climatologicalpatterns of the mid-19th century.

it's really an untapped resourceand definitely those sort of journals will contribute to that. >> i'm sorry, repeat again whatyou're specifically asking? >> as an historian, how -- >> i knew you had fallen asleep. >> well what more resourcesare available online for these [inaudible] projectshere at the library and elsewhere, i'm just wondering how'sthat -- how as a historian, how is that changing the wayyou do internet research or?

>> glenn stein: it changes itslightly in that i use the, throughout the time i was writingthe book, i used the internet as a pointer for where artifacts, and certainly repositoryfor art projects stored. but the problem is this, is thatyou wouldn't get the whole picture unless you were onsite. and unfortunately you can'talways trust some of the things that are actually said in therecords as to what the objects are. for instance, one journalthat was described

in the archives wasnot a journal at all. it was a book manuscript, adraft of a manuscript written in the form of a journal. so it was totally misleadinguntil i got onsite and i looked at the actual item and i said,"well, this is not a journal. this is written like a journal,"which means, okay, it's been edited. so it's very helpful to have thesethings onsite or online for me, but there's nothing like beingthere -- let's put it that way. there's nothing like being there.

you really have to take it all in. and you will not believehow much i found where i did not expectto find anything. because again, there wereerrors in cataloguing. things were not cataloguednecessarily as well. and i found other correspondencein certain folders, which sometimes was very helpfuland other times had nothing whatever to do with what i was looking at. so i think you have to bevery careful about that.

i think you have to really be there. i went twice to englandand spent a lot of time looking ateverything i could. having my hands on it. and by the way -- just tofinish off, there's nothing like comparing handwriting. because i found-- and thisis what i did with my book -- i found it very important toput that an item was a copy of a letter, or a copy of something.

and you would notice that thehandwriting was not the same. so, yes, it was a copy notin that same person's hand. it becomes very subtle -- a lotof subtleties involved here -- which i hope translatedwell into my writing. oh, by the way, i want to mentionthat i misspoke when i was talking about mcclure's anti-steam[inaudible] mentor, it was james clark ross, not hisuncle, john ross, who was anti-steam and impressed thatso much on mcclure. >> all right.

so [inaudible]? >> yeah, i just -- can isneak in one more question. what's left to be donewith the investigation? [inaudible], what hasto be done still? >> ryan harris: yeah, i mean, of the200 hours that we have on the wreck of the erebus, we have muchtime on record investigator. so in fact if we had our druthers,we probably would've been happy with diving on the investigatorto this date, but we're encouraged to continue the search forerebus and [inaudible].

it became certainly a source ofgreat interest for our cabinet. so we're eager to go backto the investigator site, but really we're justscratching the surface. in many ways, what wemight stand to learn from the erebus wreckarcheologically might be more influential in reconstructingthan the history of what happened. as the fate of the investigatorsis pretty well documented. it is -- i am sure whatglenn would hope for is that at some point we'll come acrosssome preserved paper, materials --

which is not impossible at all. with all that silt and thecold water temperatures, and the darkness, being covered byice for, you know, 85% of the year or longer, there'sdefinitely the prospect of those sort of materialssurviving. is there a journal cached inone of the cabins somewhere that never made it off the ship? you never know. >>thank you.

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