It is possible he was on board the Matthew , but unlikely. The only supporting evidence is a map showing parts of North America which bears the legend: "This land was discovered by John Cabot the Venetian and Sebastian Cabot his son. John Cabot did not return from the voyage, and his sons made no effort, so far as we know, to preserve his memory.
Indeed, Sebastian, who became a mariner and explorer himself, seems to have encouraged people to think that he deserved the credit for his father's exploits.
No wonder chroniclers became confused. In - , backed by Bristol interests, Sebastian Cabot explored areas to the north of those found in , seeking a way round the new continent to Asia. He may well have sailed through Hudson Strait, turning back only because his crew refused to continue. While out fishing with a friend along the west coast of King William Island, he had once seen a big wooden pole sticking above the water. After hours of searching the seafloor with side-scan sonar, Kogvik and his colleagues found Terror, about 80 feet underwater.
Today Parks Canada archaeologists are planning to excavate both Franklin ships, but Erebus is their priority. Harsh Arctic conditions now threaten the vessel. Sea ice has scoured the stern and crushed the area where Franklin had his cabin, entombing or scattering its artifacts. More haunting still are the conditions aboard Terror. Windows and hatches, mostly unbroken, still seal the contents of the cabins. Studies and excavations at the two wreck sites are expected to take years, and archaeologists hope to settle a long-standing controversy.
But in the s, David Woodman, a retired mariner and history writer based in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, analysed the reports of Inuit witnesses. Instead many returned to the ships after Crozier wrote his note, and managed to sail farther south.
When the two vessels finally sank, the castaways survived on salvaged provisions and occasional hunted game, until the last man died in the early s. But the accounts given by some 30 Inuit witnesses contained many ambiguities and contradictions, in part because of translation problems.
So the Parks Canada team hopes to recover written records from the shipwrecks, such as logs or personal journals, to help reveal what went wrong with the expedition. In Britain, families of the dead men were left to wonder about their sons and husbands and how exactly they met their end—questions that linger among many descendants today. And some relief may be in sight.
Stenton and his team have taken samples from skeletal remains and sent them to Lakehead University in Ontario. Geneticists there successfully extracted DNA from the remains of 26 crew members. Now Stenton is gathering DNA samples from living descendants.
By comparing the historical and modern DNA profiles, he and his colleagues hope to identify some of the bodies by name. Moreover, the Parks Canada team may add to these identifications. The underwater archaeologists have yet to encounter any human remains, but if skeletons or bones turn up, the team will consider DNA testing.
Once they were free of the ice, the mutineers set Hudson and those loyal to him adrift in a small boat before the mutineers returned to England. Hudson was never seen again. The ships vanished. Nineteenth century reports from local Inuit suggested the men may have resorted to cannibalism as they trekked on foot across the ice. Cut marks on the bones support the cannibalism claims. McClure confirmed the existence of the route when his crew became the first to traverse the Northwest Passage—by ship and over the ice on sled—in Yet it would be more than fifty years before Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen would make the entire passage by sea.
The entire route was ice-free for the first time in recorded history in the summer of Traffic through the Arctic sea route has increased in the past decade. In , a record 30 ships made the transit.
Crystal Serenity , a luxury cruise ship, made headlines in when it became the first tourist cruise ship to navigate the Northwest Passage. Less ice means that marine species once separated by the North American continent are now able to cross from ocean to ocean with greater ease. In , two gray whales—native to the Pacific Ocean—were spotted in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in more than years.
Experts think the Pacific whales may have made their way through the open waters of the Northwest Passage and the Arctic Ocean into the Atlantic. Increased access to the route has stirred up a decades-old debate over who controls the Arctic waters. Canada claims parts of the passage as its own territorial waters, while the U.
The Franklin Expedition; Parks Canada. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Lawrence River would later enable France to Henry Hudson made his first voyage west from England in , when he was hired to find a shorter route to Asia from Europe through the Arctic Ocean.
After twice being turned back by ice, Hudson embarked on a third voyage—this time on behalf of the Dutch East India Company—in The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters.
Known in the past as the premiere Honeymoon destination, this geological wonder is not only one of most popular tourist attractions in the state of New York, but also functions as one of the major power providers to the state itself.
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