.SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS Scientists at the Department of Culture and Heritage in the Canadian territory of Nunavut h ave begun examining the DNA of the remains of sailors from the doomed Franklin expedition, and were surprised to learn that women might have been part of the endeavor. The 1845 undertaking, led by British Royal Navy captain Sir John Franklin, set out in two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to find a sea route linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The ships were trapped in thick ice in 1846, and the crews indicated in a message sent out in 1848 that they were abandoning the ships to attempt the journey south to safety, bur none survived. Researchers have been trying to piece together the story of their final journey ever since. The wrecks of the Erebus and Terror
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were discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The remains of more than twenty of the crewmembers have been found along the route away from the wreck sire. Initial examination of the crew's skeletal remains points to incidences of scurvy and also the possibility of cannibalism, bur what has been the most startling discovery is that four of the individuals appear to be women. While it is possible that the age of the DNA evidence might have reduced its reliability, the DNA appears to be that of European women, indicating that the remains were not those of women native to the region, but women who were part of the ship's company. The research team hopes that, through studying the remains, it can piece together more of the story of what happened to the crewmembers in their final days . In
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Sonar scan showing HMS Erebus in the Queen Maud Gulf in Nunavut.
1992, the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were designated as a national hisroric site under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act, despite neither shipwreck having been fo und at that time. Parks Canada and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association cooperatively-manage the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site, the first national historic site cooperatively managed in N unavut. (Vis it the Parks Canada website on the Franklin Expedition for more information on the proj ect, plus videos of the field work, photos, and more: www.pc.gc.ca/en /c ulture/ franklin.) ... Researchers from the Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP) team, working with American and European maritime archaeologists to study how sea-level change affected early human societies around the end of the last ice age, were surveying the Black Sea off the coast of Bulgaria last summer and discovered an array of shipwrecks. In all, rhe team found more than forty vessels. TI1e oldest dates back to the Byzantine Empire; the majority of them range from the 14'h to 19'h centuries. The shipwrecks are in particularly good shape because the waters of the Black Sea at depths below 500 feet are devoid of oxygen and thus rhe dreaded reredo, or "shipworm," which bores through wood timbers, cannot thrive there. Working from MAP's research vessel, the SEA HISTORY 159, SUMMER 20 17