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Northwest Passage Exploration Ship Found

Posted by Soulskill on from the forgot-to-bring-their-GPS dept.

Kittenman writes: The BBC (and several other sources) are carrying the news that the Canadian government has found the sunken remains of one of Sir John Franklin's ships (either the Erebus, or the Terror), that went missing in the 1840s, causing sensation in Victorian London. Sir John and his entire crew were never seen alive again. The search for traces of the expedition went for over ten years in the 19th century, partly led by Sir John's widow. The discovery has been called the biggest archaeological event since the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.

3 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Who names those ships? by mirix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Names like HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are kind of asking to sink with all hands on deck, aren't they?

    Must be British humour or something...

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
    1. Re:Who names those ships? by Dr+Caleb · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The HMS Terror was also involved in the War of 1812 under the command of John Sheridan it lay siege on Balitmore, which led to a poem by Francis Scott Key and then inspired "The Star Spangled Banner".

      These ships are as much a part of US history as they are of Canadian.

      --
      "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
  2. Re: Biggest archaeological event? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uh, what about:

    1) the finding of the undisturbed royal tombs of the 21th and 22nd dynasties in Tanis in 1940?

    2) the finding of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945?

    3) the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran around ~1950?

    4) the finding of an extremely well preserved chalcolithic European in 1991?

    5) the finding of Qin Shi Huang's Teracotta Army in 1973? (Which is probably nothing compared to what we'll find in the undisturbed tomb one day.)

    Perhaps also, sort of: 6) the discovery in 1973 that the corroded lump of rock found in ~1900 and lying in a Greek museum for decades is actually an Ancient Greek mechanical astronomical computer.

    And besides these "grade A+ finds", could also point to "regular" "grade A finds" like Gobekli Tepe, the Staffordshire hoard, the aspherical Viking lenses found at Visby, etc. etc.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20