There’s no hiding or disguising the smile on Aaron Lawton’s face as he recounts the days leading up to Sept. 9 when remains of the legendary Franklin Expedition were found in Canada’s Arctic. Like a 10-year-old opening a gift on his birthday, Lawton rolls out charts showing ocean depths and the various islands around the Northwest Passage.
Two ships led by Capt. Sir John Franklin, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became trapped in ice in September of 1846 near King William Island. The bomb vessels were built in the early 1800s and each measured just over 31 metres in length. Sir John Franklin was ordered to find a passage through the Arctic to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Lawton was part of a group searching this summer for any signs of the remains of the two ships, which sank about 170 years ago.
Interest in finding the legendary vessels mounted in 2008 when Parks Canada launched a six-week expedition to search for the ships. More search expeditions took place between 2010 and this year.
Lawton spreads his fingers across his tablet and expands the view on the screen to show the area where he and his One Ocean Expedition colleagues sailed in the first week of September to help find Terror and Erebus as part of the Victoria Strait Expedition.
“We were approached last winter by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGF),” he says, his smile widens as another layer of the wrapping paper that is this story comes off. “The three of us are Fellows of the RCGF and we were approached with this proposal to get involved with the Franklin search this summer. The government was proposing a public-private partnership. The government didn’t have the available resources to get all of the equipment up to the search site.”
One Ocean is a tourist operation that takes customers to the Arctic in our summer months and to the Antarctic in our winter months on two former Russian research vessels. Lawton was aboard the One Ocean Voyager. The people who own the ship and the company that operates it work from headquarters based in Squamish.
“The expedition we were planning this summer, was basically a northern search area, which was this area here and a southern search area, which is down in this water,” says Lawton as he points to large swaths of blue on his map.
On Sept. 7, the last day of the search expedition, the government searchers on the expedition quietly found what they were looking for. They didn’t share the discovery right away with the other people on the expedition.
“I am delighted to announce that this year’s Victoria Strait Expedition has solved one of Canada’s greatest mysteries, with the discovery of one of the two ships belonging to the Franklin Expedition lost in 1846,” announced Prime Minister Steven Harper two days later in Ottawa.
“Although we do not know yet whether the discovery is HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, we do have enough information to confirm its authenticity.”
This is a big deal for England.
“The prime minister briefed the prime minister of England and received a call very quickly back from the Queen congratulating him on his find and for his efforts because they’re her ships,” adds Lawton. “They were still part of the Royal Navy. Before anything is done to them, basically before anything at all is done, the government of Canada had to have the permission of the Crown.”
Harper is clearly as pleased as Lawton with the discovery. He has had a personal interest in finding the two long-lost vessels for many years.
“Our government has been deeply committed to finding HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which were Canada’s only undiscovered national historical sites.
“This is truly a historic moment for Canada. Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty,” says Harper.
Lawton says he and his business partners, his wife Catherine and Andrew Prossin, knew something was up because one of the senior searchers on One Ocean Voyager was quickly transferred off the ship then whisked away to Ottawa.
As they were wrapping up the One Ocean trip, Lawton says he and Prossin were asked to fly to Ottawa to participate in a news conference.
“We were told 15 or 20 hours before the press conference there was a major discovery,” Lawton says. But, that’s all they were told.
He chose not go to Ottawa. The Lawton family had plans to attend a Katy Perry concert in Vancouver. Lawton chose to be with his daughters over attending a press conference with the prime minister in Ottawa. Prossin, the principal owner of the company, represented One Ocean at the news conference.
Lawton was watching the news conference with his wife as it streamed live over the Internet.
The full details were revealed to the couple through that news conference.
“That hit me like a punch in the gut when I saw the image of the ship,” he says. “I’ve been travelling in those waters for the last 15 summers, wondering what happened with the Franklin Expedition.”
Lawton notes, the ship was found in just 11 metres (36 feet) of water. His small tourism company played a key role in finding two ships that carried 129 men to Canada’s icy north and ultimately their deaths when provisions ran out.
Prossin says Prime Minister Harper is genuinely excited about the discovery.
“I travelled up with him on his plane to go meet the ship and spent two days with him,” says Prossin. “He’s a keen student of history and he’s pretty keen on this story.”
Since news broke of the Franklin discovery, the One Ocean website has been flooded with hits.
“We’ve been contacted by a guy who is a direct descendent of John Franklin in England,” notes Prossin. “That makes it all seem pretty wild.”
As exciting as the discovery was, the most exciting part of the expedition was a rescue mission when a 10-metre (35 feet) yacht became trapped in ice. To make life even more interesting for the couple on the yacht a polar bear was intrigued by the yacht and started walking toward the small vessel.
“The yacht got pinched and pushed up,” says Lawton. “They couldn’t do anything, they were stuck.”
The One Ocean crew decided to push through the ice and help the stranded couple.
“Our captain is experienced in the ice and he worked that ship in beautifully. He worked through the ice ever so slightly, pushing here, pushing there,” recounts Lawton. “We got within about a half a mile from the yacht when we noticed a polar bear walking toward the yacht.”
The couple on the yacht had also noticed the big white bear walking straight toward them.
“They were nervous about it,” says Lawton.
“We got closer and closer and then the bear turned away.”
A towline was attached to the yacht and Lawton says it was towed out of the ice.
The role the small adventure tour company played in the Franklin search was significant in the mission’s overall big picture as One Ocean Voyager was used to transport the Defence Research and Development Canada Team and their Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) called the Arctic Explorer. The sophisticated search vehicle was instrumental in the Franklin discovery. There are no Canadian naval vessels capable of carrying the Arctic Explorer into Canada’s frozen northern waters.
“Our role was minor in regards to the actual discovery but the equipment that discovered the ship was brought to the site by us so it wouldn’t have happened without our involvement,” says Lawton.
This from a small company based in downtown Squamish for the last three years.
According to Lawton, the company owners wanted the company headquarters to be located in western Canada and Squamish fit the bill partially because there are a lot of people in Squamish who have worked in Antarctica.
“There aren’t very many places in Canada where you can walk into a coffee shop and meet somebody who has been to the Antarctic and worked there,” he says.
Prossin says he felt strongly that the company headquarters has to be located in the downtown area of Squamish.
As Lawton, Prossin and the rest of the One Ocean team prepares for their next tours of Antarctica Lawton and his co-workers are looking forward to heading north again next summer to continue unwrapping Sir John Franklin’s mystery.
