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An American professor who studies the Franklin Expedition says Parks Canada lost valuable time to investigate the wreck of HMS Terror because it wasn’t told the wreck had been found.
A private search ship discovered the wreck on Sept. 3, but in a conference call with reporters Monday, Parks Canada revealed that its own team didn’t learn of the find until Sept. 11.
Now Russell Potter of Rhode Island College said this delay cost Parks most of the investigation time that remained in a short Arctic navigation season.
Potter teaches English and media studies and has studied the Franklin Expedition for years. His book Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search was published this month by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
In the days after Terror was found, Parks Canada kept scanning the ocean floor with sonar, looking for a wreck that wasn’t there. In the meantime, the season was drawing near a close. The time suitable for searching is only about six weeks late in each summer.
“The eight days’ time lost to the Parks team certainly has severely limited what might have been learned this season,” Potter wrote in an email to the Citizen.
He called the lack of communication a “great disappointment.”
During the eight days that Parks Canada was steaming back and forth in the wrong place, Potter notes the Arctic Research Foundation was able to return to land for equipment, record video underwater, and tell its story to Paul Watson, writing for the UK newspaper The Guardian.
“Those eight days, when — apparently — conditions were ideal, were lost to the Parks team, and what could be learned this season considerably reduced,” he wrote in his blog about the Franklin search, Visions of the North.
“The crew of the Bergmann’s explanation, that there was not an ‘updated protocol’ in place, seems flimsy indeed. While they certainly deserve credit for the discovery, this revelation begs the question: What more might we have learned, if not for their silence?”
The Martin Bergmann is the Arctic Research Foundation’s ship. And the foundation said Monday that it didn’t tell Parks Canada because it felt the department didn’t have updated protocols for handling a new discovery and ealing with media.
Bergmann’s crew found the wreck Sept. 3. Parks Canada says it learned of the find Sept. 11, and set out to see it Sept. 13. But bad weather delayed them, and they were only able to investigate the wreck for three days (Sept. 16 to 18) before the navigation season ended.
They got one day of diving, but the water had become murky and they couldn’t see inside the Terror’s hull. By comparison, the private searchers had obtained video in clear water, and were able to identify individual wine bottles and the open drawer of a table inside a cabin.
Arctic Research says that while it did not inform Parks Canada directly, it did tell the Prime Minister’s Office. The Citizen has asked Parks Canada and the PMO about this, and is waiting to hear back.
Potter does hold out hope for the future exploration of Terror and Erebus.
He hopes especially that divers will “get an accurate ship’s log or other official record, which would certainly change what we know about the final fatal months or years of the expedition. For those of us who have already spent a large chunk of our lives wondering, it will be a long year!”
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
A private search ship discovered the wreck on Sept. 3, but in a conference call with reporters Monday, Parks Canada revealed that its own team didn’t learn of the find until Sept. 11.
Now Russell Potter of Rhode Island College said this delay cost Parks most of the investigation time that remained in a short Arctic navigation season.
Potter teaches English and media studies and has studied the Franklin Expedition for years. His book Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search was published this month by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
In the days after Terror was found, Parks Canada kept scanning the ocean floor with sonar, looking for a wreck that wasn’t there. In the meantime, the season was drawing near a close. The time suitable for searching is only about six weeks late in each summer.
“The eight days’ time lost to the Parks team certainly has severely limited what might have been learned this season,” Potter wrote in an email to the Citizen.
He called the lack of communication a “great disappointment.”
During the eight days that Parks Canada was steaming back and forth in the wrong place, Potter notes the Arctic Research Foundation was able to return to land for equipment, record video underwater, and tell its story to Paul Watson, writing for the UK newspaper The Guardian.
“Those eight days, when — apparently — conditions were ideal, were lost to the Parks team, and what could be learned this season considerably reduced,” he wrote in his blog about the Franklin search, Visions of the North.
“The crew of the Bergmann’s explanation, that there was not an ‘updated protocol’ in place, seems flimsy indeed. While they certainly deserve credit for the discovery, this revelation begs the question: What more might we have learned, if not for their silence?”
The Martin Bergmann is the Arctic Research Foundation’s ship. And the foundation said Monday that it didn’t tell Parks Canada because it felt the department didn’t have updated protocols for handling a new discovery and ealing with media.
Bergmann’s crew found the wreck Sept. 3. Parks Canada says it learned of the find Sept. 11, and set out to see it Sept. 13. But bad weather delayed them, and they were only able to investigate the wreck for three days (Sept. 16 to 18) before the navigation season ended.
They got one day of diving, but the water had become murky and they couldn’t see inside the Terror’s hull. By comparison, the private searchers had obtained video in clear water, and were able to identify individual wine bottles and the open drawer of a table inside a cabin.
Arctic Research says that while it did not inform Parks Canada directly, it did tell the Prime Minister’s Office. The Citizen has asked Parks Canada and the PMO about this, and is waiting to hear back.
Potter does hold out hope for the future exploration of Terror and Erebus.
He hopes especially that divers will “get an accurate ship’s log or other official record, which would certainly change what we know about the final fatal months or years of the expedition. For those of us who have already spent a large chunk of our lives wondering, it will be a long year!”
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
