Discovering the wreck of HMS Investigator

A stunning side scan image of the wreck

MERCY BAY, N.W.T. • The ship whose crew discovered Canada’s Northwest Passage has been found 155 years after it was abandoned and disappeared in this isolated Arctic bay, a historic find and one that may help bolster Canadian claims to Arctic sovereignty.

The wreck of HMS Investigator was detected in shallow water within days of Parks Canada archeologists launching an ambitious search for the 422-ton ship from a chilly tent encampment on the Beaufort Sea shoreline.

“It’s sitting upright in silt; the three masts have been removed, probably by ice,” said Ifan Thomas, Parks Canada’s superintendent of the western Arctic Field Unit. “It’s a largely intact ship in very cold water, so deterioration didn’t happen very quickly.”
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com

Update

Some more images and a link to Parks Canada website on this find.


ROV used to take images of the wreck

Minister Jim Prentice contemplating a Sailors grave