The Northwest Passage’s most famous shipwrecks sit in these waters. Scientists are still finding out what else lies beneath.
QUEEN MAUD GULF, NUNAVUT, Canada — In 1846, in perilous seas to the north of here, the two steam-propelled ships of British explorer Sir James Franklin, the Erebus and the Terror, froze in the ice. It was the beginning of the end of the Franklin mission, in which more than 100 men perished in the cold despite the launch of scores of ships to try to rescue them – the greatest disaster in a long and troubled history of trying to uncover the Northwest Passage.
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