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Toronto: Canada said Friday it will search for two fabled British explorer ships that disappeared in the Arctic more than 160 years ago, fearing melting ice caused by global warming could entice others to find and plunder the underwater tombs.
Environment Minister John Baird announced the Parks Canada-led search for British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin's ships.
The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the late-1840s. Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men vanished mysteriously on an expedition that began in 1845 to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Franklin's disappearance prompted one of history's largest rescue searches, from 1848 to 1859, which resulted in the discovery of the passage.
The route runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago. European explorers sought the passage as a shorter route to Asia, but found it rendered inhospitable by ice and weather.
Underwater tomb
Robert Grenier, a senior underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada, will lead the search for Franklin's ships aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
"It's very exciting. It's like an Indiana Jones adventure. It's searching for a lost underwater tomb," Baird said.
The mission comes as Canada moves to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting ice has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin's men were after.
Grenier said Hollywood producers and others have offered local aboriginal Inuits money to help search for the ships.
The six-week Franklin mission begins on August 18. If it fails to find the lost ships, two more expeditions are scheduled.
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