Missing Ship Found 150 Years Later

The old saying “nothing is ever lost” was proven true Wednesday when a team of Canadian archaeologists found a missing British ship—150 years after it went missing in the icy Canadian Arctic waters. The HMS Investigator left Britain in 1850 under Capt. Robert John Le Mesurier McClure—who has been credited with discovering the last portion of Canada’s Northwest Passage—on a mission to rescue an expedition that had disappeared five years earlier. The 122-ton ship got stuck in the ice, and the crew was forced to abandon it after two years. The expedition was later rescued at Mercy Bay—named by McClure—which is covered in ice for most of the year, so the remains of the ship have been nearly impossible to find. The crew of archeologists set up camp last week at the site, and when the ice briefly cleared Sunday night, the search began. Brian Payton, author of a book on the Investigator, called the excavation a “wonderful relic of the Arctic past and of Canada’s past.” Three grave sites of crew members who did not survive the expedition were also found.