Researchers discover remarkably well-preserved artifacts aboard the sunken HMS Terror

Parks Canada and Inuit researchers announced Wednesday the results of a study of the HMS Terror, a ship which was part of a 19th century British polar expedition led by explorer Sir John Franklin.

Franklin and his crew disappeared during the expedition in 1845 (a second ship, the HMS Erebus, was also involved); multiple rescue missions failed, and western archaeologists ignored Inuit oral history about the shipwrecks for decades. But Inuit historians helped uncover the Erebus in 2014 and the Terror in 2016 beneath Canada's Arctic Ocean. Since then, Parks Canada has been studying them.

The Terror (researchers are still taking a look at the Erebus, The Guardian reports) has remained impressively intact. The researchers remotely piloted a vehicle that scoured nearly 90 percent of the ship's lower deck. It turns out the frigid Arctic waters helped preserve a lot of the vessel, including documentation like logbooks and maps. "Not only are the furniture and cabinets in place, drawers are closed and many are buried in silt, encapsulating objects and documents in the best possible conditions for their survival," Marc-André Bernier, the head of Parks Canada's underwater archaeology department, said in a statement. "Each drawer and other enclosed space will be a treasure trove of unprecedented information on the fate of the Franklin expedition." Read more at The Guardian and watch a tour of the ship below. Tim O'Donnell

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