her majesty’s ship investigator discovered

By Letitia Pokiak

On board Her Majesty’s Ship Investigator, Captain Robert McClure and his crew of 66 men set out in 1850 to find Sir John Franklin, who had gone missing during his search for the Northwest Passage five years earlier. Instead of finding Franklin’s lost ship, McClure and his crew found the Northwest Passage, and narrowly avoided the same fate as Franklin. As the winter of 1851 approached, the Investigator’s crew sought refuge in what McClure called “the Bay of God’s Mercy”, not knowing they would be stranded there for two arctic winters. They survived on meagre rations and whatever wildlife they could hunt. The crew suffered from scurvy and was near starvation. Three of McClure’s men: John Boyle, John Ames and John Kerr perished. Members of another English ship named HMS Resolute eventually rescued the Investigator’s crew. The HMS Investigator was abandoned at Mercy Bay, which eventually sank to the bottom of the ocean floor. In July of 2010, approximately one hundred and fifty years later, the ship was rediscovered by Parks Canada.

Having an education background in anthropology, I was invited to join the Parks Canada 2010 Archaeological Survey, which was successful in both discovering the sunken ship and in locating the graves of the three sailors. It was exciting to be given the opportunity to be part of this momentous project, which gained international attention and a visit from the

Minister of Environment, Jim Prentice.

There were nine members in our crew, consisting of two teams: the land team set out to find the three graves and to record known archaeological sites; and the underwater team set out to locate the Investigator in the waters of Mercy Bay. We also had three valuable Inuvialuit guides from Parks Canada, who assisted in both the land and water surveys.

The land crew included Henry Cary, Edward (Ed) Eastaugh and Me. Henry Cary was responsible for coordinating the logistics of the entire trip, which ran smoothly and successfully. Ed Eastaugh, from the University of Western Ontario was in charge of the geophysical survey. From them, I learned a lot about what’s involved with field equipment and procedures. They are very knowledgeable about the history of Arctic peoples and were great to work with.

The underwater team consisted of Ryan Harris, Jonathan Moore and Thierry (Terry) Boyer. Ryan Harris was head of the Underwater Archaeology crew, whose discovery of the location of HMS Investigator made headlines around the world. Jonathan Moore assisted the land crew when the marine team was unable to go out on the water due to bad weather or ice. Thierry Boyer, the optimist, would look at things on the bright side and make light-hearted jokes.

Halfway through our expedition, Minister Jim Prentice and a Canadian Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) documentary crew joined us on the shores