Franklin ship found

After all this time I thought they'd never find either the Erebus or the Terror, but I'm happy to have been proved wrong.  This for a great change is the latest of breaking-news and not what you'll usually see here, but I wanted to mark it.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/lost-franklin-expedition-ship-found-in-the-arctic

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says one of Canada's greatest mysteries now has been solved, with the discovery of one of the lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.

"This is a great historic event," Harper said.

"For more than a century this has been a great Canadian story.… It's been the subject of scientists and historians and writers and singers. And so I think we have a really important day in mapping together the history of our country," the prime minister said.

At this point, the searchers aren't sure if they've found HMS Erebus or HMS Terror. But sonar images from the waters of Victoria Strait, just off King William Island, clearly show wreckage of a ship on the ocean floor.

The wreckage was found on Sept. 7 using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. When Harper revealed the team's success at Parks Canada's laboratories in Ottawa Tuesday, the room burst into applause and hollering.

 This is a big deal, as the search for the lost Franklin expedition of 1845 (his third expedition, his first very nearly as calamitous his last) greatly exercised the imagination of Victorian Britain and beyond.  The original search was looking for survivors and obviously found none, but did end up doing a very thorough job of charting the Arctic.  This in turn is the basis for Canada's (as the successor to British North America) claim to what we call our northernmost territory today. Anyway, I will be watching this for whatever info comes from this discovery.  It's not every day that I'm actually excited about something in the news, but you can mark this one down.