Mt erebus wreck11/10/2023 ![]() The remains of the aircraft still lie on the slopes of Mt Erebus. However at this year’s anniversary the chairwoman Therese Walsh offered a full apology as did Prime Minster Ardern on behalf of the Government. In 2009 the airline apologised for its behaviour in the aftermath of the disaster, but not for the accident itself. The disaster and the bitterness surrounding the subsequent inquiries and legal disputes had an enormous effect on the confidence and innocence of New Zealand. Mahon’s report also accused management of Air New Zealand of a conspiracy to cover-up, but this was later rejected. Mahon found that the descent was explained by an approval to descend below 6 000′ if authorised by air traffic control at the US McMurdo Sound base. Public outrage prompted a further enquiry-the Mahon Inquiry- in 1981 which cleared the crew, laying blame on the airline for altering the fight plan and-crucially-not advising the crew of TE901. “It’s an epic failure on a grand scale, where people met their fate with resolute determination.The initial enquiry into the disaster concluded that the pilots were to blame for the accident, primarily for descending below the MSA. There had been 13 previous flights, and all had used this erroneous information, albeit without incident. Owing to a typing error, the printout from Air New Zealands ground computer system allegedly directed pilots down the middle of the wide McMurdo Sound, 43 kilometers west of Mt Erebus. Erebus remains the worst peacetime accident in New Zealand's history, the scale of loss. The lost expedition’s allure “is like the appeal of the Titanic and Antarctic explorer Robert Scott,” says nautical archaeologist James Delgado, director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program. It would take you over the top of Mt Erebus. At 12.49pm the aircraft crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew. As hopes of rescuing crew members dimmed, the story of this lost Arctic expedition became enshrined in Canadian culture, becoming the subject of popular novels, paintings, and songs. In the following decades, search and rescue parties combed Arctic waters for traces of the lost expedition, turning up a last written message in a cairn, as well as graves of some of the men. The remaining crewmembers abandoned the ships less than a year later, hoping to trek across the sea ice to a Hudson Bay Company outpost on the Canadian mainland. In June 1847, Franklin died, possibly from a heart attack. But 16 months after their departure, both ships had become trapped in sea ice. ![]() Led by a veteran Arctic explorer and outfitted with state-of-the-art technology-from central heating to newly invented daguerreotype equipment for photography-the Franklin Expedition seemed destined for success. “Probably a good percentage of the contents of Franklin’s cabin is either entombed within the crushed cabin itself, or deposited on the seafloor,” said Jonathan Moore, a senior underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada. Part of the stern where Franklin’s quarters were located has collapsed, trapping what appear to be his furnishings and possessions under beams and planking. Inserting cameras through holes in the vessel’s upper deck and hull, the team spied the shattered remains of expedition leader Sir John Franklin’s cabin. This past summer the Canadian team returned to the Arctic to study the ship’s well preserved remains and peer inside. The Mount Erebus disaster was (and still is) New Zealands worst peacetime disaster. ( Read more about the discovery of H.M.S. Parks Canada underwater archeologists planning their next steps in the exploration of the HMS Erebus wreck see potential for revealing more than just a treasure trove of mid-19th-century artifacts. Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that a Canadian scientific team had located Erebus in less than 40 feet (12 meters) of water in a remote Arctic strait. ![]() For more than a century and a half searchers combed Canada’s high Arctic in vain for the expedition’s two ships, H.M.S. Erebus.ĭispatched by the British admiralty in 1845 to search polar waters for the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, the expedition led by Sir John Franklin was soon lost. Unusually calm weather and clear water during the waning Arctic summer has helped Canadian archaeologists get their best look yet inside their nation’s most famous shipwreck, the Franklin Expedition’s H.M.S.
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