What happens next with the Erebus? I've been thinking about this because tonight will find me just north of Toronto, speaking to roughly 120 women about Searching for Franklin: The Lost Ships, the Discoveries, and the Woman Who Created a Legend. The occasion is the celebratory May Dinner of the Aurora/Newmarket branch of the Canadian Federation of University Women.
Last month's dive to the Erebus, projected to last 10 days, was cut in half because stormy weather interfered with the delivery of almost 12,000 kg of gear. But the Parks Canada team did manage to bring back massive amounts of high-definition video, photos, and laser-scan images from outside and inside the ship.
In late August or early September, searchers will revisit the Erebus, which is sitting just west of Adelaide Peninsula in Wilmot and Crampton Bay. The greatest possible on-board discovery, from an historical perspective, would be a log book or series of status reports sealed in metal canisters. The finding of human remains would prove still more sensational. And to me, this last seems a near certainty.
In the 1860s, a number of Inuit told American explorer Charles Francis Hall about visiting the ship at this location not long before it sank. Hall reported that "they broke into a place that was fastened up & there found a very large white man who was dead, very tall man. There was flesh about this dead man, that is, his remains quite perfect -- it took 5 men to lift him. The place smelt very bad. His clothes all on. Found dead on the floor -- not in a sleeping place or birth [sic]." This is just the clearest report among several. Maybe I am wrong, but I am guessing that corroboration will come later this year. 
(The image above is a reconstruction from Franklin's Lost Ships, that marvelous new documentary.)

"Denied a role in Victorian England’s male-dominated society, Jane Franklin (1791–1875) took her revenge by seizing control of that most masculine of pursuits, Arctic exploration, and shaping its history to her own ends." This clarification went missing during my own final edit of the book, to my lasting mortification. So it's great to see it turning up in a promotional blurb here, where anyone can easily order a copy.  Between 1848 and 1859, thirty-five expeditions went searching for Sir John Franklin and, as I write in the book, Lady Franklin "variously organized, inspired, and financed eleven of these -- nearly one third." Lady Franklin's Revenge runs 468 pages and, yes, it's more relevant than ever. Where else will you get the Charles Dickens angle? The book won the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography and, in conjunction with Fatal Passage and Ancient Mariner, landed the Pierre Berton Award for History. There's more at the HarperCollins Canada site, and here I discover an interview that is probably the best-ever backgrounder. Far be it from me to blow my own horn or tout my own wares. But, hey, someone has to do it.