{"id":91248,"date":"2017-09-15T01:20:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T01:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/where-is-the-body-of-john-franklin-inuit-historian-thinks-he-knows.html"},"modified":"2017-09-15T01:20:49","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T01:20:49","slug":"where-is-the-body-of-john-franklin-inuit-historian-thinks-he-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/where-is-the-body-of-john-franklin-inuit-historian-thinks-he-knows.html","title":{"rendered":"Where is the body of John Franklin? Inuit historian thinks he knows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The man who guided searchers to the wreck\u00a0of John Franklin&#8217;s flagship may have one more surprise left up his<br \/> parka sleeve.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe that Franklin is in a vault on King William Island,&#8221;\u00a0says Louie Kamookak, an Inuit historian who has spent 30 years\u00a0correlating stories collected from elders with European logbooks and\u00a0journals.<\/p>\n<p>The mystery that surrounds the Franklin Expedition is one of the\u00a0great legends of Arctic exploration. The ships Erebus and Terror set\u00a0out from England in 1845 with 129 men to search for the Northwest\u00a0Passage, but they never returned.<\/p>\n<p>Little by little, the Franklin story is coming together.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Artifacts and graves found throughout the 19th and 20th centuries\u00a0were joined by several more bodies discovered in the 1980s. The\u00a0ships were found in 2014 and 2016.<\/p>\n<p>But where is the grave of John Franklin?\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>PHOTOS | <a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Inuit guardians &#8216;happy and proud&#8217; to protect Franklin&#8217;s ships<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>PHOTOS |\u00a0<a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"><strong>&#8216;Credit is going back to our ancestors&#8217;: Gjoa Haven celebrates Erebus and Terror finds<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4289794.1505409454!\/cpImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/gjoa-haven-aerial-shot.jpg\" alt=\"Gjoa Haven, aerial shot\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">Gjoa Haven, pop. 1,200, lies on the southeast of King William Island facing Rae Strait in the central Arctic. (Jason Franson\/CP)<\/p>\n<p>Kamookak relates two stories passed down through generations that\u00a0may offer tantalizing clues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One group of Inuit said they saw a burial of a great chief\u00a0under the ground, under stone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This was remarkable for the hunters, as Inuit traditionally\u00a0buried their dead on the surface, wrapped in caribou skins and under\u00a0a cairn. They investigated the site, expecting to find something\u00a0similar. All they found was a flat stone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They said he was a great shaman who turned to stone,&#8221; says\u00a0Kamookak.<\/p>\n<p>In another account, a group of travelling Inuit came across a\u00a0large wooden structure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They managed to get a cross piece they took for a sled. The man\u00a0who was telling the story said there was a flat stone and he could\u00a0tell the stone was hollow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4289853.1505410426!\/cpImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/terror-bay-aerial-shot.jpg\" alt=\"Terror Bay, aerial shot\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">Terror Bay, where the sunken ship HMS Terror lies, near Gjoa Haven. (Jason Franson\/CP)<\/p>\n<p>Given that other expedition graves have been found on land,\u00a0Kamookak believes Franklin&#8217;s is there too.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think they would have an ocean burial for him.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If he&#8217;s right, Franklin is probably still lying beneath the\u00a0tundra on King William Island&#8217;s rocky and windswept northeast coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If he&#8217;s wrong, chalk up one more mystery in a tale that&#8217;s been\u00a0generating questions for 170 years.<\/p>\n<p>Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/north\/franklin-body-kamookak-1.4289776?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The man who guided searchers to the wreck\u00a0of John Franklin&#8217;s flagship may have one more surprise left up his parka sleeve. &#8220;I believe that Franklin is in a vault on King William Island,&#8221;\u00a0says Louie Kamookak, an Inuit historian who has spent 30 years\u00a0correlating stories collected from elders with European logbooks and\u00a0journals. The mystery that surrounds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-91248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}