For others, the discovery also marks a new beginning of a more personal nature in the efforts to unravel the sad saga of what happened to British naval hero Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men as they tried to find the long-sought Northwest Passage.
"This has completely opened up again a new chapter in the mystery and hopefully now we will find out a lot more," said Adrian Gell, a great-great-great-grandson of Franklin. "I think it's a fantastic job that this current expedition has done in completing the find," he said in an interview Tuesday from his home northwest of London, England.
Gell was "over the moon" with word one of the ships — either HMS Erebus or HMS Terror — had been found, something he learned only when a photographer from the Daily Telegraph arrived at his garden gate.
"This discovery will hopefully open the doors where a huge amount [of] information can be gleaned and it will hopefully then reveal exactly where [the ships] went, what happened to Franklin and his crew, how much further they got, etc., etc. — the whole list of things one can think about."
The Franklin family would be "absolutely fascinated" to find out what happened to their famous relative, Gell said. "I think if a member of your family goes missing under extraordinary circumstances and incredibly brave circumstances … it's always great for the family to have some sort of closure on it."
Right now, though, what would excite him most, he says, is if searchers would "identify which of the two ships this is that they've found and then, secondly, to locate the second of the two ships."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/franklin-ship-discovery-just-the-beginning-1.2760930