Hundreds of artifacts, including serving dishes and a leather book, were recovered from a shipwreck settled on a shallow seabed off the coast of northern Canada.
Earlier this year, archaeologists set up camp on the ice above the wreck of HMS Erebus, a wooden vessel abandoned by its crew in 1848 during an Arctic expedition, according to a news release from the Canadian government.
Multiple diving expeditions have taken place at the wreck site, discovered in 2014, according to the Canadian parks department.
In September, 56 separate dives took place at the wreck over the course of 11 days, providing researchers with a more comprehensive understanding of the ship, one of the “best-preserved” wooden wrecks in the world, according to the parks department.
Of particular interest to divers were the second and third lieutenants’ cabins and the steward’s pantry.
The pantry of the 100-foot vessel yielded a trove of tableware, including platters, serving dishes and stoneware plates, according to CBC.
However, the most “remarkable” discovery was a book, Ryan Harris, one of the divers, told the Canadian outlet.
“We came across a folio — a leather book cover, beautifully embossed — with pages inside,” Harris said. “It actually has the feather quill pen still tucked inside the cover like a journal that you might write in and put on your bedside table before turning in.”
The recovered artifacts are owned jointly by the Canadian government and the Inuit Heritage Trust, an organization dedicated to protecting the heritage of indigenous Canadians, the parks department stated.
It was Inuit oral history that led to the discovery of the Erebus wreck. The search would have been “wholly impractical” without traditional knowledge, David Woodman, a researcher credited with helping find the ship, said, according to the parks department.
Following its abandonment in 1848, neither the crew nor the ship were seen again, leading the ill-fated voyage to achieve a myth-like status during the Victorian era and later years, according to The Spectral Arctic.
Only in later years was it discovered that the crew — weak, frozen and likely suffering from Scurvy — all perished while traveling by foot over the ice-covered water, according to a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
One study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, found evidence that members of the ship’s crew resorted to cannibalism.
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