Sometimes things go missing. Every once in a while they show up again.
The Franklin Expedition departed England in 1845 and never returned. It was led by Sir John Franklin, and was his fourth trip to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The Admiralty and Lady Franklin both offered rewards and sent expeditions to search for the missing Franklin ships and the 129 men who crewed them.
The first crew members were found in the 1850s, in marked graves on an island. Over the decades, more graves were discovered, the local tribes provided oral histories of encounters with the men or sightings of the ships. Examination of artifacts and remains show that the crew had very high levels of lead exposure, and were also malnourished and sick.
In 2014, the wreck of the HMS Erebus was found to the west of O’Reilly island. Her sister ship, the HMS Terror was found south of King William Island, a location that shows it drifted in ice for many miles before it finally broke free and sank.