P.E.I. fishermen back home after helping discover HMS Terror

A father-son pair of Island fishermen are back on P.E.I., after being part of adiscovery of a lifetime earlier this month.

CaptainDavidMcIsaacand son DanielMcIsaac, were part of the small crew that discovered Sir John Franklin's long-lost HMS Terror.

Pair also part ofErebusdiscovery

When not fishing in Atlantic Canada, the pair has worked with the Arctic Research Foundation for several years, with much of that time dedicated to locating Franklin's lost ships.

Both were present when theHMSErebuswas found in 2014. That took several years of searching, but the HMS Terror was found the day after expedition leader Adrian Schimnowski got a tip from a local hunter.

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DanielMcIsaac said he'd taken over steering the vessel while his father went to the washroom, and noticed an unfamiliar large peak on the depth sounder.

"They made the decision to make a second overpass," said DanielMcIsaac. "By then everybody was in the wheelhouse, so I sailed back over it, I stayed right on the mark we took the first time, and when it came back up, everybody was just: 'Oh my God, what could this be?'"

'Either a whale skeleton or a ship'

Assuming the large peak was either a whale skeleton or a sunken ship, Captain DavidMcIsaacordered a smaller boat put into the water to investigate, and was able to confirm it was indeed a ship in the icy waters below.

With a hunch it could be the Terror, the crew returned to the site the next day, with a remotely operated underwater vehicle, to get a closer look at the details of the ship.

"We put the ROV in the water, where we figured the stern of the ship was, and we started at the back and worked our way to the front," said DavidMcIsaac. "We had blueprints for the Terror, and everything we came across as we were working our way to the front, matched up with the blueprints on the Terror."

McIsaacsays the submerged ship was in pristine condition, with almost no damage to either the interior or the exterior, "as though you could pump the water out of it and it would still float," saidMcIsaac. He says once it was clear among the crew that the ship was the long-lost Terror, everyone on board was elated.

'It completely changes history'

"Any shipwreck found in the Arctic would make the news, and of course the Terror is the most famous ship of them all," said DavidMcIsaac. "And finding it where we found it, it completely changes history, because there's not a history book written that tells you it's at the south of King William Island, it's always been (believed to be) sunk at the north of King William Island, so now every history book will have to be re-written."

He says the crewmostly Atlantic Canadians from P.E.I., Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotiahad less than two days to explore the ship, before they had to return the research vessel to Cambridge Bay.

More discoveries to make

The pair estimates that, during the warmer weeks of the year, crews will be diving to study the sunken ship for years to come, looking for answers to all the questions that remain.

"I don't know if we'll ever make the history books or anything, whether they'll talk much about us," said DavidMcIsaac, "butwe've definitely changed history, it's an amazing feeling."

Both father and son are set to return to the Arctic by the end of this week.

They hope to get the call to helpagain next year, both eager to remain part of such an important piece of history.

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