Franklin expedition find is all relative for Brian Spenceley

For BrianSpenceleyof Thunder Bay, it's all relative, when it comes to the recent discovery of one of the missing ships from the Franklin expedition.

The 82-year old retiredLakeheadUniversity physics professor is the great-great nephew of theHartnellbrothers,who were crew members on the ill-fated voyage to find the Northwest Passage.

Spenceleysaid he was delighted to hear the ship had been located.

"Tickled to death, of course. I hadn't really thought they would.But I've always thought of it as being a separate problem from the problem of what happened to the crew," he said.

"The ships went one way. The crew went another, and we have bone and artifact evidence of how far the crew got, but nothing about the ships," saidSpenceley.

Looking into the eyes of a long-dead relative

Spenceleyhas been involved in researching the doomed grouphimself.

In 1986, he travelledtoBeecheyIsland in the Canadian Arctic , on a research trip led by OwenBeattie, to exhume the body of his great-great uncle JohnHartnell, who was just 25years old when he died in 1846.

Hartnellhad been buried on the island along with fellow sailors JohnTorringtonand WilliamBraine.

Spenceleysaid over the years, the coffin had filled with water, which had refrozen around his great-great uncle's body. He said the team spent hours gently pouring warm water into the casket.

"Bit by bit, we thawed the ice, and revealed his face, first of course, and there he was. And he had a strong resemblance to my grandmother, oddly enough. TheHartnellsall seem to have long noses. JohnHartnelldid too," saidSpenceley.

Spenceleysays it was a unique moment in his life to look into the face of his long-dead uncle.

"Nobody had ever done, had been presented with this, literally looking into the eyes of a relative who had been dead for 140 years. It was just rather overwhelming. There wasn't sadness then. It was a sense of wonder," saidSpenceley.

'...amazed that it all happened to me'

He said the sadness came later, as they prepared to re-buryHartnell.

"It was really a normal family burial, so far as I was concerned...he had been part of [the]family, and he had died tragically, very young, and there we were, putting him back under the permafrost again," saidSpenceley.

"There are times when I forgot that I was there," he added."And when these events come up, I look through my old photographs, and all the old documentation and am mildly puzzled and amazed that it all happened to me."

Spenceleysays he`s hoping dive missions to the shipwreck will uncover more items that will help tell the story of the doomed voyage to chart the Northwest Passage.