I have to admit that the excitement over the Franklin expedition discoveries leave me a bit cold. "Lost ships." "169-year-old mystery." Well, not really. We've always known what happened to Franklin and his men and we've always had a pretty good idea where the ships were. What are we going to learn from this that we don't know already?
Two decades ago I wrote this essay about the Franklin search and I have no reason to change my mind.
However, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. Peter Mansbridge would certainly think so. As this article shows, he agrees with Prime Minister Harper that the search for Franklin's ships is one of the great unsolved riddles of Canadian history.
UPDATE: I recommend this essay over at Active History.