Sir John Franklin and his crew were captured in this 1847 painting by W Turner Smith called The End In Sight
One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found, Canada's prime minister says.
Stephen Harper said it was unclear which ship had been found, but photo evidence confirmed it was one of them.
Sir John Franklin led the two ships and 129 men in 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic.
The expedition's disappearance shortly after became one of the great mysteries of the age of Victorian exploration.
"I am delighted to announce that this year's Victoria Strait expedition has solved one of Canada's greatest mysteries, with the discovery of one of the two ships belonging to the Franklin Expedition," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement.
"Finding the first vessel will no doubt provide the momentum - or wind in our sails - necessary to locate its sister ship and find out even more about what happened to the Franklin Expedition's crew."
The loss of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror prompted one of largest searches in history, running from 1848 to 1859.
The mystery has gripped people for generations, in part because no one knows for sure exactly what happened to the crew.
Reports at the time from local Inuits say the men, desperate for food, resorted to cannibalism before they died.
Sir John Franklin's wife spearheaded an attempt to find him, launching five ships in search of her husband.
In total more than 50 expeditions joined the search.
Bodies eventually recovered were found to have a high lead content and to this day, many people believe the 129 crew members were poisoned by leaking lead in their poorly soldered tin cans.
More recent research suggests the canned food supplied to Franklin was not acidic enough for that to happen and the lead was more likely to have come from the internal pipe system on the ships.
The search resulted in the discovery of the Northwest Passage, which runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago.
A team of Canadian divers and archaeologists has been trying to find the ships since 2008
BBC News - Fabled Franklin Arctic ship found