Despite having proved its worth as a platform for ocean exploration, nonetheless, the Franklin’s career languishes. Piccard and Grumman had hoped the Gulf Stream mission would generate contracts for the Franklin’s services.

It is contracted to survey a deep water dumping site off New Jersey, and then towed to Florida where a young Navy oceanographer named Bob Ballard makes his first submersible dive off the coast of Florida in the Franklin. The sub is then bought by a Canadian firm to survey and prospect the ocean bottom for mining purposes. It is never used, never goes to sea again, and sits on stands in a Canadian industrial lot, rusting and rotting for over 30 years.

In 2001, the Vancouver Maritime Museum rediscovers the Franklin, and salvages it. The museum has begun to restore the sub, and plans to turn it into an interactive exhibit on undersea exploration. Jim Delgado, the museum’s director, wants to use it as a way to fire the imagination of a new generation of oceanographers and explorers. He hopes will be inspire young students to pick up the challenge of oceanic exploration where the Ben Franklin mission left off, over three decades earlier.

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