illuminator newsletter #22
UPCOMING
2 May 2023
This coming Saturday, for the first time, a Franklin relic will participate in the coronation of a British monarch. A relic from the expedition has been built into the coach that will take Charles and Camilla from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. Alison Freebairn interviewed the coach’s designer for Canadian Geographic.
RECENTLY
18 April 2023
Douglas Wamsley has completed the first full-length biography of Franklin searcher Frederick Schwatka. Reviewed for the Arctic Book Review by Dave Woodman.
https://arcticbookreview.blogspot.com/2023/04/big-wolf.html
26 April 2023
In The Courier, actor Gordon Morris (John Weekes, HMS Erebus) looks back on AMC’s The Terror at five years.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/past-times/4335631/gordon-morris-the-terror/
As well, 5th anniversary celebrations including script releases and multiple Zoom Q&As with show creator Dave Kajganich have been organized by Catriona Whitefield, happening on weekends across May and June.
https://dramaticopeningshot.com/2023/04/29/news-the-terror-5th-anniversary-celebration/
27 April 2023
New photography of the Boat Place relics at Ottawa’s Museum of Nature.
https://www.illuminator.blog/p/ottawa-nature.html
25 April 2023
On the anniversary of the Victory Point Record’s 2nd note, Dave Woodman returns to a previous essay on the document, with new updates from 2021: “175 years ago today an exhausted group of men finally reached a frozen and barren beach and set up camp. Two officers wrote a few words around the margins of a form. The mystery continues.”
https://www.aglooka.ca/two-words-the-victory-point-record/
23 April 2023
Alison Freebairn tells the story of Fox Expedition alumni reaching out to help their Danish sledgemate Carl Petersen in retirement.
https://finger-post.blog/2023/04/23/carl-petersen-pension/
23 March 2023
Canadian government press release from March: "...the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror will progressively become a fully Inuit-led national historic site."
30 April 2023
The Globe & Mail has gorgeous new photographs of Gjoa Haven by Amber Bracken. The article centers on an Arctic Research Foundation project to grow vegetables in the village. Betty Kogvik is featured at the top, previous Inuit Guardian to the shipwrecks and the wife of Sammy Kogvik, discoverer of HMS Terror. (Note: the Globe & Mail website is not optimized for mobile photography; view this article on a desktop/laptop if possible.)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-gjoa-haven-inuit-greenhouse/
ALSO
At the start of March, the Royal Navy museum in Portsmouth announced that they had only two weeks left to secure funding to keep a Franklin search flag in the UK. Eight weeks later, there’s been no further word on whether they met their goal.
Their original appeal (with an intriguing mention of Erebus & Terror artifacts coming to Portsmouth) from March 6th:
https://www.nmrn.org.uk/news/Kelletts-sledge-flag-urgent-appeal
LAST WORD
The End.