illuminator newsletter #23
TODAY
22 May 2023
With support from Michael Palin, Portsmouth’s National Museum of the Royal Navy has won their bid to secure Captain Kellett’s Franklin search flag from going into a private collection abroad.
Of equal interest, they repeat a claim from their original appeal in March stating the museum would soon be receiving artifacts from Parks Canada from “the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.” Today’s press release adds to the story: “The Kellett flag will be displayed in Belfast, Hartlepool and Portsmouth as part of exhibition featuring artefacts from Erebus that are being transferred to the National Museum of the Royal Navy by Canada National Parks.” [Terror’s name has now been removed, presumably as no artifacts have yet been recovered from Terror.]
If true, this will effectively be a mini-Death In the Ice — and the first time Erebus shipwreck relics have been seen in public since that exhibition closed, pre-pandemic.
The museum’s press release:
Also, as a matter of strange trivia, Peter Carney wrote years ago that HMS Trincomalee is today’s sole survivor of the Franklin search saga, given her role bringing supplies to search ships at the western entrance of the Passage. She survives today in Hartlepool — one of the apparent destinations of the Kellett flag, and thus the museum’s future Erebus artifacts. If this happens, it will mean that the Franklin search ship that got the closest to HMS Erebus’ bell will have been, oddly enough, the supply ship Trincomalee.
Peter Carney’s original 2014 article on visiting the Trincomalee:
https://erebusandterrorfiles.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-sole-survivor-of-franklin-saga.html
SINCE THE LAST ISSUE
4 May 2023
Explorers Web has done a profile on Randall Osczevski and his satellite photography search for Franklin sites.
13 May 2023
Following the recent coronation in London, Kenn Harper in Nunatsiaq News has written about Tookoolitoo Hannah and Ipiirvik Joe Ebierbing meeting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/inuit-visit-the-queen/
The End.