illuminator newsletter #30
Last Wednesday I spoke with Jonathan Moore, Manager for Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team, who led the 2023 work on HMS Erebus. I asked the same question I have after every Parks Canada dive season: “Any new damage to Erebus?”
This has been my top question every year since 2018, when the dive team returned to Erebus to find a significant piece of the starboard upper deck flipped over by (presumably) a storm.
The answer this year was: No significant new damage to Erebus. But, as Jonathan Moore has been quoted in the Guardian this past week: “Parts of the ship’s upper deck collapsed recently and other parts are sloping over dangerously. It’s getting tricky down there.”
For this dive season, that upper deck damage found in 2018 proved beneficial. Where it had peeled away was above the seaman’s chest in the forecastle.
Each dive season has some artifact or discovery that becomes the star of the season’s work. Last year it was the folio in the steward’s pantry (still under conservation in Parks Canada’s lab). This year it was the seaman’s chest. “We’ve been eyeing that seaman’s chest for quite a long time,” said Moore, “Ever since we saw it, really.”
The value of the seaman’s chest is that, while many artifacts have been moved around Erebus by the sea, the contents of the seaman’s chest likely remain in context: as they were when the ship went down. Divided into two partitions, the chest should prove to be a window into the lives of two individual mariners, each (presumably) sharing one half of the chest.
Such a collection of personal possessions would be a rare view into the life from anyone from the Victorian era. But these chests belonged not to officers but to the crew — who ate, slept, and lived in this area of the lower deck, called the forecastle. Just as the work on the Beechey graves gave us a rare glimpse into the lives of the expedition’s crew, the Erebus seaman’s chest could give us another glimpse into the lives of these ordinary sailors from the mid-1800s.
Previously the seaman’s chest was in a fairly confined area of the starboard lower deck. But since the starboard upper deck detached in 2018, it opened up a new, safer way to reach the seaman’s chest from above. The Underwater Archaeology Team conducted a safety assessment of this new approach during the previous dive season (2022), and then again this past season (2023), before deciding to proceed.
“As the manager of the team, the occupational health and safety overhead is very significant. To be honest: archaeology is the easy part. It’s this other work that is challenging.”
The excavation is not over. Jonathan Moore said that there are still more artifacts remaining in the seaman’s chest — and, that there are potentially two more seaman’s chests in the forecastle that may also have in context artifacts inside.
– L.Z.
24 January 2024
Russell Potter has written an article about this dive season’s discoveries at Visions of the North.
https://visionsnorth.blogspot.com/2024/01/parks-canada-2013-finds.html
23 January 2024
Michael Palin has unveiled a plaque commemorating the Franklin Expedition in Greenhithe, where Erebus and Terror departed from, at the Sir John Franklin pub on the Thames.
ITVNews (link) has a short video interviewing Palin outside the pub, and KentOnline (link) has a video interviewing Palin inside the pub. Claire Warrior (link) and Andrew Lambert were in attendance for the unveiling.
30 January 2024
Atlas Obscura has an article looking at the Terror Camp phenomenon.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-terror-amc-camp-fandom
28 January 2024
Russ Taichman has a new paper in Polar Record analyzing the Jamme report — and publishing the complete report for the first time.