illuminator newsletter #42
The final dive season.
15 September 2025.
Today, Parks Canada released not news of dive season 2025, but instead the end of dive seasons:
“Following more than a decade of on-site exploration of the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, in 2025 Parks Canada is transitioning from active archaeological research to a regular, appropriate monitoring program, co-developed with Inuit, while supporting the development of a new research strategy.”
No reason is given. But the obvious reason would be a loss of funding, as Canada is under both a tariff trade war and threats of annexation from the United States. This is not the geopolitical environment where expensive archaeology projects survive.
The work left undone is extraordinary, with Sir John Franklin’s cabin on Erebus not excavated, and HMS Terror never entered by divers, the pristine interior where Parks expected to find much preserved documentation. Most worrisome is the fragile state of HMS Erebus – where Parks had warned that “time is running out” – if she is now to be left to the sea and climate change for an unknown number of years.
This bitter pill today is sugared with extraordinary imagery and details from the previously-unseen dive season 2024, including the first ever view of HMS Erebus’s locomotive steam engine, and a stunning pitcher “decorated with raised relief scenes from Robert Burns’ poem Tam O’Shanter” (seen below).
Link to full press release and additional photography:
https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/archeologie-archeology/explore/2024
Pitcher recovered by Parks Canada from HMS Erebus.
I expect to be sending out another newsletter when additional details or commentary is available. At the moment, there is only the press release.
15 July 2025.
The wreck of The Sir John Franklin (and other Franklin Expedition pubs of London). By Logan Zachary & Alison Freebairn.
New article from Alison and I, on pubs in London connected to the Franklin Expedition.
https://www.illuminator.blog/p/londonpubs.html
3 July 2025.
Dave Woodman has released the audio of a recent interview he gave. The interviewer is Meilan Solly from the Smithsonian Magazine, who earlier this year published a lengthy generalist’s overview of the Franklin Expedition (link). For those already familiar with the expedition, Woodman’s interview is of greater interest, as it allowed him to go into finer detail.
The audio appears on Woodman’s Youtube channel, @aglukaq, which is full of rare videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh3xusBiaVw
27 July 2025.
Russell Potter recently noted that an Irish radio documentary about Sir Leopold McClintock, broadcast almost four years ago, has finally been made available online. The program is miles above the average podcast and television documentary fare, interviewing the right people and then getting out of the way to let them tell the story. The addition of clunky sound effects over the top makes for a classic radio program.
https://shows.acast.com/lmfm-documentaries/episodes/mcclintock-the-forgotten-explorer