illuminator newsletter #44
Upcoming: Terror Camp V.
5-7 December 2025.
Terror Camp weekend starts this Friday. This year’s program includes a curator’s tour of Roald Amundsen’s house, an interview with the director of the film Conclave, and a University Challenge quiz show featuring actors from The Terror. Registration is free, presentations are online.
https://www.terror.camp/2025-program
Recently.
20 October 2025.
The Franklin Family Vault. By Mary Williamson.
On a visit to John Franklin’s hometown of Spilsby in 2023, I realized too late that something was missing from the town’s Franklin guide. If this was Franklin’s hometown, then where was the Franklin family tomb? There were well-known memorials to Franklin and his brothers along the walls of the church — but where was the family vault? Through the decades that people searched for Franklin’s tomb in the Arctic, had his own family tomb gone missing in rural Lincolnshire?
Having run out of time combing the churchyard, I contacted two people after departing from Spilsby: the author of the town’s Franklin guide, Stef Round, and the keeper of the Franklin family papers, Mary Williamson (co-editor of the recent May We Be Spared). Two years later, these two have brought to light historical descriptions and a large mossy gravestone, all detailed by Mary in a debut article for her new Franklin family blog.
https://johnfranklinfamily.blogspot.com/2025/10/sir-john-franklin-blog.html
Additionally, two further articles on Mary’s new site spring from her attendance at the 2024 reburial of Captain Matthew Flinders in Donington. In Part 2, she outlines family connections between the Franklins and the Flinders families, in the process bringing to life some of the names from that family vault in Spilsby — and including Matthew Flinders’ advice to the young John Franklin on what clothing he should bring aboard ship.
https://johnfranklinfamily.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-flinders-connection-part-1.html
2 November 2025.
“He died much lamented”: George S. Malcolm of HMS Resolute, and his grave on Griffith Island. By Alison Freebairn.
Very occasionally, someone runs across the lonely grave of Franklin searcher George Malcolm in the Arctic. He lies on a little island in sight of the boatloads of tourists sailing to visit the graves on Beechey Island. When a squadron of nine ships searching for the missing Franklin Expedition overwintered in the area in 1850-51, George Malcolm was the one man across all nine ships who came to rest here forever.
Alison Freebairn has put together a dedicated biography of George’s short life, including a youthful romance back in Scotland, the medical details of the frostbite that killed him, and a Tom Crean-like 28 mile march-without-sleep to try to save him.
It is filled with the little details Alison found along the way. One of which I have to highlight: in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, Alison found the original watercolour for the “cowboy hat Franklin search” sketch from the 1851 Illustrated London News. The verdict: the use of cowboy hats in searching for the Franklin Expedition has been greatly exaggerated. The surprise: the watercolour actually gave names for some of the figures (two of whom were about to become lead characters in George Malcolm’s story).
https://finger-post.blog/2025/11/02/george-malcolm-of-hms-resolute/
22 November 2025.
Canadian author Kenn Harper has written a remembrance of Louie Kamookak in his Taissumani column at Nunatsiaq News.
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/louie-kamookak-a-remembrance/
2 November 2025.
The former home of the Terror’s captain, Francis Crozier, is up for sale in Banbridge, Ireland. Asking price is around £400,000.
Upcoming: December 2025.
Douglas Wamsley, the polar author who recently produced a biography of Franklin searcher Frederick Schwatka, is about to release a biography of Frederick Kislingbury from Greely’s Lady Franklin Bay Expedition.
20 October 2025.
In a Warming Arctic, a Fight Brews Over the Fabled Northwest Passage. By Norimitsu Onishi.
The New York Times has done a new profile on Gjoa Haven, with interviews and new portraits of people such as Sammy Kogvik and Louie Kamookak’s widow Josephine. There are also a handful of new photographs of the Erebus shipwreck artifacts now on display in Gjoa Haven, the first dedicated shots of the displays yet seen. [Subscription required.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/world/canada/canada-arctic-northwest-passage.html