James Walter Fairholme

Caroline Elisabeth née Forbes (born 1799) and George Fairholme (1789–1846), a land owner, banker, traveller, naturalist and scriptural geologist.

Fairholme joined the Royal Navy on 12 March 1834 aged 13 as a First-class Volunteer on board the Gannet under Captain John Balfour Maxwell, with whom, and with Commodore Sir John Strutt Peyton, of the Madagascar, he served on the West India station, part of the time as Midshipman, until despatched as second in command of a prize-slaver to the coast of Africa, where he was wrecked on 7 April 1838, and taken prisoner by the Moors.

Being, however, rescued on the banks of the Senegal 16 days afterwards, while on his journey inland with the rest of his shipmates, by a party of French black native troops under a government officer, Fairholme returned to England, and in December 1839 joined the Ganges under the command of Captain Barrington Reynolds.

[3] As Third Lieutenant he was the fifth most senior officer on board after Captain Sir John Franklin and Commander James Fitzjames, the latter describing him as, "a smart, agreeable companion, and a well-informed man".

[10] At the Whalefish Islands in Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, 10 oxen carried on Baretto Junior were slaughtered for fresh meat which was transferred to Erebus and Terror.

On 31 March 1854 the Admiralty removed the name of Sir John Franklin and his officers and men from their books, presuming that they all had perished, and arrangements were made to distribute the back-dated pay to their dependents.

[14] When in 1854 the Arctic explorer John Rae and his search party located a group of Inuit at Repulse Bay among the items they were given were a fork and a spoon that belonged to Fairholme.

In 2019 divers from Parks Canada found and brought to the surface a pair of lieutenant's epaulettes, probably from Fairholme's dress uniform, located in his cabin on the wreck of the Erebus.

[17] He appears as a minor character in the 2007 novel, The Terror by Dan Simmons, a fictionalized account of Franklin's lost expedition, as well as the 2018 television adaptation in which Fairholme is put in charge of a sledge party by Captain Francis Crozier with the aim of making it to Fort Resolution in order to rescue the rest of the crew.