Only Dr. McDonald, who had worked with Mr. Helpman – Captain Crozier’s Clerk in Charge – during the provisioning, had his Theories.
As I recorded some Months ago in this Journal, besides the 10,000 cases of preserved cooked meats aboard Erebus, our tinned rations include boiled and roast mutton, veal, a wide variety of vegetables including potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, various types of Soups, and 9,450 pounds of Chocolate.
Alex McDonald had been our Expedition’s medical liaison with the Captain Superintendent of the Deptford Victualling Yard and with a certain Mr. Stephan Goldner, our Expedition’s Victualling Contractor. McDonald reminded Captain Crozier in October that four contractors had put in bids to provide Canned Ship’s Stores for Sir John’s expedition – the firms of Hogarth, Gamble, Cooper amp; Aves, and that of the aforementioned Mr. Goldner. Dr. McDonald reminded the Captain – and astonished the rest of us – by reporting that Goldner’s bid was only half that of the other three (Much Better Known) victuallers. In addition, while the other contractors set a schedule of delivering the food in a month or three weeks, Goldner had promised immediate delivery (with the crating and drayage thrown in for no charge). Such immediate delivery was impossible, of course, and Goldner’s bid would have required him to lose a fortune if the food had been the quality advertised and cooked and prepared in the ways advertised, but no one except Captain Fitzjames appears to have taken notice of this.
The Admiralty and the three Commissioners of the Discovery Service – everyone involved in the selection except for the experienced Comptroller of the Deptford Victualling Yard – immediately recommended accepting Goldner’s offer at a full-payment value, or more than 3,800 pounds. (A fortune for any man, but especially for the foreigner that McDonald explained Goldner to be. The man’s only canning factory, Alex said, was in Golatz, Molavia.) Goldner was given one of the largest consignments in the history of the Admiralty – 9,500 cans of meats and vegetables in sizes weighing one to eight pounds, as well as 20,000 cans of soup.
McDonald had brought one of Goldner’s handbills – Fitzjames recognized it at once – and looking over it made my mouth water: seven kinds of mutton, fourteen preparations of veal, thirteen kinds of beef, four varieties of lamb. There were listings for jugged hare, ptarmigan, rabbit (in onion sauce or curried), pheasant, and half a dozen other varieties of game. If the Discovery Service wished to have seafood, Goldner had offered to provide canned lobsters in the shell, cod, West Indian turtle, salmon steaks, and Yarmouth bloaters. For fine dining – at only fifteen pence – Goldner’s handbill offered truffled pheasant, calf’s tongue sauce piquant, and beef a la Flamande.
In reality, said Dr. McDonald, we’re used to receiving salt horse in a harness cask.
I had been at Sea long enough to recognize the terms – horse flesh substituted for beef until the sailors called the barrels a harness cask. But they ate the salted meat readily enough.
Goldner cheated us much worse than that, continued McDonald in front of a livid Captain Crozier and an angrily nodding Commander Fitzjames. He substituted cheap foods under labels that sold for much more on the handbill – regular “Stewed Beef” under a label reading “Stewed Rump Steaks,” for instance. The former is listed at nine pence, but he charged fourteen pence by changing the label.
Good God, man, exploded Crozier, every victualler does that to the Admiralty. Cheating the Navy is as old as Adam’s foreskin. That can’t explain why we’re suddenly almost out of food.
No, Captain, continued McDonald. It’s the cooking and soldering.
The what? demanded the Irishman, obviously trying to keep his Temper in check. Crozier’s face was crimson and white under his battered cap.
The cooking and soldering, said Alex. As to the cooking, Mr. Goldner bragged of a patented process in which he adds a large dose of nitrate of soda – calcium chloride – into the huge vats of boiling water to increase the processing temperature… primarily to speed production.
What’s wrong with that? demanded Crozier. The cans were overdue as it was. Something needed to be done to build a fire under Goldner’s arse. His patented process hurried things up.
Yes, Captain, said Dr. McDonald, but the fire under Goldner’s arse was hotter than the fire under these meats, vegetables, and other foods that were hurriedly cooked before canning. Many of us in the medical field believe that proper cooking of food rids it of Noxious Influences that can cause disease – but I myself witnessed Goldner’s cooking processes and he simply did not cook the meat, vegetables, and soups long enough.
Why didn’t you report this to the Discovery Service Commissioners? snapped Crozier.
He did, Captain Fitzjames said tiredly. So did I. But the only one who listened was the Comptroller of the Deptford Yard Victualling Service, and he had no vote on the final commission.
So you’re saying that more than half our food has gone bad in the last three years because of poor cooking methods? Crozier’s Countenance continued to be a Mottle of crimson and white.
Yes, said Alex McDonald, but equally to blame, we think, is the soldering.
The soldering of the cans? asked Fitzjames. His doubts about Goldner evidently had not extended to this technicality.
Yes, Commander, said Terror’s assistant surgeon. Preserving food in tins is a recent innovation – an amazing part of our Modern Age – but we know enough in the past few years of its use to know that proper soldering the flange along the seams of the cylindrical body of the can is important if the foodstuffs within are not to turn Putrid.
And Goldner’s people did not properly solder these tins? asked Crozier. His voice was a low, menacing growl.
Not in about sixty percent of the tins we’ve inspected, said McDonald. The gaps in the careless soldering have resulted in incomplete seams. The incomplete seams appear to have accelerated the putrefaction of our tinned beef, veal, vegetables, soups, and other foodstuffs.
How? asked Captain Crozier. He was shaking his broad head like a man who has been stunned by a physical blow. We’ve been in polar waters since shortly after the two ships left England. I thought it was cold enough up here to preserve anything until Judgement Day.
Apparently not, said McDonald. Many of Goldner’s remaining twenty-nine thousand cans of food have ruptured. Others are already swelling from the gases caused by internal putrefaction. Perhaps some Noxious vapours entered the tins in England. Perhaps there is some microscopic animalcule of which Medicine and Science are not yet aware which invaded the tins during transit or even at Goldner’s victualling factory.
Crozier frowned more deeply. Animalcule? Let’s avoid the fantastic here, Mr. McDonald.
The assistant surgeon only shrugged. Perhaps it is fantastical, Captain. But you have not spent the hundreds of hours straining at the eyepiece of a microscope such as I have. We have little understanding of what any of these animalcules are, but I assure you that if you saw how many are present in a simple drop of drinking water, you would be deeply sobered.
Crozier’s coloration had calmed somewhat, but he blushed again at the comment which might have been a reflection of his frequently less-than-sober state. All right. Some of the food is ruined, he said brusquely. What can we do to make sure the rest is safe for the men’s consumption?
I cleared my throat. As you know, Captain, the men’s summer diet included a daily ration of one and a quarter pounds of salt meat with vegetables consisting of only one pint of peas and three-quarters pound of barley a week. But they received their daily bread and biscuits. When we went into winter quarters, the flour ration was cut back twenty-five percent on the baking of bread so as to conserve coal. If we could just begin cooking the remaining canned food rations longer and renewing the baking of bread, it would help not only in preventing the fouled meats in the canned goods from threatening our health but also help in the prevention of scurvy.
Impossible, snapped Crozier. We barely have enough coal left to heat both ships until April as it is. If you doubt me, ask Engineer Gregory or Engineer Thompson here on Terror.
I don’t doubt you, Captain, I said sadly. I’ve spoken to both engineers. But without a resumption of extended cooking of the remaining canned goods, our chances of being poisoned are very high. All we can do is throw out the obviously ruined canned foods and avoid the many poorly soldered cans. This cuts down on our remaining stores most dramatically.
What about the ether stoves? asked Fitzjames, brightening a bit. We could use the camping stoves to heat the tinned soups and other doubtful provisions.
It was McDonald who shook his head. We tested that, Commander. Dr. Goodsir and I experimented with heating some of the canned so- called Beef Stew on the patented Cooking Apparatus spirit stoves. The pint-sized bottles of ether do not last long enough to thoroughly heat the food and the temperatures are low. Also, our sledge parties – or all of us, should we be forced to Abandon Ship – will be dependent upon the spirit stoves to melt snow and ice for drinking water once we are on the ice. We should preserve the ether spirits.
I was with Lieutenant Gore on our first sledge party to King William Land – and we used the spirit stoves daily, I added softly. The men used just enough ether and flame to get the canned soups to bubble a bit before digging in ravenously. The food was barely tepid.
There was a long silence.
You report that over half the canned food we had been counting on to get through the next year or two – if necessary – is ruined, Crozier said at last. We don’t have the coal to recook this food on either Erebus’s or Terror’s large Frazer’s Patent Stoves, nor on the smaller whaleboat iron stoves, and you tell me that there is insufficient fuel to use the ether spirit stoves. What can we do?
All five of us – the Four Surgeons and Captain Fitzjames – remained Silent. The only answer was to Abandon Ship and seek out a more hospitable clime, preferably Ashore somewhere south, where we might shoot fresh game.
As if reading our collective minds, Crozier smiled – it was a uniquely mad Irish smile, I thought at the time – and said, The problem, gentlemen, is that there’s not a man aboard either ship, not even one of our venerable Marines, who knows how to catch or kill a seal or walrus – should those creatures ever grace us with their presence again – nor with the experience of shooting large game such as caribou, of which we have seen none.
The Rest of Us remained silent.
Thank you for your diligence, effort at doing the Inventory, and excellent report, Mr. Peddie, Mr. Goodsir, Mr. McDonald, and Mr. Stanley. We shall continue separating the cans you consider fully soldered and safe from those insufficiently soldered or bloated, distended, or otherwise visibly Putrid. We shall stay on the current Two-Thirds Rations until after Christmas Day, at which time I shall instigate a more draconian rationing plan.
Dr. Stanley and I pulled on our many layers of winter slops and went up to the deck to watch Dr. Peddie, Dr. McDonald, Captain Crozier, and an honor guard of four seamen armed with shotguns begin their long trek back to Terror in the dark. As their lanterns and torches disappeared in the blowing snow and the wind howled in the rigging, the roar mixing with the constant grind and groan of the ice working against Erebus’s hull,
