The Terror

“Perhaps enough left for six months of heating,” says Thompson. “But only if we cut back from two hours a day to one. And I recommend we do that soon – no later than the first of November.”

That is less than two weeks away.

“And steaming?” says Crozier.

If the ice relents at all next summer, Crozier plans to cram all the surviving men from Erebus aboard Terror and make an all-out effort to retreat the way they’d come – up the unnamed strait between Boothia Peninsula and Prince of Wales Island, down which they rushed two summers ago, past Walker Point and Barrow Strait, out through Lancaster Sound like a cork from a bottle, then rushing south into Baffin Bay with all sail set and the last coal being burned, going like smoke and oakum, burning extra spars and furniture if need be to get the last bit of steam, anything to get them into open water off Greenland where whalers could find them.

But he’ll also need steam to fight his way north through the south-flowing ice to Lancaster Sound, even if a miracle occurs and they are released from the ice here. Crozier and James Ross once sailed Terror and Erebus out of the south polar ice, but they’d been traveling with the currents and bergs. Here in the damned arctic, the ships have to sail for weeks against the flow of ice coming down from the pole just to reach the straits where they can escape.

Thompson shrugs. The man looks exhausted. “If we cut off the heat on New Year’s Day and somehow survive until next summer, we might get… six days steaming without ice? Five?”

Crozier merely nods again. This is almost certainly a death sentence for his ship, but not necessarily for the men of both ships.

There is a sound out in the darkened corridor.

“Thank you, Mr. Thompson.” The captain lifts his lantern off an iron hook, leaves the glow of the boiler room, and heads forward in the slush and darkness.

Thomas Honey is waiting in the corridor, his candle lantern sputtering in the bad air. He is holding the iron pry bar in front of him like a musket, clutched in thick gloves, and hasn’t opened the bolted door of the Dead Room.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Honey,” Crozier says to his carpenter.

Without explanation, the captain throws back the bolts and enters the freezing-cold storage room.

Crozier can not resist lifting his lantern toward the aft bulkhead where the six men’s bodies have been stacked in their common canvas shroud.

The heap is writhing. Crozier expected that – expected to see the movement of rats under the tarp – but he realizes that he’s looking at a solid mass of rats above the shroud-canvas as well. There is a solid cube of rats, extending more than four feet above the deck, as hundreds of them jostle for position to get at the frozen dead men. The squealing is very loud in here. More rats are underfoot, scuttling between his and the carpenter’s legs. Rushing to the banquet, thinks Crozier. And showing no fear of the lantern light.

Crozier turns the lantern back to the hull, walks up the slight incline caused by the ship’s cant to port and begins pacing along the curved, tilted wall.

There.

He holds the lantern closer.

“Well, I’ll be God-damned to hell and hanged for a heathen,” says Honey. “Pardon me, Captain, but I didn’t think the ice would do this so soon.”

Crozier doesn’t answer. He crouches to investigate the bent and extended wood of the hull more closely.

Hull planks have been bent inward here, bulging almost a foot from the graceful curve elsewhere along the hull’s side. The innermost layers of wood have splintered and at least two planks are hanging free.

“Jesus God Christ Almighty,” says the carpenter, who has crouched next to the captain. “That ice is a fucking monster, begging the Captain’s pardon, sir.”

“Mr. Honey,” says Crozier, his breath adding crystals to the ice already on the planks and reflecting the lantern light, “could anything but the ice have done this damage?”

The carpenter barks a laugh but stops abruptly as he realizes his captain is not making a joke. Honey’s eyes widen, then squint. “Begging your pardon again, Captain, but if you mean… that’s impossible.”

Crozier says nothing.

“I mean, Captain, this hull was three inches of the finest English oak as it was, sir. And for this trip – for the ice, I mean, sir – it was doubled with two layers of African oak, Captain, each one and a half inches thick. And them African oak panels was wrought on the diagonal, sir, givin’ it even more strength than if it were just doubled straight-like.”

Crozier is inspecting the loose planks, trying to ignore the river of rats behind them and around them as well as the chewing sounds from the direction of the aft bulkhead.

“And, sir,” continues Honey, his voice hoarse in the cold, his rum-tainted breath freezing in the air, “on top of the three inches of English oak and the three inches of diagonal-laid African oak, they laid on two layers of Canadian elm, sir, each two inches thick. That’s four more inches of hull, Captain, and that wrought diagonal against the African oak. That’s five belts of serious timber, sir… ten inches of the strongest wood on earth between us and the sea.”

The carpenter shuts up, realizing that he’s lecturing his captain on details of the shipyard’s work that Crozier had personally overseen in the months before departure.

The captain stands and sets his mittened hand against the innermost planks where they have come free. There’s more than an inch of open space there. “Set your lantern down, Mr. Honey. Use your pry bar to lever this loose. I want to see what the ice has done to the outer layer of hull oak.”

The carpenter complies. For several minutes the sound of the iron bar prying at iron-cold wood and the carpenter’s grunts almost drown out the frenzied gnawing of the rats behind them. The bent Canadian elm tears back and falls away. The shattered African oak is leveraged out. Only the inward-bent original oak of the hull remains now as Crozier steps closer, holding his lantern so that both men can see.

Shards and spears of ice reflect the lantern light through the foot-long holes in the hull, but in the centre is something much more disturbing – blackness. Nothing. A hole in the ice. A tunnel.

Honey bends a piece of the splintered oak farther in so Crozier can shine his lantern on it.

“Holy fucking Jesus Christ fucking shit almighty,” gasps the carpenter. This time he does not ask his captain’s pardon.

Crozier has the temptation to lick his dry lips but knows how painful that will be here where it’s 50 below in the dark. But his heart is pounding so wildly that he’s also tempted to steady himself with one mitten against the hull the way the carpenter has just done.

The freezing air from outside rushes in so quickly that it almost extinguishes the lantern. Crozier has to shield it with his free hand to keep it flickering, sending the men’s shadows dancing across decks, beams, and bulkheads.

The two long boards from the outer hull have been smashed and bent inward by some inconceivable, irresistible force. Clearly visible in the light from the slightly shaking lantern are huge claw marks in the splintered oak – claw marks streaked with frozen smears of impossibly bright blood.

4 GOODSIR

Lat. 75°-12? N., Long. 61°-6? W.

Baffin Bay, July, 1845

From the private diary of Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir:

11 April, 1845 -

In a letter to my brother today, I wrote - “All the Officers are in great hopes of making the passage and hope to be in the Pacific end of next summer.”

I confess that, however Selfish it is, my own hope for the Expedition is that it may take us a bit longer to reach Alaska, Russia, China, and the warm waters of the Pacific. Although trained as an anatomist and signed on by Captain Sir John Franklin as a mere assistant surgeon, I am, in Truth, no mere surgeon but a Doctor, and I confess further that as amateurish as my attempts may be, I hope to become something of a Naturalist on this voyage. While having no personal Experience with arctic flora and fauna, I plan to become personally acquainted with the life-forms in the Icy Realms to which we set sail only a month from now. I am especially interested in the white bear, although most accounts of it one hears from whalers and old Arctic Hands tend to be too fabulous to credit.

I recognize that this personal Diary is most out of the ordinary – the Official Log that I shall begin when we depart next month will record all of the pertinent professional events and observations of my time aboard HMS Erebus in my capacity as Assistant Surgeon and as a member of Captain Sir John Franklin’s expedition to force the North-West Passage – but I feel that something More is due, some other record, some more personal account, and even if I should never let another soul read this after my Return, it is my Duty – to myself if no other – to keep these notes.

All I know at this point is that my Expedition with Captain Sir John Franklin already promises to be the Experience of a Lifetime.

Sunday, 18 May, 1845 -

All the men are aboard, and although last-minute Preparation is still going on around the clock for tomorrow’s Departure – especially with the stowing of what Captain Fitzjames informs me is more than eight thousand cans of tinned food which have arrived only in the nick of time – Sir John conducted Divine Service today for us aboard Erebus and for as many of Terror’s crew who wished to join us. I noted that Terror’s captain, an Irishman named Crozier, was not in attendance.

No one could have attended the lengthy service and heard the very lengthy sermon by Sir John today without being deeply moved. I wonder if any Ship from any nation’s Navy has ever been captained by such a Religious Man. There is no doubt that we are truly and safely and irrevocably in God’s Hands on the voyage to come.