The Terror

19 CROZIER

On a Tuesday dogwatch in the third week of November, the thing from the ice came aboard Erebus and took the well-liked bosun, Mr. Thomas Terry, snatching him from his post near the stern, leaving only the man’s head on the railing. There had been no blood at Terry’s stern watch post: no blood on the ice-covered deck or on the hull. The conclusion was that the thing had taken Terry, carried him hundreds of yards out into the darkness where the seracs rose like trees of ice in a thick white forest, murdered and dismembered him – perhaps eaten him, although the men were growing increasingly doubtful that the white thing killing their crewmates and officers was actually doing so for food – and then it returned Mr. Terry’s head before the starboard or port watchmen noticed that the bosun had gone missing.

The men who found the bosun’s head at the end of that watch spent the week telling and retelling the others about poor Mr. Terry’s visage – jaws open wide as if frozen in the middle of a scream, lips pulled back from his teeth, eyes protruding. There was not a tooth wound or claw mark on his face or head, only the ragged tearing at the neck, the thin pipe of his esophagus protruding like a rat’s grey tail, and the stump of white spinal cord showing.

Suddenly the more than one hundred surviving seamen found religion. Most of the men aboard Erebus had grumbled for two years about Sir John Franklin’s endless Divine Services, but now even the men who wouldn’t have recognized a Bible if they’d wakened next to one after a three-day drunk found a deep need for some sort of spiritual reassurance. As word of Thomas Terry’s beheading spread – Captain Fitzjames had put the sail-wrapped bundle in Erebus’s own sealed Dead Room down on the hold deck – the men began requesting a single Sunday service for both crews. It was ferret-faced Cornelius Hickey who came to Crozier late on Friday night with the request. Hickey had been on a torchlight work party repairing ice cairns between the ships and had spoken to the men from Erebus.

“It’s unanimous, sir,” said the caulker’s mate as he stood in the doorway of Captain Crozier’s tiny cabin. “All the men would like a combined Divine Service. Both ships, Captain.”

“You speak for every man on both ships?” Crozier asked.

“Aye, sir, I do,” said Hickey, flashing a once-winning smile that now showed only four of his remaining six teeth. The little caulker’s mate was nothing if not confident.

“I doubt it,” said Crozier. “But I’ll talk to Captain Fitzjames and let you know about the service. Whatever we decide, you can be our appointed courier to tell all the men.” Crozier had been drinking when Hickey rapped on his door. And he’d never liked the officious little man. Every ship had sea lawyers – like rats, they were a fact of Naval life – and Hickey, despite his bad grammar and total lack of formal education, struck Crozier as the kind of sea lawyer that, on a difficult voyage, soon began fomenting actual mutiny.

“One of the reasons we’d all of us like a service such as that what Sir John – God bless and rest his soul, Captain – used to provide is that all of us…”

“That will be all, Mr. Hickey.”

Crozier drank heavily that week. The melancholia that usually hovered over him like a fog now lay on him like a heavy blanket. He’d known Terry and thought him a more-than-capable boatswain, and it was certainly a horrible enough way to die, but the Arctic – at either pole – offered a myriad of horrible enough ways to die. So did the Royal Navy during peacetime or war. Crozier had witnessed more than a few of these horrible ways to die during his long career, so while Mr. Terry’s death was among the more uncanny he’d personally known and the recent plague of violent deaths more frightening than any real plague he’d seen aboard ships, what brought on Crozier’s deeper melancholy was more the reaction of the surviving members of the expedition.

James Fitzjames, the hero of the Euphrates, seemed to be losing heart. He was made a hero by the press even before his first ship had left Liverpool when young Fitzjames had plunged overboard to rescue a drowning customs agent even though the handsome young officer was, as the Times said, “embarrassed by a greatcoat, hat, and very valuable watch.” The merchants of Liverpool, knowing the value – as Crozier well knew – of a customs officer who was already bought and paid for, had rewarded young Fitzjames with an engraved silver plate. The Admiralty had taken notice first of the silver plate, then of Fitzjames’s heroism – although in Crozier’s experience, an officer rescuing a drowning man was an almost weekly occurrence since few sailors knew how to swim – and finally of the fact that Fitzjames was “the handsomest man in the Navy” as well as a well-bred young gentleman.

It hadn’t hurt the rising young officer’s reputation that he had twice volunteered to lead raiding parties against Bedouin bandits. Crozier noticed in the official reports that Fitzjames had broken his leg in one such foray and been captured by the bandits in the second adventure, but the handsomest man in the Navy had managed to escape, which made Fitzjames all the more the hero to the London press and the Admiralty.

Then came the Opium Wars and in 1841 Fitzjames showed himself to be a real hero, being commended by his captain and by the Admiralty no fewer than five times. The dashing lad – twenty-nine at the time – had used rockets to drive the Chinese off the hilltops of Tzekee and Segoan, used rockets again to drive them out of Chapoo, fought ashore at the Battle of Woosung, and returned to his expertise with rockets during the capture of Ching-Kiang-Fu. Seriously wounded, Lieutenant Fitzjames had managed, on crutches and in bandages, to attend the Chinese surrender at the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. Promoted to commander at the tender age of thirty, the handsomest man in the Navy had been given command of the sloop of war HMS Clio, and his bright future seemed assured.

But then in 1844 the Opium Wars ended, and – as always happened to rising prospects in the Royal Navy when treacherous peace suddenly broke out – Fitzjames found himself without a command, on shore, and on half pay. Francis Crozier knew that if the Discovery Service offer of command to Sir John Franklin had been a godsend to the largely discredited old man, the offer of effective command of HMS Erebus had been a shining second chance to Fitzjames.

But now “the handsomest man in the Navy” had lost his pink cheeks and usual ebullient humor. While most of the officers and men were maintaining their weight even on two-thirds rations – for members of the Discovery Service received a richer diet than 99 percent of Englishmen ashore – Commander, now Captain, James Fitzjames had lost more than two stone. His uniform hung loosely on him. His boyish curls now fell limp from under his cap or Welsh wig. Fitzjames’s face, always a bit too chubby, now appeared drawn, wan, and hollow-cheeked in the light from the oil lamps or hanging lanterns.

The commander’s public demeanor, which was always an easy mix of self-effacing humor and firm command, remained the same, but in private with only Crozier in attendance, Fitzjames spoke less, smiled less frequently, and too often looked distracted and miserable. For a melancholy man like Crozier, the signs were obvious. At times it was like staring into a looking glass, except for the fact that the melancholy countenance staring back was a proper lisping English gentleman rather than an Irish nobody.

On Friday the third of December, Crozier loaded a shotgun and made the long solo walk through the cold darkness between Terror and Erebus. If the thing on the ice wanted to take him, Crozier thought, a few more men with guns would make little difference in the outcome. It hadn’t for Sir John.

Crozier arrived safely. He and Fitzjames discussed the situation – the men’s morale, the requests for a religious service, the situation with the food tins, and the need to enforce strict rationing soon after Christmas – and they agreed that a combined Divine Service on the following Sunday might be a good idea. Since there were no chaplains or self-appointed ministers aboard – Sir John had filled both those roles until the previous June – both captains would give a sermon. Crozier hated this task more than dockside dentistry but realized that it had to be done.

The men’s moods were in a dangerous state. Lieutenant Edward Little, Crozier’s executive officer, reported that men on Terror had begun to fashion necklaces and other fetishes from the claws and teeth of some of the white bears they had shot during the summer season. Lieutenant Irving reported weeks ago that Lady Silence had gone into hiding in the forward cable locker and the men had started leaving portions of their rum and food rations down there in the hold as if making offerings to a witch or saint in hopes of intercession.

“I’ve been thinking about your ball,” said Fitzjames as Crozier began bundling up to leave.

“My ball?”

“The Grand Venetian Carnivale that Hoppner set up when you wintered over with Parry,” continued Fitzjames. “When you went as a black footman.”

“What about it?” asked Crozier as he bound his comforter around his neck and face.

“Sir John had three large trunks of masks, clothing, and costumes,” said Fitzjames. “I found them among his personal stores.”

“He did?” Crozier was surprised. The aging windbag who would have held Divine Service six times a week if he had been allowed and who, despite his frequent laughter, never seemed to understand anyone else’s jokes, seemed like the last sort of expedition commander to load trunks of frivolous costumes the way the stagestruck Parry had.

“They’re old,” confirmed Fitzjames. “Some of them may have belonged to Parry and Hoppner – may have been the same costumes you chose from while frozen in Baffin Bay twenty-four years ago – but there are over a hundred tattered rags in there.”

Crozier stood bundled in the doorway of Sir John’s former cabin where the two captains had held their sotto voce meeting. He wished Fitzjames would get to the point.

“I thought we might hold a masque for the men soon,” said Fitzjames. “Nothing as fancy as your Grand Venetian Carnivale, of course, not with the… unpleasantness… out on the ice, but a diversion nonetheless.”

“Perhaps,” said Crozier, allowing his tone to convey his lack of enthusiasm at the idea. “We shall discuss it after this accursed Divine Service on Sunday.”

“Yes, of course,” Fitzjames said hurriedly. His slight lisp became more pronounced when he was nervous. “Shall I send some men to escort you back to Terror, Captain Crozier?”

“No. And turn in early tonight, James. You look fagged out. We’ll both need our energy if we’re to properly sermonize the assembled crew on Sunday.”

Fitzjames smiled dutifully. Crozier thought it a wan and strangely disturbing expression.

On Sunday the fifth of December, 1847, Crozier left behind a skeleton crew of six men commanded by First Lieutenant Edward Little – who, like Crozier, would rather have his kidney stones removed with a spoon than be forced to suffer sermons – as well as his assistant surgeon, McDonald, and the engineer, James Thompson. The other fifty-some surviving crewmen and officers trooped off across the ice following their captain, Second Lieutenant Hodgson, Third Lieutenant Irving, First Mate Hornby, and the other masters, clerks, and warrant officers. It was almost 10:00 a.m. but would have been absolutely dark under the shivering stars except for the return of the aurora which pulsed, danced, and shifted above them, throwing a long line of their shadows onto the fractured ice. Sergeant Soloman Tozer – the shocking birthmark on his face especially noticeable in the coloured light from the aurora – headed up the guard of Royal Marines with muskets marching points, flank, and behind the column, but the white thing in the ice left the men alone this Sabbath morning.

The last full gathering of both crews for Divine Service – presided over by Sir John shortly before the creature carried their devout leader down into the darkness under the ice – had been on the open deck under cold June sunlight, but since it was now at least 50 degrees below zero outside, when the wind was not blowing, Fitzjames had arranged the lower deck for the service. The huge cookstove could not be moved, but the men had cranked up the seamen’s dining tables to their maximum height, taken down the removable bulkhead partitions that had delineated the forward sick bay, and removed other partitions that had created the warrant officers’ sleeping area, the subordinate officers’ stewards’ cubicle, and the first and second mates’ and second master’s berths. They also removed the walls of the warrant officers’ mess room and assistant surgeon’s sleeping room. The space would be crowded still, but adequate.

In addition, Fitzjames’s carpenter, Mr. Weekes, had created a low pulpit and platform. It was raised only six inches because of the lack of headroom under the beams, hanging tables, and stored lumber, but it would allow Crozier and Fitzjames to be seen by the men in the back of the jam of bundled bodies.

“At least we’ll be warm,” Crozier whispered to Fitzjames as Charles Hamilton Osmer, Erebus’s bald purser, led the men in opening hymns.

Indeed, the packed bodies had raised the temperature on the lower deck here higher than it had been since Erebus had been burning great heaps of coal and forcing hot water through its heating pipes six months earlier. Fitzjames had also tried to lighten up the usually dark and smoky place by burning ship’s oil at a furious rate in no fewer than ten hanging lamps that lit the space more brightly than at any time since sunlight had poured through the overhead Preston Patent Illuminators more than two years earlier.

The crewmen rocked the dark oak beams with their singing. Sailors, Crozier knew from his forty-plus years of experience, loved to sing under almost any circumstance. Even, if all else failed, during Divine Service. Crozier could see the top of caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey’s head in the crowd, while next to him, hunched over so that his head and shoulders would not hit the overhead beams, stood the idiot giant Magnus Manson, who bellowed out the hymn in a boom so off-key that it made the grinding of the ice outside sound like close harmony. The two were sharing one of the tattered hymnals that Purser Osmer had handed out.

Finally the hymns were finished and there came a low din of shuffling, coughing, and clearing of throats. The air smelled of fresh-baked bread since Mr. Diggle had come over hours earlier to aid Erebus’s cook, Richard Wall, in the baking of biscuits. Crozier and Fitzjames had decided that the extra coal, flour, and lamp oil were worth expending this special day if it helped the men’s morale. The darkest two months of the arctic winter were still ahead.

Now it was time for the two sermons. Fitzjames had shaved and powdered carefully and allowed his personal steward, Mr. Hoar, to take in his baggy waistcoat, trousers, and jacket, so he looked calm and handsome in his uniform and shining epaulettes. Only Crozier, standing behind him, could see Fitzjames’s pale hands clenching and unclenching as he set his personal Bible on the pulpit and opened it to Psalms.

“The reading today shall be from Pthalm Forty-six,” said Captain Fitzjames. Crozier winced slightly at the upper-class lisp that had become more pronounced with tension.

The LORD Almighty is with us;

the God of Jacob is our fortress.

The men roared “Amen” and shuffled their warming feet in appreciation.

It was Francis Crozier’s turn.

The men were hushed, as much out of curiosity as respect. The Terrors in the assembled mass knew that their captain’s idea of a reading for Divine Service was a solemn recitation of the Ship’s Articles – “If a man refuses to obey orders from an officer, that man shall be flogged or put to death, punishment to be determined by the captain. If a man commits sodomy with another member of the crew or a member of the ship’s livestock, that man shall be put to death…” and so forth. The Articles had the proper biblical weight and resonance and served Crozier’s purpose.

But not today. Crozier reached to the shelf under the pulpit and pulled out a heavy leather-bound book. He set it down with a reassuring thud of authority.

“Today,” he intoned, “I shall read from the Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve.”

There was a murmuring in the crowd of seamen. Crozier heard a toothless Erebus in the third row mutter, “I know the fucking Bible, and there ain’t no fucking Book of Leviathan.”

Crozier waited for silence and began.

“ ‘And for that part of Religion, which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of Powers Invisible,…”

Crozier’s voice and Old Testament cadence left no doubt as to which words were celebrated with capital letters.

“ ‘… there is almost nothing that has a name, that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles, in one place or another, a God, or Divell; or by their Poets feigned to be inanimated, inhabited, or possessed by some Spirit or other.

“ ‘The unformed matter of the World, was a God, by the name of Chaos.

“ ‘The Heaven, the Ocean, the Planets, the Fire, the Earth, the Winds, were so many Gods.

“ ‘Men, Women, a Bird, a Crocodile, a Calf, a Dogge, a Snake, an Onion, a Leeke, Deified. Besides, that they filled almost all places, with spirits called Daemons: the plains, with Pan, and Panises, or Satyres; the Woods, with Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other Nymphs; every River and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house with its Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, Peace, Concord, Love, Contention, Vertue, Honour, Health, Rust, Fever, and the like; which when they are prayed for, or against, they prayed to, as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall, or withholding that Good, or Evill, for, or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own Wit, by the name of Muses; their own Ignorance, by the name of Fortune; their own Lust, by the name of Cupid; their own Rage, by the name of Furies; their own privy members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions, to Incubi and Succubae: insomuch as there was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem, which they did not make either a God or a Divel.’ ”

Crozier paused and looked out at the staring white faces.

“And thus endeth Part One, Chapter Twelve, of the Book of Leviathan,” he said and closed the heavy tome.

“Amen,” chorused the happy seamen.

The men ate hot biscuits and full rations of their beloved salt pork at dinner that afternoon, the extra forty-some Terrors crowding around the lowered tables forward or using casks for surfaces and extra sea chests for chairs. The din was reassuring. All of the officers from both ships ate aft, sitting around the long table in Sir John’s former cabin. Besides their required antiscorbutic lemon juice that day – Dr. McDonald was now fretting that the five-gallon kegs were losing their potency – the seamen each received an extra gill of grog before dinner. Captain Fitzjames had dipped into his reserve ship’s stores and provided the officers and warrant officers with three fine bottles of Madeira and two of brandy.

At about 3:00 p.m. civilian time, the Terrors bundled up, wished their Erebus counterparts good-bye, and went up the main ladder, out under the frozen canvas, and then down the snow and ice embankment onto the dark ice for the long walk home under the still-shimmering aurora. There were whispers and muted comments in the ranks about the Leviathan sermon. The majority of men were certain that it was in the Bible somewhere, but wherever it had come from, no one was quite sure what their captain had been getting at, although opinions ran strong after the double ration of rum. Many of the men still fingered their good-luck fetishes of white-bear teeth, claws, and paws.

Crozier, who headed up the column, felt half certain that they would return to find Edward Little and the watch murdered, Dr. McDonald in pieces, and Mr. Thompson, the engineer, dismembered and strewn about the pipes and valves of his useless steam engine.

All was well. Lieutenants Hodgson and Irving handed out the parcels of biscuits and meat that had been warm when they’d left Erebus the better part of an hour earlier. The men who had remained on watch in the cold took their extra rations of grog first.

Although he was chilled through – the relative heat of Erebus’s crowded lower deck had made the outside cold worse somehow – Crozier stayed on deck until the watch was relieved. The officer on duty was now Thomas Blanky, the Ice Master. Crozier knew that the men below would be doing Sunday make-and-mend, many already looking forward to afternoon tea and then supper with its sad fare of Poor John – salted and boiled codfish with a biscuit – with the hopes that there might be an ounce of cheese to go with their half pint of Burton’s ale.

The wind was coming up, blowing snow across the serac-strewn ice fields on this side of the huge berg blocking the view of Erebus to the northeast. Clouds were hiding the aurora and stars. The afternoon night became much darker. Eventually, thinking of the whiskey in his cabin, Crozier went below.