“But if we consolidate our fuel in the less damaged ship,” continued Crozier, “and especially if we have some luck finding open water down the east side of King William Land, we will have much more than a month’s fuel for steaming west along the coast as fast as we can. Erebus would have been sacrificed, but we might — we will — reach Point Turnagain and familiar points along the coast within a week. Complete the North-West Passage into the open Pacific this year instead of next.”
“Abandon Erebus?” repeated Sir John. He did not sound cross or angry, only perplexed by the absurdity of the notion being discussed.
“Conditions would be very cramped aboard Terror,” said Commander Fitzjames. He seemed to be seriously considering the notion.
Captain Sir John turned to his right and stared at his favorite officer. Sir John’s face was slowly assuming the cold smile of a man who has not only been left out of a joke on purpose but may well be the butt of it.
“Crowded, but not intolerably so for a month or two,” said Crozier. “My Mr. Honey and your ship’s carpenter, Mr. Weekes, will supervise the breaking down of interior bulkheads — all officers’ quarters to be dismantled except for the Great Room, which could be turned into Sir John’s quarters aboard Terror, and perhaps the officers’ mess. That would give us ample room, even for another year or more on the ice. These old bomb ships have a great amount of space belowdecks, if nothing else.”
“It would take some time to transfer the coal and ship’s stores,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte.
Crozier nodded again. “I’ve had my purser, Mr. Helpman, work out some preliminary figures. You may remember that Mr. Goldner, the expedition’s provisioner of canned foods, failed to deliver the bulk of his goods until less than forty-eight hours before we sailed, so we had to repack both ships to a great extent. We did so in time to meet our departure date. Mr. Helpman estimates that with both crews working through the long daylight, sleeping on halfwatch schedules, that everything we can hold on one ship can be transferred to Terror in just under three days. We’d be a crowded family for some weeks, but it would be as if we’re starting anew on the expedition — coal reserves topped off, food for another year, a ship in full working condition.”
“Go for broke,” repeated Ice Master Blanky.
Sir John shook his head and chuckled as if he had finally had enough of this particular joke. “Well, Francis, that is a very… interesting… speculation, but of course we shall not be abandoning Erebus. Nor Terror either, should your ship suffer some minor misfortune. Now, the one thing I’ve not heard at this table today is a suggestion to retreat to Baffin Bay. Am I correct in the assumption that no one is suggesting that?”
The room was silent. Overhead came the rumble and scrape of crewmen holystoning the decks for the second time that day.
“Very well then, it is decided,” said Sir John. “We shall press forward. Not only do our orders direct us to do this, but as several of you gentlemen have pointed out, our safety increases the closer we get to the coast of the mainland, even if the land itself there is every bit as inhospitable as the dreadful islands we have passed up here. Francis, James, you may go tell your crews of our decision.”
Sir John stood.
For a dazed second the other captains, officers, ice masters, engineers, and surgeon could only stare, but then the Naval officers stood quickly, nodded, and began filing out of Sir John’s huge cabin.
The surgeon Stanley was plucking at Commander Fitzjames’s sleeve as the men went forward along the narrow companionway and stomped up the ladder to the deck.
“Commander, Commander,” Stanley said, “Sir John never called on me to report, but I wanted to tell everyone about the increasing numbers of putrid foodstuff we’ve been finding in the tinned goods.”
Fitzjames smiled but freed his arm. “We’ll arrange a time for you to tell Captain Sir John in private, Mr. Stanley.”
“But I’ve told him in private,” persisted the little surgeon. “It’s the other officers I wanted to inform in case…”
“Later, Mr. Stanley,” said Commander Fitzjames.
The surgeon was saying something else, but Crozier passed beyond earshot and waved to John Lane, his bosun, to bring his gig alongside for the sunny ride back up the narrow lead to where Terror’s bow was wedged in the thickening pack ice. Black smoke still poured from the leading ship’s funnel.
Heading southwest into the pack ice, the two ships made slow headway for another four days. HMS Terror burned coal at a prodigious rate, using its steam engine to throw itself against the ever-thicker pack ice. The glint of possible open water far to the south had disappeared, even on sunny days.
The temperature dropped suddenly on 9 September. The ice on the long thin line of open water behind the trailing Erebus covered over with pancake ice and then froze solid. The sea around them was already a lifting, surging, static white mass of growlers, real icebergs, and sudden pressure ridges.
For six days, Franklin tried every trick in his arctic inventory — spreading black coal powder on the ice ahead of them to melt it more quickly, backing sail, sending out fatigue parties day and night with their giant ice saws to remove the ice in front of them block by block, shifting ballast, having a hundred men at a time hack away with chisels, shovels, picks, and poles, setting kedge anchors far ahead of them in the thickening ice and winching Erebus—which had resumed the lead ahead of Terror on the last day before the ice had suddenly thickened — a yard at a time. Finally Franklin ordered every able man onto the ice, rigged lines for everyone and sledge harnesses for the largest men among them, and tried hauling the ships forward a sweating, cursing, shouting, spirit-killing, gut-wrenching, back-breaking inch at a time. Always, promised Sir John, was the reality of open coastal water just another twenty or thirty or fifty miles ahead of them.
The open water might as well have been on the surface of the moon.
During the lengthening night of 15 September, 1846, the temperature plummeted to below zero and the ice began moaning and scraping against both ships’ hulls. In the morning, everyone who came on deck could see for themselves that in each direction the sea had become a white solid stretching to the horizon. Between sudden snow squalls, both Crozier and Fitzjames were able to get adequate sun sightings to fix their positions. Each captain figured that they were beset at roughly 70 degrees 5 minutes north latitude, 98 degrees, 23 minutes west longitude, some twenty-five miles off the northwest shore of King William Island, or King William Land, whichever the case might be. It was a moot point now.
They were in open sea ice — moving pack ice — and stranded directly in front of the full onslaught of Ice Master Blanky’s “moving glacier,” bearing down on them from polar regions to the northwest from all the way to the unimaginable North Pole. There was not a sheltering harbour, to their knowledge, within one hundred miles and no way to get there if there were one.
At two o’clock that afternoon, Captain Sir John Franklin ordered the boiler fires to be drawn on both Erebus and Terror. Steam was let down in both boilers. Just enough pressure would be kept up to move warmed water through the pipes heating the lower decks of each ship.