Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Franklin

Latitude fifty-one twenty-nine minutes north, longitude zero degrees zero minutes west London, May 1845 He was, and always will be, the guy who "eats his shoes." Four days before sailing, Captain Sir John Franklin finally caught the long-standing flu.He was sure that he had not learned from sailors or London dock workers, nor from his one hundred and thirty crew and officers (all of them as strong and healthy as the horses in the trailer), but from someone in Mrs. Jane's social circle. Got it from a sycophant cat. People who eat their own shoes. According to tradition, the wives of heroes who explore the North Pole will weave a flag and ask their husbands to take it and plant it at the northernmost point they have reached, or ask their husbands to raise the flag high after completing the mission of navigating the Northwest Passage.When Franklin came home, his wife, Jean, was almost finishing her silk flag.Sir John was half-slumped on the horsehair sofa, near where she sat, when he entered the drawing-room.He couldn't remember if he had taken off his shoes, but someone had apparently helped him, either Jane or his servant, because he was lying on the couch half-asleep before long.His head hurt, his stomach was worse than when he was on the boat, and his skin was hot.Jane was talking to him about how busy she was that day, talking nonstop by herself.Sir John tried to listen, but his fever carried him away like a choppy tide.

He's a man who eats his own shoes, and has been for twenty-three years.This title has followed him since he returned to England in 1822 when he first traveled overland across northern Canada to find the Northwest Passage.He remembered the sniggering and the jokes they made on him when he came back.Franklin ate his shoes, and during his miserable three-year journey he ate worse, including rock porridge, a disgusting gruel made of moss scraped off rocks. After two years outside, they had nothing to eat, and he and his men (Franklin, at a loss, divided his army into three groups, led one himself, and left the other two groups to fend for themselves) To survive, cook and eat the tops of boots and shoes.Sir John--he was just John then, knighted for a long inland voyage and a poor arctic expedition by sea, though still unfinished--in 182 Many days a year, there is nothing to eat but chewing on scraps of untanned leather.His men even ate buffalo sleeping blankets.Then some went on to eat other things...

But he never ate people. To this day, Franklin doubts that others on his expedition, including his close friend and Chief Lieutenant Dr. John Richardson, resisted temptation as successfully as he did.When they were divided into several groups and struggled individually, trying their best to cross the arctic wasteland and woodland, back to Franklin's temporary small fortress Fort Adventure and the real fortresses Fort God's Help and Fort Determination, many things happened. Nine whites and one Eskimo died.In 1819, thirty-three-year-old, stubby young Lieutenant John Franklin, who was beginning to go bald, brought twenty-one men out of Fort Resolution, but nine died later, as did the local guides he absorbed along the way. One, Franklin had previously been unwilling to let this man leave the expedition to find food on his own.Two people were brutally murdered, at least one of whom was undoubtedly eaten by others.But only one Englishman died, and only one real white man, the others were either French shipwrights or Indians.

The expedition was considered a success—only one white Englishman died, even though most of the others were reduced to slurred, bearded, gaunt skeletons.They survived only because of that hideous, hypersexual Warrant Officer, George Baker, who snowshoeed twelve hundred miles to bring back supplies and more Indians than supplies. People, keep Franklin and his dying companions fed and cared for. Jane Griffin married the newly knighted Sir Franklin on December 5, 1828, at the age of thirty-six.They went to Paris for their honeymoon.Franklin didn't particularly like the city, nor did he like the French, but the hotel they stayed in was decent and the food was good.

Franklin had been a little afraid that they'd run into this guy named Roger on their trips to the Continent—Petermarco Roger, the guy who got the attention of the literary world for trying to publish a shitty dictionary or something.He once proposed to Jane Griffin, but she rejected it like the suitors of her youth.Franklin later had a peek at Jane's journals from that period (he also excused his crime: she wanted him to find and browse through her many calfskin-bound diaries, why else would they be in the Such a conspicuous place?), let him read a passage written by her in delicate and beautiful handwriting after her lover Roger finally married someone else: "The romance of my life is over."

When Warrant Officer George Baker returned from hunting with a group of Indians, his partner, Warrant Officer Rob Hood, and Green Sock had been making love for six almost endless arctic nights in a row.So the two arranged to have a life-and-death duel at sunrise the next day (about ten o'clock in the morning). Franklin didn't know what to do with it.The portly lieutenant was too weak to restrain rough boatmen and contemptuous Indians, let alone stubborn Hood and impulsive Baker. Both warrant officers were good at drawing and were both experts in cartography.From that point on, Franklin distrusted artists.When the Parisian sculptor worked on Mrs. Jane's hands, or when a perfumed, sexually eccentric Londoner spent nearly a month painting her in oils, Franklin would not leave them alone with Jane.

As Baker and Hood faced off in the early morning light, there was nothing Franklin could do but hide in the log cabin, praying that the eventual casualties would not render an expedition that had made so many compromises unprincipled.His mission instructions didn't explicitly tell him that he was supposed to bring food on this 1,200-mile journey inland, along the coast, and down rivers to the North Pole.He had to provide food to feed sixteen people out of his own pocket.He assumed that the Indians would hunt for them next, so that they would be well fed, just as the guides would help him carry his pack and row his birch-bark canoe.

Choosing to use birch bark canoes was a bad decision.Twenty-three years later, he was finally willing to admit it, at least to himself.Within days of entering ice-blocked water along the northern coastline, the fragile boat began to crumble.It had been more than a year and a half since they left Fort Resolve by then. Franklin's eyes were closed, his brows were hot, his head was swollen, and as he listened to Jane's babble, he thought back to that morning, lying in his heavy sleeping bag, when Baker and Hood each took fifteen steps outside the cabin, and then He squeezed his eyes shut as he turned to fire.Damned Indians and damned shipwrights, whose primitive, savage nature sees life-and-death duels as sideshows.Franklin remembers Green Socks glowing that morning, her body glowing with sex.

Even lying in his sleeping bag with his hands over his ears, Franklin could still hear the commands to start, turn, aim, and fire. Two trigger shots followed, and the crowd laughed. The old Scottish sailor John Hayburn, who was in charge of giving the duel password, had a difficult personality and no gentlemanly demeanor. He had removed the gunpowder and bullets from two specially prepared pistols the night before. Under the continuous teasing of the Indians who clapped their knees and a group of boatmen, the discouraged Hood and Baker parted ways.Soon after, Franklin ordered George Baker to return to Fort Resolve to buy more necessities from the Hudson's Bay Company.Baker went almost the whole winter.

Franklin ate his own shoes and subsisted on moss scraped off rocks, a slimy treat that even a well-bred English dog would vomit.However, he has never eaten human flesh. After that duel, another long year passed.After parting ways with Franklin's group, something happened to Richardson's group.Michael Terojo, a surly, half-mad Iroquois Indian who participated in the expedition, shot and killed Warrant Officer Rob Hood, an artist and cartographer, in the center of the forehead. A week before the murder, the Indians brought back a tangy haunch for the hungry crowd.He insisted that the wolf was either antlered by a reindeer or antlered by a Terojo, and that the Indian story was always changing.A small party of starving men cooked and ate the meat, but before the meat was eaten, Dr. Richardson noticed that there were some tattoos on the skin of the meat.The doctor later told Franklin that he was certain that what Terojo had brought back for them to eat was the body of a boatman who had died on the way that week.

Richardson heard gunshots while scraping moss off the rocks, and the starving Indian happened to be alone with Hood, who had been shot dead.Suicide, Terojo insisted, but Dr. Richardson, who had dealt with quite a few suicides before, knew the way the bullet had entered Rob Hood's brain could not have been caused by himself. The Indian's current armaments included a British bayonet, a Mauser, two loaded pistols ready to fire, and a knife as long as his forearm.The only remaining living non-Indians, Blackburn and Richardson, had only a small pistol and a dodgy musket combined. Richardson is now England's most respected scientist and physician, and a friend of the poet Rob Burns, but at the time he was only a potential expedition doctor and naturalist.He waited until Michael Terojo came back from foraging sometime and was sure he had firewood in both hands before he raised his pistol and shot the Indian in the head in cold blood. Dr. Richardson later admitted that he ate Hood's buffalo blanket, but neither Heben nor Richardson—the only two surviving members of the party—never mentioned the following week, during their arduous trek back to Fort Adventure. , they may have eaten something. In Fort Adventure, Franklin and his group were too weak to stand up or walk.In comparison, Richardson and Blackburn look much more energetic. John Franklin may have been a man who ate his own shoes, but he never... "The cook will be serving roast beef today, my dear. Your favourite. As she's only just arrived - I'm sure the Irish woman would have been bluffing, and stealing is as natural to an Irishman as drinking - and I reminded her, Your beef must not be overcooked, it should bleed when the steak knife touches it." Floating in the fading heat, Franklin tried to gather his thoughts to answer her, but the wave of headaches, nausea, and high fever overwhelmed him.Sweat seeped through his tights and turtleneck. "Admiral Thomas Martin's wife sent me a lovely card and a beautiful bouquet today, I wasn't expecting that at all, but I must admit those roses are really pretty in the entryway. You see those Did you spend it? Did you have time to speak to Admiral Martin when you were at the reception? Of course he's not that important, is he? Even as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy? He's certainly not as good as the Ministers or the Chief Staff, let alone with the Compared to your friends in the Arctic Parliament." Captain Sir John Franklin had many friends.Everyone likes him, but no one respects him.For decades Franklin knew the former and avoided thinking about the latter, but now he knows it: everyone likes him, but no one respects him. No one respected him after Van Diemen Landmass.After the Tasmanian prison incident and the way he handled it poorly, no one respected him. His first wife, Elena, was dying when he left her for his second major expedition. He knew she was going to die, and she knew she was going to die.Her tuberculosis, and the mutual understanding that she would die of it before her husband died of war or expedition, had been present as a third party on their wedding day.During their twenty-two months of marriage she bore him a daughter, his only child, little Elena. His first wife, who was petite and frail, but possessed amazing willpower and physical strength, once asked him to go on a second expedition to find the Northwest Passage, and said that this expedition by land and sea should follow North America. coastline walk.When she said this, blood was already coughing up from her mouth, and she also knew that her life was coming to an end.She said it would be better for her if he was somewhere else at the end of her life.He trusts her.Or, at least he believed it would be better for him. John Franklin was a very devout believer.He prayed to God that Elena would die before he set off, but she made it through.He set out on February 16, 1825, and wrote many letters to his beloved wife on his way to Great Slave Lake (Note: Canada's second largest lake), in New York City and Albany (Note: The capital of New York State, USA) mailed the letter.On April 24, he was informed of her death at the British naval base at Penguison.She died not long after his ship left England. When he returned from his expedition in 1827, Irene's friend Jean Griffin was already waiting for him in England. The admiral's reception was less than a week old today, no, exactly a week before this damned cold.Sir John Franklin, of course, and all the officers and adjutants of Erebus and Terror were present at the reception.In addition, some non-military personnel who participated in this expedition-James Reid, the ice and snow expert of the Erebus, Thomas Blanche, the ice and snow expert of the Terror, and several pay officers, ship doctors and controllers The official also attended the reception. In a new blue tuxedo and blue gold-trimmed trousers, with gold tasseled epaulettes, ceremonial swords and a Nelson-era cocked hat, Franklin looked quite handsome.The captain of his flagship, the Erebus, James Fitzkin, often called the most handsome man in the Royal Navy, looked as striking and courteous as the war hero at the time.Fitzjian almost took everyone by storm that night.Francis Crozier, as usual, looked stiff, clumsy, brooding, and slightly drunk. But Jane was mistaken, the members of the Arctic Council were not Franklin's friends.In fact, the Arctic Parliament does not exist at all.It's just an honorary society, not a real organization, but it's the hardest 'old boys' club in England to join. They were all mixed together at the reception: Franklin, his leading officers, and the tall, thin, gray-haired members of the legendary Arctic Council. To become a member of this council, the basic requirement is to lead an expedition to the northernmost point of the Arctic Circle...and come back alive. Franklin was at the bottom of the long line of memberships.He could only feel ashamed and tongue-tied at his inconspicuousness.Viscount Melville is the most notable of them all.He had been Secretary of the Admiralty, and had been the former patron of John Bello, the patron of the expedition.But Melville was no veteran of Arctic exploration. Franklin was a little nervous that night. To him, these true legends of the Arctic Council, mostly in their seventies, were more like the thirteen witches in Macbeth, or similar swarms of gray ghosts, rather than alive. man.Each of them went to find the Northwest Passage earlier than Franklin did, and they all came back alive, but only half alive. That night, Franklin wondered, could anyone actually come back alive after spending the winter in the Arctic Circle? Sir John Ross's Scotch face with more facets than icebergs and protruding brows is similar to the penguin's neck and feathers described by his nephew James Clark Ross after his trip to the South Pole Same.Rose's voice was rough, like dragging a piece of sand across a cracked deck. Sir John Bellow was older than God and twice as powerful.He is the father of professional British polar exploration.Everyone present that night, even the white-haired seventy-somethings, could only be regarded as boys—Belo's boys. Even compared to the royals, William Perry was a gentleman's gentleman.Four times he had attempted to cross the Northwest Passage, only to see his crew die, his Fury crushed, crumbled, and sunk by the ice. James Clark Ross, who had just been knighted, was newly married.His wife made him swear off expeditions.If he wanted, he, not Franklin, would be in command of the expedition, as they both knew.Rose and Crozier stood together, some distance from the others, drinking and talking softly, conspiring. That damned Sir George Baker!Franklin has never been able to let go of sharing the title of knighthood with the little warrant officer (and a womanizer) who was once his subordinate.Captain Sir John Franklin almost wished, on this festive evening, that Blackburn had not removed powder and cartridges from his dueling pistols twenty-five years ago.Baker is the youngest member of the Arctic Council, and even after the tragic events of HMS Terror being slammed and nearly sunk, he seems happier and more smug than the rest. Captain Sir John Franklin himself was a teetotaler.After three hours of champagne, wine, brandy, sherry, and whiskey, as everyone else relaxed, the laughter around him grew louder, and the conversation in the hall grew less serious.Franklin, however, became more composed. He understood that this reception, with its gold buttons, silk bow ties, shiny epaulettes, exquisite food, cigars and smiles, was all for him.This time, it was all for him. So, when old Rose pulled him aside unexpectedly and snarled questions at him amidst the smoke from the cigar and the flickering candlelight reflected from the crystal goblet, he was taken aback. "Franklin, what the hell reason are you taking one hundred and thirty-four people there?" His vocal chords were screeching like sand and stones on a rough plank. Captain Sir John Franklin blinked. "This is an important expedition, Sir John." "Damn it's so important! If you ask me, I'd say that. If something happens, it's hard enough to take thirty people across the ice, into a boat, and back to civilization. What's more One hundred and thirty-four people..." The old explorer made a rough sound and cleared his throat as if about to spit. Franklin nodded with a smile, hoping that the old man would stop pestering him. "And your age," Rose went on, "you're sixty, you know that?" "Fifty-nine," said Franklin stiffly, "ser." Old Rose smiled, looking more like an iceberg than ever. "How much is the Terror? Three hundred and thirty tons? About three hundred and seventy tons for the Nether?" "My flagship is three hundred and seventy-two tons," said Franklin, "and the Terror is three hundred and twenty-six tons." "Both ships have a draft of nineteen feet, don't they?" "Yes, sir." "Fucking crazy, Franklin. You two ships have the deepest drafts ever explored in the Arctic and Antarctic. All the evidence about these two areas shows that the water you are going to is not very deep. , and there are shoals, rocks, and dark ice everywhere. My Victory has a draft of only a fathom and a half, nine feet, and is out of the shallow bay where we spend the winter. When George Baker commanded your Terror , and nearly threw his ass off the ice." "Both ships are secured, Sir John," said Franklin.He felt the sweat dripping from his ribs and chest onto his fat belly. "They are currently the strongest ice-crawlers in the world." "And what of all that nonsense about steam engines and power engines?" "That's no bullshit, sir," said Franklin, and he could hear the strain in his voice.He didn't know anything about steam engines, but his expedition consisted of two good engineers and Fitzgerald, who was a member of the newly formed Steam Naval Department. "These engines have a lot of power, Sir John. They will keep us going through the ice when the sails fail." Sir John Ross snorted. "Your steam engine isn't even a sea engine, am I right, Franklin?" "No, Sir John. But they are the best engines that the London and Greenwich Railway can sell us, and have been converted into marine engines. They are two mighty beasts, sir." Rose took a sip of whiskey. "Yeah, powerful, unless you plan to build a railway on the Northwest Passage, and then let the power locomotive drive on it." Hearing this, Franklin chuckled patiently a few times, but he couldn't see any humor in this comment, and vulgar language was a great insult to him.He often couldn't tell jokes and had no sense of humor. "Not really that powerful, though," Rose went on. "That one-and-a-half-ton machine they stuffed into your Nether's hold makes only twenty-five horsepower. As for Croze's Engines are even less efficient...twenty horsepower at most. But the hauler, the ship that's pulling you out of Scotland, has a smaller steam engine that produces two hundred and twenty horsepower. Why? Because that It's a marine engine, designed for sailing." Franklin was noncommittal on this point.He smiled, and to fill the moment of silence, he waved to the waiter who just passed by with champagne and took a glass.Because it was against his principles to drink, he'd just stood there with his glass, occasionally looking at the fizzy champagne, looking for a chance to dispose of the wine when no one was looking. "Think about it, without those two engines, how much more supplies can be stuffed into the bilges of your two ships!" Ross clung to the topic. Franklin looked around as if for help, but everyone was cheerfully talking to someone. "We've got enough stock for three years, Sir John," he said at last. "We can last another five to seven years if the daily quota is reduced." He smiled again, trying to soften Rose's stiff expression. "And both the Erebus and the Terror have central air-conditioning, Sir John. I'm sure you'd like your Victory to have it too." There was a gleam in Sir John Ross' dark eyes. "The Victory was crushed by the ice like an egg, Franklin. Your advanced steam central air-conditioning doesn't do that either, does it?" Franklin looked around again, hoping that Fitzgerald could see him, or even Crozier, whoever would come to his rescue.Only, no one seemed to notice that Old Sir John and Fat John were having a lively (or one-way) conversation here.A waiter passed by, and Franklin returned the untouched champagne to the tray.Ross squinted at Franklin. "Do you know how much coal is burned just to heat one of the ships in the North Pole for a day?" the old Scottish man continued to ask. "Well, I don't really know that, Sir John." Franklin smiled triumphantly.He really didn't know, and didn't particularly care.Engineers would take care of the steam engines and coal, and the Admiralty would plan ahead for them. "I know," said Ross, "that you need to use up a hundred and fifty pounds of coal a day just to keep the hot water running and to heat the crew's quarters, and just to keep the steam engine running." , you're going to use up half a ton of your precious coal a day. Assuming these two ugly gunboats can make four knots (a unit of speed, a knot equals one nautical mile per hour), you're going to use up two to three tons of coal a day. Tons of coal. If you're going to ship through the ice, you're going to use a lot more coal than that. How much coal did you have on board, Franklin?" Captain Sir John waved his hand, only to find the gesture contemptuous, even unmanly. "Oh, about two hundred tons, ser." Rose squinted at him again. "To be exact, the Erebus and the Terror are ninety tons each," he said gruffly, "and that's when you've just left Greenland, before you've crossed Baffin Bay, and you haven't touched any real ice at all. .” Franklin laughed but didn't answer. "Suppose you get to a frozen place for the winter, and seventy-five percent of the ninety tons of coal haven't been burned," Ross continued, pushing forward like a ship through soft ice, "your steam How many more days can the machine run under normal conditions instead of ice? Twelve? Thirteen? Fourteen?" Captain Sir John Franklin had no concept at all.Although he is professional and familiar with sailing, he basically doesn't think about such things.Perhaps his eyes reflected a momentary panic, not from the coals, but from behaving like an idiot in the presence of Sir John Ross, for the old seaman was gripping Franklin's shoulders with pincer-like fingers.Captain Sir John Franklin could smell whiskey spitting from Rose's mouth as he leaned closer. "How does the Admiralty plan to search for you, Franklin?" Ross asked gruffly.His voice was very low, surrounded by the laughter and chatter of the guests when they were enjoying the wine. "Search and rescue?" Franklin blinked.The two most advanced ships in the world, in order to sail in the ice, the hulls have been reinforced, powered by steam, loaded with the supplies needed for five years or more in the ice, and the crew on board are all John Bay Sir Luo personally selected, will need or may need other people's rescue?Franklin never dreamed about it, the idea is too exaggerated. "Are you planning to store some things and set up supply stations on the islands you pass along the way?" Rose said softly. "Hoarding?" said Franklin. "Leaving our necessities along the way? How could I possibly do such a thing?" "If you have to walk on ice to get out, your crew and boat have food and shelter," Rose said strongly, eyes sparkling. "Why are we walking back to Baffin Bay?" Franklin asked. "Our goal is to go through the Northwest Passage!" Sir John Ross drew back his head and tightened his grip on Franklin's upper arm. "So, there is no search and rescue ship or search and rescue plan at all?" "No." Rose seized Franklin's other hand and squeezed it so hard that the stately Captain Sir John almost frowned. "Well, boy," said Rose softly, "if we hadn't heard from you in 1848, I'd go and find you myself. I swear." Franklin woke up suddenly. He was drenched in sweat.He felt dizzy and weak, his heart pounding, and with each beat his head hurt like a cathedral bell pounding inside his skull. He looked at himself in horror.His lower body was covered with a silk scarf. "What's this?" he cried nervously. "What's this? There's a flag over me!" Ms. Jean stood petrified. "You look cold, John. You've been shaking. I'll use it as a blanket to cover you up." "My God!" cried Captain Sir John Franklin. "My God, lady, do you know what you're doing? Don't you know the flag is put on dead men!"