Chapter 19 Chapter 19 Crozier

Seventy degrees five minutes north latitude, ninety-eight degrees twenty-three minutes west longitude December 5, 1847 On the evening watch on Tuesday, the third week of November, the thing on the ice went aboard the Erebus, and took the beloved bosun, Mr. Thomas Terry, from his post near the stern, and only Leave his head on the railing.There was no blood on Terry's stern post, nor on the frozen deck or hull.The conclusion was that the thing took Terry away, and carried him hundreds of yards into the darkness outside, where seracs grew like trees in the thick white forest.Then the thing killed him, dismembered him, and probably ate him afterwards.Afterwards, before the starboard or port guard noticed that the bosun was missing, return Mr. Terry's head.The crew became more and more suspicious whether the things that killed fellow shipmates and officers were really killed for food?

Several of the guards who had found the bosun's head on their way down had been repeating all week what poor Mr. Terry looked like: the mouth wide open, as if suddenly frozen in a scream, the lips parted back until the teeth were all bared. , the eyes protrude outward.There was not a single tooth or claw mark on his face or head, only a broken laceration in his neck, where the thin, tubular esophagus jutted out like a gray mouse's tail, and the white spinal cord was clearly visible. The hundred or so crew members who survived suddenly found religion.Most of the Erebus's crew had complained for two years about Sir John Franklin's church service, but now even a man who woke up three days drunk and couldn't read the Bible felt a great need for spiritual comfort.After word spread of Thomas Terry's decapitation—Captain Fitzgerald had placed the canvas-wrapped mass in the bilge of the Erebus, the airtight chamber of the dead—the crew began asking the captain to pay for the two ships. All on board held a joint Sunday service.On Friday night, sable-faced Cornelius Hedge came to Crozier with a request.Xi Ji had previously been on duty with the torch construction team to repair the ice road marker between the two ships. At that time, he took the opportunity to talk to the people on the Nether about this matter.

"Nobody objected," said the mate caulker, standing in the doorway of Captain Crozier's cramped cabin. "Everyone wishes for a joint service. Two ships together, Captain." "Can you speak for everyone on both ships?" Crozier asked. "Yes, sir, I can represent them," Hedge said, showing only four of his six remaining teeth in a smile that once meant victory.Confidence is all that the diminutive mate caulker has. "I doubt it," said Crozier, "but I'll talk to Captain Fitzjian and let you know if there's a service and how. Whatever the final decision, you can be our special agent." Messenger, let everyone know." Crozier was drinking when Hedge knocked on his door.He had never liked the meddling little crew.There are self-righteous "sea lawyers" on every ship who are as much a part of life at sea as the rats.To Crozier's surprise, Higgy, despite his broken grammar and lack of formal education, had the skills to be a mutinous maritime lawyer on a grueling voyage.

"One of the reasons we all wish to have a service like the one Sir John—God bless him, rest his soul, Captain—used to hold is that we all..." "That's all, Mr. Hedge." Crozier drank heavily that week.The melancholy that had hung over him like a fog in the past was now covering him like a thick blanket.He knew Terry, thought he was a super capable boatswain, and thought his death was terrible.However, no matter the Antarctic or the Arctic, the polar regions also provide countless ways to die.The same goes for the Royal Navy, both peacetime and wartime.Crozier had witnessed several horrific deaths during his military career, so while Mr. Terry's death was one of the more unusual ones he'd seen and the recent plague of violent deaths , It was also more terrifying than the real plague he had seen at sea before, but what made Crozier even more melancholy was the reaction of the survivors in the expedition.

James Fitzgerald, a hero of the Euphrates, was beginning to lose heart.His first ship hadn't even left Liverpool yet, and he became a hero because of the media coverage.The young Fitzjian jumped out of the boat to save a drowning customs clerk, a handsome young officer who, as The Times reported, was "in chains of great coat, hat and expensive watch".The Liverpool trader knew, and Crozier knew, how valuable the customs officer who was bribed and also got money was, so he presented him with a silver medal as a thank you.The Admiralty first noticed the silver medal, and then noticed Fitzgerald's heroic deeds—although in Crozier's experience, officers went to the sea to rescue people every week, because most of the crew could not swim— It was finally noted that Fitzgerald was "the handsomest man in the Navy" and a very well-bred young gentleman.

The rising young officer's reputation was not tarnished by twice volunteering to lead commandos against Bedouin bandits.Crozier noted in his official report that Fitzgerald, the most handsome man in the navy, escaped after breaking his foot during a raid and was captured by bandits during a second attack, leaving Fitzgerald Zijian became a hero in the eyes of the London media and the Admiralty. Next came the Opium Wars.In 1841 Fitzgerald showed himself to be a true hero, and was praised no less than five times by his captain and the Admiralty.He was promoted to lieutenant colonel at the young age of thirty, and the most handsome man in the entire navy was also assigned to be the commander of the sloop Royal Navy Clio. It seemed that a bright future was in sight.

But then, when the war was over, and the elusive peace seemed to be suddenly upon any promising officer in the Royal Navy, Fitzkean found he had no ships to command and was stuck on land, on half pay. .Crozier knew that if the command of the Royal Navy Exploration Corps to Sir John Franklin was a gift from God to this not-so-famous old man, then the substantive command of the Royal Navy's Nether was for Fitzgerald. It's a shiny second chance. Now "The Handsomeest Man in the Navy" no longer had the pink cheeks or his formerly passionate sense of humor.Even if the daily food ration is only two-thirds of normal, most officers and crew can maintain their usual weight, because members of the Royal Exploration Corps eat better than ninety-nine percent of England on shore, but now Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian, who was the captain, had lost more than thirty pounds.His uniform fell loosely over him, and his boyish curls fell limply from under his hat and Welles wig.Fitzgerald's face, which had always been a little round in the past, now looked haggard, weak, and sunken in the light of an oil lamp or lantern.

The lieutenant colonel's public demeanor was as usual, always easily combining self-deprecating humor with firm control.But in private, when he and Crozier were alone, he was less talkative, less smiling, often inattentive and a little pathetic.In fact, the symptoms of Crozier's depression were already evident.Sometimes it was like looking at yourself in a mirror, except that the sad face staring back at him was a standard English gentleman instead of an obscure Irishman. On Friday, December 3, Crozier loaded his shotgun and walked alone on the cold, dark, long road between the Terror and the Erebus.If the thing on the ice field was going to get him, Crozier thought, even a few more men with guns would not change the outcome much.Wasn't that the case with Sir John?

Crozier arrived safely on the Nether.He and Fitzjan discussed the current situation: the morale of the crew, their request to hold services, the state of the canned food, the need for strict food rationing in the immediate aftermath of Christmas.They agreed that it might be good to have a joint service next Sunday.Since there was no pastor and no self-appointed preacher on board, Franklin had been both roles until June of this year, so both captains had to give a sermon.Crozier hated it more than going to the dentist on the docks, but he knew it had to. (bottom missing)