Chapter 1
Crozier
October, 1847
So, I was wrong already! The chapters are not character POV! The chapters focus on a single character, but are narrated by an omniscient 3rd person narrator.
This chapter takes place, I think, about 2 years after the voyage began. Captain Crozier is the focus in this chapter. He’s coming up onto the deck of his ship, the Terror, to the sight of the Aurora Borealis and a -50° Fahrenheit evening. He observes the sky and stars for about a page (sailors LOL), and meanwhile it’s offhandedly mentioned that he is an Irishman.
The sails and parts of the upper masts have been removed because ice will build up on them and cause the ship to capsize; I’m learning!! When he sees the stars appearing to bounce on the horizon he is reminded of another expedition-when he and (then)commander James Ross discovered Antarctica. Cappy then reflects on how many discoveries he’s made have been named after him (zero) and decides that screw that, he didn’t want anything named after him anyway. If this isn’t some kind of foreshadowing that someone is important and maybe like, a main character who matters even if no one else seems to realize it right away, I’ll eat my hat. And it is a baseball cap with lots of cardboard and eating it would generally be unpleasant. So you know I’m quite confident.
Most of the beginning of the chapter is an introduction to Cappy as well as the current plot setting. He’s been in a constant state of drunkenness for around 3 years, the ship is frozen into place, and he is referring to (Captain Sir John) Franklin in the past tense. He describes the way the men are attired while they take their watch on deck, or just go outside; layers of flannel and wool, “waterproof” coats, big mittens and hats with floppy ear coverings. Charming, and I’m sure very stinky. The men on deck look like piles of clothes, but Crozier is so fantastic a Cappy that he can tell them all apart.
It’s revealed that at this point, the Terror has 59 “surviving” officers and men. OK, it’s a polar expedition and it’s not exactly a job or time period in history where people took great care of themselves. They are 2 years in, shit happens. How many men have been lost? To what? He changes the subject.
The ship is stuck in the ice badly, tilted at an angle and shifting as the ice grinds against it. The lookout has a shotgun next to him. For what? He’s wearing mittens, and shotguns are metal in negative 50 degrees. I think that means the risk of freezing to the gun is worth the risk to defend against whatever is out there. I mean he’d have to remove mittens to fire the gun right? So what’s he watching for? Polar bears maybe? The natives 10000% have better shit to do then mess around with a bunch of ratty smelly damp British people.
The ship is apparently overcrowded, even with X number of deaths and/or departures. The men have 2 hour watches (short due to the extreme cold). The watchman -Hickey- tells the captain that nothing else has been heard since the gunshot and the possible scream. He also reveals to the reader that they have no line of sight to the other ship. There hasn’t been any communication with the Erebus since the shot, because Cappy won’t send men out onto the ice at night because of the thing, and the thing means certain death.
Our fearless Captain still shaves every day, and complains about the cold water, so I’m not sure how bad things could be if British naval hair care is still a consideration for these guys. Cappy asks Hickey about someone awesomely named Lady Silence and I instantly love her so much. She’s (as they call her in the book-this is not me being culturally ignorant!) an Esquimaux woman, knows no English, and evidently these brave discoverers think she is just terrifying. She’s hanging out with Lieutenant Irving on deck. The Lieut should have been off his break an hour ago but, as Hickey observes, he goes where Lady Silence goes (it isn’t outright stated but “boy follows her like a lovestruck puppy” is heavily implied). Evidently she is a witch because she can stay out on deck longer than the men can. It’s totally magic guys. No way is it because she grew up in this environment, and isn’t wearing clothes that capture moisture and never dry like a bunch of stinky, dopey MFers who don’t know what they are actually doing bumbling around in the Arctic Circle. No guys. Magic.
Cappy slowly and painstakingly slides across the deck, telling us all about it, and finds Irving and Lady Silence (love it) having some “privacy”. This private moment is described as Lady Silence having her back to Irving, looking away, with him leaning way into her personal space. I’m sure the good-looking Irving is thinking he is very smooth and how could Lady Silence (that’s so great to type guys) not be absolutely interested in him? I’m also sure that Lady Silence is trying not to acknowledge this smelly guy encroaching into her space, talking at her in a foreign language, stuck on a boat trapped in ice, alone with nothing but a ship full of his friends to back him up if she makes any sort of “Step the hell back stinky man” signals. Good call Irving. Romance the woman.
Cap breaks up the moment and Irving doesn’t react with any sort of suaveness at all. He doesn’t act mad or frustrated like you’d expect from a guy who thinks he may have just been cockblocked. He even seems to act slightly guilty for having less-than-honorable thoughts about Lady Silence. That could be because he is a good kid and just really naive, or (and I’ll tell you which I think it is later) it’s because he was showing interest in a non-white female. Cap gives him some shit for being out in the cold for so long.
Sidebar here-your TEETH and EXPLODE from the cold? What?! Like actually, with shrapnel and shit, EXPLODE.
Cap is frustrated because his Lieutenant is out here, mooning over some Esquimaux woman and risking frostbite. Irving’s eyes are FROZEN OPEN. Why would you go to this awful place where your teeth explode and monsters run around and your eyelids freeze open? Cap gives the kid orders to go below deck to get checked by the doctor and defrost; doesn’t he know that “watch over Lady Silence” means spy on her, not follow her all over like a creep?
Then our Captain pisses me right the fuck off. He calls Lady Silence a nasty name, because she is Esquimaux and he isn’t, and then she turns to him “as if understanding his words”. Then I had to break my fingers to avoid typing any spoilers but OMG you guys. O.M.G. Anyway, she’s brown and gross to the heroic captain who is having strong pantsfeelings for someone called Sophia Cracroft. He mentally gives Lady Silence some weird and awful backhanded compliments about how she is strange and mysterious and no wonder a young romantic like Lieuty would “love” her. And then I’m like
SPOILERS
As he thinks more mean things about Lady Silence, he thinks about how he is too old and too Irish for romance. I’ve heard that drinking too much whiskey can cause problems with the romance, and I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge. There is even an actual for-real phrase to describe the problem. But cutting back on the whiskey is unthinkable; the best way to deal with the problem is to have a Sophia Cracroft pity party on the deck of your ship in the Arctic Circle. That seems healthy.
Finally we have somewhat of a shenanigans timeline. The thing showed up at roughly the same time that Lady Silence and her now-deceased (courtesy of the brave British explorers bumbling around this area) male companion turned up. Lady Silence is around 20 years old,a virgin (because of course they’d check the doctor checked that?) and she doesn’t have a tongue. Not only does she not have a tongue, it appears to have been chewed off. Again, what even is this place with exploding teeth and chewed off tongues and stinky men wearing damp clothes in the freezing cold and things roaming the ice doing whatever to these men? WHY DO PEOPLE GO HERE. So anyway, cappy was surprised to hear that Lady Silence was a virgin because of course. Brown girls are all sluts and all white men in the 1800s knew it for a fact(is his gross gross opinion, please, not mine). Way to be an asshole Crozier. How many chapters do I have to read your thoughts? Ugh.
Due to
SPOILERS I CAN’T REVEAL
and everything, I really feel like she’s too nice. To everyone. I’d get the thing on the ice to eat everyone one of these smelly fuckers if it were me. We will revisit this stuff, guys, I promise and I’m SO MAD I can’t talk about it now. Geeze.
Out loud, Captain Crozier politely addresses Lady Silence, telling her that she should go below deck for the night. When he’s on his way to talk to the other man on watch, a wild Marine appears! The young Marine tells the Cap to go see the engineer please sir, yes sir, sorry sir, may I have another sir, really just sirring it up. Crozier is like “why though” and DUDE. Your ship is frozen in place. You have nothing else really going on and the guy who is keeping your ship heated wants to see you quickly please. Maybe ask why while moving in that direction at least. The response is more sirring followed by sorry sir but Seaman Mason is threatening mutiny sir.
The short version of this is that the simple giant of the ship is afraid to carry sacks of coal passed the “dead room” because he can hear ghosts. This is the mutiny emergency. My first thought was well rats chewing on (6) frozen dead guys might be kind of loud. So Simple Jack here thinks the rats are ghosts. The Captains private secret brain thoughts that he doesn’t say out loud are that there probably are rats in there (yay me!!) but also there is a louder noise then there should be. Something else banging and scraping around the outside of the ship. A thing that maybe has tunneled through the snow and ice and somehow found an empty room on the overcrowded ship (dead room) and is banging and clawing, trying to break in. And then downstairs they go to deal with Lenny the mutineer.
fluffymankillr 