At sunrise an hour later they saw that they were moored to an island of old ice, which rose from the sea in a gradual slope rather than precipitously. Its surface was mounted and furrowed, and was already heavily scoured by rivers of meltwater. A party went ashore
to explore it and to examine the surrounding sea from its peak.
Accompanied by Goodsir, Fitzjames was the first to make the climb and see what lay beyond. He was not surprised by what he saw—more ice and navigable water until the shifting pattern of light and dark confused him—but what did attract his attention was a large number of vivid red stains on the southern shore of the island. He pointed these out to Goodsir, who immediately became keen to investigate.
They reached the marked ground and Goodsir announced that they were blood stains.
“It’s like a battle ground,” Fitzjames said, searching around him for some clue as to the origins of the marks.
“But without the bodies,” Goodsir added. He collected samples from the nearest of the stains.
“Hunters?” Fitzjames crouched beside Goodsir. Some of the stains looked fresh and wet, but when he touched these he discovered that they were buried, that meltwater had frozen over them and not yet started to wash them away.
Goodsir left him and walked toward the sea.
Fitzjames walked in the opposite direction, coming across a small flock of gulls pecking at the ice to reach their disgusting meal beneath.
Goodsir called to him, and approaching him, Fitzjames saw that there was something at his feet. Arriving beside him he saw that this was the frozen corpse of a walrus, its open mouth plugged with ice.
“Our mystery explained,” Goodsir said.
“Then it is hunters. This animal was wounded and left behind.”
Goodsir laughed at this. “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid.” He tapped the solid corpse with his foot and then stepped aside to reveal more fully the encircling pool of frozen blood, at the center of which lay a newborn calf, as dead and as frozen as its mother.
“This must be their birthing ground,” Goodsir said. He tried to prise the calf free of the ice, eventually having to chip at it with his hammer to break it loose.
They continued south for five more days. On good days they made twenty miles, on poor ones only two.
On the sixth morning they saw in the early dawn that the slender channel they had followed the previous day had become even narrower in the night as the ice along its edges gathered and consolidated. They saw that they had been surrounded by a drifting field of level surface ice which, even as they looked out upon it, threatened to consolidate further and trap them within it.
The
Erebus
was the first to get away, pushing through the floe and nosing to port and starboard as she part-sought and part-created a path through the gathering mass, aiming for the dark water a mile ahead.
The
Terror
followed immediately astern, taking advantage of the leading ship’s open wake.
Reid guided the
Erebus
from his perch on the bowsprit cap, signaling first one way and then the other as new leads offered themselves ahead. Running up against a heavier shelf of ice they were forced to turn through 90 degrees and seek another route, a difficult maneuver with the floe already pushing along their entire length. Seeing what had happened, the helmsman on the
Terror
was able to turn her at a less severe angle and avoid the obstruction.
It took them eight hours to sail a mile and pass through the ice into open water beyond.
Minutes after their release, the dark cap of an island appeared on their starboard horizon, but other than note its position on their empty charts, neither vessel took any further account of it.
Their way south now appeared clear. Open channels penetrated the field of scattered bergs, and although the water was filled with the debris of these larger masses, this presented them with few obstacles.
Returning from his uncomfortable perch, Reid called for Vesconte to fetch several of his aluminum canisters. Waiting for him, he explained to the others that the ice off their starboard bow was starting to move in a different direction from that behind them, and he deduced that they had entered the fan of a southerly drift, and that the west coast of Boothia lay hidden off their port bow. The ice
there would be more densely packed than at the center of the channel or along any corresponding land mass to the west, and he suggested that they should continue south until they were clear of the ice which presently surrounded them. They might then adopt a south-southwesterly course and see what lay ahead of them in that direction. He felt certain that this passage would prove similar in many respects to that unsuccessfully sought along Prince Regent’s Inlet by Parry and Ross to the east of Boothia, and although he was unsure of what lay to the south and west of them, he was further convinced that they should avoid the known shore to the east and follow a course toward where the stronger southerly currents exerted their influence on the drifting ice.
Vesconte arrived with his canisters, into which details of their position and progress to date were already sealed. Taking several of these from him, Reid went to their prow and cast them overboard in rapid succession so that they formed a line in the water like the floats of a submerged net. Most of these were immediately lost amid the smaller pieces of nearby ice, but those that floated into open water began to drift ahead of them.
Countless thousands of these canisters had been thrown overboard since being adopted as the only viable, albeit distrusted and unreliable, means of communication between vessels in the ice and the world beyond. Inside them a form in several languages requested that they be returned to the Admiralty. Some were picked up decades after they had been thrown. Most were lost, sunk or frozen over. And some, everyone knew, probably drifted forever with cargos of hope or despair so large they could never be contained, and which, if ever released or exposed, crumbled to dust and disappeared as completely as the men who had thrown them, and whose calls and screams and prayers had drifted with them to the horizon of their shrinking world.
They were caught in gathering ice for the next eight days, box-hauling in enclosed leads and lowering their boats to investigate every time a navigable channel opened up ahead of them.
The
Terror
suffered further damage when she was caught in a nip
while chasing open water to the southwest. She came to an abrupt halt and was shaken from prow to stern. Those watching from the
Erebus
realized immediately that she had struck more submerged ice.
“She’s hauling astern,” Fitzjames said, standing beside Franklin, the attention of both men focused on the efforts of the
Terror
to release herself from the trap into which she had sailed.
Franklin called down to Des Voeux to take out a party on the ice and help them pull clear.
Des Voeux gathered together a dozen men and led them over the side onto the stable ice. They ran until they were alongside the
Terror
, whose boats were already lowered and coming toward them.
Reluctant to move any closer, and concerned about their own position in the narrow lead, Franklin ordered a second party to stand ready to lower their boats and haul the
Erebus
astern until she too was back out in open water.
“She’s grinding,” Fitzjames said suddenly. A distant crunching sound could be heard, and many of the men on deck stopped what they were doing and turned to look at the
Terror.
James Fairholme arrived beside them and directed their attention to their own stern, pointing to where one slab of ice had been pushed upon another and was now sliding over it at an angle. The distant noise resumed, and was concluded by a sudden crack as the uppermost slab broke and fell in two halves upon the ice it had mounted.
Those watching on the
Erebus
waited for the tremor this might produce, but nothing came.
It was difficult to judge the size of this upheaval, or its distance away from them, but Fairholme, the son and grandson of farmers, estimated the risen shelf to be at least an acre in extent.
There were other, less distinct noises, as the reverberations of this collision died down, and only when they were convinced that there was no more to follow did they turn their attention back to the
Terror
and her efforts to free herself.
By then, Crozier had landed on the ice, and was supervising the work from the shore. John Irving and George Hodgson worked
alongside him. In addition to their land-lines, the
Terror’
s boats were attempting to pull her astern.
“She’s free,” Fitzjames said eventually, watching as the bow of the
Terror
rocked in the water and sent out an irregular wave on either side of her.
Confirming this, Franklin ordered all their sail to be taken in, and for them too to be pulled astern.
The two ships were moored where they sat at the onset of night. Lanterns were lit on the ice and sea anchors made ready in case the banks of the channel closed further in on them in the darkness.
Crozier spent the evening aboard the
Erebus
.
“There are times when I wish I had never set eyes on the borders of this cursed place,” he said. “I make no excuses for my carelessness, but I ask you, who in their right mind would not have taken the course I followed?”
“It certainly appeared to offer a reasonable chance of getting ourselves clear,” Franklin said. He had followed Crozier against his own better judgment, keen to raise the spirits of his inactive and restless crew by the simple expedient of setting them in motion, however slow or tortuous.
Crozier rose to press his outstretched palm into the empty space at the center of the map hanging beside them. “My suggestion is that we remain where we are and try again to move forward along the same path.”
“We retreat back out into open water,” Franklin said, handing Crozier a decanter of port. “We retreat and try again elsewhere.”
Crozier saw that argument was useless. He wondered if Franklin made a note of these private discussions in his Admiralty Book or journal. “I would prefer the word ‘withdraw,’” he said.
“Then withdraw it is.” Listening to all this, it occurred to Franklin that Crozier spoke in the aggrieved tone of someone who believed he had been unfairly treated, almost as though he were seeking some reward for his labors, whereas instead he had received only mockery. “These are not mistakes or misjudgments we make,” he said. “For that we would need to know what lay ahead of us.” But Crozier was not to be appeased and they parted soon afterward.
They resumed their hauling the next day, and more men were sent out on the ice to assist in this. The
Terror’
s rudder was lifted, and without it she became unwieldy in the confined space, her stern wave rocking the boats which pulled her.
Word reached Franklin late in the morning that her bow reinforcement had also been damaged in the collision and that she was being pumped as she was towed.
Irving reported to Franklin mid-afternoon that the shock of the collision had been largely absorbed by the
Terror’
s outer sheathing at a point where she was best protected, and that the damage was superficial. She was shipping water into her empty bow, but her restraining timbers were still intact. He pointed out to Franklin the slight dip in the
Terror’
s bow, passing on Crozier’s reassurances that once the towing parties were back aboard she would be quickly pumped and sealed.
By late afternoon the
Erebus
was free of the lead and back out in open water.
As they followed the edge of the ice to the west, everyone on board the
Erebus
was surprised to see the rush of smoke from the
Terror’s
stack and then to see her complete the last half mile of her own reverse journey using her engine. Even rudderless she came out into the open water in a straight line and at a constant speed considerably greater than that at which the
Erebus
herself had come clear.
Further progress was delayed while repairs were carried out, and during that time Fitzjames persuaded Franklin to experiment with their own engine.
Less than a mile to the west of where they had emerged lay a second opening, and this, Fitzjames assured Franklin, would provide them with the perfect testing ground: using their engine instead of their sails they might turn into this loose ice and push it away ahead of them instead of forever changing tack to avoid its larger pieces, as they would be forced to do under sail alone.
Hearing what the
Erebus
was about to attempt, Crozier, Hodgson and Irving came aboard to participate in the experiment.
For an hour before their departure Fitzjames worked with the
stokers to build up a head of steam sufficient to drive them with some force into the channel. With the ice in its present condition, gentle but constant pressure, he reasoned, would prove more effective than if they ran at it using their reinforced bows as a ram. Later, if the need for brute force did arise, then they would employ it scientifically, like a quarryman splitting blocks of slate with precise and expert blows on his chisel.