Fitzjames visited him on the morning of his second attempt to meet Tozer, and was alarmed to see how much more weight he had lost during the previous few days. Before he left, Stanley drew back the blanket to reveal Fairholme’s near-skeletal body, with its swollen joints and the bruising which covered his stomach and groin. He
had become incontinent, and the smell filled the small room. According to Stanley, his condition was stable, but the progress of scurvy once it had taken hold was unpredictable, only its symptoms following the same irreversible and terrifying pattern.
Disheartened by what he had seen, Fitzjames left the room and then the ship, and walked the quarter of a mile from the
Erebus
to Tozer’s shelter. With him again went Gore and Vesconte, accompanied this time by Hodgson and Irving from the
Terror
. Crozier had urged him to take a party of “loyal” marines from the
Erebus,
but Fitzjames had rejected this, knowing that the approach of any armed men in his company might provoke the confrontation he was hoping to avoid. He was convinced that the situation concerning the men on the ice was not so serious as Crozier believed, and that, in his mind at least, matters of loyalty and self-preservation had become deliberately confused.
The five men passed through the mounds of stores and came to the first of the two upturned boats, to which tarpaulin canopies had been attached, and within which small fires burned. The men gathered around these fires did not notice their approach, and Fitzjames stepped beneath the canopy of the nearest boat before those inside were aware of his arrival.
“Gentlemen,” he said, drawing back his hood and stamping the wet from his boots. He moved closer to feel the warmth of the fire. Empty cans and bottles lay scattered around him, and a mound of bones showed powder white in the embers of the fire.
“James Daly, isn’t it?” he said. “And William Heather,” recognizing the two marines sitting by the entrance, and having already checked with one of the
Terror’
s warrant officers the names of all the men who had so far chosen to follow Tozer.
Both men nodded and Daly took off his cap, followed by Heather.
“You’ve made yourselves very comfortable,” Fitzjames went on, hoping neither man misinterpreted the tone of his remark. He saw them look over his shoulder to see who had accompanied him.
There were three others in the upturned boat, all seamen, only one of whom—George Kinnaird—Fitzjames recognized. He greeted him too, and then asked if it was possible to see Tozer.
The five men agreed to this, and offered to accompany him to the larger ice-shelter where Tozer now slept. It was clear that his presence made them uneasy, causing some of them to behave as though a trap were about to be sprung on them.
“We had no choice,” Kinnaird said to him before Fitzjames could ask anything further.
Gore and Vesconte appeared in the doorway and called in to identify themselves.
James Daly invited both men in. He smoked a pipe, which filled the low space with smoke and collected in a cloud above them.
“Choice?” Fitzjames asked Kinnaird.
“Go and look at her. Her forecastle head’s all stoved in. The first sign of a sea under her and she’s going to say her prayers. I know they’re trying to repair her, but I doubt they’ll stop her tipping in a fast thaw or if the ice drops her. I wouldn’t never have left her otherwise. We haven’t abandoned her, Mr. Fitzjames, but we couldn’t go on living in her as she was, not forward of that smashed hold.”
Fitzjames acknowledged both the sincerity and the despair in the man’s voice and assured him that he had not come seeking to punish anyone or to persuade them to return with him.
“Then what?” William Heather asked contemptuously, drawing nods and anxious glances from the men around him.
“Simply to find out how you are situated and to see what might now be the best way forward,” Fitzjames said, afterward addressing his remarks to the more sympathetic Kinnaird.
At the appearance of Irving and Hodgson, the two marines took up their rifles and looked as though they were about to run.
It was Kinnaird who defused the situation. “Tell Captain Crozier that most of us will be happy to return to his command if he will only berth us farther astern so that we might at least stand a chance of orderly abandonment if she does suffer any more damage and go down in a crush.”
George Hodgson took out a pad and read from it a list of two dozen names, asking those present to confirm if the men on his list had now joined them. He did this under orders from Crozier, and
all five officers regretted the ominously formal tone it cast upon the proceedings. The number of those living out on the ice had doubled in the past five days, several men from the
Erebus
also having joined them. Fitzjames realized that with one or two possible exceptions, these were not men who would panic easily, many of them, Tozer and Kinnaird included, having wintered in the Arctic several times before.
“There is one thing,” Kinnaird said hesitantly, as Fitzjames and the others prepared to leave and go in search of Tozer.
“What’s that?”
“The two boys have come out to join us. Scared as rabbits at harvest, they were. They’re around somewhere. Take them back with you. They have no part in this or its consequences.”
The others nodded their agreement at this request, and Fitzjames promised to find the boys and take them back to the
Erebus
with him, where they might share the bunks of their own two apprentices.
Leaving the boat, the five men, now accompanied by half a dozen of those living on the ice, made their way toward the more substantially constructed shelter beyond.
Tozer appeared in the doorway at their approach, shielding his eyes against the sun to make them out.
“Mr. Fitzjames,” he called out. There was neither surprise nor suspicion in his voice; Fitzjames had anticipated a more hostile reception. “And Mr. Gore, Mr. Vesconte, Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Irving,” Tozer added, identifying each of them as they came forward out of the glare.
Fitzjames went ahead alone and asked Tozer if the two of them might talk in private. Tozer considered this and then agreed, calling into the dwelling behind him for those inside to vacate it. Nine men came out, and behind them came the two boys, whom Fitzjames greeted, but who remained nervously silent in his presence. He signaled to Gore to approach them and persuade them to return with him to the
Erebus.
“Come in,” Tozer said brusquely, holding open the door for Fitzjames to precede him into the hut. Light entered by a solitary small window in its south wall. Cases and clothing filled most of the space,
along with scattered furs and groundsheets. A smoking lamp burned on the table at the center of the room. Tozer drew up chairs and the two men sat down. Here, too, lay scattered the debris of empty cans and bottles, and Fitzjames caught the smell of alcohol, mixed with that of grease, gun oil and the warm, rank smell of men.
“Kinnaird told me what happened,” Fitzjames began.
“Go and see for yourself. Go and see the so-called repairs Captain Crozier thinks he’s making. She’ll dip as soon as she’s afloat. That is if she isn’t caught and crushed first. You’ve only got to look at all the precious stores they’ve offloaded. We fulfill our duties and obligations as posted. We stand ice watch through the nights, but we aren’t going to be tempted to return until we see some chance of salvation if the need arises.”
“There are many still aboard who have no intention of joining you,” Fitzjames said.
“Then more fool them.” Tozer smiled. “But we do worry them an awful lot, don’t we, Mr. Fitzjames? They’re there and we’re here, and they can’t help but have that nagging doubt at the back of their minds, can they?”
Fitzjames conceded that this was an accurate assessment of the situation. “Did you think Crozier might send armed men to bring you back?”
The suggestion silenced Tozer for a moment, but he had clearly given this alternative course of action some thought. “Then he’d have had a fight on his hands. Besides which, for all his faults, he isn’t stupid enough to let any such action leave a stain on his career. Especially not now—not now that he’s in command. Surely you’d guessed that much, Mr. Fitzjames, surely you’d realized that that was why he let
you
come out here and held back himself?”
Fitzjames had considered this, but had willingly accepted his own role in the negotiations. A balance had been struck, an understanding reached, and neither man spoke for a moment. Then Tozer lifted a hot kettle to the table and made them a drink.
“We’ll take back the boys,” Fitzjames said eventually.
“I’d be grateful. And in turn I shall do nothing to encourage the others to join us.”
“You do that simply by being here,” Fitzjames said.
“No more nor less than they are encouraged by the lack of concern with which Captain Crozier treats his damage and his repairs. If I were you, I’d watch my own berth on the
Erebus.”
Fitzjames agreed to make his own inspection of the repair work and return with his views of it.
“She was a bad berth to begin with,” Tozer said.
“In what way?”
“The story goes she shivered her timbers in the shipyard and that they double-banded her instead of stripping her back to her keel ready for her shakedown.”
“Are you certain?”
Tozer shrugged.
Fitzjames had only ever heard of one other ship with which he was acquainted having shivered her timbers during her construction, and that was the
Rosemary
, supply and sister ship to the
Clio
in which he had sailed the South China Sea for four years. She was built in 1829, and days after having had her keel laid and her spars fixed, the insufficiently seasoned timber of her inner hull had responded to the new strain imposed upon it by shaking itself loose, requiring it to be stripped off and replaced.
“I was with Back in her ten years ago,” Tozer went on. “She got caught, lifted and squeezed and all but shook herself to pieces then. When we got back we thought she’d be dismantled or sent for a hulk, but instead they doubled her, refitted her and sent her back for ice-service.”
Fitzjames rose to leave.
Back outside they were approached by Gore and Vesconte, Hodgson and Irving having already departed to report to Crozier. Fitzjames regretted not having had the opportunity to speak with them before they conveyed their own impressions of the camp to Crozier. The two boys stood with Gore and did not appear unduly concerned at the prospect of returning to the
Erebus
. Kinnaird approached with a pot of freshly rendered grease for Fitzjames to take for Fairholme and any others suffering from swollen joints.
F
ranklin was finally buried on the 15th of July, St. Swithun’s Day, five weeks after his death. Following the delay caused by the return of Fitzjames’ party, the ceremony was further postponed by the arrival of a summer storm which lasted three nights and two days, and which covered everything with six inches of powdered ice, including Franklin’s coffin and recently excavated grave.
It had been Crozier’s original intention to bury Franklin away from the graves of the others, but the ice in the direction of his chosen site had recently shown signs of faulting, its elastic surface folding in long strips like crimped ribbons. In other places, equally distant, leads of dark water had temporarily appeared, only to be frustratingly sealed as lids of thick ice were then drawn and shunted over them.
The nearest of these leads had appeared a mile distant from the ships, but so far none had been broad enough or long enough to suggest any prospect of release.
On one occasion a broad channel of broken ice and water had appeared to the southwest, and because this was the direction in which they waited to sail, a larger party than usual, led by Hodgson and Irving, had been sent out to investigate. The surface ice had shattered during the night, and it was not until five the following morning that this distant but promising-looking channel was spotted. Irving’s initial estimate of a mile proved optimistic, and after traveling almost two they were little closer to the distant water than
when they had set out. After a few more minutes of their wasted journey, Hodgson called a halt.
The twelve men rested and shared their disappointment. Eager to confirm that their release was imminent, many had run the whole way and were now exhausted, their cheeks dripping with sweat in the heat. An inch of molten surface water skimmed the plain around them and they scooped this up and splashed it on their faces.
From where they now stood at the center of an unbroken basin, nothing of the lead could be seen, and in every direction they were dazzled by the sun on the ice. Those who had brought their veils and goggles put them on; those without shielded their eyes and walked back to the ships with their faces down.
On their return journey, Hodgson made notes on the condition of the ice through which they might yet have to forge a path, remarking with dismay upon its thickness and solidity, and upon the fact that much of it was old ice which had neither moved nor ruptured for some years past.
Crozier was critical of their failure to locate the distant lead. He took his two lieutenants on the deck of the
Erebus
and pointed it out to them, his anger barely suppressed in the presence of the others working all around them. He pointed to where the root of dark water still appeared to snake toward them, and to both Hodgson and Irving it seemed impossible that they could have traveled so far and not come upon it; it looked now to be little more than a mile distant from them, the intervening space lost in the confusion of the glare.
“An illusion, I’m afraid,” Irving ventured, immediately regretting having spoken, realizing how provocative this excuse might be to someone whose hopes had been so high.
“An illusion? You dare to speak of illusions to men for whom—” Crozier fell silent. “Rest assured that I intend making a full report of your failure for the log. Of your failure, and your lack of commitment and concern.”
Neither Hodgson nor Irving responded to this, aware of all the men around them who had paused in their work to watch.
Fitzjames arrived, knowing only that the party of men had returned.
“Good news?” he called to them, aware only as he spoke of all the silent men around him.
Crozier stood with his back to him. “The matter has been dealt with, Mr. Fitzjames. What passes between myself and the
Terror’
s officers is no longer a matter for public consumption, and I’ll thank you not to interrupt.”
Surprised by the vehemence in his voice, Fitzjames said, “Surely an explanation is not too much to ask for.”
“Explanation, Mr. Fitzjames?” Crozier shouted at him, surprising him even further. “I think not. Look for yourself. You see what I see. You see, in all probability, our salvation. You see an avenue leading us toward an open sea and the completion of our task.” Crozier strode away from the four men, speaking as he went.
“You
see it,
I
see it, everyone upon this deck sees it, and yet neither Mr. Hodgson nor Mr. Irving are able, having been out upon the ice, to confirm that what we can all see is actually
out
there.” He stopped abruptly, as though only then aware of the violence of his outburst. He pushed through the men ahead of him and left the
Erebus
by her rail ladder. A murmur rose from the nervous silence.
Down on the ice, Crozier shouted orders at the men collecting supplies, calling for a group who sat around a fire to extinguish it and get back to work. Midway between the two ships he turned and called for Hodgson and Irving to report to him immediately, and seeing that they did not instantly respond to his command, he shouted again, making himself hoarse in the process.
“Go,” Fitzjames said to them. “It serves no purpose to aggravate him any further.”
The men on the ice put out their fire and climbed back aboard the
Erebus,
where the angry confrontation remained the topic of discussion throughout the day.
All this happened four days before Franklin’s funeral, and only six hours before the onset of the storm, which came swiftly and caught them unprepared. The men living out on the ice secured their
doorways and awnings and sat out the freezing winds as best they could. The upturned boats were buried completely and then abandoned after the first few hours of the storm. The ice-house was hidden by steep drifts which collected against two of its sides, and by loose ice which mounded on its roof.
Those who suffered worst during the two days of the storm were those aboard the
Terror
close to her damaged bow, where the ice blew inside and built up around them, barely thawing in the warmth of their heaters and ovens. The tented roof of the
Terror’
s deck collapsed and was blown away, scattering the supplies and coals stacked beneath it. The men working there when this happened were unable to retrieve either the canvas or the stores and were quickly forced below. Noon temperatures of 30 degrees over the previous week fell to 10 below freezing in the storm, the ferocity of which surprised them all.
It had long since occurred to Crozier and others that Franklin could not be committed to the ice in the same way as their other fatalities, and that a more ceremonious and dignified service was called for. Franklin deserved to be entombed rather than buried, and his grave needed to be carefully and solidly constructed. It also needed to be prominently marked in case the possibility later arose of retrieving his body and returning it home for the more civilized and acclaimed reburial it merited.
To this end Crozier ordered that a hole be excavated in the old and stable ice off their starboard bow, and that this should be at least nine feet deep, by nine long, by five wide. At first these dimensions surprised those who were charged with the task, but he would consider no reduction.
It took nine men three days using picks and axes to excavate a hole to these specifications, and only when Crozier was satisfied that this had been done did he explain to his officers that he intended constructing a tomb, using the sand and Portland cement the ships carried as ballast.
The base of the vault would be laid down to a depth of four feet, thus providing a solid slab upon which the coffin might rest. The walls would be built up from this foundation, and Franklin’s coffin
slotted between them. A concrete lid would await the lowering of the coffin and be slid into place above it. The whole tomb would then be sealed with fresh concrete, in which a marker might later be fixed. In this way the coffin would be sealed but not cemented into its base and walls, easily capable, once the grave had been located, of being lifted free. The empty tomb might afterward remain as a monument to Franklin and the expedition as a whole.
On the day of the funeral, Crozier read the service and then each of the senior officers said a few words of their own. This took place close by the ships, and when a prayer had been said ropes were attached to the trestles of the makeshift bier upon which the coffin had been laid, and forty men pulled Franklin the level, frozen mile to his grave. It was Crozier’s intention that every one of them should play some physical part in the ceremony, and only those who were injured or still recovering from scurvy were excused their turn at the ropes. The giant sledge moved easily over the new powdering of ice.
Tozer led his men from their camp and they too took their turn at hauling.
The gravesite was reached and further prayers said. Throughout the proceedings a mixed flock of gulls and ravens hovered above, attracted by the prolonged disturbance below, and it was not until a salute was fired over the grave that the birds were finally dispersed, rising higher and then separating as clearly as grain from chaff, black in one direction, white in another.
The lid of the tomb was manhandled into position, and following Crozier’s speech of thanks to everyone involved, the officers and men drifted slowly away. The concrete to seal the grave was mixed on the ice, and Fitzjames remained behind to supervise this, and then to attach the beaten copper plaque upon which Franklin’s name and honors had been engraved. No epitaph was added. Jane Franklin might add this later upon her husband’s possible reburial in London; or she might choose one and despatch it with some later expedition, having decided that her husband’s present resting-place was the most fitting.