Work Text:
NOTES
ON THE
MINUTES
OF A
COURT-MARTIAL
HELD AT ADMIRALTY HOUSE
WHITEHALL
Beginning Monday, the fourth day of September, 1849, and continued till Tuesday, the eighteenth day of December, 1849, following,
For the trial of
Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, FRS FRAS
Of Her Majesty’s Ship Terror
PRINTED BY MOTTLEY AND HARRISON; AND SOLD BY LONGMAN AND CO. LONDON; AND THE BOOKSELLERS AT THE SEA-PORTS: 1850
PRELUDE.
Shortly after the termination of the court-martial, held at the Admiralty Hall of London, on Captain Francis R.M. Crozier, FRS FRAS, on the subject of his conduct, as captain of the failed expedition to the High North, two pamphlets, purporting to contain the proceedings in full made their appearance; but as one of them was confessedly defective, having been authored by an observer outside the court, and the other was evidently garbled, no notice was taken of either.
Such omissions therefore called for those elucidations which will be found in the following pages; and which are submitted, in no other spirit, and to no other end, than to diminish the labours of the public, in forming their conclusions, and ultimately deciding upon the matters that those minutes embrace.
The court-martial held on Captain Crozier is not of that number which affects only the situation of an individual who had violated some naval regulations, or failed in the discharge of a minor part of his duty. It is one in which the public are highly interested; the reader will remember scarcely six months hence the intense anxiety for news of the expedition, thought lost, which invested every syllable of intelligence from the North with extraordinary interest. It is also one in which the naval character is involved, and with which the honour, and even the existence of our empire, are blended.
To the end proposed, we have selected the more prominent features of the minutes before us; and, as far as our judgment is capable of discriminating, fairly and honestly contrasted the depositions of the two principal witnesses, Captains Crozier and Fitzjames, who gave their testimony on points of material consequence. The reader will of course note the extraordinary matter of their discordant testimonies, as well as the touching effusions of brotherhood which unfurled themselves in due time.
Having thus submitted the reasons that operated, and our sense of the duty, that compelled us to bring this to the public, we have only to report on the findings of the case. The court-martial having concluded the fifteenth ultimo, the judge-advocate issued his verdict forthwith. For abandonment of his post, which resulted in the loss of sixteen thousand pounds in Royal Navy property, Captain Crozier was dismissed from the naval service and his pension dissolved. It was the opinion of the judge-advocate that such flagrant breach of duty to ship and crew ought not go unpunished. It is our opinion that Captain Crozier had been fortunate to avoid a public hanging.
Upon this verdict, Captain Fitzjames leapt up and denounced the ‘gross and scandalous libels against honour and valour.’ The Commissioners for Executing the Office of Lord High Admiral reminded Captain Fitzjames that he, being a most brave and capable officer, had been chosen to command the next expedition to the High North which was to depart from England in the month of May, 1850; that being an expedition which surely would expunge this latter one from the minds of the public in the farthest reaches of our empire. Captain Fitzjames then proceeded to delight the newsmen gathered in the gallery by replying that it was his dear hope those ships would catch fire, too, before they ever left Woolworth.
Was the letter submitted to the Office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, entitled ‘Remarks in defence of the conduct of Captain F.R.M. Crozier,’ dated the twenty-fourth of July, 1849, authored by you?
Yes.
Are the contents therein correct and true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Yes.
Do you affirm that you are able to place the subject in a comprehensible point of view?
Yes.
Do you consider the very severe reprimand contained in the letter from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, just read, to have originated from the actions of Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, FRS FRAS, now under investigation?
Yes.
How do you find the conclusions drawn?
Such is the opinion of their Lordships, to which they are perfectly entitled, as is every man. Otherwise they would not have written the letter they did. They did not proceed from any representations on my part, however, as I had no fault to find whatever with the conduct of Captain Crozier. I cannot speak as to the motives of the Admiralty, as I was bereft of opportunity to discern.
What was the impression on your mind when you received their Lordships’ directions to so severely reprimand Captain Crozier?
It was a matter of great surprise. And great indignation, if I may be so frank.
You have not been shy in concealing your displeasure with their Lordships. Upon what grounds do you venture these opinions?
Had Captain Crozier not done what he did, I would not be capable of delivering testimony before you today. Nor would any of our men.
Why is that?
We would be dead.
Captain Fitzjames, I must ask you to refrain from extending such naked conjecture. It is the object of the judge-advocate, and the judge-advocate alone, to consider the evidence laid before him and dispense a verdict such as he sees fit. Did Captain Crozier request of you, or of the late Sir John Franklin, KCH FRS FLS FRGS, Rear-Admiral of the Blue, permission to abandon his command and lead a sledge party to Fort Resolution?
Yes.
Was permission granted?
Yes.
Will you affirm that you have failed to submit any remarks in support of your conduct to either the judge-advocate nor the Office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland?
Yes.
Will you affirm that you have not been pressed into silence? That none of your rights have been withheld?
Yes.
Finally, before we proceed, would you care to lay before the court any remarks?
No.
Very well. What was the state of the weather on the eleventh of June, 1847, at 70°5’N Long. 98°23’W?
I don’t recall.
With reference to the logbook of the H.M.S. Terror: ‘Thermometer standing at 36 degrees this morning’s mean. Weather is favourable for working. Fine, clear sun. Observations taken by Lt. Le Vesconte shall be recorded after dog watch.’ Were those remarks entered in the logbook by you?
Yes.
Are they correct and true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
I don’t recall.
Is it not the duty of a ship’s captain to note daily records in his logbook?
Yes.
Did you permit any other officers aboard the H.M.S. Terror to keep the logbook?
No.
You were the sole proprietor of the ship’s logbook, and yet you find yourself unable to attest to its veracity?
I shouldn’t like to make a mistake in answering from memory. Much has escaped it these past years.
That places you in rather a peculiar situation, does it not?
Perhaps.
It is curious that you do not recollect the circumstances of the day.
Once we were frozen in, most days resembled their brothers. Whole families of them, piled atop each other. You couldn’t tell one from another by its neckcloth.
But this day was of especial import. Do you agree?
Yes.
Can you remember at what hour you rose on the eleventh of June, 1847?
No. But it was the custom of my steward, Thomas Jopson, to wake me by four o’clock if I hadn’t risen.
Did Mister Jopson dress you that morning?
Presumably.
Presumably. Did you and he speak freely?
Yes.
It has been found, according to the testimony of many crew aboard H.M.S Terror, that Mister Jopson was a man you took often into your confidence. Is that a correct and true statement?
He was my steward.
It would be good of you to answer directly.
He changed my drawers.
Captain Crozier.
Yes. I trusted Thomas Jopson wholly. I do.
Did you inform Mister Jopson of your plan that morning?
No.
What impeded you from informing him? A steward ought to know his captain’s mind in all things, as I gather.
The success of the journey relied on it.
Is there any man aboard H.M.S. Terror you did inform?
No.
Was the party composed in secret?
Yes.
By yourself?
Yes.
The eight members of the party have testified that Mister Thomas Blanky, Ice Master, gathered them. Did you oblige Mister Blanky to collect these men?
Yes.
Was Mister Blanky acquainted with the aims of the party?
No. No one believed it was anything more than a simple hunting party.
Captain Fitzjames vouchsafed only yesterday that you were granted permission to embark on the journey to Fort Resolution. Do you contradict Captain Fitzjames’ testimony?
Captain Fitzjames has his own recollection of events. I’ll not begrudge him that. Nor traduce his virtue.
Captain Crozier, this is a court, not a salon. The judge-advocate does not seek an inquiry into the state of men’s souls. What he seeks, what we all seek, is the truth of the matter. When that truth has been exhumed, he will pronounce a verdict and set forth a remedy commensurate to the losses suffered by the Royal Navy. I ask again, do you contradict Captain Fitzjames’ testimony?
Yes.
Captain Fitzjames, please return to the gallery and retake your seat. You will be called upon to deliver further testimony in due time. Captain Crozier, did you request permission to embark on the journey to Fort Resolution?
Yes.
From whom?
From Sir John.
When was this request made?
The day before he was killed. The tenth of June.
How was your request met?
With all due candour.
Go on.
A glass of knock-me-down in one hand and an alarm bell in the other, he said.
Captain Crozier, I assure you, this is hardly the moment for larking. We have convened this court-martial to investigate a tragedy of the highest order, one in which forty-nine of your own men were lost to the frozen North, and yet I spy upon your face a smile. Lest I remind you, you are bound by oath to answer any inquiry truthfully and directly. How was your request met?
I had let the bloom of our friendship wither. He had the right of me all along, and I was deaf to him. I said I did not judge, I only brooded. That was a lie.
Captain Crozier. I really must insist you answer the question. Otherwise I shall have no choice but to recommend a summary punishment for contempt.
Sir John forbade the plan.
Was Captain Fitzjames privy to Sir John’s proscription?
Yes.
He was present when you spoke?
No.
Then how can you be certain?
Every man aboard a Navy ship becomes a newsman in time.
I see. Did you and Captain Fitzjames discuss the decision, either before you made the request or subsequently?
No. I discussed very little with Captain Fitzjames in those days.
You and Captain Fitzjames were both seconds to Sir John, after a fashion. Did you not share confidences?
No. We shared nothing but the burden I could not loose from myself.
Captain Crozier, you are suggesting that Captain Fitzjames, your second in command, has readily deceived myself, the judge-advocate, and their Lordships in attesting that you received permission to lead a sledge party. You have created a prejudice injurious to the character of a most gallant and respected officer. Is your object to throw this court into confusion?
No.
To diminish the integrity of your officers out of self-interest?
No.
The court’s records indicate that you and Captain Fitzjames share lodgings. The third floor of a house on Gower Street. Have you discussed matters pertaining to this court-martial amongst yourselves?
Yes. Unhappily.
Why unhappily?
There is much upon which we do not agree.
Have you pressed Captain Fitzjames into service?
I thought I had not. I thought we had surpassed all that. But Captain Fitzjames has been very ill.
Well, we shall unravel this strange jumble in due course. Captain Crozier, kindly narrate for the court your recollection of the eleventh of June, 1847.
Yesterday you heard Captain Crozier recount a series of rather extraordinary acts in which he disobeyed Sir John’s express orders. Captain Fitzjames, kindly provide your own recollection of the events of eleventh of June, 1847.
I rose just after six in the morning. My steward, John Bridgens, attended to me as he always did. I washed, shaved, and dressed. I then performed the sundry duties assigned to me by the Navy and the Discovery Service, which assuredly this court does not care to hear, all those in attendance having but a mortal spell upon this earth. By the time forenoon watch ended, I was making ready to cross the half-mile to Terror with Sir John. Our command meetings were held every Friday. Ordinarily we hosted Captain Crozier and his lieutenants aboard Erebus, but Sir John suggested we might avail ourselves of the fine weather, the temperature having crept above thirty degrees, and pay the Terrors a visit. Spirits were dreadfully meagre, of course, with Graham’s party having returned bereft just three days before.
You refer to the late Commander Graham Gore?
Yes. Commander Gore had led a party to scour the ice that lay west of us. He was slain by a rogue bear, the facts of which were documented in remarks proffered by many of the crew. It was a terrible loss. Graham was, I dare say, the brightest star in our constellation. Sir John had planned to hold a Divine Service for him the next day.
Suffice it to say, this Divine Service did not occur.
It did not. We had just set out for Terror when Sir John bade me continue on without him. He wished to bring a small gift to the Marines of the hunting blind. A short of whiskey to keep warm. The men ought to be cheered in whatever small ways we could manage, he thought. We were to be all cheer, even with Graham gone. Even with the ships iced in, the summer weather struggling to rouse, the provisions turning up spoiled. An adventure of a lifetime, is what he said. And adventurers ought never to be governed by alarm or panic.
Yes, we will return to the matter of the spoiled provisions in time. So you continued to Terror with your lieutenants, and Sir John departed for the hunting blind. That is correct?
Yes.
Did you hold a command meeting aboard Terror?
No. I had thought, upon arriving at the ship, to speak to Captain Crozier before Sir John returned to us.
Were there particular headlines you wished to transmit?
No. It was typical for Captain Crozier and I to chat before and after command meetings or dinners. We spoke frequently for two men aboard ships moored half a mile apart. Being an Arctic veteran, his guidance was most instructive. I always found myself heartened by the prospect of his expertise, upon which we could surely rely when the screws began to tighten. I simply thought to wish him good luck on his long journey to Great Slave Lake.
What testimony Captain Crozier has supplied signifies quite a different story. Thus we must briefly pause here to remark upon the contradiction. An irregularity which is swiftly becoming regular, the court may indeed perceive. Captain Fitzjames, how do you explain the deficiency in your captain’s testimony?
Francis travelled sixteen hundred miles on foot in four months. A journey of that magnitude, containing such hardships as the court could never imagine, weighs on a man. Having myself pursued similar journeys through similarly unfriendly territory, what came before often matters less than what follows.
And yet this court has been convened precisely to discover what, in fact, came before. Kindly proceed with your recollection of the day.
Once my lieutenants and I had reached Terror, I asked a man of the foretop if we might descend to the wardroom. Yes, he said, only Captain Crozier isn’t here. Well, where might we find him? I asked. He told me Captain Crozier had departed, along with eight of his men, just after dawn.
You did not know Captain Crozier had planned to leave that morning?
Not so early, no. I had heard tell, from Sir John, that Captain Crozier was to lead the party out after last dog watch. That way the men would be well-fed from dinner. Sir John and I had thought to hold a little farewell for them before they went. I had, in fact, written a short speech to deliver.
Is there any record of this speech?
Yes.
Where may the court find it? You did not submit any such remarks in evidence, as I recall.
The court may find it north of King William Land, on H.M.S. Erebus, wherever she may be, squeezed by the ice or descended into the frozen depths, in the captain’s desk. The third drawer down, as I recall.
Thank you for the specificity, Captain Fitzjames. The court is glad to know we may trust the freshness of your memory.
Of course.
Once you had word of Captain Crozier’s untimely departure, did you return to Erebus?
Yes. My men and I were crossing back to the ship when we heard it. The most dreadful shouts which have resounded in my skull ever since.
Who was shouting?
Sir John. He was calling for Erebus.
The court has already heard testimony from the Marines of the hunting blind, so we shall not linger here overlong. Do you wish to affix your own statement before we proceed?
No. Much has been said for the case of that damned bear. Too many men were lost to his vengeance. I only thank God one of our number finally got a good shot in.
Very well. In Sir John’s absence, formal command of the expedition passed to Captain Crozier. And with Captain Crozier having abdicated his own post, you thus became acting commander of the expedition. Had you any orders?
Only those which the Admiralty had conferred upon Sir John before we departed England. As the court may imagine, it all came as an awful shock. In truth, I found myself quite at sixes and sevens.
You had been awarded your own command some years prior, in Bombay. The court has no question as to the class of your leadership, but—Captain Fitzjames, should you like us to take a brief recess? I see your eye is troubling you again. Captain Crozier, cease speaking out of turn. If Captain Fitzjames wishes for a recess, he will tell us so.
No, thank you. I am quite well. This old thing will likely harass me for the rest of my days, if the doctor is to be believed. No matter. A regularity now, if life could be said to comprise such. But never have I been more sensible as to the heaviness of the responsibility I shouldered. Two captains left that day, one never to return. I daresay I felt the loss of the one who did even more acutely.
When did you become apprised of Sir John’s passing?
Not for many months after.
Do you find it, perhaps, curious that he perished only hours after you departed?
A great many things about this voyage I find curious. Far beyond the known charts of curious. They are incomprehensible. But if you’re asking whether I engineered a plan of some sort, no, I did not. I doubt there’s a soul on this earth who’d credit me with that much cunning. And whatever differences lay between Sir John and myself, he only ever had the men’s happiness in mind. I ought to have seen that sooner.
This is a subject of some regret for you.
The deepest.
Had you known then of the bear’s attack, would you have elected to proceed with the journey to Fort Resolution?
Ah. Now we are in a salon.
Captain Crozier, your cheek is badly misplaced. The court insists you answer the question.
No.
No, you would not have elected to proceed?
Correct.
For what reasons?
I left Captain Fitzjames with far more burden to bear than he ought. He couldn’t have foreseen what was to come.
We shall come to that later. For now, let us press on. You quitted the ships just after dawn.
Yes. The names of the men in the party I have submitted to the court, as a list. I packed alone, once Jopson had left me. We were off shortly after five, in the sledge Commander Gore’s party had used before he was killed.
What manner of provisions did you bring?
I have also submitted this list to the court. Biscuits, pemmican, salt pork, a quantity of tinned meat, wine for the sick, lemon juice, scotch barley, tobacco, tea, chocolate. And whiskey from my personal stores.
And whiskey?
Yes. A case. Twenty-four bottles.
Were the men in the party overfond of whiskey? Twenty-four bottles must weigh, perhaps, seven or eight stone.
Some. But whatever fondness did dally was discharged fully by the trek, I can tell you that.
How many miles did you make on that first day?
Six. A fair distance for what we were up against. Great wracks of ice had risen which we had to scale and then descend. By our observations we had come within three days’ march of the western side of King William Island.
When did you reach King William Land?
The sixteenth of June. Good cheer prevailed among the men. They drove hard up and down the ridges. It was cold for June, but they’d seen far colder, and they thought they’d be home within the fortnight once they’d shot a few caribou on the mainland.
And when did you reach the mainland?
The twenty-fifth of June. That morning, setting off from Cape Herschel, we went south across the strait. We reached Cape Seaforth, on the north face of the Adelaide Peninsula, before the day was out. You’ve no doubt seen the charts I submitted to the court. What had been presupposed to be King William Land is, in fact, as we discovered, King William Island.
Yes, I am certain the Discovery Service is grateful for your contribution. Go on.
From the tip of the peninsula to Back’s Fish River was, I reckoned, another hundred and fifty or so miles. The weather had become cold and stormy, and the melt we’d all hoped for had not come to pass. Even on the mainland we were trekking over snow and ice. But the farther south we marched, the more life sprung up. There are a great many intervening lakes that span the whole scope of the region. From time to time we spied iced-over water beginning to crack. Lanes starting to open up near the rivers that reached the strait. We shot several birds and deer and ate well. We could not pursue a rhumb line on account of the chain of inland lakes, but our course was quick and true. By the seventh of July we reached the mouth of the Fish River. I commanded the men to prepare our sledge for sailing. Four hundred miles’ worth of it.
How was this command met?
The men were confused. Upset, angry. I didn’t hold it against them. I explained that the situation we had found ourselves in was dire, that we would be lost if we spent another winter mired in the pack. We must urgently send word to England. If we reached the Hudson Bay Company outpost by the first of August, the Admiralty would begin to ready measures. It was too late for ships to sail through Baffin Bay until next summer earliest, but there was a true possibility of overland rescue. Delay our journey even a week, though, and we would risk the lives of every last man we’d left behind.
Did any of the men ask to return to the ships?
Yes.
Which of the men?
Able Seaman William Sinclair, Able Seaman George Kinnaird, Private Henry Wilkes.
Did you consider the principle of their request?
Of course I did. They had been lied to by their captain. But I told them they had nothing to fear once we returned. The blame would fall squarely upon myself, for having disobeyed the captain of the expedition. I had perceived no other choice.
Yet you did not honour it.
No. The long miles they were marching, I said, the cold, the wild unfamiliar landscape, the mornings and nights on frozen ground, all of it was a good and noble sacrifice. What journey we were undertaking couldn’t have been more necessary. Here I told them of Captain Fitzjames’ fifty miles overland in a day to deliver the mail. They’d be heroes to their crew. Rewards would await upon their return home.
Another page in a large book of fictions.
Perhaps. Not as I saw it. The court-martial of myself I understand. But the eight men who accompanied me deserve every gold thing there is.
Were Able Seaman Sinclair, Able Seaman Kinnaird, and Private Wilkes persuaded?
Yes. They all were.
I see. And you proceeded forthwith?
Yes, the next morning. We had stopped to camp for the evening. I opened a bottle of whiskey and allowed the men to share it among themselves as thanks.
Was it customary to ply the men with whiskey?
No. They were on half-water, and only at dinner.
Then why include twenty-four bottles among the provisions?
They were for myself.
A captain’s spoils?
One brings one’s spoils everywhere he goes, doesn’t he.
The court may perceive here Captain Crozier’s efforts to nettle and obscure. Now, Captain Crozier, did any further difficulties or danger occur in the days hence?
Not as such. Not other than what I had expected. We were obliged to make a portage nearly every other day, some being a hundred yards, some being half a mile. It is a river of fickle disposition. Long ranges of cliff-broken hills extend irregularly around the compass, most facing downstream. Sometimes the ice carried down the water is thrust up against the rocks and shatters with an explosion like rockets. Quiet streams will turn suddenly to rapids. We would find ourselves plunged into the midst of curling waves that seemed to descend downhill. But the men kept on coolly and calmly. Even when our keel plate splintered after being thrown upon a rock, and we feared destruction, they found a landing place, leapt out of the boat, nailed up a replacement, and leapt back in. We did not rejoice once we had reached smooth water, because we knew the rapids were soon to return. It was hard, cold work. The men fared well, even when they went bare-legged by the fire while their trousers dried off. Their bellies were always full. We were deep enough into the territory to find game around every bend. You could shoot a caribou with your eyes closed, even.
The eight men have all testified that you took exceedingly ill on July twentieth, when you crossed what George Back called Wolf Rapid. Why do you omit this fact?
I do not consider my own illness to be a difficulty or a danger.
What was the nature of the complaint?
Overdue.
Captain Crozier.
It was an imposition, more than anything else. I was unwell for two weeks. The men were kind to me. We had no doctor in our party, though a few had played nursemaid before. They had me lay in the back of the sledge while they hauled. But I could not love them for it.
For what reason?
I had known it was coming for some time.
You were unwell when you left the ships?
In a manner of speaking.
Did you, in the weeks preceding the eleventh of June, 1847, perceive any signs of illness in Captain Crozier?
I did not. Captain Crozier has always appeared a mighty hale fellow.
And yet Captain Crozier has attested to his being beset by a long, lingering illness. The fact of which calls into question his fitness to command, certainly his capacity to lead a party on an eight hundred mile march and back.
The seafaring life is rife with unimaginable risk, particularly in the High North. I shall address the members of the court and the prosecution who, I dare say, may be unfamiliar. The perils one contends with can hardly be spelled out. Frostbite, ill humours, catarrh, heart trouble, scurvy, gangrene, consumption, to say nothing of the caprices of the ice. Why, Dundy—Lieutenant Le Vesconte, I mean to say—himself sacrificed two toes off his right foot to the enterprise. He was obliged to hobble like a horse for a fortnight before the foot became fluent again. Only the smallest two were lost, you see, and yet the upset to his balance was extreme. He never complained, though. He knew what he’d signed up for. One lives in close quarters with men who are granted scarce minutes at the basin each morning. One dines on all things tinned and preserved. There’s not a man aboard either ship who hasn’t gone dyspeptic from the rations. If Captain Crozier suffered from some such malady, he concealed it admirably. If I may venture a guess, perhaps a mild case of gastritis?
You are anxious to exercise fair judgment, Captain Fitzjames, and to defend the conduct of your captain, even when he has sought to discredit your testimony. Naturally, that is a mark of your high professional character. However, should the court find Captain Crozier’s testimony regarding his illness unsatisfactory, he shall be required to appear before the Medical Board. Sufficient though your experience may be to diagnose a case of gastritis, the judge-advocate is entitled to consider the opinion of a trained medical man if he so desires. It may very well be that Captain Crozier was unfit to sail from Greenhithe to begin with.
I do not believe Captain Crozier ever kept me in ignorance of anything relative to the fitness of his command. I have impressed this position upon the court repeatedly, in the preceding evidence I have given.
Very well. Let us return to the events of the month of June. Once Captain Crozier had departed for Great Slave Lake and Sir John Franklin had sadly been lost, how did you proceed as acting commander?
My first order, given immediately upon losing our captain, was to dispatch three hunting parties to slay the bear. Ten men apiece. Be merciless, I said, in honour of our fallen companions. This being done, I allowed the remaining men to be relieved of their duties for the day. Both Sir John and Captain Crozier were much beloved by all, and it was my feeling that the men were sorely distressed by their absences. By the next evening, however, the hunting parties had returned empty-handed, so I held a Divine Service after dinner. I read a few words which had been written by Sir John, principally from the Book of Genesis. Then I swore to the men that we would not cease our hunt for the creature who had done this terrible thing. But just as every night gives way to dawn, so too would Captain Crozier be our dawning light breaking through the agony, the confusion, of our grief. He and his sledge party would return from the Hudson’s Bay outpost by summer’s end, with ample provisions in hand and a neat line sent to our friends back home in England. We needn’t worry ourselves any longer over the state of our frostbitten toes, or such ravenous ursine instincts. This time next year, we would be dozing in front of English fires, wrapped in English quilts.
It is my understanding, having read the memoirs of their Lordships who have travelled to the Arctic, that polar bears are not predisposed to barbarity. Yet, by your accounts, it had slain a total thirteen men from both ships. Had the crew perhaps provoked the bear in some fashion?
Certainly not. Sir, you flirt at the boundaries of a deliberate insult upon the character of my men. Their conduct, both those who survived and those who perished upon the ice, was nothing short of unimpeachable these last four years.
In our investigation into the conduct on the whole of the expedition, we have discovered several instances of questionable conduct. Of course, there is not a soul in this courtroom who would impute blame. Rest assured, this line of inquiry seeks only to unveil the truth, not to impugn the good name of a decorated officer.
A thing which I have never possessed, and which latterly revealed itself to be made of tar and ash.
Captain Fitzjames, come now.
I tell you, the misconduct arose at my behest, and no one else’s. If you do not believe Francis, you must, at least, believe me.
When did you reach Fort Resolution?
The third of August.
Had you, by this time, resumed your post as captain?
Yes. Just barely. The men had got me up and walking two days prior. I was grateful that we had not been visited by calamity otherwise, nor lost a single soul. We were dirty and in disorder when we knocked at the door of the fort, but the Hudson’s Bay Company agents met us with warm welcome. Mister McLeod in particular attended to us nicely.
How did the men of the party appear physically?
Tired. Sore. No doubt mightily sick of each other, too. But I had chosen men I knew to be hardy, both in body and spirit.
Do you consider yourself to be a hardy man, Captain Crozier? In body and spirit?
Perhaps. By rights I oughtn't have been the first choice to lead the party. I had twenty years on every one of the others. I took ill. I became useless for a fortnight. But I did make it, in the end.
So we see. Did you confer with Mister McLeod and his agents about the nature of your predicament?
Yes. Immediately. He kindly assisted in posting a letter by dispatch canoe to Montreal, where it would be taken first to New York, then England. He assured me it would be in the hands of the Admiralty by the first of September. I then asked how we might go about collecting men and supplies to return with us.
How was this request met?
Eagerly, at first. Then with surprise.
Go on.
I told him we could pay with knives, guns, trinkets. Anything his men, or any of the natives, there being many Indian hunters installed at the fort, might fancy. In addition to that we could offer a hefty advance from the Navy. That would buy a band of a dozen men and perhaps a thousand pounds of supplies, so McLeod said. We were in neat agreement until I asked when we might set off. I would give our party a week to rest, but that was all. Otherwise we would not beat the coming of winter.
Did Mister McLeod advise you to overwinter at the fort?
Yes.
What were his reasons given?
He believed we were too late to make it back to the ships. If we had perhaps a week or two at our backs, yes. But it had been an unusually cold summer, and looked to be an unusually cold, early winter. Its full force would be upon us before we’d got halfway. Then we’d be stranded, seeking shelter under some sorry headland lee, or worse.
Did you find these reasons sound?
Yes.
Captain Crozier, do you know how many men have completed the passage entire of Back’s Fish River, from where it rises out of Great Slave Lake to its mouth at Chantrey Inlet?
Yes. Three.
Do you recall their names?
George Back. Peter Dease, travelling with Thomas Simpson.
Did either of those parties set off so late in the summer season?
No. June, both.
And yet you proposed setting off for a similar journey, dare I say one even longer and more freighted with danger, two months later.
Yes.
Did you apprehend the danger in this course of action?
Yes. But I sensed the urgency of our mission at hand. As I saw it, the need couldn’t have been greater.
The ships were provisioned comfortably for three years. Five, with heavy rationing. The period of time which concerns our inquiry marked only two years since the expedition’s departure from England. Surely you did not doubt the capacity of the Royal Navy to ably provision its fleet?
At the time I did not.
Did you doubt the capacity of your second, Captain Fitzjames, to lead the crew through a third winter?
No. Never.
What, then, impelled your haste?
It was a feeling.
A feeling?
Yes.
What species of feeling?
Concern.
Wherefore?
The men required fresh meat. Fresh supplies.
Captain Crozier, you have just avowed the suitability of the expedition’s provisions.
Yes. But if the coming winter was indeed a cruel one, and the Admiralty could not send men to our rescue overland by spring, it would be a whole year before any ship would reach us through open water. And with our understanding of the mainland, Captain Fitzjames and I would be able to send additional hunting parties throughout the winter months, myself having just learned the best country for caribou hunting. Some men do not fare well with lemon juice alone for the scurvy. They must have meat. It is the only way.
You are substituting conjecture where fact ought to reside.
The longer I spent away from the ships, the louder my alarm bells rang. I dreamt of calamity. I worried for Captain Fitzjames, even as I set great store by his capacity. I became convinced that I had erred disastrously.
And so the lives of the eight men in your charge became subordinate to this attack of neurasthenia?
If you like. Though nevertheless it is the one decision out of the whole lot I would make again.
The court will note that we have reassembled this day, the sixteenth of September, pursuant to a fortnight’s adjournment. Captain Fitzjames, do you affirm that you are well enough to proceed with the inquiry?
I do.
Neither myself nor the judge-advocate would object should you wish you recuse yourself upon a plea of ill health.
Thank you, sir, I am quite hale. There is no shortage of people who have expressed dire concern over my health, some of whom, well-intentioned though they may be, ought to know better. But to you all I say, am I not standing before you today, plainly sound of mind, speaking at full quarterdeck volume?
Indeed you are. However, I must ask before we continue. Are you circumstanced to answer the remarks lately submitted to this court by Captain Crozier, on the tenth of September? You are permitted, though not obliged to.
I have nothing to say which I have not already said to Captain Crozier in private society. He, like others I am lucky to call friends, is most generously concerned for my welfare. I do not begrudge him that. In fact, I live in gratitude for it. However, I have assured him that I am simply predisposed to such spells now, having very briefly taken ill during our sojourn on the shale. But the blasted thing’s no more menacing than a common grippy cold. If I am occasioned to speak, I shall do it with aplomb. I am quite committed to my position, as perhaps you have discerned.
Very well. Now, Captain Fitzjames, if you could relate for the court the substance of the narrative log, detailing the period between the eleventh of June and the twenty-ninth of November, 1847, which you submitted in our initial proceedings.
Yes. Once Captain Crozier departed with his search party, I assumed temporary command of the expedition in accordance with the Admiralty’s instructions. Thenceforth my object was primarily to take observations on terrestrial magnetism. I called for the re-establishment on solid ground of our portable observatory, from which I directed Lieutenants Des Voeux and Le Vesconte to avail themselves of our instruments in performing all required calculations. These have been furnished to the president of the Royal Society, though in truth I am unsure of their utility and value. Captain Crozier is the dab hand at magnetism.
And yet you were appointed to discharge this branch of science by the Admiralty.
I was. I cannot say I don’t know why. I know precisely why. It is a dreadful farce.
Do you dispute your own appointment?
For God’s sake, Francis is a fellow of the Royal Society. I had a month’s instruction at Woolworth.
Captain Fitzjames, I urge you to preserve yourself.
Pardon me.
Thank you. Kindly continue with the fulfilment of your instructions.
Our progress through the Polar Sea of course being arrested, I also sought to ascertain, by lead parties, the best prospect of accomplishing the passage to the Pacific. These parties were comprised of our bravest men. Their discoveries have been noted in the charts I supplied. On King William Island’s western side sits a wide channel which admits a vast and continuous stream of heavy ocean ice from the northwest. Having first tested the distance of this channel, then Simpson’s and Dease Strait to the south, we turned east. As you no doubt will have read in the papers, King William Island is indeed separated from the mainland on its eastern face. It is my belief, along with that of my fellow officers, that Lancaster Strait may indeed be connected with the navigable channel that doubtless extends along the continent to Bering’s Strait.
You have done the Discovery Service a great turn. No doubt the intrepid officers who come after shall benefit from this knowledge and, once and for all, claim the Northwest Passage for England.
Perhaps.
Surely you do not dispute this jewel of discovery?
Not a jewel. Mere gold plate. Vanity when we could not have required it less. The men could not eat it. It did not replenish their health. It did not warm them, nor ease the agony of their frostbitten fingers and toes.
That is for their Lordships to decide. Now, let us return to fact. You have been directed to capture all circumstances and events of note which transpired in the aforementioned period. Are there any other circumstances or events, as represented in the submitted document, which you deem advisable to reproduce for the court?
The summer was cold and ice-locked, as Captain Crozier had predicted. I kept the men as occupied as I could through observations and discoveries. They took to it well, for which I commend them. It is no easy thing to endure in a land which has first ingested you whole and then seeks to spit you up. None of us knew when Captain Crozier and his party might return. The men did ask me, likely to shore themselves up, but I could not answer truthfully, so I lied. I told them we could expect supplies and succour by September’s end. In the meantime I sought to preserve discipline above all. The men tolerated it for a time. But by October, the temperature had dropped back to minus forty, and rescue had failed to arrive. I began to feel perturbed. The men could see it. We were bedding down for a third winter with diminishing provisions. I increased disciplinary measures. I gave men duty-owing for peccadillos. Untrimmed nails, uncut hair, untidy collars. Their tolerance became begrudging. And yet I was consumed by anxious speculation. I redoubled my efforts, hoping to provide for the men the security of protocol when all else was lost.
Captain Fitzjames, it is an act of valour for a third to assume command after the untimely losses of his first and his second.
No. It is an act of hubris.
The court will detect Captain Fitzjames’ modesty, perhaps misplaced. The discipline you exercised, Captain, was perfectly congruent with the rules and regulations of the service.
That may be. But I had never held a more incongruous command.
Let us turn now to the events of the twenty-ninth of November and their antecedents. Several crewmen have testified to the flagging spirits of the winter season, as well as the stirrings of sedition. Had any circumstances or events transpired which excited your suspicion?
No. My mind had narrowed to the fine point of order and discipline. That was where safety lay, I believed. But I could not see that the men required an enlargement of their existence. They required largesse. A gentler hand. If they were to be contained on two ships for God knows how many months to come, I ought to have given them something for their troubles. Instead I took. I curbed, I controlled, I tightened the leash. I relied upon the experiences of my prior command in the East, which was a different kind of business altogether. We’d always had open water before us there. Only with my officers did I slacken my grip. In my wish for guidance I looked below, when it ought to have come from above. I allowed my lieutenants, as well as Terror’s, led by Commander Little, to enjoy merriment where appropriate. Our dinners in the officer’s mess were wet and boisterous. I believed it would remain a private affair, the business of the expedition’s captain and command. In this I was wrong, too. The men saw, as they always will, even the greenest ship’s boys.
What, then, compelled you to host a ball aboard ship?
Desperation, if I may be bold in being plain. Francis once told us, ‘You know what men are like when they are desperate.’ At the time I thought him peevish. Whatever lengths desperate men will go to, surely the sturdy borders of our ships, fortified by the gilded glory of our empire, will stop them up. I had no notion that I myself ever would count among them. My officers, primarily Ice Master Blanky, had begun to tell me of festering unrest. The men were growing restless, he’d heard. Beginning to doubt that Captain Crozier’s party would ever return. Perhaps we had been abandoned, left to circle round and round upon a fixed stage, with I their marionettist, whirling their strings to and fro while they froze and starved. Thus I decided a respite was in order. A benjo, I called it, to salute the last sun of the year and toast the coming of polar night with good cheer. The twenty-ninth of November. I remembered that Francis had spoken once of a ball he and Sir James Ross had hosted at furthest south. If we could not have our captain with us clear-eyed, if we had indeed lost him to the Canadian wilderness, then perhaps we could induce his spirit to raise our own. The men took to it gleefully. They built an arcade between Terror and Erebus, a canvas-covered way lined with branches of pretend wattle in full bloom. Pairs of timber lamp-posts dotted the entrances. Players brought out their fiddles and flutes and formed a little band which travelled from ship to ship every hour. High above each quarterdeck was suspended a canvas awning. Underneath, every looking-glass and shaving mirror we could find, positioned in the style of Versailles to reflect the lamps. The effect, after wending along that small, gloomy passage, was a spectacular flood of light. Like all the light of the world we had ceased to be a part of, every dewy English morning, suddenly pouring in, drenching us. Those mirrors saw us, our faces, anew. We were splintered apart by those beams, lancing silver and gold every which way, and dressed in light clear and pure. A rebirth, I had hoped for; an illusion, I had conjured.
You have indicated in your records that your party left Fort Resolution on the eleventh of August. That is correct?
Yes.
Did agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company accompany you?
Yes. Thirteen men who hauled a sledge of their own, which contained twenty bags each of pemmican, flour, grease, and reindeer tongue. Ample room was left for the game we would shoot as we retraced our steps back toward Nunavut. Mister McLeod was hesitant to loan them out to us. I offered him double the promised rate.
A transaction not authorized by any representative of the Admiralty.
No. But I believed there to be a pressing need. And I thought, perhaps foolishly, that the Admiralty would prefer the loss of capital to the loss of men.
There is no need for flippancy, Captain Crozier. By your accounting, when would you have reached the ships where they were stranded?
Around the end of September, if our luck held out.
And did it?
No.
What transpired to prevent your party from effecting a timely return?
Nature. She’s never given a damn about our plans. No use starting now.
The members of your party have attested that progress came to a halt by the fifteenth of September. Do you confirm their accounts?
Yes. Snow fell early and hard. Raw weather followed, with northerly winds and temperatures slipping under ten degrees. We did not expect it, though we were prepared for it. What had been rugged ground became slippery with sleet. Water froze around our oars and the sides of the boats. We tried to portage across rocks, but we were met with sheets of ice. Then we tried to cut passages through, but the sheets were too thick for our axes. We could not lighten our loads. The supplies we carried were the very reason we strove to find our way back. By the fifteenth of September we had been beset by three days of raging storms. We could continue no more, so I called for camp to be set up. We settled close to what George Back had named Lake Garry. There were marks there indicating a native encampment, which signalled to us the logic of the spot. Caribou and wolves and musk-ox were plentiful. We ate well, and preserved what we could to convey back to our mates.
How long were you obliged to remain in camp?
Six weeks. Some of the longest I’ve ever spent.
Your party had accomplished only half the required distance from Great Slave Lake. The weather would only sour as you pressed farther north. Did you not consider turning back?
No.
As you yourself have attested, no man has ever completed the journey up Back’s Fish River so late in the season. You had also taken grievously ill not two months prior. Had you, perhaps, formed an exaggerated opinion of your own capacity?
It wasn’t my capacity I thought of. It was the men I’d left behind on board those ships. It was the weather, the ice, the dwindling gallons of lemon juice. We had not even mustard and cress, which we ate with Parry back in ‘23. And even then, we’d turned back rather than risk another season in the north, with so many of our number enfeebled by scurvy.
Captain Crozier, may I once again remind you that conjecture is not the object of this inquiry. Such statements are unwarrantable. They are pregnant with insinuation, the effusion of fancy.
You know what came next. We all do. I saw it. To have turned back would have spelled the destruction of every man who sits in that gallery today.
It is true that accused persons are entitled to form their opinion, no matter the foundation. The court will admit Captain Crozier’s speculation, opposed though it is by the facts of historical precedent. Captain Crozier, when did your party’s progress resume?
The twenty-eighth of October. The storms had been quiet for several days, and ice was beginning to harden over the sleet. I believed it strong enough to hold us in our passage. The men were brittle with nerves, but I could not blame them. We were about to undertake an overland journey into the frozen heart of winter. And yet when I gave the word, they readied themselves and hauled like oxen.
Did you encounter further dangers or difficulties on the journey?
None other than what we had anticipated. From time to time we paused to sift through falls of soft snow. There were storms of great violence. But we pressed on, and found ourselves crossing from the mainland by the middle of November. We had only a hundred and fifty miles from there to the location of the ships. Every inch of us was bitten by frost, but one of the Hudson’s Bay men had laboured under a doctor in Montreal for some time, and he reassured us it was not much more than skin deep. The party were cold and smarting, but they were fed freshly every night. That is what separates living men from dying ones. They kept up their strength, even as we trekked hundreds of miles in temperatures that ought to have killed us. They could abide the hardship. They were a different species of men than the rest of their crew had become.
On which date did you reach the ships?
The first of December. We arrived with some two hundred pounds apiece of meat and fat.
What did you find there?
All that could’ve been feared.
The court has heard lengthy testimony, gathered from divers persons, on the subject of the fire. Captain Fitzjames, you have indicated in your report that you first took notice of the flames at approximately eleven-fifteen in the evening of the twenty-ninth of November. Is this observation correct and true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Yes.
In what manner did you proceed?
I first ordered the men aboard Terror’s quarterdeck to loose the canvas canopies so they could smother the flames. Those who were below, I ordered to retrieve pails of water from the galley and bring up with haste. Within ten minutes we had tamped down ten percent of the blaze. The mizzenmast had already been engulfed. Flames licked at the feet of the foremast and the mainmast. It was no longer safe to pass through the companionways, so congested were they with smoke. The canvas we had not succeeded in pulling down became a flaming firmament. By eleven-thirty I gave the order to abandon ship.
This was an order given without hesitation.
Of course. We had five minutes more before it went up. To hesitate would have meant the loss of God knows how many more souls. Terror had only ever been sister to my own ship, but the order did give me pain to speak, if not pause. I rushed down to the captain’s quarters to retrieve Captain Crozier’s and acting Commander Little’s logbooks before I would be consumed.
What possessed you to do such a thing? Lost logbooks would make a poor calculus against the life of a decorated commander.
I confess I was thinking of Captain Crozier as I went down the ladder. How he had sailed her pole to pole, steered her through seas and sights few men on this earth have ever marvelled at. How he would not be here to see her final bow, ignominious as it was. But I am gladder than any damn thing they had not returned any earlier.
For what reason?
Our thirty-six dead might have been forty-five. Once you know the scent of burning flesh, your nose will not ever forget it. A view that smells wholly of roast duck, I once said. I’ve no idea why none of them struck me then and there. But these men, our crew mates, they burned like all the meat we had craved for two years. Rescue was impossible. Those who had caught fire early charred and sizzled before our eyes. Those caught aboard took longer. Once we were a safe distance away we watched them. Lonely columns of doomfire and smoke. The smell of disaster.
How could any man have checked such a disaster?
In my view, not even God himself could have checked that inferno if he had been thusly inclined. I speak not in the singular, but of the totality of my failures. The deficiencies of my vision. I felt the piercing physical agony of my impotence.
You had sustained injuries?
No, unaccountably. Shamefully.
Several crewmen, all speaking highly, have testified that blood was trickling from your cap. They commended your courage in attending to their mates before addressing your own wounds.
Yes. That was from the scurvy.
Had the expedition’s doctors diagnosed you with such?
No. But I knew the signs well enough from the memoirs I’d read. By then it was two months since my gums and hairline had begun to bleed.
Perhaps you were merely overtired. Overtaxed by your position as sole commander of the expedition.
Perhaps. And perhaps I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than you shall get one of your cheek.
It is a difficult matter to recount in vivid detail, the court understands. But let us return to the matter of the fire. Did you, at any time before or subsequently, discover evidence of its architect, whether by word or deed?
No.
Four members of the crew, whose names shall remain unrevealed, testified as to the probable culpability of a Petty Officer Cornelius Hickey. It became apparent to them that he had enlisted several crewmen in a plot to deflate confidence in your leadership.
That may be. I could not possibly say. And as Mister Hickey is now lost to the wilds of northern Canada, I doubt he could say, either.
An unlucky blank in the pages of this court-martial. As of course you know, any person in the fleet who sets fire to a ship, not then appertaining to an enemy, pirate, or rebel, shall suffer death by hanging. Had you perceived any signs of unrest or unruliness in the conduct of Mister Hickey prior to the twenty-ninth of November?
No.
Had you perceived, as contended in the testimony of those four sailors, that Mister Hickey had sought to stoke discontent among his fellows?
No. I’d never had cause to hear the name. He appeared to me only as a name on a muster roll. But by all accounts, which I have now certainly had all the cause in the world to hear, Mister Hickey is a man of some cunning. I had left many holes for him to tear open.
One crewman’s testimony contains the relation of the accusation, as brought forward by Mister Hickey, that you had failed to plan for the eventuality of a third winter. One moment while I review the document. Yes. Here I quote, ‘Mister Hickey told us Captain Crozier had done a French leave. Probably pouring himself a big glass of whiskey back home in Marylebone right about now, putting his feet up while we froze our—off. He couldn’t wait to leave us behind. He’d made a plan in secret to do it. Captain Fitzjames was greener than any ship’s boy if he thought we wouldn’t find out. But he wasn’t one to rely on, either. He was out of his depth. He’d sooner have us on six-water for feting a man’s birthday than draw up a plan to get us the—out of here. It’s like your mam who raps your knuckles for stealing a biscuit from the tin when she’s the one coming home with crumbs otherwise. But we ought to do something about it before we all went the way of poor Sir John. We ought to master our fates rather than beg for them.’
An artful speech.
The court does not require you to respond to such specious accusations. However, the aforementioned testimony does include repeated mentions of a document authored by Captain Crozier, possessed by Mister Hickey, which suggests a partial truth. Do you know of the document of which I speak?
No.
The witnesses attest that Mister Hickey uncovered the document among Captain Crozier’s personals while attending to his seat of ease. The document, according to Mister Hickey, was a letter of resignation.
I have never heard of or seen such a document. Whatever insinuation Mister Hickey made to his fellows is nothing but the grossest, basest slander.
The court has reviewed all logbooks, journals, and miscellaneous material submitted by yourself and Captain Crozier. Nowhere does such a document appear. Captain Fitzjames, it is only because I am oath-bound, being charged as I am to substantiate truth and justice by venturing beyond mere presumptive proof, that I must further press. Did you, at any point before the fire or subsequent to its incidence, discover a document of similar nature?
I did not. I am not, nor ever have been, in the habit of prying into my captain’s personals. Nor am I slovenly enough to have misplaced anything of the kind in collating my records for the court.
Captain Fitzjames, I thank you for your indulgence. Undeniably you have done your duty to the utmost of your power, and, since the earliest days of your career, rendered a great service to Her Majesty’s government. The late Sir John Barrow, before his sad passing, submitted remarks to the court which left no doubt of your zeal, judgment, and ability, as did his sons, William and George.
It is a reasonable action, their submission. But the man of which they speak is not the man who sits before you today in this box. Would that their remarks had gone the way of Terror herself.
The resumption of your logbook’s records on the second of December suggests that you had also resumed, on the very date, your command of the expedition. Is that correct?
Yes.
And do you attest that the order dated the fifth of December, 1847, which bears your signature, was made with full soundness of mind?
I do. That I can say plainly. We were in no state to consolidate onto a single ship for long, even with many of our number lost. Half of our stores had been lost along with them. The men were frightened, angry, imagining the hunger they’d soon feel. They rejoiced at the caribou we’d brought back, but we all knew it was just enough to get us through winter. Come spring, we would have to walk. The earliest possible date. We would meet rescue ships at such place I had indicated in the letter sent to the Admiralty. Victoria Harbour. Only a hundred and fifty miles northwest of our present location. With fresh meat in their bellies, the men surely could recover to manage such a journey.
What cause had they to recover?
Scurvy. I could see it as soon as we arrived on board. It was the reunion of nine living men and three-score nearly dead ones.
Is ‘nearly dead’ an opinion you received from the expedition’s doctors?
You know—well it isn’t.
How, then, was this opinion reached? Surely what you are suggesting is melodrama.
I’ve never had an ear or a tongue for melodrama. James can tell you as much. But I’ve eyes, and they’ve seen what scurvy does to a man.
And what is that?
When men’ve got it in their bones, they begin to dissolve. The gums are the first thing you see. They pull back. Then all the wounds you’ve ever gotten since you were a boy, down the last cat scratch. Those open up. Soon enough you’re a walking maw of raw flesh, with bones too weak to hold you up. Not one of you here today would wish for that.
Naturally. But having expended a great deal of the Admiralty’s money—two thousand pounds, to be exact—on an outfit of men and supplies, it is the opinion of the court that you ought to have waited for the overland rescue you paid for.
That would have required us to remain becalmed on Erebus for another three months, well into the next summer. With our stores decimated, we had no hope of surviving that long. What little hope we did have resided at Victoria Harbour. With a fair wind at our backs we’d be aboard a Navy ship by the end of May. The thirtieth of May, as it turned out. The Enterprise was timely in her arrival.
You have admitted, in prior weeks of testimony, to being beset by an attack of neurasthenia. Reality is often quite separate from the phantasms of the mind, Captain Crozier.
Yes. I’ve been haunted by enough of them to know. But what we faced here was no apparition. It was sickness and starvation. Certainly we could live well enough on Erebus together to last the winter. But we could not last beyond it. That’s where I’ll plant any sword you’ll give me.
Thank you, as always, for the vivid speculation you offer the court. You have noted in your journal that a number of the crew began to falter by the end of February, Captain Fitzjames among them. What treatments were they prescribed by the expedition’s medical men?
Camphor, mandragora, coca wine. Those were only for the pain. The root of it we could not treat without fresh squeezed lemon or meat. What game we’d shot had been eaten in full a month prior. Captain Fitzjames continued to command as long as he was able. He was gracious in allowing me to share his berth. From this place I aided him in issuing orders and directing the preparation of our portables.
There is hardly grace in extending the captain’s quarters to one’s first, Captain Crozier. That is, in fact, a matter of Navy regulation.
There is when you’ve done what I did. But of course James won’t have spoken of that.
What Captain Fitzjames has spoken of, indeed at great length, is the integrity of your conduct during the winter months of 1848. He has indicated it both in his daily journals, kept aboard ship and on the journey to Victoria Harbour, and in remarks prepared for this court-martial. And yet you have attested that he had taken quite ill since February, and remained so until he was given daily doses of squeezed lemon aboard H.M.S. Enterprise. Is it therefore possible to confirm the substance and veracity of Captain Fitzjames’ statements during this period?
You’d have to ask James that.
I am asking you, Captain Crozier. Do you confirm or deny Captain Fitzjames’ ability to exercise his faculties once enfeebled by, as you claim, scurvy?
—hell.
Kindly answer for the court, absent of any further obscenities.
Deny.
Captain Fitzjames, As you well know, you have not been called here to defend yourself against any manner of accusation. Indeed, the court has called you to speak only as a witness to the questions laid out before you. You have already submitted plentiful remarks which bear your opinions. You have narrated your recollection of events. The court requires only your testimony, as directed by myself, carrying out my duty as prosecutor. Such fervour, while no doubt governed by honest dictates of the heart, is unnecessary for our purposes.
I might sooner hang the defendant myself.
Please, Captain Fitzjames. I implore you. You are an officer of the finest character and standing. We may adjourn the court if a recess would benefit your health.
My health is entirely solid. What I find myself in the position of defending now is, rather, my sanity.
I assure you, much relief is dispensed by the court in matters of illness. We have gathered testimony and evidence from dozens of your crew who may speak on the events which eluded you, being invalided as you were.
I was never a—invalid. Not in the sense that Francis has alleged. God knows they had to carry me like a babe. In any case, we exchanged confidences then such as we had never exchanged before. He may deny it, but I shall never.
You testified on the twelfth of September that you and Captain Crozier had shared a closeness since the earliest days of the voyage. Can you describe the enlargement of this closeness?
I cannot. I can say only that my mind had never been clearer, nor had my soul. Even if I did not wish for them to be cleansed, he saw that they were.
Regrettably, this court does not traffic in the language of sentiment. Facts, Captain Fitzjames, if you please.
I have nothing which I see fit to offer you. That is mine and his alone.
If your testimony does concern the loss of approximately sixteen thousand pounds in Royal Navy property, as well as a captain’s desertion of his post, it is most certainly the province of this court.
Very well. Declare me incompetent, or whatever it is you do.
The court does not wish to adopt such a position.
Then throw out the ridiculous notion that Francis has fed you. My testimony is lucid. My mind is lucid, then and now. What I have avowed here, in this box, is truth. Not simply a truth I have managed to the best of my knowledge and belief, but a whole and essential truth, the sort that God has invested with infallible signification.
Surely you do not compare your accounting of the expedition to God’s own word. I caution all who have gathered here today to disregard Captain Fitzjames’ ipse dixit.
I have been, on occasion, accused of puffery. My critics had better take out a notice in the Saturday Review.
Captain Fitzjames, the court has been greatly impressed by your attempts to set crooked paths of honour straight. However, we must continue along those paths in reaching the end of our inquiry. You have been asked to testify as to the events of the expedition’s march to Victoria Harbour, comprising the period between the twenty-fifth of March and the thirtieth of May, 1848. Though the court has been advised as to the inadmissibility of this testimony, we would hear you speak on the dangers and difficulties of the journey, as directed by Captain Crozier. A journey in which fifteen additional men perished.
You are asking me to hurl two stones of condemnation from the same hand: one at the soundness of my own faculties, and one at Francis himself. Well, I refuse. I formally dispute the charge of debilitation Captain Crozier has exhibited against me. Moreover, I would also like to bring forth my own charge. I charge Captain Crozier with perjury.
Captain Fitzjames, the court urges you to reconsider. We are sympathetic to the duration and the rigor of this court-martial. Indeed, we have now entered into our third month of inquiry. And yet we must see this course of action through, fully and wholly, so that the judge-advocate may formulate a verdict.
I will not. Not so you can blacken the name of a man who ought to be knighted.
Very well. Your distress has been noted, Captain Fitzjames, and the court will adjourn for now. But to prevent any further misapprehension, we shall advance in our course by another route altogether.
The court will note the extreme irregularity of the proceedings in which we now find ourselves. However, circumstances have plunged this court-martial into such a legal quandary as to permit it—nay, to require it. Thus we must examine witness and defendant as one. Gentlemen, do you affirm that the subjects of which you speak are correct and true to the best of your knowledge and belief, and that you are able to place these subjects in a comprehensible point of view?
Yes.
Yes. Though I daresay the asymmetry of your own will be revealed in due course.
James. Peace.
This court has displayed an iniquitous and unmerited prejudice which runs through your interrogation, sir. It has superseded every atom of reason. You have cast us in roles according to a play which has been written entirely without our consent. Captain Crozier and I have divergent recollections of the event of this expedition, it is true. Yet it is only Captain Crozier’s testimony which is banished from the realm of authenticity. And, of course, mine when it does not advance the tidy little drama you have set out for us. There is no quest for truth here. There is only the verdict their Lordships have desired from the very start. Absent any other recourse, they have elected to channel this expedition’s failure into the only man impolitic enough to bear it without consequence from his patrons. Do not sigh at me, Francis. I shall not be silent on this point.
Captain Fitzjames, kindly attend the line of inquiry which I shall momentarily put to you. The court has dismissed your charges against Captain Crozier as an effect of the great ordeal you have suffered. Nevertheless, it is essential that we reconcile such contradictions and inconsistencies as have been asserted by you both. Our first object is to arrange and marshal the facts of your testimony which do not agree. Gentlemen, did Captain Crozier receive permission from Sir John Franklin to embark on a journey to Fort Resolution?
Yes.
James, it isn’t worth doing.
So I shall simply sit back and see you hanged, is that it? You care so little for your own head, for my own care of it, that you would ask such a thing of me? You would ask such a thing, and forbid me from asking anything in return. A fine compromise!
I’ve done what I’ve done. You know why I made the trip. And look what it produced.
I don’t—well care now. You lived, and so did I. And I, too, have done what I’ve done. You know as well as I. Even then, the choice was as easy as a child’s.
I would never have required that of you.
Yes. But my belief has always trumped your obduracy.
Gentlemen, please. I insist we proceed.
Ask your questions. We will see what they yield.
Very well. As we are unable to confirm the first question which has been put to you, we shall proceed to the second. Captain Crozier, had you been ill before you departed on the sledge journey?
Yes. In mind and body both.
Francis. You nearly perished. There is no need to bring it upon yourself again.
A situation of my own making.
By—,I’d thought you dead for months! You hadn’t a chance in—of surviving there and back.
I know. I can’t explain it.
And yet you had gone anyway. I was furious. I could not countenance it for so very long. I was wrong, though. More than God loves them, I’d said. You’d walk farther than I ever have for their sakes.
Gentlemen.
James, you have your pick of any command in the fleet. Go sail the Med, for God’s sake. Have your peace.
I shall never have peace if you are condemned by that which I scrabbled to uphold. Do not be a—martyr, Francis.
There is no one else for it to fall to.
Be that as it may. You know what protection has been afforded me, prejudicial as it is. I would make use of it, Francis.
Gentlemen. I call you to order. Had Captain Crozier been unfit to lead a party for rescue, such as he deemed it necessary?
Yes.
Not in the least. He was the only one of us who could see clearly. And when it came time to walk out, to Victoria Harbour, he alone hauled with perfect vigour day in and day out.
I saw nothing. I saw only what had been denied to me. I had been overlooked, and I left. I left you all to starve and burn and rot.
Francis, it was my foolishness that caused the fire. You are an explorer, not a Tractarian. Do not mortify yourself. I shall comb the flat for whips and dispose of them promptly.
I abandoned you, James.
Captain Crozier speaks in the figurative here, the court surely understands. He had not formally abandoned his post. He is merely a man prone to sentimental discourse.
The court thanks you for your explication, Captain Fitzjames. Your support of your post-captain is, as every man who sits behind that bench will agree, commendable.
You were half-dead. If I had not left—
Then. I would have surpassed half-dead and attained it in full. It was your meat that nourished us. Your note that called the Enterprise to the harbour where we were saved.
I cannot, for the life of me, balance out these scales.
That is not what I ask of you. None of us here is Saint Peter. I ask only that you allow me to do for you which you had done for me, and for the rest of our men. It is recompense. It is more than that, in fact.
I know.
You will become their gull, if only because you have not played their game.
I know that, too.
It would complete the work which scurvy and starvation did not on me.
I have not earned what you would have me seek. And I would not have you stoop to meet me there.
If you cannot hear it from me, then strive while you still live. Every day, if you must. That is the only way. You must promise. I shall never forgive you otherwise.
Gentlemen.
James.
I have already begged. A thing which does not debase me, but rather which vexes me beyond measure. What in God’s name must else I do? Consider the act selfish if it goes down easier. The act of a man who would sooner succumb to what nearly destroyed him than see what he has gained lost forever.
Captain Fitzjames, the court would issue you a caution. It is inadvisable to speak with such unadorned passions. I must once again remind you, facts are the fulcrum upon which the judge-advocate adjudicates. Now, Captain Crozier, did you, at any time before departing for Fort Resolution, author a note signifying your resignation from the Royal Navy?
Francis.
Oh, James, do not.
Captain Fitzjames, please rise from the floor. The court insists you remain seated for such time as you are installed in this box to deliver testimony.
I should not like to sail the Med alone. I should not like to mourn you as I do, either. I could forgive everything that came before. Not this.
What is it that you would like?
It is plain. You hold it in those very hands.
Yes. I see.
Do you?
I do. And I thank you, James. You are a better man than any of us deserve.
Not you.
Perhaps. But I would be a fool to pass this up, I wager.
Yes, you would. The world would indeed be rid of another one should you refuse me.
I could not. I would not. For one thing, I fear it would only make this story longer in your telling of it at the service.
Gentlemen, this court is entirely in disorder. I decree that this proceeding shall henceforth be adjourned until tomorrow. Then we shall see how far it will be necessary for Captain Crozier to receive further indulgence.