Now It's Been Named

[krpalmer]

With the news that one of the ships of the lost Franklin expedition had been found sunken in the Arctic, I started wondering how long it would be before we knew just which of the two ships the wreck was. On the radio news yesterday, though, I heard the name HMS Erebus given. I admit my first reaction was to think of a post I'd seen just after the first announcement which sorted through the Inuit testimony and concluded the ship was likely HMS Terror. That then made me think of a novel I'd read a few years ago by Dan Simmons, The Terror, in which that ship winds up drifting south in its last pages if to then meet a fate suiting the fantastic, Grand Guignol mood of the book. Perhaps inspired by thoughts of that book, I bought an e-book after the announcement titled On the Proper Use of Stars, a novel by Dominique Fortier translated from French (and more "realistic"), which also managed to make Sir John Franklin the epitome of self-satisfied British polar incompetence and presented Francis Crozier as the apparently necessary more aware protagonist. With Franklin having died before the last record was signed, though, I suppose he's harder to develop as a fictional central character. If life hasn't imitated art, the Inuit testimony may yet be accurate enough for Terror to be crushed debris in deeper water further north. I did also happen to find a piece where some people had their own particular reasons to hope the ship to be Erebus, which goes to show everyone has their own opinions.