The officers of HMS Terror had fared a bit better than those of Erebus, at least in the sense that two Naval officers — Captain Crozier and Second Lieutenant Hodgson — had survived. Second Mate Robert Thomas and Mr. E. J. Helpman, Crozier’s clerk-in-charge and another civilian who served the expedition with officer’s rank, were the other remaining officers.
Not answering muster today were Crozier’s lieutenants Little and Irving, as well as First Mate Hornby, Ice Master Blanky, Second Master MacBean, and both his surgeons, Peddie and McDonald.
Four of Terror’s original eleven officers were still alive.
Crozier had started the expedition with three warrant officers — Engineer James Thompson, Bosun John Lane, and Master Carpenter Thomas Honey — and all three were still living, although the engineer had wasted away to a hollow-eyed skeleton too weak to stand, much less haul, and Mr. Honey not only showed advanced symptoms of scurvy but had had both feet amputated the night before. Incredibly, as of this assembly, the carpenter was still alive and even managed to shout, “Present!” from his tent when his name was called at muster.
Terror had sailed with twenty-one petty officers three years earlier and sixteen were still alive on this cloudy August morning — Stoker John Torrington, Captain of the Foretop Harry Peglar, and quartermasters Kenley and Rhodes had been the only casualties in that group until just moments ago when Cook John Diggle had joined the ranks of the dead.
Where nineteen able seamen had once answered Terror’s muster, ten now did, although eleven had survived: David Leys still lay comatose and unresponsive in Dr. Goodsir’s tent.
Of HMS Terror’s contingent of six Royal Marines, none had survived. Private Heather, who had lingered for months with his shattered skull, finally died the day after they had left River Camp, and his body was left on the gravel without burial or comment.
The ship had recorded two “Boys” on its original muster, and now only one — Robert Golding, almost twenty-three years old and certainly no longer a boy, although gullible in a boy’s way — answered to the roll.
Out of an original muster of sixty-two souls on HMS Terror, thirty-five had survived to see this Divine Service at Rescue Camp on 13 August, 1848.
Thirty-nine Erebuses and thirty-five Terrors remained, for a total muster of seventy-four men out of the one hundred twenty-six who had sailed from Greenland in the summer of 1845.
But four of these had suffered one or both of their feet being amputated in the last twenty-four hours and at least another twenty were almost certainly too sick, too injured, too starved, or too bone- and soul-weary to go on. A third of the expedition had reached their limit.
It was time for a reckoning.
“Almighty God,” intoned Crozier in his exhausted rasp, “with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity: We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother John Diggle, age thirty-nine, out of the miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee, that it it may please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, all of us here if it pleases thee, and thus to hasten thy kingdom; that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” croaked the sixty-two men still able to stand at muster stations.
“Amen,” came a few voices from the other twelve lying in tents.
Crozier did not dismiss the assembled men.
“Men of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, members of the John Franklin Discovery Service Expedition, shipmates,” he rasped loudly. “Today we have to decide which way our paths shall carry us. You all remain — under both the Ship’s Articles and the Articles of the Royal Discovery Service which you signed with your oaths of honour — under my command and will continue to be so until you are released by me. You’ve followed Sir John, Captain Fitzjames, and me this far, and you have done well. Many of our friends and shipmates have gone home to Christ, but seventy-four of us have persevered. I am resolved in my heart that every man of you here at Rescue Camp today should survive to see England, home, and your families again, and God shall be my witness that I have done my best to make sure that this shall be the outcome of our efforts. But today I release you to decide your own path by which to reach that goal.”
The men murmured to one another. Crozier let that go on for a few seconds and then continued. “You’ve heard what we are doing — Dr. Goodsir to remain here with those too ill to travel, the healthier men to continue toward Back’s River. Are there any among you who still wish to attempt to find some other way to rescue?”
There was a silence as men looked down and scuffled their booted feet on the gravel, but then George Hodgson hobbled forward.
“Sir, some of us do, sir. Want to head back that is, Captain Crozier.”
The captain just looked at the young officer for a long moment. He knew that Hodgson was a stalking horse for Hickey, Aylmore, and a few of the more rebellious sea lawyers who had been stirring up the men with resentment for so many months, but he wondered if young Hodgson knew it.
“Back to where, Lieutenant?” Crozier asked at last.
“To the ship, sir.”
“Do you think Terror is still there, Lieutenant?” As if to punctuate his query, the sea ice south of them exploded in a series of shotgun blasts and earthquake rumbles. An iceberg hundreds of yards from shore crumbled and fell.
Hodgson shrugged like a boy. “Terror Camp will be, Captain, whether the ship still is or not. We left food and coal and boats at Terror Camp.”
“Aye,” said Crozier, “so we did. And we’d all welcome some of that food now — even some of the tinned food that killed some of us so terribly. But, Lieutenant, that was some eighty or ninety miles and almost one hundred days ago when we left Terror Camp. Do you and the others really think you can walk or haul your way back there into the teeth of winter? It would be late November by the time you made your way even to the camp. Total darkness. And you remember the temperatures and storms of last November.”
Hodgson nodded and said nothing.
“We ain’t going to walk ’til no late November,” said Cornelius Hickey, stepping out of the ranks to stand next to the slumped young lieutenant. “We think the ice is open along the shore back the way we come. We’ll sail and row around that fuckin’ cape we hauled five boats over like ’Gyptian slaves and be home in Terror Camp in a month.”
The assembled men mumured furtively among themselves.
Crozier nodded. “It may indeed open for you, Mr. Hickey. Or it may not. But even if it does, it’s more than a hundred miles back to a ship that may well be crushed and most certainly will be frozen fast by the time you get there. It’s at least thirty miles closer to the mouth of Back River from here and the odds of the inlet being free of ice south of here, near the river, are much greater.”
“You ain’t talking us out of this, Captain,” Hickey said firmly. “We talked it over ’mongst ourselves, and we’re going.”
Crozier stared at the caulker’s mate. The captain’s usual instinct to put down any insubordination immediately and with great strength and decisiveness rose in him, but he reminded himself that this was what he wanted. It was past time to get rid of the malcontents and to save those others who trusted his judgement. Besides, this late in the summer and in their escape attempt, Hickey’s plan might even be workable. It all depended upon where the ice broke up — if it broke up anywhere before the winter set in. The men deserved to choose their own last, best chance.