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Fort Leavenworth prints are HERE!

Finished Madhouse at the End of the Earth and feeling normal about the Fort Leavenworth visit? Do you want to see Frederick Cook and Roald Amundsen holding hands with one pole each?

Printed on 320g pearlescent paper, this A4 print will be a gorgeous addition to your walls and polar collection! And did I mention you could add an extra magical touch and make it extra special with the hand-illuminated edition with gold and silver ink?

Get the print now! I ship worldwide!

p.s. use code TABLECLOTH for 15% off from now through March 4th!

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Aspencore

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Decided to start posting some of my old polar comix here! First up, that time Hussey got engaged (then un-engaged) the moment the Endurance crew were rescued:

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Character designs for a furthest south Terror prequel: Thomas Jopson, Francis Crozier, James Clark Ross and Joseph Dalton Hooker. Inspired by Palin’s Erebus.

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"The Terror" ep07 / "Two Men by The Sea" by Caspar David Friedrich (1817)

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When I was a teenager, I had to have several teeth taken out in one go. They let me keep the removed teeth, and my dad made a little wooden display stand to put them on.

Which led me to think of this:

It's the thought that counts, I suppose.

So what DO you do with stuff that needs to be snipped due to hypothermia?

Back on my Dr Stanley/Dundy agenda

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Carrying on a bit from my previous post:

The Terror is not a story of if people die, it is a story of how people die. That is clear from how the story is structured from the very beginning. Therefore it is not a story of how the choices made damn the people involved to a gruesome death. They were already damned. It is instead a story of how choices are made within the context of the damned.

So I would like to propose a different context for the argument between Franklin and Crozier in “Go for Broke”, one that takes into account the historical context. (Leave aside that the rest of the show, by adhering to the “standard narrative” of the Victory Point note being indicative of a great walk south towards rescue, disregards said historical context. The writers were stuck with that.)

We usually characterize this argument – to go east (Crozier) or west (Franklin) – as the choice that doomed the expedition. It was Franklin’s hubris that damned them all, etc. But I don’t think this is the right context. The argument they are having is how to go around King William Island: east through James Ross Straight, or west through Victoria Straight. That means they have already sailed through Peel Straight by the time we meet them and watch them have this argument. And that means they are already doomed.

The reality is this: Peel Straight was unusually free of ice, and they sailed through it, south to King William Land (which they actually had good reason, although no direct evidence, to believe was an island!). This is the choice that damned them. They then had a choice to sail east or west, and neither was passable. East, through James Ross Straight, was too shallow and full of shoals for ships the size of Erebus and Terror. West, through Victoria Straight, was well known to be filled with ice during almost all of the year (from the memoirs of one James Clark Ross and his overland trek during the expedition under John Ross with one F.R.M. Crozier) and had a high likelihood of freezing them in. There is, in fact, evidence that they tried to go through James Ross Straight, foundered, and had to turn around. So, at this point, they were fucked. They were stuck in a land that could not support them, and they had no way to escape. They could not sail north – Peel Straight had frozen behind them, and would not be free of ice again for ten years. When JCR showed up to rescue them, he saw the very frozen Peel Straight at pretty much the exact time of year that the Franklin Expedition had happened upon it, said “no way!”, which was a very reasonable thing to think, and went off looking in the wrong direction. They could not sail east, or west. They were already damned.

The Terror removes men’s choices from the damning of them. No choice made after Franklin and Crozier’s argument has any effect on their ultimate end: they are all going to die. But the writers knew how the real story likely played out, and I think making the argument about exactly what it was about – James Ross Straight or Victoria Straight – was intentional. That fictional argument could have been placed earlier, perhaps about sailing down Peel Straight itself. That argument would have been one that could have ultimately made a difference. But instead they chose to make it about James Ross Straight or Victoria Straight, an argument that ultimately had no meaning. No choice, made during the duration of the show, changes their ultimate end. They are all going to die.

And that is what allows the story to be about how they die.

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The type of shit I’ve been on lately

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Sometimes Jopson forgets himself and lingers for too long

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The whole world is on fire, OF COURSE I’m going to cope by fixating on dead polar explorers

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“The Spirit of Vulcan, Genius of the Workers in Iron and Steel (figure study)” ~ Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) American painter, illustrator and muralist. Rotunda, Pennsylvania State Capitol, Harrisburg.

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Jared Harris as Captain Anderson (To the ends of the Earth)

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Orde-Lees cruising around in the fuck ass car!!!!

(feat. one of the first ever Oop I'm in front of the camera*awkward run out of frame*)

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i love seeing photos of early polar explorers interacting with penguins. no matter who they are their adoration is palpable. like oh okay Olaf, veteran of eight Antarctic expeditions who once ate his own boots to survive a winter trapped in the ice, you’re pretty rough and tumble. really masculine man, for sure. and oh? what’s that? you have adopted a penguin that wandered near the boat and named it Little Timmy Baby Boy? and you coo over it and hand feed it and let it sleep in a basket full of rags you carefully arranged to be like a nest next to your bed? yeah. of course you fucking did

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The Ross expedition of 1839-1843

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Top Ten Shanties and Sea Songs That Perfectly Embody The Line Between Homosocial and Homoerotic in Naval History