#books about the Franklin Expedition

[queensthiefofattolia]

Finally watched The Terror and turns out everyone was right. It has fundamentally altered my brain chemistry and consumed my waking thoughts. So that's cool I guess.

[cockroachesunite]

Considering setting up an art shop, does anyone have any recommendations? Etsy, redbubble, etc? There’s a lot of options and it’s a bit daunting, but I’d love to sell my work just as soon as I can figure out how!

[madqueenalanna]

i just learned yesterday that the winter that caused the franklin expedition's boats to freeze, eventually leading to their deaths, was the same winter that stranded the donner party, 1846. what a horrible year to have been alive

[butchsaint]

how titillating. where is the rpf (frozen in time, pg. 8)

[frmulcahy]

You know those coffee table books that are just like, a timeline of a certain topic and they give you the cliffs notes of each major event so it’s an intro to the subject as a whole?

Anyways I want The Big Book of Polar Exploration

[graveyardrabbit]

I spent like all day running around to various thrift stores trying to find the right jacket cover in fake blood for my Halloween costume, and I wasn’t successful on that end but I did find manage to find a copy of The Worst Journey In The World, so I’m going to so that that’s a different kind of success

[frodolives]

1850s Tumblr Dashboard Simulator

👸🏻 girlbossladyjane Follow

It really makes me sick to see people giving money to penny weeklies when Franklin's expedition STILL has not been found �� There are good men out there trapped in unimaginable temperatures and literally all that's needed is a little more funding for another rescue mission yet all you guys seem to care about are your vulgar little stories...

🧔🏻‍♂️ queerqueg Follow

the franklin expedition is dead as hell

👸🏻 girlbossladyjane Follow

Disgraceful thing to say but I'd expect nothing more from a M*lville fan

10,558 notes

👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

Sorry for posting so much about Tom Gradgrind/James Harthouse from Hard Times lately. It turns out that I was getting arsenic poisoning from my wallpaper? Anyway I took a seaside stroll and I'm normal now. Check your walls y'all

#whyyy did i assume they were committing unlawful actions together like where did i even get that from lol #hard times isn't even that good by dickens standards tbh

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🎨 asherbrowndurand

Just painted this

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ss-arctic-girlie-deactivated18540927

RIP Napoleon... you may have been unable to conquer Alexander's Russia but you sure as hell conquered Alexander's bed

🖼️ preraphaelitebro Follow

HERITAGE POST

📝 shakespearesforehead Follow

How does this have less than 100k notes you could literally not avoid this post back in the 20s lol

82,170 notes

🌄 loyalromantic Follow

poets just aren't dying young in mysterious water-related incidents like they used to :/

#as useless and degenerative as i find 'the living poets' and i'm glad we're finally moving on from them #i have to agree with op in this respect

6,884 notes

🎀 thefopdiaries Follow

I finally got a daguerreotype of myself ^_^ Porcelain urn for scaling

📜 bartlebi-thescrivener

i think i hauve consumption

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🐋 whaler4life

They found oil in the ground??? WTF. THIS IS LITERALLY THE WORSTTTT. FUCK MY LIFE FOR REAL THIS TIME

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🌿 naturesnaturalist Follow

I swear this website has 0 reading comprehension skills. Darwin NEVER claimed we "evolved" from apes like if one of you guys actually bothered to open his new book you'll see all his arguments are backed up by evidence. He actually makes a lot of sense

#sure there's nuance like i don't fully agree with all of it #but his general theory of natural selection seems pretty sound imo

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🤵🏻‍♂️ byronicherotournament Follow

🙈 butchbronte Follow

Of course these are the finalists lmao this website is so predictable. Anyway vote Heathcliff if you dont i'm going to assume you're a phrenologist

📖 sapphichelenburns Follow

It's not problematic to acknowledge the fact that Heathcliff was a brute like he literally killed dogs in case you forgot. #rochestersweep

🙈 butchbronte Follow

I love the implication here that Rochester never did anything cruel either. He literally locked his wife in the attic and lied to Jane about it 😭 like that was a pretty significant thing that happened

📖 sapphichelenburns Follow

And? God forbid women do anything

#why'd you have to pit two bad bitches against each other #anyway i'm not attracted to men but still went with rochester #bc in terms of living quarters thornfield hall > wuthering heights easily

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👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

Not the Russian tsar dying immediately after hartgrind became canon

#i know dickens hasn't technically confirmed it yet but like. SOMETHING was strongly implied ok #see: my previous post #dickensposting

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👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

LORD HELP ME. THE BODY LANGUAGE. THE WAY THEY'RE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER. AHHHHHH

#this installment!!! im-- #dickensposting #i can't fucking cope #dickens wants to KILL us he wants us DEAD....

2,309 notes

⭐️ newamerican

Hi guys sorry I haven't been posting lately it's been so difficult getting to California 💀 I'm finally here now though just need to find a pickaxe and soon I'll be digging! :-) wish me luck lol

#gold #gold rush #gold rush grind #california #adventure

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[blodeuweddschild]

Permanently tempted to make every assignment about a random topic so I get to forcibly educate my tutors about the use of geothermal energy in Iceland or the Acali sex raft when all they wanted was some design shit

[petoskeystones]

hello here is a link to download an epub of the 2014 edition of frozen in time w/ margaret atwood's foreword and here is a link to download a pdf of the 2004 edition (also w/ atwood foreword but idk if it's the same exact one)

also margaret atwood's short story "the age of lead" which is kind of sort of about my darling john torrington can be found in her book wilderness tips <3

can you recommend some historical documents / other sources to learn about your ice mummies? :) I love natural mummification, and the franklin expedition, and I need a rabbit hole to fall into

ok i cannot stress enough how much you need to read frozen in time: the fate of the franklin expedition by owen beattie and john geiger. there should be an epub/pdf version around somewhere online if you look hard enough. this book is the holy grail of franklin expedition ice mummy anthropology and investigative forensic archeology and i think it ought to be required reading if you want to be a reputable franklin expedition nerd !!!!

and if you don't have time to read a whole book or are still curious before it arrives in the mail, then good news! you can watch buried in ice, the nova documentary from 1988 which is ABOUT the exhumations of the lads on beechey island by the same team who wrote frozen in time. and then i'm also going to direct you to @radiojamming's exceedingly detailed and beautiful research into john hartnell's life, and also @entwinedmoon's exceedingly detailed and beautiful research into john torrington's life. as far as i know i don't think anyone on this webbed site has done a deepdive into william braine's life but if anyone HAS then I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.

also here are the autopsy reports for torrington & hartnell.

here's the radiology report for hartnell & braine

[arthurwilde]

Everyone should watch the Terror because it's a masterpiece on a million different levels but you should be aware of what it will do to you. I just watched an hourlong history channel documentary about a dude who tried to go to the North Pole on a submarine in 1931 and I was riveted. I read a 400 page book about the Franklin Expedition this summer and I thumbed through pictures of the Shackleton Expedition and was absolutely amped when the Endurance was found. I'm almost certainly going to cave and buy a rare Canadian map detailing the route of the rescue efforts to find the Franklin Expedition. This is who I am now. It happened to me and it will happen to you

[bertie-w-wooster]

if I had (hypothetically) made a reading list of 55 works about the Franklin Expedition and related areas, including the pdfs of most of the articles and a couple of the books on it, would anyone be interested in it? pls lmk in the comments or tags!

update: I have posted it, check the reblogs or my blog to find it

[dravenscroft]

So I see several posts joking about how everyone in The Terror fandom needs to pick a guy and write a novel about him due to some of the romance novels that exist.

And I just felt like it was time to announce that I'm an agented author currently preparing to send my agent a manuscript that is...low-key Terror fic, based on the question 'what would happen if Hickey and the mutineers got back to England and were able to spin the narrative of what happened to suit them?'

It's horror/mystery, and centers on a fictional expedition sent to search for Franklin, and the aftermath of that fictional expedition 5 years later. Some of the characters, though original, will remind you of certain cold boys 👀.

Anyway something something history is written by the victors etc. The book's comps are 'THE TERROR' meets 'ALIAS GRACE'.

Please pray that some foolish publisher takes on that monstrosity in the near future.

Also obviously it's queer af.

Figured I'd share it here because if it gains interest, my agent can push that on editors.

[jesslovesboats]

BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT, I'm back with more Sad Boat Books for Sad Boat People! But first, some words.

I never dreamed that a silly little graphic I made for some friends would generate this much response on twitter and here, but I'm overjoyed that it resonated with so many of you! I read every single comment and tag, and by far my favorites are all of the people who say some variation of "I thought I was the only one who loved these books." We are NOT alone, there are literally thousands of people who reblogged or retweeted this list-- people of all ages and backgrounds and gender identities. Sad Boat isn't just for old white men! I was also delighted to hear from other librarians who are using this in displays and for reader's advisory. PLEASE go forth and do so with my blessing, nothing would make me happier! I was recently laid off from my librarian job as part of a restructuring under new management (don't worry about me, it sucks right now but I'm gonna be fine), so I would love to think that I'm still contributing to the library ecosystem while I'm out of commission. I would also love to keep making these lists (including one that deals with Sad Boat fiction and one with recommendations for other types of media), and I've never had more time to do it, so if you have suggestions, please drop them in my inbox!

Anyway, enough of that-- here are more books! I've either read all of these, or the recommendation came from someone I trust, so read with confidence!

First Hand Accounts

The Quiet Land: The Antarctic Diaries of Frank Debenham edited by June Debenham Back

The Voyage of the Discovery by Robert Falcon Scott

Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen

Endurance by F.A. Worsley

Boats boats boats!

Franklin's Lost Ship: The Historic Discovery of HMS Erebus by Alanna Mitchell and John Geiger

The Voyages of the Discovery: The Illustrated History of Scott's Ship by Ann Savours

HMS Terror: The Design, Fitting, and Voyages of a Polar Discovery Ship by Matthew Betts

The SS Terra Nova (1884-1943): Whaler, Sealer, and Polar Exploration Ship by Michael C. Tarver

You'll learn about the Ross Sea Party and you'll like it

Shackleton's Heroes by Wilson McOrist

Shackleton’s Forgotten Men: The Untold Tragedy of the Endurance Epic by Lennard Bickel

The Ross Sea Shore Party 1914-1917 by R.W. Richards

The Lost Men by Kelly Tyler-Lewis*

Polar Castaways by Richard McElrea and David Harrowfield*

*These were on my other list, but this is my graphic and I'll do what I want

Sad Airships and Planes

From Pole to Pole: Roald Amundsen's Journey in Flight by Garth James Cameron

N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia by Mark Piesing

Antarctica's Lost Aviator by Jeff Maynard

Disaster at the Pole: The Tragedy of the Airship Italia and the 1928 Nobile Expedition to the North Pole by Wilbur Cross

More Shackleton Content

Shackleton: A Life in Poetry by Jim Mayer

Shackleton's Last Voyage by Frank Wild

The Quest Chronicle: The Story of the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition by Jan Chojecki

Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod by Beau Riffenburgh

Polar Partners

Snow Widows by Katherine MacInnes

Polar Wives: The Remarkable Women Behind the World's Most Daring Explorers by Kari Herbert

Widows of the Ice by Anne Fletcher

Sad Boat Graphic Novels

Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey by Nick Bertozzi

The Worst Journey in the World- The Graphic Novel Volume 1: Making Our Easting Down adapted by Sarah Airriess from the book by Apsley Cherry-Garrard*

How To Survive in the North by Luke Healy

*This was also on my other list, but this is my graphic and I'll do what I want

Biographies

Scott of the Antarctic by David Crane

Ice Captain: The Life of J.R. Stenhouse by Stephen Haddelsey

Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard by Sara Wheeler

Birdie Bowers: Captain Scott's Marvel by Anne Strathie

Roald Amundsen by Tor Bomann-Larsen

Miscellaneous sad boat books that are well worth your time

I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford

Fatal North: Adventure and Survival Aboard USS Polaris, The First US Expedition to the North Pole by Bruce Henderson

Barrow's Boys: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy by Fergus Fleming

Pilgrims on the Ice by T.H. Baughman

The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture by Michael F. Robinson

Ghosts of Cape Sabine by Leonard F. Guttridge

Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer

If you read and enjoy any of these, please let me know!

EDITED TO ADD: OG Sad Boat Books post here!

[frmulcahy]

Hi Charlotte Brontë why the fuck did you write this

[entwinedmoon]

Cold Boys and Cannibalism

With today’s news concerning the identification of James Fitzjames’s remains—and the fact that those remains show signs of cannibalism—I have been thinking a lot about how those final, desperate days of the Franklin Expedition went down. But I’ve been thinking about those days in a particular light, one influenced by another special interest of mine: the Andes flight disaster.

The Andes flight disaster—aka the crash of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, aka That Time In 1972 When A Uruguayan Rugby Team Was On A Plane That Crashed Into The Andes And They Had To Eat Their Dead Friends In Order To Survive—has long been a casual interest of mine. But earlier this year I watched the movie Society of the Snow, based on the book by the same name, and that kicked this interest into a full-blown hyper-fixation. I’ve been reading every book about it I can get my hands on, and I’m constantly trying to steer conversations towards mentioning it (“It’s a cold night tonight…but not nearly as cold as what the survivors of the Fairchild 571 had to endure on that mountain…”).

The Andes flight disaster has several similarities with the Franklin Expedition. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere, they had to endure freezing temperatures, and when the food ran out, they resorted to eating the flesh of their dead companions. There are also some major differences, of course, such as the Franklin Expedition being a purposeful exercise in exploration whereas the Andes flight disaster was an accident, and instead of highly trained members of the Royal Navy who followed a strict chain of command, the passengers on the F-571 were mostly pampered, upper-class, well-educated men in their late teens to mid-twenties, along with some friends and family, and there wasn’t an obvious leader or authority after the crash. But one of the main differences is that, unlike the Franklin Expedition, there were survivors of the Andes flight disaster.

Sixteen men survived 72 days on top of a mountain in the Andes, suffering through brutal temperatures, altitude sickness, starvation, an avalanche, and watching their close friends—and sometimes even their family—die. They were only saved when two of those survivors—Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa—hiked ten days through the Andes to get help. When they were found, no one could believe it. These men had been written off as dead shortly after the crash. Despite only 16 out of 45 people making it out alive, their survival was hailed as a miracle. When they returned to Uruguay, they were treated like heroes.

Unfortunately, some members of the press were far more interested in painting these survivors as deranged savages. The rescue team had leaked photographs showing partially eaten body parts strewn around the wrecked airplane where the men had taken shelter. However, during a press conference on their return home, the survivors did not shy away from the truth. They admitted that they had only survived thanks to eating the flesh of those who had died. One of the survivors, Pancho Delgado, compared their eating of human flesh for physical salvation to the eating of Christ’s body for spiritual salvation. The largely Catholic country of Uruguay embraced this comparison.

The book Alive, written by Piers Paul Read using extensive interviews with the survivors taken shortly after their rescue, goes into some detail about the cannibalism that took place. It is not a book for the faint of heart. But even though the survivors have been very open about what they did, they still have attempted to distance themselves from this ultimate taboo by insisting that what they did wasn’t technically cannibalism but “anthropophagy.” Anthropophagy is the eating of human flesh, which the Andes survivors certainly did engage in, but they also very much did cannibalism. Survival cannibalism is the consumption of a member of your own species in order to survive, which is exactly what happened in the Andes—and what happened in the Arctic with the Franklin Expedition.

Every book I've read about the Andes flight disaster—Alive, Society of the Snow, and the several memoirs written by the survivors (14 of whom are still alive today)—all tell of the moment when the survivors decided they would eat the dead in order to live. Around the tenth day, after an agonizing and disappointing wait for someone to find them, several of the survivors spoke up. They had all been holding out hope that they would be rescued—their small food supply, mostly made up of snacks, candy, and alcohol, dwindling rapidly despite strict rationing—but it had become painfully clear that there would be no rescuers. No one was coming for them. And they had no food. They could only survive if they walked out, but they could only do that if they had the strength to do so. They needed to eat. There was only one way.

Some of the people who had survived the crash resisted the idea, while others fully supported it. Many put forth arguments for or against. Some said that they had a moral obligation to stay alive, and letting themselves die was wrong. Roberto Canessa, one of the two men who would later walk through the mountains to find help, was a nineteen-year-old medical student, and he emphasized the scientific side of things, explaining how they needed proteins to survive or their bodies would begin to break down. The religious explanation later used by Pancho Delgado at the press conference was actually first mentioned by one of the other survivors on that fateful day, Pedro Algorta.

I’m currently reading Algorta’s memoir, Into the Mountains. Early on in the book he too discusses that meeting of the survivors wherein they made the decision to eat the dead. He mentions the religious argument he had used. But he goes on to say that argument was merely an excuse and not the true reason he had supported cannibalizing the victims of the crash. He said that it was the emptiness of his stomach that had persuaded him. As he put it, “I was hungry and I wanted to live.”

When I read that line, my mind immediately went to the scene in AMC’s The Terror, where Lt. Hodgson spoke to Goodsir, telling him a story from his childhood about how he had once taken communion with his Catholic aunts, connecting it with the cannibalism Hodgson and Hickey’s mutineers had committed. He ended his speech with almost the exact same words used by Pedro Algorta, “I’m hungry and I want to live.”

I’m not sure if the Andes flight disaster influenced any aspect of this scene or not, but that sentiment shared by both the real-life Pedro Algorta and the fictionalized version of Lt. Hodgson is something vital to note when it comes to thinking about the cannibalism committed both by the Andes survivors and the Franklin Expedition.

Sure, it was around the tenth day in the Andes that they first cut into the body of someone they had once called a friend. But many of the survivors had already been thinking about eating the bodies for days. Nando Parrado, after waking up from a three-day coma to discover his mother had died in the crash and his sister was dying from severe internal injuries, was determined to walk out of the mountains to see his father again, even if it was the last thing he did. One day he was talking to fellow survivor Carlitos Páez about how they had run out of food. Nando told him he would not give in without a fight, and that if he had to, he would eat the pilot. Many others had similar thoughts, some keeping it to themselves while others discussed it among small groups of trusted friends. That conversation on the tenth day was merely a formality—they had already realized there was only one way to survive.

When it comes to the Franklin Expedition, we don’t know how that decision was made. When Fitzjames died, how long had the men around him been starving, their stomachs aching with hunger? Did the fading vestiges of the Royal Navy chain of command hold them back at all before they finally gave in to their bodies’ demands? Fitzjames was captain of the Erebus and third in command of the expedition. When Franklin died, he became second in command. There may very well have been an instance in which he became the leader of the expedition itself, depending on when Captain Crozier succumbed to the inevitable. Did his men see him as their captain still, or as merely a body, the man he was long gone and his flesh nothing more than something that could be used to prolong their own lives, same as how the Andes survivors saw the bodies of their dead friends?

As I mentioned before, the Andes survivors didn’t really have a firm authority figure. The pilot and co-pilot of the plane died in the crash, and none of them had really known those men, so they held no feelings of friendship or kind sentiment towards them. However, the rugby players did have a team captain, Marcelo Pérez del Castillo. Not everyone on board the flight was a rugby player—some were just friends or relatives of the players, others were only distantly connected and had just wanted a cheap ticket to visit Chile for a few days—but those who knew Marcelo respected him. Marcelo survived the crash but died in an avalanche that occurred sixteen days afterwards, killing eight of the survivors. The avalanche buried the plane, and the survivors were stuck inside for three days before they dug their way out. During those three days, they were cut off from the bodies of those who had died in the crash. With no other option, they were forced to feed on the eight who had died in the avalanche.

The survivors don’t like to specify which bodies they ate, out of respect for the families of those who died, but we know at least some of those who died in the avalanche were consumed. Marcelo may have been one of them. Even though he had once been the leader of the team and a friend of many of the survivors, his friends had no choice but to do what they needed to survive. And during that conversation on the tenth day, those who were still alive had vowed that their bodies could be used by the others for food if they passed away first. Marcelo had known what his body would be used for, and he had offered it up so that his friends could live.

Had Fitzjames done something similar? In AMC’s The Terror, there is a scene where he tells Crozier to give his body to the men, but that’s a fictional version of what happened. We don’t know what really happened to him, or to most of the Franklin Expedition. But it’s possible he did offer himself up, that he knew he could still be of some use even after his death. The Andes flight disaster shows us the extremes people will go to in order to survive—but also, it shows us the compassion and selflessness that can occur in those extreme situations as well. We think of cannibalism as a terrible act, but the Andes survivors also viewed it as an act of love on their parts, to have offered themselves to each other, willing to have their bodies be cut open and eaten to save their friends.

We think of what happened to Fitzjames as brutal, especially considering the cut marks on his face suggest a particularly sad desperation as the remaining men ate whatever last bits of flesh they could find. And since there were no survivors, there is no happy ending where the men came home, haunted but alive. Looking at other instances of survival cannibalism, however, what those men did is understandable. Cannibalism is seen as uncivilized—the first reports of cannibalism among the Franklin Expedition were dismissed as ludicrous and obscene by Victorian society—but in times of desperation, even the most civilized of men know that it is the only practical recourse. Fitzjames may or may not have known that his body would be used for food, but he probably would not have faulted his men for what they did. They were hungry and they wanted to live.

[nigesakis]

In light of the Graham Gore book (The Ministry of Time) coming out on May 7th and a show adaption already greenlit, I think it's important to talk about the fact its about the historical Gore, not the AMC character. As far as I know, the author first was a Terror fan and then picked interest by seeing historical Gore's portrait, and then got into the historical information (and you probably couldn't write a whole book about the AMC character anyway, considering the little screentime). So, it's not a Terror fanfiction, but a book involving RP fanfiction.

Anyway, what I wanna talk about is that The Terror fandom, me included, has a problem with mixing the historical and fictional sides. The Terror is a work of fiction, the characters' personalities and their actions are fictional.

Especially Fitzjames, who is as fictional as Hickey is. He's mostly based on Battersby's "research", which we now know includes a lot of bullshit (the Barrow scandal apparently did not happen, for example). @jamesfitzjamesdotcom can probably tell you more about that than I can.

So, the thing is, if you wanted to write a book about Fitzjames, about Francis, Fitzier, Goodsir or basically any other character with screentime, and then say it's about the historical persons, you could not do it if your interest and knowledge is majorly based on or fueled by The Terror.

You couldn't mix AMC James and historical James together, because they are two different people. If you write about Fitzier with their characterisations from the show, you couldn't call it historical Fitzier; it'd be like writing Destiel and then saying it's Drarry. Or some other ship that has barely any canon content, because if you look at historical Fitzier, there's no Fitzier. Like writing about Bungo Stray Dogs and then saying its about historical Ozamu Dazai just 'cause they use his name and some character traits.

It's one thing to take historical lore and use it for The Terror fanfiction or headcanons. But you can't look at historical Fitzjames or other crew members and extend their AMC/Simmons counterparts onto them.

The Terror is an amazing show in itself, but it's not a biopic or historical show like HBO War is, for example. It's not a show that tries to represent the real people as they were, the expedition as it was, it's a work of fiction inspired by real events, subjectively interpreted and then fictionalised. So if you're interested in the real events, you can't just watch or read The Terror, because it doesn't represent them. It doesn't represent the people.

This fandom, again me included, needs to be more conscious of that when talking about the historical people and events.

Especially now, because the Gore book will most likely attract more people to watch/read The Terror and get into the Franklin Expedition. So it's important that when they get here, there's a clear, or at least clearer, cut between The Terror and the real history.

For example, not tagging historical FE content with "The Terror/The Terror AMC/terrorposting" (since the historical Terror would be HMS Terror it'd be a difference) is a start. Tagging the show/book content clearly with "Simmons/AMC/2018" somewhere, and not with "Franklin Expedition", is another way.