The Terror Trivia: Episode 1

In honor of The Terror beginning to air on BBC 2 tomorrow night, I’m going to be doing a series of “pop-up” trivia posts for first-time (and repeat) watchers. Feel free to read them on their own, or have them open to read along with while you’re watching. Without further ado, here’s a guide to “Go For Broke” !

(I’m using the timestamps on my download, which may not line up to other versions online). 

[02:02] Sir James Ross was a legendary British polar explorer of the 19th century. He accompanied his uncle Sir John Ross on numerous expeditions before commanding his own voyage to Antarctica in 1839, and later a search expedition for Franklin.

[03:49] The north magnetic pole, which is separate from the geographic North Pole and moves over time, was first located by Sir James Ross in 1831. Compass needles are affected by it, making navigation difficult. 

[05:03] Captain Francis Crozier is being attended to by his steward Thomas Jopson. Allsopp’s is a reference to Allsopp’s Arctic Ale, the pale ale favored by polar expeditions for its high alcohol and caloric content, which resisted freezing.

[06:15] Neptune the dog was described in a letter sent home by a lieutenant early in the expedition as “the most loveable dog I ever knew, and [a] general favourite.”

[07:00] James Fitzjames is recounting a story of his participation in the First Opium War of 1839-42. The details of the story come directly from the (quite mediocre) 10,000-word poem that the historical Fitzjames wrote about the experience, which was published anonymously in the Nautical Magazine. 

[08:26] Sir James Ross refused the position of commander of the expedition because he was newly married to his wife Ann. Francis Crozier had acted as his second-in-command on the successful Antarctic expedition from 1839-1843. 

[08:53] An AB is an Able Seaman, the more senior rank of ordinary sailors. Royal Navy ships of the era included detachments of Royal Marines, who were soldiers responsible for the security of the ship’s officers and the enforcement of discipline in the ship’s crew. 

[10:29] “The three who died at Beechey” were stoker John Torrington, AB John Hartnell, and Marine Private William Braine. Their graves were discovered on Beechey Island by Franklin searchers in 1851, and proved that the expedition had wintered there from 1845-46. Modern investigations have proved they all died of tuberculosis, or as Dr. McDonald refers to it, consumption. 

[15:39] A growler is a small iceberg or piece of drift ice that is barely visible above the surface of the water. 

[17:21] Sophia Cracroft first met Francis Crozier in 1840, when the Antarctic Expedition was wintering in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) where her uncle Sir John Franklin was serving as governor. 

[21:38] Welsh wigs are the knitted caps worn by the men and officers. The pattern was popular amongst soldiers, workers, and polar explorers throughout the 19th century. 

[24:12] In a letter home before the expedition departed, Harry Goodsir described Dr. Stephen Stanley as “the only idle hand […] who appears to spend the greater part of his time reading novels in bed.”

[25:41] Leads are the name for the lanes of open water that appear between ice floes as they diverge or shear. 

[27:52] In the 80s, a team lead by Owen Beattie exhumed the body of John Hartnell from its grave on Beechey Island to try and determine cause of death, and discovered that he had already been autopsied—possibly by Harry Goodsir.  

[32:24] The Franklin Expedition was not the first polar expedition to attempt a partially steam-powered journey—Sir John Ross’s Victory had an engine, but it caused so much trouble that it was dumped on the shore after the first winter in 1830. 

[33:24] Crozier makes reference to Sir John Franklin’s disastrous Coppermine expedition (1819-22), which made him a household name in polar exploration but included the deaths of 11 of his 22 men as well as accusations of murder and cannibalism. The men who survived did so because they ate lichen off of rocks as well as their own shoe leather, leading to Franklin’s nickname “the man who ate his boots.” 

[45:15] In the last glimpse of the theater flashback, we see for just a moment James Fitzjames seated alongside young George Barrow and his father, Sir John Barrow, the elderly Second Secretary of the Admiralty responsible for sending the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic. 

with op’s permission, i’ll be adding these notes as well. the timestamps might vary, but i’ve put lines and descriptors.

[04:10] terror’s signalling, sir john. terror’s flags, as seen through the spyglass, are using the marryat flag system. each flag pertains to a number and each series of numbers pertains to an idea. the flags read 4385-stop-4372. in the marryat system, 4385 means ignorant / ignorantly / ignorance; and 4372 means ice. taken together, it means ignorance of ice, or a request for an ice report. source

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part 2 bc i hit the limit!

[33:39] the exact shape of king william land is unknown. at this point, the ships are approaching kwl from the north. they have two options: sail along its western side, where there’s visibly heavy pack ice, or its eastern side, where there’s less ice but it could be a dead end. francis proposes that they avoid the heavy ice and take a chance that the eastern side has a clear passage (it has). if it is a dead end, at least they can avoid getting beset in the western side and make a safe retreat in the spring.

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