James on rollerskates!

Fitz Fact Day 15: James Fitzjames was also mauled by his own ships cheetah when it alarmed one of the crew. He decided to step in and distract the beast by pulling on its tail. Note that he was still healing from being shot by a sniper. The crew, Le Vesconte included had to beat the poor cheetah off of their Captain and thankfully he wasn’t too hurt by the incident.

By your count, how many time did poor fitz just barely avoid dying. Like, 12 right

12 near sightings with death, maybe more

Basic math isn’t my strong suit plus it really depends on how you’d define barely avoiding dying but (that i know of): 1) sick list on the St. Vincent for several weeks in 1834 (knee trouble apparently treated with leeches, including it because it wasn’t specified & dragged on for weeks, haven’t seen an exact date), 2) St. Vincent almost wrecked in February 1834, 3) diving into the Mersey to save that drowning man in the middle of winter (2/1/1835), 4) saved another man from drowning during the Euphrates expedition (4/1835), 5) brain fever (spring 1835), 6) malaria (spring 1835), 7) cholera (spring 1835), 8) malaria with broken leg (shivering prevented the break from healing etc. etc., spring 1835), 9) Euphrates & Tigris caught in a squall, 20 men dead (5/21/1835), 10) Euphrates threatened by several thousand armed residents of Hillah (after May 31st 1836), 11) Euphrates fired on with muskets at El-Khudr, 12) Euphrates almost wrecked on the Shatt el-Arab river, 13) held at gunpoint by 30 men and robbed and taken captive (10/31/1836 - 11/8/1836), 14) received civilly in Diwaniya which immediately came under siege (November 16th or 17th), 15) snuck into an Egyptian camp during the Egyptian-Ottoman war to distribute an officer’s proclamation to try & convince Egyptian soldiers to desert (debatable whether or not you’d call this a brush with death because he doesn’t seem to have had any issues. Possibly 9/1840?) 16) three killed and 20 wounded during the bombardment of Wusong (6/16/1842), 17) musket to the backbone while possibly leading an assault at Zhenjiang (7/1842), 18) mauled by pet cheetah (1844), 19) publicly humiliated by Francis Crozier who knew Erebus ice master James Reid was sailing them in the wrong direction & opted not to say anything (early July 1845.) Everything roughly in that order

In German we say “this person is unkaputtbar” and I think that’s beautiful.

Oh wait, there was that Arctic expedition. Damn.

And, If I remember from the Battersby book, he also nearly ‘choked to death’ while 'skylarking’ in the Gunroom of H.M.S Madagascar with John Boyd. As you do.