amundsenxcook - Tumblr blog

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I really like this thing The Terror does where no one ever kisses. At first I thought it was just being neo-Victorian, than it was about the vibes, but now I just think it's because as they said in interviews this show is about love between people and as a result they purposefully choose to only use elements that can be equally used to build romantic, platonic, familial and sexual relationships. If Bridgens and Peglar or Hickey and Gibson or Sophia and Francis kissed, their relationship would stand out, would be marked as special which is why they become worthy of a "bigger" gesture than their other relationships and that's the opposite of the point that The Terror is trying to make. Even Bridgens, who literally dies of a broken heart, is sobbing at James' deathbed that there will be poems. How people express love in The Terror is never differentiated in a way to imply that one kind of love is more important than the others.

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Found this on KnowYourMeme

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beattie was apparently asked A Lot if john torrington could be brought back to life someday with "some elixir or as yet unimagined technology" but he said torrington was too sick and had too much cell damage for that to happen. oh really owen. that's the only reason you can't bring this guy back to life. if not for the cell damage you'd be frankensteining him?

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to the ghost of henry peglar, congrats on writing your poem down 177 years ago!!!

to the actual academic scholars who have studied the pages before me....

so I took the royal museum greenwich's scan of the poem page (which is available online hereeee) and screwed around with its light levels in photoshop until henry's script was darkened enough to see more clearly. then I digitally traced over the darkened letters as best as I could, while also trying to discern his handwriting, and type up how I was reading it & this process took me about a week to get done between like... living my regular day to day life lmao.......

so when it WAS done, the final isabel acheronist peglar papers ["the open C"] transcript seemed a bit different than how I remembered the readily available russell potter transcript going ? (the poem is on the last two pages of that pdf for those of you who don't spend a billion hours a week looking at it btw)

it felt like I was getting more/different information out of it, compared to the potter transcript, which was kind of stressing me out honestly. so THEN I compared mine with barry cornwall's original poem and found more words that matched up? particularly in the second and third stanzas?

so!!!!! almost two hundred years later here's what I've landed on:

April 21 1847 the C the C the open ) ( it grew so fresh the Ever free the Ever free the Ever free without it without it covered it will Run to Earth above Re gions Round I love the C I love the C when I whare & I wish to be with and and silence whare Never go if a sailor should a Come and Make the meek What matter what matter Come Ride Or Sleep there was shores white and of red morn at the noisy hours knew I was ever near I was Born the [...] in felt Unto the Maid the wale the young dolphin ...... yet thes back of gold the Call of gods When I was on Old England Shore I like the young C more and more oftentimes time flew to a sweltering place like a bird thats seeks it mother Case and ware she was bird oft to me for have I loved a young and Hopen C

so then after going thru All Of That, I wanted to have a version of the original poem with parts that Henry did remember clearly highlighted for comparison purposes:

I know it's a popular theory that Henry was writing a dirty parody of the original poem? which if true, is funny as hell. me when i have to write cheeky victorian porn before i die.

But (serious voice) something about that hadn't ever seemed exactly right to me... IN MY HEART it seems more realistic that around 1847 he (and also by extension, the whole surviving expedition crew) were starting to experience confusion / brain fog symptoms from being ummmm quite physically unwell. the lead poisoning/scurvy combo would have severe effects on the brain's ability to function properly, and I started to wonder if Henry was trying to test his memory somehow? So he picked a widely known and popular Victorian era poem about being a sailor to see how much he could recall??? and he then got a little whimsical with it, and wrote in his own words to fill in the portions he couldn't fully recall, because it's his own diary and likely didn't expect anyone else to ever read it, much less have it turn into ONE of TWO surviving sources about the expedition?????

like... idk... this is probably the work of someone in the exact moment as they were starting to realize how bad things were, and then was trying to cope by using poetry. and That hurts my feelings enough as it is, but going through it was also just a very weird and haunting experience....... like, I can recognize all these tiny details in this dead guy's script and handwriting now. and to read his own account of his life in his own words, what stood out to him and what he recalled, what he wanted people in the future to know about him? insane. it literally felt like i was getting haunted by him for no reason. on top of knowing that Someone (#teamarmitage) loved this guy enough to keep his memory protected and safe, even though They Were So Totally Fucked And Going To Die There, unknowing if they'd ever be found again........

SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + CRYING A BIT HONESTLY

anyways thanks for reading this all. I don't think that this is revolutionary franklin expedition news by any means, and idk if there's a better different transcript somewhere that i've not found that already covers all this? but it's consumed a lot of my life lately lol and i wanted to share. because its the anniversary of henry writing it, and it felt...... important....? 💌....????

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175 years.

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Frederick Cook claimed he was the first to reach the North Pole on 21 April 1908. In 1937 he said "I have been humiliated & seriously hurt, but that doesn't matter anymore. What does matter to me, is that I want you to believe that I told the truth. I discovered the North Pole."

[Image: contemporary copy of a signed picture, my collection. Quote: Robert Bryce 'Cook & Peary', p. 729]

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did you guys know they put douglas mawson on the australian 100 dollar note for a bit. not sure what to do with this information

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hey, wanna know something cool?

a little over a century ago, the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton lost the ship Endurance when attempting to make a land crossing of the antarctic.

soon after, the ship would be crushed by the surrounding ice as it shifted, and it would sink about 10,000 feet to the sea floor.

BUT THEN

2 years ago, national geographic was able to locate the HMS endurance and found it in an incredibly well preserved state!

the leader of the expedition, Mensun Bound, said "This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation."

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Tell us your favourite fact or piece of information about a polar expedition

this is the one that comes up in conversation the most that the people i'm talking to (fellow polar nerds) don't know - but basically, one of my areas of interest is THIS mfer, Sir Clements Markham. now let it be known i don't like him or "stan" him by any means i think he's for the most part a terrible person lolol but i am fascinated by him and have done a lot of research into his life and work:

most people know him as the guy above, the *ahem* controversial old fogey who was more or less the driving force behind the british end of the heroic age of polar exploration. but when he was a teenager, and looked like THIS:

he was on one of the early Franklin search expeditions in 1850-51, on board the Assistance under Captain Ommanney, sister of the Resolute under Captain Austin. this was his last journey with the Royal Navy - he only lasted about five years, he wasn't really cut out for the lifestyle (except for the parts where he got have intense life-destroying crushes on his superior officers) - but it was definitely the most impactful. it left markham with a singular, youthful and optimistic impression as to what polar exploration was all about. homosocial camaraderie, midwinter entertainment, effortful manhauling, geographical discovery, honor and bravery in service to the Empire. et cetera. (can you see where this eventually is going?)

this myth-through-experience grew and grew over his adult life as he worked his way up through the imperial bureaucracy, first at the India Office and later at the Royal Geographical Society, which was to be his most long-lasting professional association.

he participated in the organization of the Nares expedition in 1875, but when that was a resolute failure he bided his time until the 1890s, when support for antarctic discovery began to grow amongst the scientific establishment.

during the time that he was working on drumming up support for what would eventually become Scott's first expedition on the Discovery, in the mid-to-late 1890s, he was working on a, let's say, "private manual of devotion." this was a lengthy manuscript with an equally lengthy title:

James Fitzjames: the story of the friendship, devoted zeal for the service, high souled courage, self denial, and heroic deaths of 129 British Naval Officers and Seamen - A Romance based on information and on facts so authentic and so numerous that it must be very near to the truth.

as you can probably tell already. this was a piece of work. its first few chapters are indeed "based on information" - biographies of Franklin and his officers, often using details Markham received secondhand from men he'd met who actually knew them. (apparently he went around asking everyone he ever met if they'd known anyone on the FE and could they tell him about them which, relatable)

but then after the ships leave Disko and the historical record, the story turns to pure fancy. markham is, as you may have noticed from the title, absolutely obsessed with James Fitzjames to a psychosexual level. he was the "beau ideal" of an officer to Markham. (they never met!!! i might emphasize!!!!!) according to good old clem, if Fitzjames had been in charge of the expedition entire, it would never have perished - the fate that befell them was due to Franklin and Crozier's aged stiffness and inability to adapt.

going into detail about the rest of this frankly bonkers fanfiction would take ALL DAY i swear to god BUT highlights include: a self-insert character named "Baby" who swears fealty to Fitzjames, at least three midwinter theatricals described in detail incl. crossdressing, egregious and disgusting racism against the inuit, pop culture references, a complete and hilarious mix-up of the expedition ranks due to clem not having access to the full roster (jopson as caulker's mate!!!!), and of course lots and LOTS of men dying piously and nigh-erotically in each others' arms. of course there is no cannibalism whatsoever and the men are devoted to the naval hierarchy until the very end.

anyway, the fetishization of youth and inexperience which is visible in the story is quite glaringly tied to markham's selection of scott for the 1901 expedition. at the very least subconsciously, he wanted to recreate the FE with a "Fitzjames" in charge, thinking that would be the key to success.

and to that we can only say: LO fucking L.

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reading up on other polar expeditions and stuff after watching the terror is so crazy. like what do you mean there was a captain who died after probably being poisoned by the ships doctor??? what do you mean the first guy confirmed to have set foot on the north pole got there via snowmobile???

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Julieanne Kost Antarctica, 2016.

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thinking about this every single day.

Amundsen visiting Cook in prison.

GRRRR grrrr GrRrGGr im So NORMal AbOuT ThiS

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Polly Townsend (British, b.1977)

Antarctica works

Oil on canvas

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The fact that fred cook isn't a national folk hero haunts me. He literally lived the american dream... committed colonialism AND pyramid schemes.... lied frequently and extravagantly... had adventures with his boy bestie... staged dramatic public marital troubles so his wife could legally divorce him and keep his money before he went to jail (feminism actually)... Where is his monument. Where are the "fred cook did nothing wrong" bumper stickers. Why is he not an icon of the crypto community. All these questions and more i ask myself every single day.

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Ok literally yes they were. Like did you know that you can do a virtual tour of amundsen's house exactly as he left it when he yeeted himself into the void and prominently featured in his sitting room is the tablecloth that fred cook EMBROIDERED FOR HIM in PRISON!!!!!!!!

That is TRUE LOVE!!!!

Also honestly julian sancton is such a deep understander. Every paragraph he writes about them in madhouse makes me insane. Look at these two this is BOYFRIEND BEHAVIOR

and then there's the literal final paragraph of the book which is purely just fred imagining roald might still be alive out there in the north after disappearing ha ha ha IM FINE THIS ISNT PIERCING MY HEART AT ALL

anyway stan cookmundsen

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in the most desperate moment of his life amundsen chose to write cook a letter….

(transcript of amundsens letter:)

december 29th 1926

dear dr cook,

thank you so much for your last article. i should have written you long ago, but have been rather busy.

i want to wish you a happy year and should i come in the vicinity of fort leavenworth on my lecturetour you may rest assured i will look you up.

kindest regards,

yours very sincerely

roald amundsen