#about: franklin

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire

[dreamaruu]

Hello RvBGTBQ+ community

[ehhgg-art]

thank you red vs blue. you were the greatest show ever, of all time.

[cashmere-caveman]

putting the franklin back in franklin expedition 2k24 (x) + bonus frauncis at the funeral in question:

[jeyneofpoole]

my favorite anecdote about the franklin expedition ever. brother we are going the wrong way!!!!

[great-and-small]

I don’t know who “Brennen Lee Mulligan” is (google says comedian?) but based on the way his name is always invoked on specific personal posts of mine I am going to go ahead and theorize that he is…

1. passionate about birds

2. bad at identifying them

and while I deeply wish I could deny the second half of that assumption to myself, my weakness in gull identification suggests it is probably a fair comparison

[representative-democracy]

Cornelius Hickey is God's least favourite passenger princess

[prev] [next]

+ more cringe-fail hickey

[reality-detective]

[rondoel]

Looked into my folder and there was so much of them! 😭

[muchtodoonterror]

it's 3:30am so please excuse this post which is going to feature decapitation and cannibalism and emotions so content warning for those

but i keep seeing people say they've identified fitzjames' body, but they haven't! they've identified not even his skull but his jawbone. his lower mandible with cut marks. and yes the "they ate his face" jokes are right there for the taking, but probably more likely they in fact cut his head off first specifically so they wouldn't have to look at his face while they carried out their task of butchery. and if they were making use of the head....that's the direst of all, because it's the most individual part, it's the part they would have least wanted to consume. there are so few skeletons that were found in their original arrangement so i know it's not necessarily telling, but presuming that they did cut off his head, it really hits home to me even more that all we have identified is his jaw. not even his "face". certainly not a body. his actual body could be somewhere far distant or nowhere because all that's left is this part because these men who he lived in incredibly close quarters with for so long were forced to do the unthinkable to a man who was widely liked and considered an emblem of vitality and who they served under for years. he did funky little drawings in his letter margins and got excited about goodsir's sea creatures and had served with some of these men not just on erebus but for years before!!! he personally hired many of them (which maybe they were not so glad of anymore) because he knew and liked and trusted t hem. maybe they tried to bury his head with dignity to give at least part of him a christian burial. maybe not. but there's something deeply lonely about a jawbone. . . . with cut marks.

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

I will forever and always mourn the fact that we never got to see the shenanigans of Wash and the Reds with the Feds especially these specific reds like my god

So to fill the gap in my heart, i’ve decided to do my own shenanigans with them! Because they deserve it!! I want them to cause problems! Ok and its an excuse to have them interact with my silly little fed ocs i can confess that much

[kadoemida]

they all have beautiful princess disorder

[entwinedmoon]

40 years ago today, on August 10, 1984, a scientific team led by anthropologist Owen Beattie arrived on Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic. They intended to exhume and autopsy the three members of the Franklin Expedition buried there. They spent that first day setting up temporary living quarters and exploring the area. In a little over a week, they would come face to face with the preserved remains of John Torrington…

[dykedvonte]

If I was Hancock me and the other companions would have been fighting cause everyone has something to say about how awful Goodneigbor. One of you was literally living there cause he’s a broke bitch. One was living in a raider shit hole, half of y’all don’t live anywhere or in bigotry town and then there’s fucking Strong.

Like at least Goodneighbor is tight knit and the drugs are free like sorry your house/settlement is boring me and Hancock are gonna go get fucked up and find a dead historical figure’s old fit for me this time.

[cockroachesunite]

I think this one speaks for itself

[butchsaint]

i just noticed that silna’s carving of the ship was very similar to the current condition of erebus (its masts have been broken off by passing ice)