“I was limited to 12 lines to speak of his services. It was hardly possible to say the thousandth part of what I should have like to have said of one I so truly loved.“
–James Clark Ross, writing to Eleanor Franklin Gell about Francis Crozier, 1855
man you know what i think about a lot, re: the 1829 victory expedition finally being saved by whalers who couldn’t believe who they’d found because “captain ross has been dead these two years”
how was crozier doing while both james ross and blanky were presumed dead
Also, it just occurred to me–some of Crozier’s former shipmates (or expedition-mates at least, they weren’t all on the same ship) did actually die around the same time. Henry Foster (lieutenant on Hecla in 1824-5), George Lyon (captain of Hecla in 1821-23), and Henry Hoppner (lieutenant on Hecla in 1821-23, captain of Fury in 1824-5) all died between 1831 and 1833.
Meanwhile George Ross (Dad Of The Century) was moving to organize a search mission, with good ol’ George Back in charge. It would be be interesting to see if Crozier had any correspondence with either of them at the time!
Crozier was on duty off of Portugal at the time - there certainly hasn’t been enough written about that period of his life - so his ability to follow the news and be involved in any search plans would have been limited, but he certainly could have had SOME contact.
What I think about a lot is that it would be great to have Ross and Crozier’s correspondence form 1833-1835, once Ross was back in England but Crozier was still on assignment. I can’t imagine Ross wouldn’t have written to him, given the fact they were pretty much joined at the hip once they were both able to be in the same place again.
Ross could have chosen anyone to be his second on the Cove in 1836; he had spent four years getting to know how all his shipmates on the Victory handled time in the Arctic, after all. He could have chosen any of them for the Antarctic in 1839 as well; but he chose Crozier for both.
They had been separated for six years - four while Ross was away and then “missing,” and then two while Ross conducted his magnetic survey of the UK and Crozier was in Portugal. And yet for all that, despite everyone Ross had interacted with and all the new people he met, he STILL chose Crozier.
We don’t even need any of their correspondence to infer what their letters and then their reunion must have been like, or how it must have pained Crozier to hear that people thought Ross was dead. But imagine having it! How much of his experience would Ross have written about, and how did he frame it since he could only write it, not tell him in person?* And how long were Crozier’s letters? Did he talk about the mission he was on (which seems to have been diplomatic and kind of secretive)? Did he ramble on with his characteristic displays of honesty and emotion? Just thinking of his letters from before and after, and remembering how much he worried at Ross going on a sledge journey to the North Pole in 1827, while Crozier stayed behind with the ship (“I cannot express the mingled sensations I felt the day I parted from you…”) says quite a bit.
* An aside, regarding Ross telling Crozier about his experiences on the Victory: I was thinking earlier about how the date given for “Ross’s Cairn” on the 1848 addition to the Victory Point Record is incorrect. The record was written by James Fitzjames, but Crozier read and signed it, but did not correct the date. In the grand scheme of the abandonment of ErebusandTerror, that date may not have mattered so much, but for a great friend of Ross to not notice and correct the error … I ended up wondering if that was because Crozier himself did not know! Not knowing the date suggests to me that maybe he didn’t read John Ross’s official narrative of the voyage, but instead heard it all from James, and what he heard would have been personal and filled with anecdotes and experiences, not dates of the building of cairns.
**And, for those of you who really want to feel sad today…
It has not escaped my notice that “James Dear” seems to have been an endearment that comes up late in their friendship. From the letters I’ve been able to read, Crozier used it after their time apart, but not before. This could be just a fluke from scarcity of material, but it is possible that it developed sometime between Ross’s period of disappearance and Antarctica. It seems to me their closeness was indeed strengthened by this period of presumed death.
“I was limited to 12 lines to speak of his services. It was hardly possible to say the thousandth part of what I should have like to have said of one I so truly loved.“
–James Clark Ross, writing to Eleanor Franklin Gell about Francis Crozier, 1855
Ross is in the great cabin doing the 19th century equivalent of putting his headphones on and wondering if it was wise to offer his own cabin to the recovering captains.
