![]() As always, there are far more officer sources (notably here Robert McCormick and the genius naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker) than those of regular seamen. The prose style is fluent, though Palin might have allowed himself more jokes and fewer anachronisms (“on all accounts a bit of a drip” “there was no plan B”). ![]() Plucky Inuit recount meetings with starving white men who stagger around after their ships have sunk It is an epic story, full of appalling human suffering (everyone died) and one constantly revised as fresh discoveries float to the surface. It is a well-known tale, replete with human bones in kettles, plucky Inuit recounting meetings with starving white men who stagger around after their ships have sunk and the efforts of Lady Jane Franklin (she of the terrible handwriting, to anyone that has researched the archives) to dispatch rescue ships. That story begins two-thirds of the way through Palin’s book. It was Franklin who later captained Erebus on its final mission (by then installed with a steam-driven, screw-propeller system), a doomed assault on the Northwest Passage, the fabled trade route to the riches of Cathay, again accompanied by the loyal Terror. On its way south, the three-masted Erebus had stopped off at Tasmania, then Van Diemen’s Land, and met the useless Lt Governor John Franklin. They didn’t make their goal of the south magnetic pole but, writes Palin, “never again, in the annals of the sea, would a ship, under sail alone, come close to matching what she and Terror had achieved”. It is hard to imagine what the Erebus crew thought and felt as they sailed along the 30-metre (98ft) high ice cliffs of this shelf the size of France.Įrebus and Terror were the first sailing ships to break through the pack and the first to discover that an Antarctic continent existed. The crew enjoyed a double allowance of rum to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. In September 1839, accompanied by HMS Terror, it dropped her pilot off Deal in Kent and spent four years on an Antarctic adventure, where the dashing James Clark Ross captained her to the Barrier, or the Ross ice shelf as it was then known. Erebus spent two years patrolling the Mediterranean “to annoy the Turks”, then its life as a warship ended. ![]() After Waterloo, the navy was at a loose end. Erebus was never actually directly mentioned in the series.Palin is strong on historical context.It is sometimes used interchangeably with Tartarus. In some stories, Erebus is a region of the Underworld where the dead had to pass immediately after dying. It was quite easy for a god-emperor like him to call back his followers. When Apollo questioned how the Germani that Nero had with him were here despite being from ancient times, Nero responded that souls always escaped from Erebos even before Gaea commandeered the Doors of Death. Percy sees the place Erebos in the distance as he makes his way towards the River Styx after escaping from Hades' Palace. Percy Jackson sees the part of the Underworld called Erebos while he is on Charon's barge when he enters the Underworld for the first time. Percy Jackson and the Olympians The Lightning Thief
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |