The Terror Frozen In Time

By Dan Simmons

By Owen Beattie and John Geiger



Consider this. Two sailing ships set off to find the Northwest Passage. Other than a few ships along the way outbound no one ever hears from them again. After the time they were expected to return to England passes more expeditions are launched to go find them. Finally years later some evidence is found. But what killed them? Did they get lost? Starve? Eat each other? Go crazy? Did they find the Northwest Passage? Now ask yourself, how would you want to read about this tale. Would you want only the known facts? Would you want a story that tries to fill in some of the blanks but kept to the facts as much as possible? Or would you like a novel that takes a real situation and runs wild with it? All I can say is that put together you can get a pretty complete picture of what may have happened with a strong sense of what life on the sailing ships was like. Separate, both books leave you wanting.

Years ago I saw a TV special (probably about the expedition that Frozen in Time is written about) that introduced me to the Franklin Expedition and how they were killed by the canned food they brought with them. Years go by and I discover an interest for Polar stories and the BAM out comes The Terror. My wife actually read a review of the book first and thought it sounded like something I would like to read. She told me about it. So I gave it a go. No small feat at almost 800 pages.

The Terror is the name of the ship. I loved the attention to detail throughout the book. Now I’m not a fan of sailing, or the ocean, but I love reading about all things nautical. And nautical is one thing this book has going for it. From describing the different positions of the men, the hierarchy, how the ship is loaded, rations, this one has it all. It also has a shit load of characters. Now I realize that sailing ships had large crews and we have two ships in this story, but in a book, well it was overwhelming. It didn’t help that some characters were mentioned only once; some were mentioned on one page by their name, on another by their position and ship. Also at the beginning of the story, the book focuses on so many of the different characters, with a healthy dose of flashback (not that I minded the flashbacks, they added to fill out the story) it is hard to know who to think of as the main characters.

So I did what any slightly crazy person would do. I made a crib sheet to keep everyone straight. But then I gave up, after filling a sheet full on both sides of names, writing small and adding multiple names per line, filling the margins, etc. . . Yeah I gave up because after 700 pages there were still new characters showing up!

Okay, I really enjoyed The Terror. It had a captivating story, great detail, hero’s to root for - watch for Capt. Crozier, villains - Cornelius and Magnus (wonder what their descendants think of how they are portrayed), a crazy part on the ice that imitated Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Even the supernatural polar bear type creature that was killing off the crew didn’t bother me, that much. I love the last 100 or so pages where Capt. Crozier goes native and joins the locals. No, only two things were nagging me the whole time. WTF is it about the girl always being a virgin and the author describing how the character having sex with said girl knows that she is a virgin? ? ? Also, how much of this story is real. I mean does any one know what happened? Did they pull the row boats overland? Was there a boat headed back to where the ships were frozen in the pack ice? Why didn’t they leave more messages in the cylinders that they brought for just that purpose?

Thank god for Frozen in Time. The book chronicles the researchers as they journey up north to find leftover evidence from the Franklin expedition that set sail in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage. Even after so many years and other expeditions in the area (where they took items as souvenirs or survival) they still found evidence. A few bodies of members from the crew were recovered. The researchers found and examined 3.

Things we take for granted today did them in. Canned food. Or Tinned food from Stephen Goldner. I think nothing of opening up a can of food and eating it. Growing up my dad used to freak out if a can was dented (You’ll get botulism, he’d shout, like yelling that out answered why you don’t use a dented can) yeah I do the same thing to my wife if she tries to buy a dented can in the store, oh well. Well back in the 1800’s when canned goods were first coming into fashion, you didn’t go to a store to buy them, or at least not in the quantities the Franklin expedition needed. No you ordered them. Well to save money, they cheaped out and picked the lowest bidder, who also guaranteed the cans in the shortest about of time. After placing the order the food was then gathered and canned. So probably some of the food wasn’t cooked correctly and went rancid. Either they ate the bad food which made them sick or they tossed it and it aided in their starvation. But also the soldering of the cans, which Stephen Goldner had a patented process for (that was a good method but not executed properly) was done poorly. How poorly. Well it is thought that too much lead was used as a wetting agent for the solder, combined with a poor job of soldering. As a result lead ended up inside the cans as deposits along the inside. Of the crew members’ bodies that were exhumed, evidence of lead was found in their hair at extremely high levels compared to current times. The lead in the hair is also evidence that they were exposed to lead during the voyage as it shows recent exposure. So in the end the food that was to keep them alive did them in. That sucks.

After reading about the great explorers in the 19th century I’ve decided that the British Gentleman Explorers may have had the proper attitude to conquer the world, but that nature and poor supplies (including poor choice of what to supply yourself with) did them in every time.