They also perhaps have more common sense than the rest of the officers put together. These two are deeply flawed - particularly the alcoholic Crozier - yet are, in my opinion, the most likeable and interesting characters in the story. Two of the main characters are Francis Crozier, captain of HMS Terror, and Harry Goodsir, surgeon aboard HMS Erebus. The result is the grim death of almost every single character. Simmons chooses a variety of characters to tell a story of an incompetent Royal Navy, numerous bad decisions, failure for the Victorian explorers to work with the native Inuit people or understand the Arctic environment, finally leading to the abandonment of both ships and an attempt to haul boats over the frozen sea. As an historical novel, The Terror is masterful. Little is known about the last days of the sailors and officers of these vessels, although evidence points towards a lingering end from starvation, scurvy and cannibalism. Both ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were lost with all hands (a total of 129 casualties). The Terror tells the story of the John Franklin Arctic expedition, which took place in the mid–1840s with the objective of finding the Northwest Passage. This is a very good book, but not quite as good as I hoped it would be.
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