James Fitzjames, Captain
H.M.S. Erebus.
F. R. M. Crozier,
Captain and Senior Officer.
And start on to-morrow 26th for Back’s Fish River.
On the 26th, in the early morning, preparations were made for a start. The men had much less strength than they supposed. Much had to be left behind. The boat’s cooking apparatus, shovel, pickaxe, canvas, blankets, even Hornby’s sextant, a dip circle, the doctor’s medicine chest, and a pile of warm clothing were left, the latter making a heap four feet high.
Even thus lightened the boats were still much too heavy. Many of the men dropped and died; Crozier probably succumbed early at the cape which now bears his name, where a grave was found. A few reached Todd Island with one boat. The other had been left, full of a great variety of things, near Cape Crozier. The survivors crossed the strait and reached the bay formed by the long promontory ending at Cape Richardson. A few wandered inland. All perished. When the ice loosened the Erebus sank. The Terror was drifted on to the American coast, and ransacked by the Eskimos. Then a gale drove her off the rocks into deep water, and she too sank.
A veil should be drawn over the last struggles of brave men fighting cold, disease, and hunger. One likes to think that Captain Fitzjames, the chivalrous, the sympathetic, the dauntless leader, was perhaps the last,—that he tended them all and saw them all depart before him; and that then
His soul to him who gave it rose
God led it to its long repose
Its glorious rest.
And though Fitzjames’s sun has set