Boothia Peninsula

Go for broke, Blanky had advised, agreeing with Captain Crozier that they needed to turn tail while there were still the slightest open leads, needed to seek out open water as close to the Boothia Peninsula as fast as they could steam that long-ago September.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

While this area was strange to him — as far as Blanky knew, no ship had ever sailed this far south of Lancaster Sound and so near to King William Land before, nor sailed so far west of Boothia Peninsula — most of the terrible arctic conditions were as familiar to him as a summer in Kent where he was born.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

And then we'd have to cross the whole Boothia Peninsula with all its mountains and obstacles to get to the east coast where the whalers might be.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

“I know you're aware, Captain, that in 1829, Sir John Ross and his nephew James sailed their ship Victory down the east coast of Boothia Felix — the peninsula they discovered and which we now call Boothia Peninsula.”

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

And with the mostly uncharted bulk of arctic Canada to their south, King William Land to their southwest, and Boothia Peninsula beyond their reach to the east and nor'east, there was no real ice drift here — as Crozier's and Fitzjames's and Reid's and Blanky's repeated sun and star sextant readings kept telling them — just a sickening pivot around a fifteen-mile circumference.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

Even so, Francis Crozier would have preferred to have wagered everything on a dash straight across the ice — northeast over the worst of the pack ice in a mad attempt to replicate the astounding 600-mile small-group sledge trip made by his friend James Clark Ross eighteen years earlier when the Fury was frozen in on the opposite side of the Boothia Peninsula.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

Still, Crozier would have preferred staying in the northern latitudes and going the longer distance east and north to Boothia Peninsula and then across it.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

Right up until the crushing of Erebus on the last day of March, Crozier had hopes that they could set off for the east coast of the Boothia Peninsula, the possible stores there at Fury Beach, and the probable sighting by whalers coming in from Baffin Bay.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

A much shorter and surer route to rescue than going south, he knows, would be to head due east from here across the ice before the ice pack opens for the summer — if it opens at all — hunting and trapping as he goes, then crossing the Boothia Peninsula to its eastern coast, traveling north to Fury Beach or the old expedition sites there.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

From the east toward the Boothia Peninsula — no open water.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007