“a Grand Nautical Drama”
“a grand nautical drama”
On their illustrious 1841 return from a successful first season in the Antarctic which marked Ross’ discovery of his eponymous 200 foot tall ice shelf (among other finds including an impressive amount of dead bird specimens) Captains Crozier and Ross were treated to a well-meaning, but by all accounts tooth-pullingly painful theatrical production by Hobart’s enthusiastic dramatic society.
Both Crozier and Ross politely (and wisely) declined to appear. Eleanor Franklin, daughter of Sir John, was not allowed to attend as her father “did not approve of the theatre,” but heard enough to recount to a friend that the most unbelievable exaggeration was that “Sir John had hair!”
It was so bad that surgeon Robert McCormick who had chosen to make an appearance and no doubt regretted it, gratefully concealed himself in a curtained box seat until it was over.
The Grand Ball hosted on Erebus and Terror–gorgeously bedecked in mirrors, steel bayonet chandeliers, with Erebus’ deck cleared as a dance floor and Terror groaning to the gunwales with food, claret, champagne, and port–no doubt made up for it. 300 guests and both captains danced until six in the morning. The Hobart Town Advertiser gushed that it was ‘quite impossible for any fete to have been more elegant and tasteful.” It became known throughout Hobart as “The Glorious First of June.”
The next day they “cleaned up the Wreck” with the worst hangovers of their lives.
More Posts from Flurries-and-frost and Others
I believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity because I have seen the Polar Exploration and Age of Sail enthusiasts.
Ghost Ship - or barque Europa in dense fog, Photo: Brendan Byrne
A football or rugby game between sailors and officers, in front of HMS Terror, during the Back arctic expedition 1836, by first lieutenant William Smyth 1836
Hi, I’m new here. Here’s a little ship with some tall icebergs.
Inside Siberia’s isolated community of forgotten women. Photographed by Oded Wagenstein.
“In the remote village of Yar-Sale in Northern Siberia, live a group of elderly women. They were once part of a nomadic community of reindeer herders. However, in their old age, they spend most of their days in seclusion, isolated from the world they loved and their community. While men are usually encouraged to remain within the migrating community and maintain their social roles, the women often face the struggles of old age alone.It took a flight, a sixty-hour train ride from Moscow, and a seven-hour bone-breaking drive across a frozen river to meet them. I immersed myself in their closed community, and for days, over many cups of tea, they shared their stories, lullabies, and longings with me.On this series, the memories of the past, represented by the images of the outside world, are combined with the portraits of current reality.
By doing so, I tried to give their stories a visual representation. One that could last after they are already gone.
(*Like Last Year’s Snow is a Yiddish expression – referring to something which is not relevant anymore)”
- Oded Wagenstein
Rankin Inlet in a snowstorm, october 2017
sientists won't stop texting me asking for my ideas + research
Frank Hurley :: Sclater penguin, from [Exhibition of pictures taken during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition and other photographic studies], 1911-1914 / src: State Library of New South Wales
more [+] by this photographer
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