Morbidboats - What The Hap Is Fuckening - Tumblr Blog

my therapist had to listen to me talk about the franklin expedition for most of the session yesterday what have y'all done to me

sir that is my emotional support historical disaster wikipedia article

it honestly is wild though that the Donner Party and the Franklin expedition both happened at roughly the same time. possibly even the very same year. that’s just funny to me. truly the world’s fair of survival cannibalism.

getting a “Just Eat” youtube ad during a documentary on the donner party is wild

been seeing homies get deep into "the terror" and making me want to rewatch SO i spent two hours in the dead of night reading the wiki/the subreddit/other linked articles and like. one of those articles was deadass fucked up

there was a woman who spoke inuktitut who was writing a book containing a lot of inuit oral histories, and in nunavut she was able to hear passed-down recollections of when survivors from the franklin expedition were passing through

and like. i can't imagine being an inuit family/group, knowing that europeans exist but having never seen them, seeing 8-9 shambling, blue-skinned, cold-to-the-touch out-of-their-minds white men come wandering by. they invited the men inside their igloos for warmth, for food, to be hospitable. the men refused to eat, refused to speak, and when trade was offered, clutched their possessions close and refused to entertain the idea of trade. this was, offputting, to say the least. the group set them up in their own igloo, with their own fire, and left three whole seals for them to eat. and then they fled cause what the FUCK get out of there. they came back in a few days to check on the strangers. the three seals were completely untouched, while all of the men had killed and eaten each other

i mean. fuck dude. there are obviously pretty dark angles to view the franklin expedition from– honestly can't think of a good angle, it's pure colonialism and british exceptionalism– but that specific interaction, that inuit group who were living lives as normal until a dozen fucking walking dead showed up and did cannibalism. no wonder that story got passed down, i'd be shitting my pants if i saw that

personal blurb ahead 

this may not be very coherent bc I'm exhausted but honestly opening myself up to this interest (clusterfuck arctic expeditions, and arctic stuff in general) being something I rlly genuinely want to get more into has felt so so wonderful, like coming home in a way, and I could not for the life of me figure out why. I've lived in a lush desert all my life, I've never been there. and it certainly wasn't the cannibalism aspect, ya know? even tho historical horror is fascinating. so I puzzled over it and it hit me like a tidal wave today as to why. 

when I was little (like. very little. maybe six) I fell in love with Balto, the movie, and through that, the arctic. like I saw it in planet earth and stuff later but it was mainly balto. I remember trying to beg my parents to take me to alaska, which they didn't bc (their words) it was too cold in the winter and too many mosquitoes in the summer, and rhey were afraid I wouldn't like it. but it stuck in my mind and my heart for years. and then it didn't.

I've been through a lot of nonsense, and as a result of trauma and other stuff I often feel this void where it feels like connection should be, and not just in regard to not remembering (tho that is also a thing). I remember some stuff about my childhood, but sometimes it just feels flat or absent or only scary and I feel like my child self was killed and I was what came after, like some kind of ghost haunting my own life. 

that lil kid who wanted to prance around in snowboots and a big coat and hat and look at all the snow and ice and animals and arctic culture and stuff didn't die. when it clicked I just burst into tears and thought 'she isn't dead, I didn't kill her'. there's some part of me that is the same, is sharing, and yearns for similar things. 

so thank you all for talking abt this show and topic so much. You made me feel less wierd about reading about it which made me feel something so lovely. (and I am enjoying it in general! lol. like regardless)

I may not be around much, bc of my disability it's astronomically hard to type right now and I can look at very little, but yeah. very thankful for the space y'all have created ❤️

Nah. I think we'll wait a few exits before we think about stopping for food. Thanks anyway,

Rust in vrede, Willem Barentsz.  A navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer, Barentsz ultimately died (on this date in 1597 in his mid-40s) while on his third voyage, searching for a Northeast Passage.  The Murmean Sea was renamed Barents Sea in his honor, and if you happen to take an icebreaker cruise from Murmansk, you can visit the site of Barentsz’s winter on the ice floes in the Arctic, should you be so inclined.

Stamp details: Issued on: October 1, 1996 From: Amsterdam, Netherlands MC #1593

I hope the 'i have suggested arctic themed roleplay' reddit guy and his gf are doing okay. or that she dumped him if he wouldn't let it go. I have not laughed that hard at a post in a long time. 

I hope the 'i have suggested arctic themed roleplay' reddit guy and his gf are doing okay. or that she dumped him if he wouldn't let it go. I have not laughed that hard at a post in a long time. 

Louis Apol - travel sketches in watercolor and gouache from an expedition to Nova Zembla in 1880.

the colors are funky cause it's inverted for sensory reasons but THE JUXTAPOSITION-

it's you and me, there's nothing like this

the HMS Terror and the Erebus (okay!)

William Barentsz and his men: *abandon their boat to winter in a wooden house they built*

the polar bears, observing the abandoned boat: 

FITZJAMES HAS BEEN FOUND!!!!

sciencedirect.com

Identification of a senior officer from Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition

Arctic Canada’s King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula have preserved the unidentified skeletal remains of many of the 105 sailors who p

He was one of the first to die after they abandoned the ships. My boy didn't have to suffer for long. I'm so grateful that he has been identified. Crying and in shock too. I helped find you, my dear Fitzjames. 😭❤️

man now I'm gonna spend the rest of my day thinking about james fitzjames

“Goodsir suggested, jokingly I trust, that we capture one of these beasts (a seal) and set it up on deck as some kind of local dignitary which we could consult on matters pertaining to our voyage, much as the Greeks attended their oracles when they wished the future to be made clear.”

Journal entry from James Fitzjames 19 July 1845- North With Franklin by John Wilson

Smithsonian Magazine

Tales of the Doomed Franklin Expedition Long Ignored the Inuit Side, But "The Terror" Flips the Script

The new AMC television show succeeds in being inclusive of indigenous culture

Interesting article from 2018 abt the Inuit involvement with the show

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

like. if you read any of his letters (may we be spared to meet on earth is such a good book, I'd recommend it if you're into doomed arctic expeditions or even just enjoy reminders that people two hundred years ago were still people) you know that fitzjames comes across as a pretty funny, kind, and above all human guy, just some dude who you could probably have a really nice chill time down the pub with. he was good at his job, yes, but he wasn't a Wellington or a Shakespeare or whathaveyou. he's literally Some Guy doing what was a really exciting thing for the time.

and it's not so much that he died under horrible circumstances, that much is a given. but it's the fact that so many people a hundred and seventy years later are losing their shit about him being found. think about that.

real fitzjames probably would never have expected to be recognised like that. no-one really thinks they'll have such an impact that two hundred years later. and yet he did - not because he was a great general or an inspiring poet, but literally because he was just A Guy that we found out about and got emotionally attached to.. imagine telling this random thirty-something that centuries later people would be so happy to see his body uncovered. imagine his reaction. I'm a thirty-something and I'm not a particularly famous individual, and the thought gets me properly choked up. he was literally A Guy, albeit one in unusual circumstances, and we still care so much about him. that's such a big thing.

⚓️ this is a sideblog, main is @theofreakingbell

🛟 this is a gore free blog in terms of pictures ✨ bones and non graphic body pictures will be rare if ever and always cw tagged. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE ALL LINKS especially in reblogs I do not control those. however given subject matter there may be graphic text descriptions and will be discussion of things like death, cannibalism, etc. read at your own risk ❤️

🐳 nothing else will be tagged rn bc I am tired and very sensorily disabled. hopefully this will change soon enough so I can tag things more and participate more but rn typing and seeing is hard

🪝'i can't believe I got into morbid arctic history from a show' I can't believe I got into it from a review of the show that was on youtube. and then seeing y'alls posts and reading more. I haven't even seen the show (yet). lmao

in World War 1 around 8 million horses died but in World War 2 it was under a million which can only mean horses started to evolve bullet resistance

I love tumblr because it's the only site where I can log on to see ten straight posts in a row of just "THEY ATE HIM" in huge font.

it's 3:30am so please excuse this post which is going to feature decapitation and cannibalism and emotions so content warning for those

but i keep seeing people say they've identified fitzjames' body, but they haven't! they've identified not even his skull but his jawbone. his lower mandible with cut marks. and yes the "they ate his face" jokes are right there for the taking, but probably more likely they in fact cut his head off first specifically so they wouldn't have to look at his face while they carried out their task of butchery. and if they were making use of the head....that's the direst of all, because it's the most individual part, it's the part they would have least wanted to consume. there are so few skeletons that were found in their original arrangement so i know it's not necessarily telling, but presuming that they did cut off his head, it really hits home to me even more that all we have identified is his jaw. not even his "face". certainly not a body. his actual body could be somewhere far distant or nowhere because all that's left is this part because these men who he lived in incredibly close quarters with for so long were forced to do the unthinkable to a man who was widely liked and considered an emblem of vitality and who they served under for years. he did funky little drawings in his letter margins and got excited about goodsir's sea creatures and had served with some of these men not just on erebus but for years before!!! he personally hired many of them (which maybe they were not so glad of anymore) because he knew and liked and trusted t hem. maybe they tried to bury his head with dignity to give at least part of him a christian burial. maybe not. but there's something deeply lonely about a jawbone. . . . with cut marks.