starring Peter O'Toole as the curmudgeonly lighthouse keeper

A chronology of major expeditions of the 1830s in Fergus Fleming’s Barrow’s Boys: The Original Extreme Adventurers: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude and Outright Lunacy:

1829-33 John Ross takes a small steam ship into Prince Regent Inlet and is beset for four winters. His nephew James discovers the North Magnetic Pole in 1831.

1830-31 Richard Lander and his brother John successfully trace the Niger to its mouth.

1833-5 George Back travels down the Great Fish River in an abortive attempt to rescue John Ross.

1836-7 Back sails disastrously to Wager Bay.

1837-9 Hudson’s Bay Company overlanders Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson successfully map large stretches of Canada’s Arctic coast.

1839-43 James Ross journeys to Antarctica with the Erebus and Terror. He charts large areas of undiscovered coastline and discovers the live volcano, Mt. Erebus.

For popular depictions of these polar peregrinations, I look to the Linda Hall Library’s online Ice exhibit, which contains illustrations from many contemporary expedition narratives, such as the delightfully trashy The Last Voyage of Capt. Sir John Ross (1835), by Robert Huish.

Ross’ steam ship Victory as it left Woolwich in an illustration, dressed with some very fanciful flags. And over there in the lower left corner…

It’s the Eighteen-Thirties all right!

Here is a scene from Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S. Terror, by George Back (1838):

The Terror is beset in ice, but the three men in the foreground wear winter clothing that recalls an 1833 fashion plate with the full coat skirts, defined waists, and even the caps.

Charging down the maw of the ocean I want to come close, I want to come closer I held your name inside my mouth Through all the days out wandering But called up from the mouth of oblivion Cast away like dogs from the shelter I shed the dulling armor plates That once collected radiance And, surging at the blood's perimeter: The half remembered wild interior Of an animal life

Everyone gone. You hear them, but you can't see them. Yes. Stop it! I cannot. It happens to me, too. It's happening right now.