Finished reading Michael Palin's "Erebus". It is a novel about the successful Antartic expedition under Ross  (1841) and the unsuccessful Arctic expedition under Franklin (1845). He tends to focus on the personalities and absurdities of the situation, which thanks to daguerreotying and the naval penchant for journals Palin has been able to research from the records of the time, it is quite detailed. The Arctic expedition under Franklin was significantly covered by the Victorian Press and became a national tragedy. It isn't written as a comedy but Palin does have the advantage of hindsight and so the facts have Palin's voice, so to speak.

October 2019 (13/10/2019)

Also watched the TV series "The Terror" released by the AMC network and based on the Dan Simmons novel. It was emotionally harrowing to watch, but managed to binge watch it over several days (when I was in the mood, and man, that mood was dark). I liked its attention to detail and having read Michael Palins "Erebus : The Story of a Ship" I certainly got more out of it. There are significant fantastical aspects to it that when watching the TV series, seemed to me symbolic features of a narrative, but when reading about the Dan Simmons novel are in the context of the novel supernatural elements. In the context of the TV series these supernatural elements are for the most part low key, various sailors superstitions and so forth, but escalate as the series progresses until the story definitely sheds its grounding in the researched history of the Franklin Expedition, while still conveying the sense of organised Victorian Naval explorers in a stark Artic survival situation.