Dan Simmons - The Terror

Only Dr. McDonald, who had worked with Mr. Helpman – Captain Crozier’s Clerk in Charge – during the provisioning, had his Theories.

As I recorded some Months ago in this Journal, besides the 10,000 cases of preserved cooked meats aboard Erebus, our tinned rations include boiled and roast mutton, veal, a wide variety of vegetables including potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, various types of Soups, and 9,450 pounds of Chocolate .

Alex McDonald had been our Expedition’s medical liaison with the Captain Superintendent of the Deptford Victualling Yard and with a certain Mr. Stephan Goldner, our Expedition’s Victualling Contractor. McDonald reminded Captain Crozier in October that four contractors had put in bids to provide Canned Ship’s Stores for Sir John’s expedition – the firms of Hogarth, Gamble, Cooper amp; Aves, and that of the aforementioned Mr. Goldner. Dr. McDonald reminded the Captain – and astonished the rest of us – by reporting that Goldner’s bid was only half that of the other three (Much Better Known) victuallers. In addition, while the other contractors set a schedule of delivering the food in a month or three weeks, Goldner had promised immediate delivery (with the crating and drayage thrown in for no charge). Such immediate delivery was impossible, of course, and Goldner’s bid would have required him to lose a fortune if the food had been the quality advertised and cooked and prepared in the ways advertised, but no one except Captain Fitzjames appears to have taken notice of this .

The Admiralty and the three Commissioners of the Discovery Service – everyone involved in the selection except for the experienced Comptroller of the Deptford Victualling Yard – immediately recommended accepting Goldner’s offer at a full-payment value, or more than 3,800 pounds. (A fortune for any man, but especially for the foreigner that McDonald explained Goldner to be. The man’s only canning factory, Alex said, was in Golatz, Molavia.) Goldner was given one of the largest consignments in the history of the Admiralty – 9,500 cans of meats and vegetables in sizes weighing one to eight pounds, as well as 20,000 cans of soup.

McDonald had brought one of Goldner’s handbills – Fitzjames recognized it at once – and looking over it made my mouth water: seven kinds of mutton, fourteen preparations of veal, thirteen kinds of beef, four varieties of lamb. There were listings for jugged hare, ptarmigan, rabbit (in onion sauce or curried), pheasant, and half a dozen other varieties of game. If the Discovery Service wished to have seafood, Goldner had offered to provide canned lobsters in the shell, cod, West Indian turtle, salmon steaks, and Yarmouth bloaters. For fine dining – at only fifteen pence – Goldner’s handbill offered truffled pheasant, calf’s tongue sauce piquant, and beef à la Flamande.

In reality, said Dr. McDonald , we’re used to receiving salt horse in a harness cask.

I had been at Sea long enough to recognize the terms – horse flesh substituted for beef until the sailors called the barrels a harness cask. But they ate the salted meat readily enough.

Goldner cheated us much worse than that, continued McDonald in front of a livid Captain Crozier and an angrily nodding Commander Fitzjames . He substituted cheap foods under labels that sold for much more on the handbill – regular “Stewed Beef” under a label reading “Stewed Rump Steaks,” for instance. The former is listed at nine pence, but he charged fourteen pence by changing the label.

Good God, man, exploded Crozier , every victualler does that to the Admiralty. Cheating the Navy is as old as Adam’s foreskin. That can’t explain why we’re suddenly almost out of food.

No, Captain, continued McDonald . It’s the cooking and soldering.

The what? demanded the Irishman, obviously trying to keep his Temper in check. Crozier’s face was crimson and white under his battered cap .

The cooking and soldering, said Alex . As to the cooking, Mr. Goldner bragged of a patented process in which he adds a large dose of nitrate of soda – calcium chloride – into the huge vats of boiling water to increase the processing temperature… primarily to speed production.

What’s wrong with that? demanded Crozier . The cans were overdue as it was. Something needed to be done to build a fire under Goldner’s arse. His patented process hurried things up.

Yes, Captain, said Dr. McDonald , but the fire under Goldner’s arse was hotter than the fire under these meats, vegetables, and other foods that were hurriedly cooked before canning. Many of us in the medical field believe that proper cooking of food rids it of Noxious Influences that can cause disease – but I myself witnessed Goldner’s cooking processes and he simply did not cook the meat, vegetables, and soups long enough.

Why didn’t you report this to the Discovery Service Commissioners? snapped Crozier .

He did, Captain Fitzjames said tiredly . So did I. But the only one who listened was the Comptroller of the Deptford Yard Victualling Service, and he had no vote on the final commission.

So you’re saying that more than half our food has gone bad in the last three years because of poor cooking methods? Crozier’s Countenance continued to be a Mottle of crimson and white .

Yes, said Alex McDonald , but equally to blame, we think, is the soldering.

The soldering of the cans? asked Fitzjames. His doubts about Goldner evidently had not extended to this technicality .

Yes, Commander, said Terror ’s assistant surgeon . Preserving food in tins is a recent innovation – an amazing part of our Modern Age – but we know enough in the past few years of its use to know that proper soldering the flange along the seams of the cylindrical body of the can is important if the foodstuffs within are not to turn Putrid.

And Goldner’s people did not properly solder these tins? asked Crozier. His voice was a low, menacing growl .

Not in about sixty percent of the tins we’ve inspected, said McDonald . The gaps in the careless soldering have resulted in incomplete seams. The incomplete seams appear to have accelerated the putrefaction of our tinned beef, veal, vegetables, soups, and other foodstuffs.

How? asked Captain Crozier. He was shaking his broad head like a man who has been stunned by a physical blow . We’ve been in polar waters since shortly after the two ships left England. I thought it was cold enough up here to preserve anything until Judgement Day.

Apparently not, said McDonald . Many of Goldner’s remaining twenty-nine thousand cans of food have ruptured. Others are already swelling from the gases caused by internal putrefaction. Perhaps some Noxious vapours entered the tins in England. Perhaps there is some microscopic animalcule of which Medicine and Science are not yet aware which invaded the tins during transit or even at Goldner’s victualling factory.

Crozier frowned more deeply . Animalcule? Let’s avoid the fantastic here, Mr. McDonald.

The assistant surgeon only shrugged . Perhaps it is fantastical, Captain. But you have not spent the hundreds of hours straining at the eyepiece of a microscope such as I have. We have little understanding of what any of these animalcules are, but I assure you that if you saw how many are present in a simple drop of drinking water, you would be deeply sobered.

Crozier’s coloration had calmed somewhat, but he blushed again at the comment which might have been a reflection of his frequently less-than-sober state . All right. Some of the food is ruined, he said brusquely . What can we do to make sure the rest is safe for the men’s consumption?