Polar research
18 December 2017 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe second half of chapter 3 seems to be ending up rather longer than I thought, after various scenes of Chagny family padding (a visit from the doctor and from an unnamed Inspector Mifroid -- it amuses me that in this scenario Philippe is suspected of trying to murder Raoul rather than vice versa!) Given the arc of the chapter so far (Raoul dealing with the aftermath of Erik's 'visit', physically and psychologically) I seem to have come to the end with Raoul on board the train out of Paris, rather than with the Phantom showing up on the Requin as she sails out of port. Which is going to make the next chapter a rather funny shape, and this one (ironically) a bit short... but I don't really see how to push on to the planned end without another restart followed by a very short remaining scene, and we've had several of those, both acknowledged (with a formal scene divider) and unacknowledged, in the chapter already.
After reading Nansen's "Farthest North" it occurred to me that one excellent explanation for Leroux's otherwise mysterious statement that Raoul was given six months' leave before the presumably urgent rescue expedition was due to depart (why leave men stranded for an extra six months in the Arctic..?) would be that they had to wait for the ice to melt before there was any chance of reaching d'Artois and his men, who were presumably encamped on the rocky shore of one of the unexplored Arctic islands like Jackson and his expedition whose relief ship eventually took Nansen back home to Norway. Jackson's ship was expected in June at the earliest (it eventually arrived in mid-July). This would explain why the Requin's mission, however urgent, could not take place over the autumn/winter during which Raoul was sent on leave in Paris.
Although the Easter/Shrovetide timing would suggest that they must have been due to sail at the end of March/early April, which suggests somewhat greater optimism over the state of the ice! (It does at least justify my inclusion of a daytime fire in the library, which I was wondering about given that the story is supposed to be taking place during the summer...)
I was interested to discover that there were apparently no real-life French Arctic expeditions at all (I already knew that Leroux supposedly based this element on his own interviews with members of the Antarctic expedition a generation later) - the proposed nineteenth-century Lambert Expedition was terminated by the Franco-Prussian War, and Lambert himself died during the siege of Paris. Presumably in a parallel universe d'Artois would have set off successfully around this date (although we know that the Paris Commune did take place in Leroux's version of history, and thus so presumably did the siege!)
However, the Antarctic expeditions set off from Le Havre, and Lambert was planning to do the same. So presumably that was where the Requin set sail from ;-p
Edit: I've given up on waiting for a 'proper' title for this story, and am simply tagging all the relevant posts as swedish!
After reading Nansen's "Farthest North" it occurred to me that one excellent explanation for Leroux's otherwise mysterious statement that Raoul was given six months' leave before the presumably urgent rescue expedition was due to depart (why leave men stranded for an extra six months in the Arctic..?) would be that they had to wait for the ice to melt before there was any chance of reaching d'Artois and his men, who were presumably encamped on the rocky shore of one of the unexplored Arctic islands like Jackson and his expedition whose relief ship eventually took Nansen back home to Norway. Jackson's ship was expected in June at the earliest (it eventually arrived in mid-July). This would explain why the Requin's mission, however urgent, could not take place over the autumn/winter during which Raoul was sent on leave in Paris.
Although the Easter/Shrovetide timing would suggest that they must have been due to sail at the end of March/early April, which suggests somewhat greater optimism over the state of the ice! (It does at least justify my inclusion of a daytime fire in the library, which I was wondering about given that the story is supposed to be taking place during the summer...)
I was interested to discover that there were apparently no real-life French Arctic expeditions at all (I already knew that Leroux supposedly based this element on his own interviews with members of the Antarctic expedition a generation later) - the proposed nineteenth-century Lambert Expedition was terminated by the Franco-Prussian War, and Lambert himself died during the siege of Paris. Presumably in a parallel universe d'Artois would have set off successfully around this date (although we know that the Paris Commune did take place in Leroux's version of history, and thus so presumably did the siege!)
However, the Antarctic expeditions set off from Le Havre, and Lambert was planning to do the same. So presumably that was where the Requin set sail from ;-p
Edit: I've given up on waiting for a 'proper' title for this story, and am simply tagging all the relevant posts as swedish!