The d'Artois expedition
6 February 2019 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI've been busy writing the backstory of the d'Artois expedition in an attempt to cover what on earth they'd been doing while missing in the Arctic for three years (I've cheated by implying that the rescue mission began to be planned a few months after the second anniversary, so that when Leroux says that no news of them had been heard for three years we're actually only 'in the third year', and not that many months into it at the start of the novel!)
I was also wondering how I was going to justify the rescue mission's having been delayed so long, when the alarm ought to have been raised at a far earlier stage -- it's not nearly so far to the Arctic as to the Antarctic, and it's unlikely the expedition was planned to last more than one year in any case, even if they didn't send back word of their safe arrival. Normal procedure would have been for them to land in high summer when the pack-ice was at its farthest retreat, and then be picked up again at the same time next year when the ship could travel that far north again. If the French Government had put a lot of money and prestige into sending an expedition to the Arctic, why would they just abandon them for so long that many if not all of them must have been expected to be dead?
Then I looked back at what Leroux actually wrote (or, to be more precise, the Penguin English translation, which is not quite the same thing) and discovered that the 'official' expedition was in fact being sent to search for survivors, and that in fact by implication (in so much as one can glean any definite information from a one-sentence mention) the d'Artois expedition was a private affair and nothing to do with the government at all. Which makes sense, because a lot of these explorers were self-financed, even though they saw themselves as acting for the glory of their country's name; Nansen had to find sponsors for his Fram expedition, Mallory had to sell the film rights to raise money for his Everest expeditions (which took place under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society, a members' club, and not the British Government), and Scott's Antarctic expedition notoriously named its sled dogs after the various schools which had paid for them ;-p
So from that point of view the belated dispatch of the Requin makes a lot more sense; it wasn't a matter of protecting the government's existing investment, it was a matter of going to a lot of unrewarded effort on behalf of one of your citizens who had got himself into trouble as part of a bit of personal glory-seeking. And they weren't expecting to find the expedition intact...
I may need to revise my wording slightly in places, although probably not that much, since I imagine they actually were doing all this for the greater glory of France anyway -- but I've definitely written at least the last chapter under the impression that Raoul and d'Artois were both attached to the same official Arctic Expedition, and on rereading Leroux I get the idea that they weren't. Having written an account of them awaiting rescue with increasing urgency and frustration/desperation, I'm also beginning to suspect that the scene where the two parties actually meet for the first time possibly ought to have more eagerness and less courteous restraint on the marooned explorers' part -- or indignation, given that their long-awaited relief party turns out to be in need of their help rather than vice versa!
I was somewhat dismayed to find that both the Ribière translation and the German version appear to suggest that D'Artois was the name of a ship rather than a person -- cf Scott's Terra Nova expedition -- since while it clearly is a human name, many ships are named after famous people. (I've really gone much too far with the concept of d'Artois as a character to go back on it now.) But none of the French editions I managed to look at seem to use this italicisation: Leroux's phrase is simply l'expédition officielle du Requin, qui avait mission de rechercher dans les glaces du pôle les survivants de l'expédition du d'Artois, and while the Requin is evidently a ship (unless the commanding officer is conveniently named 'Shark'!) it still reads to me as if l'expédition du d'Artois refers to a human leader. At any rate, it's certainly not an unambiguous error on my part...
I was also wondering how I was going to justify the rescue mission's having been delayed so long, when the alarm ought to have been raised at a far earlier stage -- it's not nearly so far to the Arctic as to the Antarctic, and it's unlikely the expedition was planned to last more than one year in any case, even if they didn't send back word of their safe arrival. Normal procedure would have been for them to land in high summer when the pack-ice was at its farthest retreat, and then be picked up again at the same time next year when the ship could travel that far north again. If the French Government had put a lot of money and prestige into sending an expedition to the Arctic, why would they just abandon them for so long that many if not all of them must have been expected to be dead?
Then I looked back at what Leroux actually wrote (or, to be more precise, the Penguin English translation, which is not quite the same thing) and discovered that the 'official' expedition was in fact being sent to search for survivors, and that in fact by implication (in so much as one can glean any definite information from a one-sentence mention) the d'Artois expedition was a private affair and nothing to do with the government at all. Which makes sense, because a lot of these explorers were self-financed, even though they saw themselves as acting for the glory of their country's name; Nansen had to find sponsors for his Fram expedition, Mallory had to sell the film rights to raise money for his Everest expeditions (which took place under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society, a members' club, and not the British Government), and Scott's Antarctic expedition notoriously named its sled dogs after the various schools which had paid for them ;-p
So from that point of view the belated dispatch of the Requin makes a lot more sense; it wasn't a matter of protecting the government's existing investment, it was a matter of going to a lot of unrewarded effort on behalf of one of your citizens who had got himself into trouble as part of a bit of personal glory-seeking. And they weren't expecting to find the expedition intact...
I may need to revise my wording slightly in places, although probably not that much, since I imagine they actually were doing all this for the greater glory of France anyway -- but I've definitely written at least the last chapter under the impression that Raoul and d'Artois were both attached to the same official Arctic Expedition, and on rereading Leroux I get the idea that they weren't. Having written an account of them awaiting rescue with increasing urgency and frustration/desperation, I'm also beginning to suspect that the scene where the two parties actually meet for the first time possibly ought to have more eagerness and less courteous restraint on the marooned explorers' part -- or indignation, given that their long-awaited relief party turns out to be in need of their help rather than vice versa!
I was somewhat dismayed to find that both the Ribière translation and the German version appear to suggest that D'Artois was the name of a ship rather than a person -- cf Scott's Terra Nova expedition -- since while it clearly is a human name, many ships are named after famous people. (I've really gone much too far with the concept of d'Artois as a character to go back on it now.) But none of the French editions I managed to look at seem to use this italicisation: Leroux's phrase is simply l'expédition officielle du Requin, qui avait mission de rechercher dans les glaces du pôle les survivants de l'expédition du d'Artois, and while the Requin is evidently a ship (unless the commanding officer is conveniently named 'Shark'!) it still reads to me as if l'expédition du d'Artois refers to a human leader. At any rate, it's certainly not an unambiguous error on my part...