So I was tracking down an unsourced image for a Shirtvestigations Sidebar post and LOOK WHAT I FOUND Y'ALL
"RARE Watermen's Shirt & Trousers, 1827" listed at Meg-Andrews.com
Shirt: Of roller printed blue and white cotton, typical T shape with squarish deep collar with two small mother of pearl buttons, the back slightly curved, the front opening with a further three mother of pearl buttons and buttonholes, above tight gathering, gathered dropped shoulders with underarm insets (for movement), the deep cuffs with a Dorset buton and a mother of pearl button to the other cuff, lower side slits with inset panel, the back slightly longer than the front, all hand sewn.
It's 20 years too early, too wide/dark of a stripe and not quite the right width and shape of bib but that's all minutiae
This is the closest extant garment I have EVER seen to the Torrington Burial Shirt and it's almost exactly the construction I've hypothesized!!!
Comparisons of the same areas aboard the HMS Erebus wreck (left) and the HMS Terror wreck (right)
HMS Terror is in pristine condition and I get so excited thinking about what we'll learn once Parks Canada is able to more fully explore the wreck and gather more artifacts. I believe they'll be doing more work on Terror this year if weather permits.
so we need to keep in mind this is trying to represent a 5'4" nineteen-going-on-twenty year old who has a managerial adjacent job
pros
he does look appropriately like a teenager with an annoying attitude which is hilarious
as far as i know we have no sources about what his personality was actually like but speculating that he might have been a bitch delights me. pov your office supervisor is a kid who is a full decade younger than you and also this is his first real job and also also you literally do have to do as he says. lol.
the actively smoking to remind the viewer we learned via autopsy that he had the lungs of an 80 year old chainsmoker is so funny. he literally is from manchester during the industrial revolution and his job is Shovel Coal All Day so this is a nice touch.
extremely cute way of including his scarf with the dots 🤍🩵 i like it when he gets to wear the scarf as a scarf and not as a way of keeping his corpse's jaw shut
i think that even for how small this rendering is, this is a nice iteration of his facial features!!! long slender face, slight bump in the nose, prominent cheekbones, high and round eyebrows etc... yup its all there. checks out!
cons
THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY THAT DRAWING IS SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING US A MAN WHO IS 5'4"
his corpse was 85lbs upon exhumation. of course we need to account for mummification /dehydration weight loss but also he was extremely sick right before dying. his stomach was empty so we can assume he wasn't eating/keeping food down, so he likely lost a ton of weight very quickly and then coughed himself to death. but also his job was Manual Labor so (when healthy) he must have had some sort of lithe wirey build. so imo there's no way he ever weighed more than 115lbs~120lbs at his most healthy.
THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY THAT DRAWING IS SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING US A MAN WHO WEIGHS 120LBS
why's he got yaoi hands. this is also not correct my boy had very slender hands. fucka you.
where did the toque come from
where did the belt come from
the blouse fabric rendering is weirding me out
i'm still honestly not sure what is the truth about his haircut is but i don't think jorrington had a mullet and bangs that he gave himself over the bathroom sink at 4am while using craft scissors
the white dove flying in the background is so heavyhanded and ridiculous i could honestly go throw up
putting on canary in a coalmine by the police. opening up john torringtons wikipedia page. scrolling to the death and autopsy portion and looking at it for hours
ok anyways fuck whatever is going on in the rest of my life IT'S LITERALLY JORRINGTON EXHUMATION ANNIVERSARY DAY!!!!!! i drew this ages and ages and ages ago when i started getting into researching the real expedition instead of just obsessing over the tv show and i do fear i'm never going to finish it lol so i'll just post the lineart rn. yay okay.
Wooden coffin snuffbox, 19th century - increpted : HMS Erebus and Beechey Island 1846
This piece causes some headaches. Since nobody knows what it is, except a weird snuffbox.
I consider this piece to be a momento mori, because that’s what the coffin shape says. It seems to have been made by a relative of one of the three gentlemen who were buried on Beechey Island and are now known as ice mummies. Since the reference is HMS Erebus and the year 1846, only two men can be considered: John Hartnell, 25 years old, died 4th January, 1846 and William Braine. 31 years old, died 3rd April 1846. John Torrington, 19 years old, died 1st January 1846, served on the Terror.
It is now conceivable that a relative of Hartnell or Braine had this snuffbox made after he had heard that the man had died in 1846.
Arctic Canada’s King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula have preserved the unidentified skeletal remains of many of the 105 sailors who p
He was one of the first to die after they abandoned the ships. My boy didn't have to suffer for long. I'm so grateful that he has been identified. Crying and in shock too. I helped find you, my dear Fitzjames. 😭❤️
hold on WHAT i was lovingly invested in peglarmitage and all the updates as like. my beloved ghost blorbo-in-laws from you but can we. if that was the speedrun can we snail crawl. can we go back to literally all of that how do i learn more??
TAKE MY HAND !!!!!!!!!! COME WITH ME
ok so fair warning a lot of the dates are accurate bc i'm a freak & i can get screenshots of all the lines henry wrote if you want, but i'm lazy and this answer is already going to be long as FUCK so lmk if you want to see those later. and also i'm looking at this whole thing with my rpf goggles SECURELY FASTENED bc i like my yaoi historically accurate and well cited. ok buckle in for this snail crawl thru the approximate timelines of their lives.
december ?? 1805 - thomas armitage born
april 24, 1807 - thomas armitage baptized
february 22, 1812 - henry peter peglar born
november 29, 1813 - henry and his older sister elizabeth are baptized in a two-for-one dunk'em special in westminster. their family lives like a 3 minute walk away from the abbey.
january 9, 1821 ~ march 27 1822 - thomas working as shipsboy on hms bulwark. he is sixteen.
march 28 ~ december 5 1822 - thomas working as shipsboy on hms gloucester
december 6 1822 ~ november 30 1823 - thomas working on hms briton and goes from ships boy, then seaman (dec 1 1823 - august 31 1825)
august 4, 1825 - henry is admitted to the marine society "for destitute boys and training seamen". he is thirteen. his dad owns a gunsmithing shop but clearly they are a working class family. his dad votes for politically radical figures (politician who thinks workers deserve some say over the land and work they tend to, rather than abiding by traditional english landlord/farmer dynamics)
september 1825 - henry is assigned to hms solebay as an extra shipsboy for training after a single month in the navy's charity bootcamp for miserable boys who can't afford their own dinner.
december 14 1825 - henry is discharged from solebay with good character and gets sent to hms clio. within months he's transferred again to hms magnificent, which was a hospital ship, and he works as a shipsboy. he sailed to jamaica for the first time
1826-1827 - henry works on hms rattlesnake. in his career account he mentions working on hms serapis (stationed in port royal) but there are no ship records / musters which include him being aboard at this time. its ok though i trust him. he should have seen inagua, port au prince, havana, montedo, santiago de cuba, chagres, bermuda, and halifax.
october 26, 1826 - thomas armitage (bachelor) and celia murray (spinster) married in gillingham parish (his parents are their witnesses. presumably no one in the family is literate as they all sign the wedding certificate with Xs. (this is the same parish that the hartnell brothers attended btw which has nothing to do with anything but i think is interesting. neighbors!)) thomas is twenty one.
july 6 1827 - thomas and cecila's first child (also named cecila) is christened
september 1 1827 - henry is paid off from hms rattlesnake at woolwich dockyard. here's some maps for your context and interest
september 3 1827 - henry joins hms perseus at the tower of london.
september 14 1827 - henry is sent to hms prince regent in chatham.
end half of 1827 - henry is involved with Something (the portion of the page in his account where he talks about this is straight up missing / disintegrated due to damage from the arctic) involving an apprentice, and thusly he is discharged from prince regent as a consequence (?) for it. no source no facts no evidence but i suspect he was supposed to be training someone in the rigging and they fell and died on his watch.
april 29 1828 - henry joins the east india company aboard the marquis camden heading for st helena, mumbai, and china. henry writes that the ship was struck by lightning and he sees a sergeant and a private killed by the lightning strike. henry is seventeen. the marquis camden stops by paracels, singapore, and krakatoa before returning to the english channel in july
july 1828 - henry joins the blockade ship ramillies, which was investigating smuggling btwn england and france. the captain of this ship is a notorious sadist who issued crazy numbers of lashings as punishment like they were nothing and henry said Okay fuck this i'm out, and moved to the tender ship hms antelope which was also involved in this smuggling investigation work in the same area at the same time.
december 3 1828 - thomas and cecila's second child (gabriel) is christened
1829 - henry returns to the navy abord hms talavera. the same sadist captain from the ramillies takes over the ship and henry gets spooked. probably from all the lashings.
september 15 1829 - henry writes to be discharged from talavera and rejoins the marquis camden
october 20, 1831 - thomas and cecila's third child (elizabeth) is christened
february 14 1832 - henry's still on on the marquis camden (sailing for st helena, mumbai, penang, singapore, and macau)
january 1833 - henry does NOT include this year in his account of his career due to the fact that he was disrated from foretop captain to ordinary seaman, confined in irons, and punished with 2 dozen lashes for drunkenness and mutinous conduct and probably didn't want FE searchers to think badly of him for this. he DOES write that a chief mate was shot while he was aboard tho. #hesinnocent #freepeglar #solidarity
may 12 1833 - thomas and cecila's fourth child (joshua william) is christened
april 4 1834 - henry joins hms gannet, but somehow, gets disrated four times in four years. so he's going from foretop captain -> gunner crew -> coxswain -> able seaman. later on in the arctic, while writing his career account, henry claims that he "joined tom ship gannett" while running out of space on the page, which isn't quite accurate bc henry was aboard gannet first and then tom arrived, but russell potter and i both think this may just be a reference to the fact that their friendship started around this time. and he literally has brain scurvies :( he can misremember a little bit its fine i trust him.
may 7 1834 - thomas joins hms gannet (gunroom steward) and signs an X (still illiterate) for his allotment to be sent home to cecelia.
christmas thru NYE 1834 -> 1835 -
!!!!! RPF SPECULATION ALERT!!!!!!! but in the wallet henry mentions a party that happened in "the old sitty of cumanar" i.e. cumana venezuela. this is the only point in his entire career where he's spending time in cumana. he crashes a beach christmas party which is hosted by some american girls, one of whom is quite hauty and reminds him of queen caroline (who got very publicly divorced in westminster in the 1820s and he probably remembered well from his childhood). another fragment from the wallet mentions "the party wot happened at trinadad" which is the next nearest port, and again, this is the only time in his career where henry would have logistically been able to stop and visit and party at this port. its literally the holidays who fucking careesssss. Another page from the wallet mentions "[...] trinadad laying in asham bay" and is likely also in reference to this period of his life. so anyways i think this is when he and tom started having an affair & part of why henry was getting disrated so often is part of his 'punishment' for getting caught screwing around with thomas.
.......meanwhile…......
january 2 1835 - thomas and cecila's fifth child (harriet) is christened
june 23 1835 - thomas leaves gannet (i suspect as punishment for screwing around with henry)
june 24 1835 ~ march 14 1836 - thomas joins hms serpent as captain's steward
march 5 1837 ~ january 14 1839 - thomas joins hms hercules as gunroom steward. his character is noted as good.
february 1838 - henry gets discharged from hms gannet and joins hms temeraire as an AB seaman. his service and conduct is "indifferent". he probably loses this job bc temeraire (despite an impressive record of never dying at sea or in battles) gets ordered to be broken up. here's a beautiful painting by jmw turner FROM 1838!!! OF THE SHIP!!! so this is what it looked like when henry was there :)
1838 - henry briefly joins hms ocean to reclimb the rank back up to captain of the fo'c'sle.
february 11 1839 ~ october 14 1839 - thomas joins hms cleopatra as gunroom steward. his character is noted as good.
november 22 1839 ~ may 6 1839 - thomas joins hms fantome as captain's steward, and then works as ship's cook from may 7 1842 ~ december 31 1842, and then commander's steward from jan 1 1843 - october 20 1843. his character is noted as "very bad" (!!!!!!!) while aboard fantome.
december 2 1839 - hms wanderer heads for the west coast of africa to work in anti-slavery patrols along the west coast of africa. there's a looooooot of british colonial powergrab nuance here which you can look into on your own time. i don't want to speculate about how henry felt during all of this so i shall simply say: #yfip
august 1842 - wanderer sails for india and then china and sees some heavy action in the first opium war. george hodgson and william gibson are also aboard wanderer at this time #bestievibesonly there's malay pirates and chinese sailors trying to kill these british fuckos and everyone gets incredibly fucked up and a lot of people almost die (not henry tho. he gets a promotion and is officially captain of the foretop again. his character is very good). another great instance of #yfip can someone please get the callout post drafted already
june 27 1844 - henry gets discharged in england from wanderer. he spent a few months on shore FINALLY and i hope he got to see his family a little bit at least but it seems like he was most likely busy trying to purchase a pub in westminster so he could retire from being used and abused by the imperial navy war machine, and then ran out of money. he's a real one for sure.
july 8 1844 ~ april 25 1845 - thomas working as gunroom steward aboard hms dee. his character is noted as good.
march 11 1845 - henry signs onto hms terror as foretop captain under captain FRANCIS RAWDOG MOIRA CROZIER. henry leaves no allotment so he was keeping his paycheck for himself.
april 29 1845 - thomas joins hms terror as the gunroom steward he DOES leave an allotment so his paycheck is getting sent home to cecilia and he still signs off on this with an X (still illiterate). i can't even begin to imagine how fucking crazy it must have felt for them to see each other on the deck of terror for the first time and realize they've got the next several years stuck together on the same ship in the arctic. l m a o.
winter 1845 ~ 1846 - the expedition overwinters at beechey island. jorrington and jartnell and liam die and get buried. jarts and liam were erebus' problem, but it's very very very likely that thomas was helping out peddie and mcdonald on terror and acting as an in-situ nurse/assistant while torrington was sick and dying. i like to think maybe henry had some useful advice for tom from his time as a shipboy on a hospital ship (magnificent). rpf is fine. henry begins writing his backwards ass diary somewhere around here.
april 21 1847 - henry writes the open c poem
september 1847 - henry writes down another page and to be so real with u i can't tell if it's poetry or if it's a journal due to a big ass hole in the center of the page. but he wrote it! and the top is dated september __ 1847
april 20 1848 (probs) henry writes a coded diary page about what's going on aboard terror / officers are promising the men new boots (likely their normal seaboots with nails stuck thru to act as cleats on the ice) before they all abandon ship and begin walking / how he thinks tom has left clothes out that wont thaw in time / someone who looks like a marine is getting bossy
1848 ~ EARLYYYYY 1850 I'M NOT GIVING THEM MUCH MORE TIME TO LIVE THAN THAT TBH - henry continues to write poetry about sailing on open water, and writing backwards diary entries , and archiving his recollections of his time in warmer climates when he was young and handsome and attending parties with fruit where people were singing and dancing. there are several references to tom in his journals, most notably is a tangent thought in the middle of a sentence abt smth else where henry refers to him as 'all my art tom'. henry notoriously has difficulties with knowing where Hs actually go in words, and he likely meant "all my heart tom". at some point he is so concerned about the potential of being lost and forgotten in the arctic that he wrote down an account of his own career and he keeps it in his wallet next to his navy ID papers. at some point henry dies, probably from lead poisoning / scurvy / the cold / etc. it was awful to live thru and we know this. thomas survives him, and carries henry's wallet as the surviving men continue trekking south under crozier's command. i imagine initially it was a "i'll make sure this gets home for you" sort of thing based on their history together, and then turned into "oh god i'm not getting out of here either, time to bet everything i have on keeping his writing safe for when someone finds our dead remains in the future"
1850(ish i think) - thomas leaves terror camp in just his steward's uniform, with a clothes brush, a folding hair comb, a six pence coin, a half sovereign coin, no shoes (?), and henry's wallet containing his poetry (safely wrapped in newspaper and leather and tucked against his chest) and walks to the south shoreline of king william island. he probably admires the ocean for one last time, presuming it wasn't frozen over, and then lays down on top of the wallet, facedown, and dies.
march 3 1854 - all franklin expedition personnel are declared dead. his arrears are given to next of kin (i can't figure out if they're sent to his older sister elizabeth or his mother sarah)
may 25 1859 - francis mcclintock (my fucking enemy. me in hell like WHERE IS MCCLINTOCK.) is searching king william island at the behest of jane franklin for clues about WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED. he comes across thomas' skeleton, disarticulated but still face down along a ridge peninsula known as gladman's point. these are the only human remains within a 30 mile stretch from the last sign of terror camp at washington bay. mcclintock takes henry's wallet and the comb/brush/some surviving buttons/tom's neckerchief with him back to england but leaves thomas' skeleton behind. here's an engraving of mcclintock finding tom + a stenograph of the artifacts they took from him (left hand side, you can see the clothes brush getting moved btwn shots). the folding hair comb initially had brown hairs still caught in the teeth, but the hairs have since disappeared </3 but thomas and henry both were listed on official paperwork as having brown hair. make of this what you will.
??????????????? idk. thomas skeleton continued exposure to the elements :(
july 20 1973 - the 1st battalion royal canadian regiment is doublechecking mcclintock's notes and refind the skeleton. they take photos of thomas' bones in situ and also after they'd been arranged on a piece of plywood. they decide somehow the partial skeleton was a guy that was 6 ft tall which is generous but technically in line with thomas' height considering he wasn't fully there and there's some room for error. they find some cloth covered buttons, a pearl button, and some scraps of wool coat. they then shipped his bones to the canadian museum of history in ottawa. allegedly the museum received the bones. they make a cairn tho + put up a plaque on the spot though
hi tom.
2018 - i watch the first ep of the terror by amc and get bored bc its a lot of white guys who look the same. i have college to be worrying about at this point lol
2020 - i finish watching the terror by amc and go Hey was that subplot about the gay dude with the wallet real or what. can i see what he actually wrote? not really? damn thats crazy ok anyways whatever time to be really depressed
2022 - thomas' skeleton whereabouts are still "unknown" by the canadian museum of history in ottawa when current FE researchers start asking Hey what the fuck man
2024 - i rewatch the terror and get SERIOUS about a facsimile, and start blogging about my descent into madness <3
2025 - actual historians start helping me out with sourcing legible copies of the papers inside the wallet so i can do the facsimile. i continue blogging like an insane man trying 2 spread the good word about these dead dudes. and you're up to date now congrats
