July 13, 1845—We are begun.

Her Majesty’s Ship Erebus, off the coast of Greenland.

Sunday, July 13, 1845, 11 p.m.—My Dearest Elizabeth. We are begun. All the endless preparation is done. The supplies are loaded and we have said a last farewell to civilisation, or what passes for it in this barren land. We weighed anchor on the tide last night, beneath the most beautiful clear sky you could imagine. The sea was as flat as a glass and peppered with a most remarkable assortment of icebergs which shone on the horizon like a twelfth cake with each occasional gleam of the midnight sun. This really is the most extraordinary of lands we have entered.

Around eight the wind picked up and has moved us quite briskly northwards all day. There was some discussion before we sailed as to whether we should head straight across Baffin’s Bay to Lancaster Sound or sail north and around the top of the ice. A Dane from Lievely who had married an Esquimaux came over to visit us at Disco and indicated that this was the one of the mildest seasons and earliest summers ever known in these lands. We are presented with a very open year for ice, but the pack—as a solid mass of sea ice is called—can still be a formidable obstacle in the centre of the bay. 

It was decided that we should sail north along the coast in the direction of Cape York and yet be prepared to take advantage of any favourable winds or intelligence from the whalers we shall meet. It is generally agreed that we shall be in time if we reach Lancaster Sound by the first of August or thereabouts. Everyone is very sanguine about our prospects and I wrote to William that I would shake hands with him on February 22nd next.

Yet, I cannot stop myself from wishing for some small hindrance to keep us in this land for a winter—we have ample supplies for three years and our scientific work would benefit greatly from the extra time. I do not think one can get to know this place without experiencing it when the sun is both never down and eternally set. So if I am not back with you as my promise to William, do not fret for I shall be enjoying myself in complete security and comfort.

My dear sister—for thus I think of you just as I think of William as my brother—and wife of him I love best; I leave you knowing you as a woman and no longer a mere description in one of William’s letters. I feel the parting from you full as much as from William—and of course the children. I am often to be found taking much pleasure in the remembrance of my little friends. My time on land between the Clio’s return and this leaving was so brief, and busy, that I scarce had time to do one quarter of the things I had promised myself. My memories are too much filled with details of supplies and crew lists and the like. However, foremost in my mind is the short time I had to become acquainted with Elisabeth and Robert. Their visit to the Erebus at Greenhithe breathed a fresh draught of life into the dull life of a sailor at dock with their eternal questions concerning every knot and billhook they espied. In particular, Elisabeth’s opinion that the rigging made the ship look as if it were held in the web of a spider and her scream of fright when she stumbled over a coil of rope which she mistook for a snake shall make me eternally look upon the tools of my trade with fresh eyes. 

Perhaps you will think I am foolish to care for little children—but so it is. I was as much pleased with little Elisabeth’s expressions of regard—exaggerated though they were—as I should have been with the more studied and carefully phrased, but perhaps less genuine expressions, of grown up people.

I hope to celebrate Elisabeth’s birthday (this one or the next) in Behring’s Strait or close by it. Little Robert, the son and heir, will be three or four by then and I promise I shall find time to devote to my Godfatherly duties. 

After all your anxiety that I should keep a journal for your especial perusal and here I am already rambling on and wearing out the porcupine quill. I have never been one to waste the hours lying abed more than necessary and can always find some dark corner of the night in which to put down my thoughts. Indeed, I have managed to keep up my official journal which I will submit to the Admiralty upon our return, but it is dry piece of work talking in the same official voice of all our doings from the weather to a man being flogged. Not fit reading for a fair lady, to be sure, so I shall use it only to refresh my overfilled memory. These writings will be mere notes to please you, of such things as may strike me, either in the form of a letter, or in any other form that might at the time suit my fancy. So I do not feel obliged to fill a page every day. To keep my thoughts fresh I shall not read over what I have written, so you must excuse all inaccuracies. 

And so having made a beginning and my excuses I will to bed. I wind up this and call it a letter just for the sake of adding that I am as ever your affectionate friend and almost brother, James Fitzjames.