The Terror

Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, second-in-command of the expedition and later captain of HMS Terror, is one of the point-of-view characters and the novel’s protagonist. Simmons uses him to explore the divide between imperial hubris and cultural integration. When Crozier is introduced, he’s already marked as different from the other senior officers of the Franklin Expedition. The real Crozier was Irish and Catholic, a background that set him apart from the Anglican English officers who dominated the Royal Navy. Simmons builds on this difference, presenting Crozier as an outsider who has achieved rank through competence and long service rather than connections or noble birth. Among his peers, there is a sense that Crozier is tolerated but not embraced. Crozier himself believes he has failed in every aspect of life. He isn’t married, his naval career feels stalled, and he sees himself as destined to die in obscurity.

Crozier’s role shifts after Franklin’s death and Fitzjames’s decline. Leadership of the expedition falls to him by necessity. At first, he seems reluctant, even broken by the responsibility. The men are starving, scurvy-ridden, and trapped in the ice with little hope of relief. Crozier, unlike Franklin, leads through pragmatism and a grim willingness to face unpleasant truths.