The chapter focuses on the experiences and representations of the shipboard community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to explore the changes in the imagining of ‘people’ and questions of individual and collective identity. By closely reading the novels by Joseph Conrad, James Hanley, and B. Traven, alongside the theoretical works of Sigmund Freud, Gustave Le Bon, and Hannah Arendt, it argues how fictional form diagnoses and dramatises with singular power the gradual move from Victorian ideas of the ‘crowd’ to an interwar imagining of peoples’ history and the language of rights. In the process, the chapter addresses a range of issues, from questions of race, class, and the body to the condition of statelessness and the growth of proletarian consciousness, which push the maritime novel in new directions.

During the search for Franklin, it was common for expeditions to intentionally winter over in the Arctic sea ice. Indeed, some ships remained in the Arctic for up to six years. The ships in winter quarters provided space and time for cultural production; a lively homosocial life inspired material for illustrations and articles that were compiled as handwritten ‘magazines’ intended to be read solely by the ship’s company. This chapter takes a closer look at the production of these fascinating and revealing illustrated on-board periodicals, which were a key part of the maritime culture during the Franklin search. The illustrations in the periodicals are, in the main, human-centred, turning inwards to observe the ship’s inhabitants in winter quarters, focusing on social interaction and incidents. The Arctic itself and expedition members’ incongruous domestic life was the source of a humour that was personal and particular to the expedition members’ situation. Intended both for amusement on board and as future objects of nostalgia, the periodicals satirise the British experience in the Arctic and effectively utilise the Arctic environment as a rich resource of humour.