It’s safer to joke about ‘retirement’ than discuss the very depressing truth. He thinks about the last time he ever heard James Clark Ross’ voice, the heartbreak he couldn’t stand to listen to as one friend explained to the other that they’d all died miserably.

“I thought I’d be married,” he admits, smiling a little sheepishly. “Married, with a successful command under my belt, perhaps some children on the way.”