I like the idea of starboard cat and port cat.

They had a guy being interviewed on NPR about some book he'd written, maybe not about the Terror, but maybe about it--definitely about a northerly wrecked ship--and he talked about speaking with Inuit people about their legends concerning the wreck, and he said one was that there was a corpse whose hair had continued to grow, down over his face, so all you could see was his eyes staring out at you. A very Edgar Allen Poe legend.