Captain Francis Crozier was a major figure in 19th century Arctic and Antarctic exploration who led the doomed Franklin Expedition's battle to survive against the odds. It is a compelling story which refuses to be laid to rest and recent discovery of his lost ships above the Arctic Circle gives it a new urgency. The ships may hold vital clues to how two navy vessels and 129 men disappeared 170 years ago and why Crozier, in command after Franklin's early death, left the only written clue to the biggest disaster in Polar history. Drawn from historic records and modern revelations, this is the only comprehensive account of Crozier's extraordinary life. It is a tale of a great explorer, a lost love affair and an enduring mystery. Crozier's epic story began comfortably in Banbridge, Co Down and involved six gruelling expeditions on three of the 19th century's great endeavours – navigating the North West Passage, reaching the North Pole and mapping Antarctica. But it ended in disaster.
The "masterfully chilling" novel that inspired the hit AMC series (Entertainment Weekly). The men on board the HMS Terror — part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage — are entering a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, they struggle to survive with poisonous rations, a dwindling coal supply, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is even more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror clawing to get in. “The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years.” —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe
Irishman Francis Crozier was a major figure in the nineteenth-century polar explorations. Rejecting his privileged background, he joined the navy during the Napoleonic wars and captained the Terror in the first charting of the Antarctic. Crozier sought adventure, but it was an unrequited love that drove him back to the ice in 1845 on the fateful North West Passage expedition. The expedition never returned, becoming the biggest disaster in Polar exploration. When Captain Franklin died, Crozier took command and led the battle to survive in the Canadian Arctic, Despite the 40 ships sent to search for the crew only a few pathetic relics were found, including signs that the men had resorted to cannibalism.
David Woodman's reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the disappearance of two British exploration vessels in 1845, under the command of Sir John Franklin, challenges standard interpretations and promises to replace them. Among the many who have tried to discover the truth behind the Franklin disaster, Woodman recognizes the profound importance of the Inuit testimony and analyzes it in depth. He concludes from his investigations that the Inuit probably did visit Franklin's ships while the crew was still on board and that there were some Inuit who actually saw the sinking of one of the ships. He maintains that fewer than ten bodies were found at Starvation Cove and that the last survivors left the cove in 1851, three years after the standard account assumes them to be dead. Woodman also disputes the conclusion of Owen Beattie and John Geiger's book Frozen in Time that lead-poisoning was a major contributing cause of the disaster.
Not long after he began reading the handwritten, 820-page diary of Scottish explorer John Rae, Ken McGoogan realized that here was an astonishing story, hidden from the world for almost 150 years. McGoogan, who was originally conducting research for a novel, recognized the injustice committed against Rae. He was determined to restore the adventurer’s rightful place in history as the man who discovered not only the grisly truth about the lost Franklin expedition, but also the final link in the elusive Northwest Passage. Fatal Passage is McGoogan’s completely absorbing account of John Rae’s incredible accomplishments and his undeserved and wholesale discreditation at the hands of polite Victorian society. After sifting through thousands of pages of research, maps and charts, and traveling to England, Scotland and the Arctic to visit the places Rae knew, McGoogan has produced a book that reads like a fast-paced novel—a smooth synthesis of adventure story, travelogue and historical biography. Fatal Passage is a richly detailed portrait of a time when the ambitions of the Empire knew no bounds. John Rae was an adventurous young medical doctor from Orkney who signed on with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1833. He lived in the Canadian wilds for more than two decades, becoming legendary as a hunter and snowshoer, before he turned to exploration. Famous for what was then a unique attitude—a willingness to learn from and use the knowledge and skills of aboriginal peoples—Rae became the first European to survive an Arctic winter while living solely off the land. One of dozens of explorers and naval men commissioned by the British Admiralty to find out what became of Sir John Franklin and his two ships, Rae returned from the Arctic to report that the most glorious expedition ever launched had ended with no survivors—and worse, that it had degenerated into cannibalism. Unwilling to accept that verdict, Victorian England not only ostracized Rae, but ignored his achievements, and credited Franklin with the discovery of the Passage. Fatal Passage is Ken McGoogan’s brilliant vindication of John Rae’s life and rightful place in history, a book for armchair adventurers, Arctic enthusiasts, lovers of Canadian history, and all those who revel in a story of physical courage and moral integrity.
The Franklin Conspiracy is an absorbing account of the single most enigmatic event in Canadian history. In 1845, two British Royal Navy ships, the Erebus and the Terror, commanded by Sir John Franklin, entered the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Neither ship returned. A fifteen-year search uncovered evidence of unparalleled disaster, but to this day no one knows exactly how the 129 men of the Franklin Expedition met their deaths. Although the expedition did not run out of food, there is clear evidence of cannibalism. The ships carried two hundred message cylinders with them, yet failed to leave records. Stranger still, an earlier explorer, Thomas Simpson, was reputedly murdered for the "secret of the Northwest Passage." What was this "secret"? The Franklin Conspiracy is an exhaustively researched, compellingly reasoned answer to that question. The result is a shocking saga of conspiracy, cover-up, and unbelievable secrets the.
An up close account of the ill-fated Franklin expedition. In 1845, Sir John Franklin set sail from England with two ships in search of the Northwest Passage. Not only did they not succeed, the ships and their crew members vanished, their fate an unsolved mystery for decades. In 10 suspenseful episodes, the captivating story of that doomed polar mission is revealed from the viewpoints of the commander, those back home and the search parties. It’s a riveting tale, that in bone-chilling detail answers the question: What really happened in Terror Bay? At last, a story long hidden in the icy Arctic, finally gets to be told.
Brandt tells the fascinating whole story of the search for the Northwest Passage, from its beginnings early in the age of exploration through its development into a British national obsession to the final sordid, terrible descent into scurvy, starvation, and cannibalism.
James Fitzjames was a hero of the early nineteenth-century Royal Navy. A charismatic man with a wicked sense of humour, he pursued his naval career with wily determination. When he joined the Franklin Expedition at the age of 32 he thought he would make his name. But instead the expedition completely disappeared and he never returned. Its fate is one of history's last great unsolved mysteries, as were the origins and background of James Fitzjames – until now. Fitzjames packed a great deal into his thirty-two years. He had sailed an iron paddle steamer down the River Euphrates and fought with spectacular bravery in wars in Syria and China. But Fitzjames was not what he seemed. He concealed several secrets, including the scandal of his birth, the source of his influence and his plans for after the Franklin Expedition. In this first complete biography of the captain of the HMS Erebus, William Battersby draws extensively on Fitzjames' personal letters and journals – most never published before – as well as official naval records, to strip away 200 years of misinformation and half-truths and enables us to understand for the first time this intriguing man and his significance for the Franklin Expedition.
