Gillian Hutchinson

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and his two ships Erebus and Terror disappeared into the Canadian Arctic to seek the Northwest Passage. Not one man ever returned to England. In 1858, the only significant written record of the expedition was found. It would be an exaggeration to say that, for the next hundred and fifty years, nothing else was learned. An exaggeration -- but a small one.

In recent years, as climate change has opened the Northwest Passage to ships, and as natural resources have been found in the Canadian Arctic, the question of what happened to Franklin has grown increasingly important; it affects who can claim which lands -- and which waters. So Canada has made serious efforts to learn more, and to find the wrecks of Franklin's ships. In 2014, they succeeded: the wreck of Erebus was located. In 2016, Terror was found -- and found to be in such good shape that it appears she may have been deliberately sailed to her last resting place rather than being sunk.

Books about Franklin have appeared regularly over the decades; I have about two dozen (give or take, since some are only partly about Franklin). But they generally divide into pre-2014 and post-2014; the discovery of the ships hasn't really answered many questions -- but, since they weren't where they were expected to be, the discovery has certainly changed the debate.

This book is, as of this writing, the newest of the post-2014 crop, and in several ways the best. It is most lavishly illustrated (e.g. it is the only Franklin book I've ever seen that includes every photo of his officers; half of them I have never seen elsewhere). It is the only book I have which lists not merely the men of the expedition but the family members to whom their wages were given (wholly or in part). It shows contemporary and modern maps, and many photographs of rescued artifacts. (And relatively few of the skulls and skeletons found in other books, which is frankly rather nice.)

The one down side of all that is that it doesn't leave a lot of room for text. This is a relatively brief account, with little history of Franklin prior to his expedition, or of Northwest Passage expeditions prior to his. If you want to understand the whole story, the account here is simply not sufficient. But it wasn't meant to supply that. It's about the search, in particular the recent search that found Erebus and Terror. If you read it with that in mind, it's an excellent book -- well-written and insightful, and obviously up-to-the-minute. Throw in the illustrations and you have a book that surely everyone interested in the Franklin Expedition will want to have.… (altro)