Palin provides a bibliography of books and articles he relied upon in researching his book and offers useful accounts of some of the important manuscript sources in the text. Drawing on personal correspondence, he offers insightful interpretations of the personalities of Franklin’s senior officers. Palin’s treatment of work and daily life aboard the ships is engrossing. His gripping account of the voyage of Erebus to Antarctica is particularly good and details an important period that will not be as familiar for many Franklin students. Palin is a gifted storyteller and has an unerring eye for illuminating anecdotes. Hutchinson’s book’s most important contribution is its selection and display of a large number of original artifacts relating to Franklin’s expedition, predecessor forays by the British navy, and succeeding voyages in search of the missing party.Īs suggested by its title, Michael Palin’s Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time treats the larger history of HMS Erebus throughout its long history with the British navy, including its voyage to Antarctic regions from 1840 to 1843, its fateful last expedition of 1845, and the mystery regarding its fate. Providing the names, ages, places of birth, and family data of every crew member, the muster tables are valuable documents for Franklin researchers. A chapter entitled “McClintock discovers the fate of the Franklin Expedition” does not fully acknowledge the contribution of Inuit who collected and traded many of the artifacts brought back by the explorers, and who contributed knowledge that significantly enabled McClintock’s revelations of 1859.Ī welcome feature is the book’s transcription and publication of the original muster tables of the two ships, heretofore only accessible to researchers at the British National Archives. Exceptions to the chronological approach are chapters on Franklin and the two ships he commanded on his last fateful expedition.ĭespite including several references to Inuit and reproducing the map of Franklin sites drawn by the Inuk Innookpoozhejook for the American explorer Charles Francis Hall, this book is light on Inuit aspects of the story. These diverse images carry much of the story that is told in mostly chronological fashion in ten chapters, from the search for the Northwest Passage to the modern-era investigations and discoveries of the ships.
Modern-day aspects of the Franklin story are covered in the penultimate chapter and illustrated with arresting surface and underwater colour photographs of the search and the wrecks discovered by Parks Canada’s researchers. Many of the original objects reside in British collections, including at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, which co-published the book. Gillian Hutchinson’s Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition is an illustrated history focussing on images of Franklin artifacts, maps, written documents, paintings, and wood engravings, as well as the collection of daguerreotype portraits of the expedition’s officers made just before their departure in 1845. An overriding question for readers, whether Franklin enthusiasts, scholars, or members of the general reading public, is the extent to which any new book adds to the existing knowledge of Franklin, his ships, and the men who accompanied him to the Arctic. The recent discoveries of the wrecks of HMS Erebus in 2014 and HMS Terror in 2016 have further fuelled this publishing phenomenon. Canada's History Youth Committee MembersĮrebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Timeįew episodes in Canadian history have inspired as many books and articles as the missing last expedition of Sir John Franklin.The John Bragg Award for Atlantic Canada.Historical Thinking Community of Practice.
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