Ice Ghosts
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: December 13, 2017 7:16 PM | Last Updated: December 14, 2017
Paul Watson
Spanning nearly 200 years, Ice Ghosts is a fast-paced detective story about western science, Indigenous beliefs, and the irrepressible spirit of exploration and discovery. It weaves together an epic account of the legendary Franklin Expedition of 1845 — whose two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror and their crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice — with the modern tale of the scientists, researchers, divers and local Inuit behind the recent discoveries of the two ships, which made news around the world.
The journalist Paul Watson was on the icebreaker that led the expedition that discovered the HMS Erebus in 2014, and he broke the news of the discovery of the HMS Terror in 2016. In a masterful work of history and contemporary reporting, he tells the full story of the Franklin Expedition: Sir John Franklin and his crew setting off from England in search of the fabled Northwest Passage; the hazards they encountered and the reasons they were forced to abandon ship after getting stuck in the ice hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization; and the dozens of search expeditions over more than 160 years, which collectively have been called "the most extensive, expensive, perverse and ill-starred... manhunt in history." (From McClelland & Stewart)
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From the book
Sir John had practically begged for the mission. He was only able to talk the Royal Navy high command into letting him go because their preferred commanders wouldn't. A month shy of his fifty-ninth birthday, when the Franklin Expedition set sail from Greenhithe on the River Thames, he went to sea for the last time as a hard-worn elderly man. War, polar exploration, and ugly bureaucratic fights had knocked him around many times, but he always found a way to get back on his feet and keep going. A fourth journey in search of the Northwest Passage, the third as commander, seemed Franklin's last, best chance to reclaim a good name that colonials had tried to steal in Van Dieman's Land, which would become Tasmania. He had already done more than enough to earn a quiet, comfortable retirement. But that was not the Franklin way. Win or lose, he would make his stand where he belonged: in the ice-choked passage that was a mammoth maritime possible waiting to be solved.
From Ice Ghosts by Paul Watson ©2017. Published by McClelland & Stewart.