Sixteen papers from the 1984 multidisciplinary symposium entitled “The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845-59” held in Ottawa, Ontario. The papers address a wide range of research topics and issues surrounding the disappearance of Sir John Franklin and his third expedition to the Canadian Arctic, 1845-1948, and the subsequent search efforts that spanned the period from 1847 to 1859.

The Franklin Northwest Passage Expedition of 1845 is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of exploration--all 129 men vanished, as did the expedition's two ships, HMS Erebus and Terror. Over the next 150 years, searchers found bones, clothing and a variety of relics. Inuit narratives provided some of the details of what happened to the frozen, starving sailors after they deserted their ice-locked ships in 1848. Then, in 2014 and 2016, Canadian researchers found the sunken wrecks, not far from the bleak, windswept King William Island in the Arctic. At last, the mystery of the Franklin Expedition would be solved. Or would it? This book pulls together the various searchers' discoveries; the many recent scientific studies that shed light on when, how and why the men died (and whether, in extremis, they ate each other); and illuminates what we know, and what we don't and may never know, about the fate of the expedition.

Visitors to the Arctic enter places that have been traditionally imagined as otherworldly. This strangeness fascinated audiences in nineteenth-century Britain when the idea of the heroic explorer voyaging through unmapped zones reached its zenith. The Spectral Arctic re-thinks our understanding of Arctic exploration by paying attention to the importance of dreams and ghosts in the quest for the Northwest Passage. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg: they disguise a great mass of mysterious and dimly lit stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past. This revisionist historical account allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the location of Franklin’s ships.

Covers the entire history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, from the voyage of Pytheas ca. 325 B.C. to the present, in one convenient, comprehensive reference resource. Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia is the only reference work that provides a comprehensive history of polar exploration from the ancient period through the present day. The author is a noted polar scholar and offers dramatic accounts of all major explorers and their expeditions, together with separate exploration histories for specific islands, regions, and uncharted waters. He presents a wealth of fascinating information under a variety of subject entries including methods of transport, myths, achievements, and record-breaking activities. By approaching polar exploration biographically, geographically, and topically, Mills reveals a number of intriguing connections between the various explorers, their patrons and times, and the process of discovery in all areas of the polar regions. Furthermore, he provides the reader with a clear understanding of the intellectual climate as well as the dominant social, economic, and political forces surrounding each expedition. Readers will learn why the journeys were undertaken, not just where, when, and how.

This comprehensive history of the native and maritime fur trade in Alaska during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is without precedent. The Bering Strait formed the nexus of the circumpolar fur trade in which Russians, British, Americans, and members of fifty native nations competed and cooperated. The desire to dominate the fur trade fed the European expansion into the most remote regions of Asia and America and was an agent of massive change in these regions. Award-winning author John R. Bockstoce fills a major gap in the historiography of the area in covering the scientific, commercial, and foreign-relations implications of the northern fur trade. In addition, the book provides rare insight into the relationship between the Western powers and the Native Americans who provided them with fur, ivory, and whalebone in exchange for manufactured goods, tobacco, tea, alcohol, and hundreds of other things. But this is also the story of the enterprising individuals who energized the Alaskan fur trade and, in doing so, forever altered the region's history

The third volume of North American Exploration, covering 1784 to 1914, charts a dramatic shift in the purpose, priorities, and results of the exploration of North America. As the nineteenth century opened, exploration was still fostered by the growth of empire, but by the 1830s commercial interests came to drive most exploratory ventures, particularly through the fur trade. By midcentury, however, as imperial rivalries lessened and the fur trade declined, exploration was driven by the growing scientific spirit of the age?although the science was often conducted in the service of a search for railroad routes or natural resources linked to military concerns. A clear transition took place as the spirit of the Enlightenment gave way to economic imperatives and to the science of the post-Darwinian age and exploration passed beyond discovery and geographical definition. This volume explores the resultant beginnings of an understanding of the continent and its native peoples.

In 2014 media around the world buzzed with news that an archaeological team from Parks Canada had located and identified the wreck of HMS Erebus, the flagship of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Finding Franklin outlines the larger story and the cast of detectives from every walk of life that led to the discovery, solving one of the Arctic’s greatest mysteries. In compelling and accessible prose, Russell Potter details his decades of work alongside key figures in the era of modern searches for the expedition and elucidates how shared research and ideas have led to a fuller understanding of the Franklin crew’s final months. Illustrated with numerous images and maps from the last two centuries, Finding Franklin recounts the more than fifty searches for traces of his ships and crew, and the dedicated, often obsessive, men and women who embarked on them. Potter discusses the crucial role that Inuit oral accounts, often cited but rarely understood, played in all of these searches, and continue to play to this day, and offers historical and cultural context to the contemporary debates over the significance of Franklin’s achievement. While examination of HMS Erebus will undoubtedly reveal further details of this mystery, Finding Franklin assembles the stories behind the myth and illuminates what is ultimately a remarkable decades-long discovery.

David Woodman's classic reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the tragic Franklin expedition has taken on new importance in light of the recent discovery of the HMS Erebus wreck, the ship Sir John Franklin sailed on during his doomed 1845 quest to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. First published in 1991, Unravelling the Franklin Mystery boldly challenged standard interpretations and offered a new and compelling alternative. Among the many who have tried to discover the truth behind the Franklin disaster, Woodman was the first to recognize the profound importance of Inuit oral testimony and to analyze it in depth. From his investigations, Woodman concluded that the Inuit likely visited 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. Much of the Inuit testimony presented here had never before been published, and it provided Woodman with the pivotal clue in his reconstruction of the puzzle of the Franklin disaster. Unravelling the Franklin Mystery is a compelling and impressive inquiry into a part of Canadian history that for one hundred and seventy years left many questions unanswered. In this edition, a new preface by the author addresses the recent discovery and reviews the work done in the intervening years on various aspects of the Franklin story, by Woodman and others, as it applies to the book's initial premise of the book that Inuit testimony holds the key to unlocking the mystery.

Arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective and offers a surprising new explanation of an enduring Northern mystery. Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures—the last one leading to more than a hundred deaths, including his own. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discovering the Northwest Passage. This book, McGoogan's sixth about Arctic exploration, challenges that vision. It rejects old orthodoxies, incorporates the latest discoveries, and interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected the advice of Dene and Metis leaders and lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation, and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition? The well-preserved wrecks of Erebus and Terror—located in 2014 and 2016—promise to yield more clues about what cost the lives of the expedition members, some of whom were reduced to cannibalism. Contemporary researchers, rejecting theories of lead poisoning and botulism, continue to seek conclusive evidence both underwater and on land. Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out many intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845, yet people remain fascinated with his final doomed voyage: what happened? McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of traveling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors, and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.

The centuries-long quest for the fabled Northwest Passage rivals the story of Antarctic exploration for heroism, drama, and tragedy. Expedition after expedition set off in search of a sea route connecting Europe with Asia's riches; each expedition suffered extreme hardship and ended in defeat, until Roald Amundsen finally succeeded in 1903-06. Across the Top of the World brings this incredible saga to life through exhaustive research, grim firsthand accounts, and hundreds of dramatic images. Paintings, engravings, and photos of the intrepid men and their ships, as well as of relics and archaeological sites, provide a poignant and compelling link with the past, while landscapes and seascapes of the harsh yet beautiful Arctic illustrate the challenges that faced explorers. Covering all the major expeditions in detail, and written with passion and authority, this book is both a scholarly reference and an eminently readable history of Arctic exploration.