Although Arctic explorer and Hudson Bay Company surveyor John Rae (1813-1893) travelled and recorded the final uncharted sections of the Northwest Passage, he is best known for his controversial discovery of the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1845. Based on evidence given to him by local Inuit, Rae determined that Franklin's crew had resorted to cannibalism in their final, desperate days. Seen as maligning a national hero, Rae was shunned by British society. This collection of personal correspondence--reissued here for the first time since its original publication in 1953--illuminates the details of Rae's expeditions through his own words. The letters offer a glimpse into Rae's daily life, his ideas, musings, and troubles. Prefaced by the original, thorough introduction detailing his early life, John Rae's Arctic Correspondence is a crucial resource for any Arctic enthusiast. This new edition features a foreword by researcher and Arctic enthusiast Ken McGoogan, the award-winning author of eleven books, including Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae (HarperCollins, 2002).

John Rae is best known today as the first European to reveal the fate of the Franklin Expedition, yet the range of Rae’s accomplishments is much greater. Over five expeditions, Rae mapped some 1,550 miles (2,494 kilometres) of Arctic coastline; he is undoubtedly one of the Arctic’s greatest explorers, yet today his significance is all but lost. John Rae, Arctic Explorer is an annotated version of Rae’s unfinished autobiography. William Barr has extended Rae’s previously unpublished manuscript and completed his story based on Rae’s reports and correspondence—including reaction to his revelations about the Franklin Expedition. Barr’s meticulously researched, long overdue presentation of Rae’s life and legacy is an immensely valuable addition to the literature of Arctic exploration.

A vital part of A Country So Interesting are the annotated catalogues of all the maps known to have been produced by the Hudson's Bay Company: 838 maps and 557 sketches. While most are in the Company's archives in Manitoba, Ruggles has tracked down maps in other collections, particularly in various libraries in London, England. Also included are sixty-six reproductions of the most important maps and map details.

From one of our foremost naval historians, the compelling story of the doomed Arctic voyage of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, commanded by Captain Sir John Franklin. Andrew Lambert, a leading authority on naval history, reexamines the life of Sir John Franklin and his final, doomed Arctic voyage. Franklin was a man of his time, fascinated, even obsessed with, the need to explore the world; he had already mapped nearly two-thirds of the northern coastline of North America when he undertook his third Arctic voyage in 1845, at the age of fifty-nine. His two ships were fitted with the latest equipment; steam engines enabled them to navigate the pack ice, and he and his crew had a three-year supply of preserved and tinned food and more than one thousand books. Despite these preparations, the voyage ended in catastrophe: the ships became imprisoned in the ice, and the men were wracked by disease and ultimately wiped out by hypothermia, scurvy, and cannibalism. Franklin's mission was ostensibly to find the elusive North West Passage, a viable sea route between Europe and Asia reputed to lie north of the American continent. Lambert shows for the first time that there were other scientific goals for the voyage and that the disaster can only be understood by reconsidering the original objectives of the mission. Franklin, commonly dismissed as a bumbling fool, emerges as a more important and impressive figure, in fact, a hero of navigational science.

In 1850, Richard Collinson captained the HMS Enterprise on a voyage to the Arctic via the Bering Strait in search of the missing Franklin expedition. Arctic Hell-Ship describes the daily progress of this little-known Arctic expedition, and examines the steadily worsening relations between Collinson and his officers. William Barr has based his research on a wide range of original archival documents, and the book is illustrated with a selection of vivid paintings by the ship's assistant surgeon, Edward Adams.

After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled Northwest Passage. For the next thirty-five years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route, and then, after 1845, to find Sir John Franklin, the Royal Navy hero who led the last of these Admiralty expeditions. Enthralling and often harrowing, The Man Who Ate His Boots captures the glory and the folly of this ultimately tragic enterprise.

Born of mixed Scottish/Native Indian blood in what is now Saskatchewan, Isbister emigrated to Britain after he found his ambitions thwarted by Hudson's Bay Company policies regarding native-born employees. There he became a respected educator, but more important to this study, he also became the most persistent critic of the Company, and of British and Canadian policies dealing with the inhabitants of Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories.

In 1845 Captain Sir John Franklin led a large, well equipped expedition to complete the conquest of the Canadian Arctic, to find the fabled North West Passage connecting the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Yet Franklin, his ships and his men were fated never to return. The cause of their loss remains a mystery. In Franklin, Andrew Lambert presents a gripping account of the worst catastrophe in the history of British exploration, and the dark tales of cannibalism that surround the fate of those involved. Shocked by the disappearance of all 129 officers and men, and sickened by reports of cannibalism, the Victorians re-created Franklin as the brave Christian hero who laid down his life, and those of his men. Later generations have been more sceptical about Franklin and his supposed selfless devotion to duty. But does either view really explain why this outstanding scientific navigator found his ships trapped in pack ice seventy miles from magnetic north? In 2014 Canadian explorers discovered the remains of Franklin's ship. His story is now being brought to a whole new generation, and Andrew Lambert's book gives the best analysis of what really happened to the crew. In its incredible detail and its arresting narrative, Franklin re-examines the life and the evidence with Lambert's customary brilliance and authority. In this riveting story of the Arctic, he discovers a new Franklin: a character far more complex, and more truly heroic, than previous histories have allowed. '[A]nother brilliant piece of research combined with old-fashioned detective work . . . utterly compelling.' Dr Amanda Foreman