Description: Exploration, Starvation, and Survival in the Quest for the Northwest Passage
In 1819 Lieutenant John Franklin was selected to command the Royal Navy's first overland expedition in the Canadian wilderness. Their mission was to seek the Northwest Passage by charting the northern coast eastwards from the Coppermine River while documenting the geography of Northern Canada, from flora and fauna to magnetic variations to meteorology to the Aurora Borealis. Assisting the expedition with information, advice, and supplies was the Hudson's Bay Company.
What began with promise soon became a harrowing struggle to survive. Miscalculations by the leadership combined with missing supplies to reduce the expedition to starvation, murder, and even cannibalism. Eleven men died, and Franklin became forever known as "the man who ate his boots."
Based on the 1823 folio, this new deluxe edition contains 4 maps and 28 restored engravings, 11 of which are in colour. It also includes detailed scientific appendices by Dr. John Richardson, Lieutenant Robert Hood, and Joseph Sabine. It is a remarkable look at the land and people of early 19th century Northern Canada.
Brief description: Sir John Franklin was born on April 16, 1786, to a merchant family in Lincolnshire. Joining the Royal Navy, he fought at the battles of Copenhagen andTrafalgar. After the defeat of Napoleon, he commanded the H.M.S. Trent in a polar expedition to Svalbard in 1818, and then headed an expedition across northern Canada in 1819. He was Elected F.R.S. and knighted after a second expedition in 1823. Sir John then served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land (modern Tasmania) from 1836 to 1843. Sir John died on June 11, 1847, while attempting to find the Northwest Passage by sea on his fourth polar expedition.