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
Industry Reviews
A very modern take on a most Victorian figure. It is both a biography of the man and an examination of the scientific ideals, as well as the commercial and political pressures, that contributed to the ill-fated decision to commence the expedition ... Lambert brilliantly recreates, not just what we know about the events of that expedition, but also how the myth of Franklin as a classic Victorian hero who died for the empire was stage-managed , not least by his widow ... it is to Lambert's credit that he rescues Franklin from his posthumous admirers, and presents here a complicated and interesting portrait of a man faced with impossible pressures. In Lambert's book, Franklin is not the man who discovers a largely useless geographical curiosity, but one who discivered the dark truth at the heart of the human condition - the savage will of the body to survive when the thin veneer of civilization has been stripped away.
