A chapter entitled “McClintock discovers the fate of the Franklin Expedition” does not fully acknowledge the contribution of Inuit who collected and traded many of the artifacts brought back by the explorers, and who contributed knowledge that significantly enabled McClintock’s revelations of 1859.Ī welcome feature is the book’s transcription and publication of the original muster tables of the two ships, heretofore only accessible to researchers at the British National Archives. Exceptions to the chronological approach are chapters on Franklin and the two ships he commanded on his last fateful expedition.ĭespite including several references to Inuit and reproducing the map of Franklin sites drawn by the Inuk Innookpoozhejook for the American explorer Charles Francis Hall, this book is light on Inuit aspects of the story. These diverse images carry much of the story that is told in mostly chronological fashion in ten chapters, from the search for the Northwest Passage to the modern-era investigations and discoveries of the ships.

Modern-day aspects of the Franklin story are covered in the penultimate chapter and illustrated with arresting surface and underwater colour photographs of the search and the wrecks discovered by Parks Canada’s researchers. Many of the original objects reside in British collections, including at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, which co-published the book. Gillian Hutchinson’s Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition is an illustrated history focussing on images of Franklin artifacts, maps, written documents, paintings, and wood engravings, as well as the collection of daguerreotype portraits of the expedition’s officers made just before their departure in 1845. An overriding question for readers, whether Franklin enthusiasts, scholars, or members of the general reading public, is the extent to which any new book adds to the existing knowledge of Franklin, his ships, and the men who accompanied him to the Arctic. The recent discoveries of the wrecks of HMS Erebus in 2014 and HMS Terror in 2016 have further fuelled this publishing phenomenon. Canada's History Youth Committee MembersĮrebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Timeįew episodes in Canadian history have inspired as many books and articles as the missing last expedition of Sir John Franklin.The John Bragg Award for Atlantic Canada.

Erebus and terror