The Lost Franklin Expedition: The Doomed Voyage Into the Ice From Which No One Returned
In the spring of 1845, two of the finest ships in the British navy sailed out of England and into the far north, carrying one hundred and twenty-nine men and the confident hopes of an empire. Their commander was Sir John Franklin, a celebrated Arctic explorer, and their mission was to conquer the last unnavigated stretch of the fabled Northwest Passage, the sea route through the frozen maze of the Canadian Arctic that had lured and destroyed sailors for centuries. The ships were named Erebus and Terror — words meaning darkness and dread — and they were provisioned for years, armored against the ice, and equipped with every advantage of the age. They were seen by other vessels one last time that summer, moored to an iceberg, waiting for the way to open. And then they sailed on into the white labyrinth and were never seen again by European eyes. Every one of the one hundred and twenty-nine men died. The full story of how they perished, and why so total and terrible a disaster overtook t...