Thirty Years in the Arctic Regions - Softcover

Franklin, John A.; Franklin, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080326867X ISBN 13: 9780803268678

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1988

Synopsis

In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his expedition, sailing on the Erebus and the Terror, set out in search of the Northwest Passage. In their pursuit of that elusive water route across North America they all perished, their fate remaining unknown for many years. Franklin and his crew inspired a spate of books on exploration in the nineteenth century, and interest in his expedition has revived with the recent discovery of the bodies of several of its members, perfectly preserved by ice for nearly a century and half. Thirty Years in the Arctic Regions, originally published in 1859, is Franklin's own record of his earlier explorations that put the high arctic on the map, and includes his last letter and reports tracing the expedition's last movements. He describes the daily progress of his two overland expeditions from 1818 to 1827, which covered a thousand miles between the Great Slave Lake and the Arctic Ocean and charted fourteen hundred miles of coastline between Cape Beechey in present-day Alaska and Bathurst Inlet, to the north of Hudson Bay. It is a narrative filled with the exhilarating strangeness of everything about the Far North and unimaginable hardship endured heroically. Bil Gilbert's introduction is informed by a first-hand feeling for what Franklin was up against. Several years ago he followed much of the explorer's route, an experience that is described in Our Nature (Nebraska, 1986).

About this title

Review:

"A captivating primary source that stirs the readers sense of adventure and imagination, Thirty Years in the Arctic Regions is highly recommended for public and college library collections." --Midwest Book Review

About the Author:

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin was an English Royal Navy officer and explorer of the Arctic. Franklin also served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1837 to 1843.
David Welky is the author of The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II, and other books. He is a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas. He lives in Conway, Arkansas.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 080326867X
• ISBN 13: 9780803268678
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496