Second In Command

by May Fluhmann

It is a phenomenon that so many books have been written about Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated expedition, but so few about the officers and men who accompanied him. This small softcover with its modest blue bookplate and a grainy reproduction of the only known daguerreotype of Crozier on the cover is very fitting for a book about that modest and unobtrusive man. It includes five pages with photos, most of which can be found in better quality on the internet nowadays. The most interesting illustration is a photograph of an envelope addressed in Crozier’s handwriting to James Clark Ross.

162 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Hana · Rating 3 out of 5]

in general, i'm very pleased with this biography, simply because it provides a good counterbalance to the doggedness of michael smith's Captain Francis Crozier: Last Man Standing?. while smith sets out on a path of proving that crozier has been unjustly treated by his contemporaries and by history, fluhmann gives a more tempered view, and one can even get a sense of nice-ness in her prose (the exclamation points are endearing, if a little jarring).

it's interesting to note the many theories that fluhmann cites with complete assurance, and to look on them now with decades worth of further analysis and criticism by today's franklin research community. fluhmann praisingly describes aspects of the expedition which would now be viewed as colossal mistakes. reading the two biographies together is a must and will give a more complete view of not only francis crozier, but of the franklin expedition as well.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would've been a decent summary of Crozier's life if 2/3 of the book weren't focused solely on the Franklin Expedition, and not really on Crozier himself. Would've loved to read more about his time before that voyage, Fluhmann zooms through his earlier life and delights in the catastrophe of the Northwest Passage fiasco, not something I really expected going into this book. She's being very racist in offhand comments about Inuit and their involvement in the Franklin searches, it's very much in line with the times this book was written in. We simply know better now.

Overall it's a bit disappointing read, but because it was so short and actually has decent source notes and gives the reader the very bare bones of Crozier's life, despite the later departure from the topic and focus on FE instead, I'm giving it 4 stars. That being said, based on 2/3 of this book the title should've been "First in Command", really 😂

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather dated now, and the section covering his entire career pre-Franklin Expedition is an extremely condensed summary of Parry and Ross's published accounts of the relevant expeditions. She rattles through them in such a way you don't have any real sense of what happened. I fear she was a bit confused herself.

Not worth the effort of hunting down