Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin, 1878-1880

by Heinrich Klutschak, William Barr

In May 1845 Sir John Franklin sailed westward from England in search of the Northwest Passage and was never seen again. Some thirty-five years later, Heinrich Klutschak of Prague, artist and surveyor on a small expedition led by Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the 3rd US Cavalry Regiment, stumbled upon the grisly remains at Starvation Cove of the last survivors among Franklin's men.

Overland to Starvation Cove is the first English translation of Klutschak's account. A significant contribution to Canadian exploration history, it is also an important anthropological document, providing some of the earliest reliable descriptions of the Aivilingmiut, the Utkuhikhalingmiut, and the Netsilingmiut. But above all, it is a fascinating story of arctic adventure.

Genres: Nonfiction

301 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Unwisely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 1987 translation of the diary of Heinrich Klutschak, who was the artist for the Schwatka expedition that wandered around King William Island and found Franklin party relics in 1878-1880. The diary was published in Germany, but this is apparently the first English translation.

Now...I liked this book quite a bit. Because it is a diary, it's gives the feel of being there, but since the translation is modern, attitudes, vocabulary, and grammar are tuned for modern sensibilities. And there's a lot to like about the book. This expedition, in contrast to most of the arctic explorers (excepting of course John Rae) adopted Inuit methods wholeheartedly, and this trip had no deaths or serious injuries. In a lot of ways this book is more a travelogue slash anthropological journey than the typical Northwest Passage Explorer book. And it's backed up enough footnotes to help explain some of the things and compare them to later searches or modern interpretations. Klutschak talks about things like the terrain and little details of arctic travel - how inhabited snow houses get covered in lumps from patching them, for example, all illustrated with his sketches.

The afterword briefly describe expeditions since then to look for Franklin relics, which is also interesting. (Apparently by burying the skeletons they found, the Schwatka guys destroyed any hope of future expeditions figuring out exactly where things happened. Whoops.)

This book is a little obscure, I guess, but if you're interested in what Arctic Travel was like in the 1880s, I would *highly* recommend this book. Now, if you know nothing about the Franklin expedition, this might be a little confusing (there is a brief introduction, but that whole mess had so many parts that I think it would have been confusing if that were all I had to go on). My minor quibble is that I would have liked it if the maps had traced the party's route on it, but, overall, highly recommended.