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Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation
In 1845 Captain Sir John Franklin led a large, well equipped expedition to complete the conquest of the Canadian Arctic, to find the fabled North West Passage connecting the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Yet Franklin, his ships and his men were fated never to return. The cause of their loss remains a mystery. In Franklin , Andrew Lambert presents a gripping account of the worst catastrophe in the history of British exploration, and the dark tales of cannibalism that surround the fate of those involved.
Shocked by the disappearance of all 129 officers and men, and sickened by reports of cannibalism, the Victorians re-created Franklin as the brave Christian hero who laid down his life, and those of his men. Later generations have been more sceptical about Franklin and his supposed selfless devotion to duty. But does either view really explain why this outstanding scientific navigator found his ships trapped in pack ice seventy miles from magnetic north?
In 2014 Canadian explorers discovered the remains of Franklin's ship. His story is now being brought to a whole new generation, and Andrew Lambert's book gives the best analysis of what really happened to the crew. In its incredible detail and its arresting narrative, Franklin re-examines the life and the evidence with Lambert's customary brilliance and authority. In this riveting story of the Arctic, he discovers a new a character far more complex, and more truly heroic, than previous histories have allowed.
'[A]nother brilliant piece of research combined with old-fashioned detective work . . . utterly compelling.' Dr Amanda Foreman
Shocked by the disappearance of all 129 officers and men, and sickened by reports of cannibalism, the Victorians re-created Franklin as the brave Christian hero who laid down his life, and those of his men. Later generations have been more sceptical about Franklin and his supposed selfless devotion to duty. But does either view really explain why this outstanding scientific navigator found his ships trapped in pack ice seventy miles from magnetic north?
In 2014 Canadian explorers discovered the remains of Franklin's ship. His story is now being brought to a whole new generation, and Andrew Lambert's book gives the best analysis of what really happened to the crew. In its incredible detail and its arresting narrative, Franklin re-examines the life and the evidence with Lambert's customary brilliance and authority. In this riveting story of the Arctic, he discovers a new a character far more complex, and more truly heroic, than previous histories have allowed.
'[A]nother brilliant piece of research combined with old-fashioned detective work . . . utterly compelling.' Dr Amanda Foreman
428 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Andrew D. Lambert
62 books39 followersAndrew Lambert, FRHistS, is a British naval historian, who since 2001 has been the Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies, King's College London
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 14, 2014
This is an odd book and not one I’d recommend to anyone who hasn’t read anything else about its subject. It’s an aggressively revisionist history, but Lambert’s desire to make his case often seems to be at odds with the information he provides. Rather than analyze and discuss, he tends to state his preferred
version/interpretation without supporting either with evidence.
Stylistically the writing is not good. He's very fond of adjectives. Adjectives make judgments but hide the grounds of the judgment. So Franklin’s detractors as Governor are ‘small minded self-interested Partisans and penny-pinching bureaucrats’ and those who criticized his last voyage are……’Doubters, disappointed, bitter men’.
The book feels scattered and lacks a focus because Franklin is absent from most of It. This isn’t a biography. The dig at Huntford on page 351 is unfortunate, not only because Huntford writes careful but readable history, but because it invites comparison between this book and Huntford's Shackleton, and the comparison is not flattering to Lambert.
This is not the kind of book that sets out to examine a subject’s motives or character. His first fifty years are skimmed in fifty eight pages. His first command, which made him famous and which is crucial to any understanding of him as Leader gets two, his first marriage gets a paragraph and he disappears on page 166.
The treatment of Franklin's first independent command, his journey down the Coppermine, sums up the problems I have with this book. Rather than discuss details, or weigh evidence, Lambert blurs both in a brief summary and then states:
"But his performance had not been about competence, it had been about leadership, motivating men who believed themselves as good as dead. He Inspired them to cross rivers and carry on when common sense told them to lie down and die quietly. He defeated the fatal drift of hypothermia providing a sensation starved world with a stunning example of human fortitude."
The standard versions of this expedition offer no such evidence. There is no evidence of inspiring leadership. The return journey was a nightmare and the expedition fell apart. Half his Voyageurs died, and who eat what or who is still an interesting question. His role in the crucial river crossing is negligible and he survived only through a chain of improbable co-incidences. He didn't defeat the fatal drift of anything, he was saved by others when he was no longer able to save himself.
Now, it is possible that the standard version, which I've known for over thirty years, is wrong, or the evidence has been been misread. That's what revisionist history is about. Challenging the accepted versions. That's what makes it so interesting. SO it seems ironic that later in the book, hectoring those he disagrees with, Lambert can state that historians should provide evidence that would stand up in court.
So although the journals of three of Franklin's fellow officers on that journey have been edited, annotated and published in the decades before the publication of this book, there is no weighing of the evidence, no discussion, no detailed narrative. Just the strange summing up I've quoted above.
The book at times reads like a draft of a history of Magnetic science in the 19th century and the men who drove it, which Franklin played a minor role in collecting data. Where detail is needed to support the argument, it is often missing, and where detail seems unnecessary, as in the story of the relief expeditions, it seems over done. To add to the frustration the maps are so crowded they are almost unreadable.
I would recommend reading this only after reading the relevant chapters in another history of the same subject. There are, after all, a lot of them
version/interpretation without supporting either with evidence.
Stylistically the writing is not good. He's very fond of adjectives. Adjectives make judgments but hide the grounds of the judgment. So Franklin’s detractors as Governor are ‘small minded self-interested Partisans and penny-pinching bureaucrats’ and those who criticized his last voyage are……’Doubters, disappointed, bitter men’.
The book feels scattered and lacks a focus because Franklin is absent from most of It. This isn’t a biography. The dig at Huntford on page 351 is unfortunate, not only because Huntford writes careful but readable history, but because it invites comparison between this book and Huntford's Shackleton, and the comparison is not flattering to Lambert.
This is not the kind of book that sets out to examine a subject’s motives or character. His first fifty years are skimmed in fifty eight pages. His first command, which made him famous and which is crucial to any understanding of him as Leader gets two, his first marriage gets a paragraph and he disappears on page 166.
The treatment of Franklin's first independent command, his journey down the Coppermine, sums up the problems I have with this book. Rather than discuss details, or weigh evidence, Lambert blurs both in a brief summary and then states:
"But his performance had not been about competence, it had been about leadership, motivating men who believed themselves as good as dead. He Inspired them to cross rivers and carry on when common sense told them to lie down and die quietly. He defeated the fatal drift of hypothermia providing a sensation starved world with a stunning example of human fortitude."
The standard versions of this expedition offer no such evidence. There is no evidence of inspiring leadership. The return journey was a nightmare and the expedition fell apart. Half his Voyageurs died, and who eat what or who is still an interesting question. His role in the crucial river crossing is negligible and he survived only through a chain of improbable co-incidences. He didn't defeat the fatal drift of anything, he was saved by others when he was no longer able to save himself.
Now, it is possible that the standard version, which I've known for over thirty years, is wrong, or the evidence has been been misread. That's what revisionist history is about. Challenging the accepted versions. That's what makes it so interesting. SO it seems ironic that later in the book, hectoring those he disagrees with, Lambert can state that historians should provide evidence that would stand up in court.
So although the journals of three of Franklin's fellow officers on that journey have been edited, annotated and published in the decades before the publication of this book, there is no weighing of the evidence, no discussion, no detailed narrative. Just the strange summing up I've quoted above.
The book at times reads like a draft of a history of Magnetic science in the 19th century and the men who drove it, which Franklin played a minor role in collecting data. Where detail is needed to support the argument, it is often missing, and where detail seems unnecessary, as in the story of the relief expeditions, it seems over done. To add to the frustration the maps are so crowded they are almost unreadable.
I would recommend reading this only after reading the relevant chapters in another history of the same subject. There are, after all, a lot of them
February 2, 2019
First half of the book is dedicated to science, second half of the book to the various search missions. The book is written by how the people in London would look at it. Lots of politics. The last chapter brings us to the ice and to the grim reality. Maps in the book are small and not very usefull. Could do with better maps!
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June 17, 2019Finito nel 01/gen/1970 00:00:00
February 7, 2025
i really really fucking love these guys
July 5, 2011
Andrew Lambert is Professor of Naval History at King's College, London and has written various books on the British Navy. He also produced 'War at Sea' which was broadcast on BBC tv. Here Professor Lambert writes many biographies in one book. Naturally the main focus here is Sir John 'Franklin-Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation' (pub 2009), but also includes a very detailed history of the many supporting characters in nineteenth century British politics, science and naval exploration.
I've long wanted to read this story. Previously I had only encountered the tragic tale in song, i.e. 'Lord Franklin's Lament', "We were homeward bound one night on the deep,
swinging in my hammock I fell asleep.
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true,
concerning Franklin and his gallant crew."
A British folk song, stolen by that other intrepid explorer, Bob Dylan for his 'Bob Dylan's Dream'.
Lambert's biography paints a redeeming portrait of the man at the centre of this nineteenth century polar tragedy, from the taints of a failed attempt at the NW passage and the loss of two ships and 129 men, in much the same vein as Susan Solomon's 'The Coldest March' does for Scott's later Antarctic expedition. The teenage Franklin stood on the quarterdeck as a junior officer in Nelson's navy and fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar. He developed into a very competent navigator and through the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, commanded his first Arctic expedition in 1819-22.
The author also puts the record straight on Franklin's tenure as Governor of Van Dieman's Land- Tasmania from 1836-43. Franklin's statue still stands in Hobart.
Franklin commanded his final expedition to the Arctic in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1845 and many aspects of this mystery still remain today. Threaded throughout is the global geomagnetic survey data gathering led by General Sir Edward Sabine who also backed James Ross's Antarctic explorations for the same reasons. Featuring large in this tragedy is also the tireless efforts of Franklin's wife Lady Jane who campaigned for relief efforts to attempt rescue and truth to the mystery and later petitioned government and Admiralty for recognition of the expeditions achievements.
Perhaps Lambert sums up the whole book in his final paragraph "This book should be a warning against the cult of celebrity, for behind every bronze hero is a human being, an urgent, flawed life in pursuit of some fragment of immortality. We should listen, not judge, because our ancestors were human, and in seeing their humanity we might recall our own before the lights go out for ever."
However, the fascination in Franklin continues as in 2011 Anthony Brandt publishes his 'The Man Who Ate His Boots'.
Studying the charts in this book it is interesting to discover that I have personally travelled further north into the Arctic circle than Franklin did. It is a cold, dark and forbidding region of the planet. Another world, that critics would do well to visit before taking pot shots with hindsight at the many brave men who have lost their lives in these terrible places.
I've long wanted to read this story. Previously I had only encountered the tragic tale in song, i.e. 'Lord Franklin's Lament', "We were homeward bound one night on the deep,
swinging in my hammock I fell asleep.
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true,
concerning Franklin and his gallant crew."
A British folk song, stolen by that other intrepid explorer, Bob Dylan for his 'Bob Dylan's Dream'.
Lambert's biography paints a redeeming portrait of the man at the centre of this nineteenth century polar tragedy, from the taints of a failed attempt at the NW passage and the loss of two ships and 129 men, in much the same vein as Susan Solomon's 'The Coldest March' does for Scott's later Antarctic expedition. The teenage Franklin stood on the quarterdeck as a junior officer in Nelson's navy and fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar. He developed into a very competent navigator and through the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, commanded his first Arctic expedition in 1819-22.
The author also puts the record straight on Franklin's tenure as Governor of Van Dieman's Land- Tasmania from 1836-43. Franklin's statue still stands in Hobart.
Franklin commanded his final expedition to the Arctic in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1845 and many aspects of this mystery still remain today. Threaded throughout is the global geomagnetic survey data gathering led by General Sir Edward Sabine who also backed James Ross's Antarctic explorations for the same reasons. Featuring large in this tragedy is also the tireless efforts of Franklin's wife Lady Jane who campaigned for relief efforts to attempt rescue and truth to the mystery and later petitioned government and Admiralty for recognition of the expeditions achievements.
Perhaps Lambert sums up the whole book in his final paragraph "This book should be a warning against the cult of celebrity, for behind every bronze hero is a human being, an urgent, flawed life in pursuit of some fragment of immortality. We should listen, not judge, because our ancestors were human, and in seeing their humanity we might recall our own before the lights go out for ever."
However, the fascination in Franklin continues as in 2011 Anthony Brandt publishes his 'The Man Who Ate His Boots'.
Studying the charts in this book it is interesting to discover that I have personally travelled further north into the Arctic circle than Franklin did. It is a cold, dark and forbidding region of the planet. Another world, that critics would do well to visit before taking pot shots with hindsight at the many brave men who have lost their lives in these terrible places.
October 2, 2011
Very full version of the circumstances and aftermath of this epic voyage - and more, of Franklin's life.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews