Ice Ghosts: 200 Years Searching for the Lost Franklin Expedition

In 1847 Sir John Franklin left England and his adoring wife Lady Jane to seek the fabled Northwest Passage. He was 59 years old and it was his fourth journey to the Arctic. He had survived starvation on his second journey. This expedition was prepared with three years of food, included new-fangled canned foods. He had powerful, heated ships. The explorer Ross promised to rescue Franklin if he did not come home.

Nothing went as planned. Extreme ice stranded the ships. Their canned food was tainted. Their maritime boots and clothing were inadequate. Franklin died and his men left the boats encased in ice, journeyed on foot, and died of exposure and starvation.

Lady Jane pressed for a search and rescue mission and spent her fortune in the quest to find her husband. For over a hundred years, enthralled by the mysterious disappearance, men went on the hazardous journey to the Arctic, hoping to solve the mystery of the lost Franklin Expedition.

My interest in polar exploration dates to junior high when I read The Great White South about the lost Scott Expedition. Over the years I've read books including Frances Spufford's I Shall Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination and Knud Rasmussen's biography White Eskimo by Stephen Bown. I loved the historical fiction book based on Franklin Voyage of the Narwhal  by Andrea Barrett and Dan Simmons' supernatural take in The Terror.

The first part of Ice Ghosts recounts the history of the expedition and the early rescue attempts, presenting the historical facts. The second part of the book is a wonderful examination of the the modern search for Franklin, including Inuit culture and history and their contribution of new information about Franklin.

Watson vividly describes the experience of the Arctic--the initial thrill followed by the freezing that can take mere minutes. The months of darkness and isolation. This environment demands cooperation to survive. I loved learning about the Inuit culture and people and their contribution to the knowledge of Franklin through their oral histories.

Louie Kamookak is the great-grandson of an Inuk storyteller and respected shaman who assisted the the Inuit anthropologist Knud Rasmussen. Rasmussen recorded the Inuit way of life as it was before being disrupted by Europeans, including enforced separation of children into mission schools where they faced abuse, resulting in 4,100 deaths.

Kamookak also had a grandfather who was an Irish trader, Gibson, who had found a marker left by an 1859 search party, and who found skeletons in another location. Kamookak's grandmother had told him that as a girl she had seen Franklin artifacts; she had taken a blunt metal knife and refashioned it into an ice chisel.

A history of tragedy and bad luck shared by Franklin searchers did not prevent Kamookak from an obsession to learn more.  He recorded oral histories from his elders to understand what had happened to the expedition. The native people knew where Franklin's men had died and where the ships settled.

The search for the Terror, Erebus, and Franklin's grave has become an international battleground. Artifacts left in situ can be disturbed by a storm and lost. But if they are collected they will soon decay. As climate change melts the ice it turns the land into swamps. Oil companies hope to drill in the Arctic, which would endanger the environment; they have funded researchers whose knowledge and new equipment are helpful to their goal.

The ships have now been found and some artifacts collected. But the grave of Franklin is yet to be discovered. The 'epic hunt' remains, as does our fascination. Watson's book is an important contribution and is sure to help another generation fall under the thrall of the tragic story of the Franklin Expedition.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

See recovered artifacts at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/20/magazine/franklin-expedition.html?_r=0
See a video of the Terror at
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/sep/13/sir-john-franklins-ship-found-in-arctic-168-years-after-sinking-video
Hear Stan Rogers singing Northwest Passage at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI&list=RDTVY8LoM47xI#t=0

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
Paul Watson
W. W. W. Norton & Company
$27.95 hard cover
Publication Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 9780393249385

Marooned in the Arctic: Ada Blackjack's Extraordinary Life

In 1921 a top secret expedition of four Canadian men and one Inuit woman set out to occupy Wrangle Island in Siberia to claim it for Britain. Several Inuit families who were to go were no shows, but Ada Blackjack desperately needed the $50 a month salary and decided to go alone. Her son had tuberculosis and as a single mother Ada needed to find money for his medical treatment.

Ada was born in 1898 near Solomon, Alaska. Her father died when she was eight and her mother sent her to a Methodist mission in Nome. She was taught English, basic reading and writing skills, and the Christian religion. Ada never learned traditional Inuit skills, except for having a skill of turning animal skins into clothing. That was her purpose on the expedition.

At sixteen Ada married  Jack Blackjack and they moved to the Seward Peninsula. Ada suffered six years of abuse and starvation from Jack. Two of their children died, Bennett developed tuberculosis, and Jack deserted the family. Ada divorced Jack and took Bennett to Nome where she cleaned houses and sewed to support them. Bennett needed medical care which Ada could not afford and she took him to the Methodist orphanage for care.

Ada heard that the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was organizing an expedition. He had hired Errol Lorne Knight, Frederick W. Maurer, Milton Galle, and Allan R. Crawford to carry out the secret mission. Stefansson told the men that the Arctic land could support a comfortable life, that game was abundant, and settlement by Europeans the goal.

Marooned in the Arctic by Peggy Caravantes tells the story of  the doomed expedition. All four men perished, and Ada had to survive alone until she was rescued two years after her arrival. Caravantes points that the men were totally unprepared and overly optimistic. They failed to provide adequate food for the long winters. They had forgone buying the boat needed to reach the ice floes where their prey could be found. As the men fell ill with scurvy and starvation, Ada learned to set trap lines and shot a rifle, chop the wood, and nurse the men--all while suffering loneliness, cultural isolation, fear of polar bears, homesickness for her son, and scurvy.

After Ada's rescue she faced pubic notoriety and the pressure to provide answers to the men's fate. She was lionized and dehumanized, had another son, fell ill with tuberculosis, and died in poverty in 1983.

Ada's story has all the elements of a great story. Adventure, pathos, racism, strength, maternal love, cultural imperialism, and Arctic exploration. Caravantes has done her research. But this book meant for ages 12+ lacks emotional connection, vitality, and excitement. It reads like an encyclopedia article with too much telling. The characters don't live. For instance, we are told that the ill and dying Knight wrote a melancholy letter but we don't know what he said.

The book has sparked an interest and I want to know more about Ada.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The True Story of Ada Backjack, the "Female Robinson Crusoe"
by Peggy Caravantes
Women of Action
Chicago Review Press
$19.95 hard cover
Publication March 2016
ISBN: 9781613730980

An Explorer of People: Knud Rasmussen's Arctic Journeys to Document Eskimo Culture

"Even before I knew what traveling meant I determined that one day I would go and find these people, whom my fancy pictured different from all others. I must go and see 'the New people' as the old story-teller called them." Knud Rasmussen

Enthralling. Thrilling.

Every time I picked up White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic  those words popped into my head. I had to put the book aside for a few weeks. I SO was eager to return to it.

Rasmussen endured treacherous journeys across the Arctic, driven by his need to discover and document people who had rarely, if ever, seen Europeans. He was fully aware that 'civilization' was already ending the Eskimo way of life.

Charismatic, with high social intelligence, ruggedly handsome and fun loving, Rasmussen could charm his way into any society. The Inuit called him the White Eskimo for he lived fully as one of them; he could drive a team of sled dogs, hunt, relish rotten meat and green liver, talk the language and walk the walk.

Rasmussen was born in Greenland in 1879. His father was a Danish missionary. His mother's people had lived in Greenland for over a century and she was one-fourth Inuit. Rasmussen loved the Arctic; there were great hardships but there was also great freedom.

When he was twelve the family returned to Denmark, a shocking transition for the boy. At boarding school he mourned the loss of his old life and was an indifferent student. He became a heart-breaker and the 'king' of social gatherings. He dropped out of university and considered acting and opera. He socialized with the intelligentsia. In 1900 he decided on a travel writing as a career.

Rasmussen charmed his way into expeditions to Iceland and Lapland, writing articles as a freelance journalist. The Danish Literary Expedition finally brought him back to his beloved Greenland. He was able to reach the Thule people who lived farther north than any other people on earth. Rasmussen had finally found a new people, with different customs, in an unknown land. Thule became his home base for most of his life, With Peter Freuchen he established a trading base there. He became part of the community listened to the stories, memorized them, then wrote them down. He loved the artistry of the Inuit poetry and folklore.

Rasmussen went on seven expeditions, journeys that took him from Greenland to cross Arctic Canada. Rasmussen endured what many other could not: starvation, frozen limbs, pushing himself past exhaustion. He noted the similarities of the cultures, language and mythology and developed a theory of their interconnectivity through migration eastward.

He accepted the Eskimo culture and peoples without European judgment. He knew their life was harsh and they did what they needed to do to survive. The killing of girl children or the voluntary suicide of the elderly prevented a community from growing bigger than their food sources could maintain. Cached meat spoiled in the summer warmth, but Rasmussen enjoyed mildewed blubber or green liver with the locals. Cannibalism happened in starvation times. Since men outnumbered women, husband sharing occurred.

Rasmussen's private life is not well documented. He never wrote about himself, never made himself into the hero of his own story. He had numerous lovers, and married and had children although his family rarely saw him. In later years he returned to his family to write. Promoting his books meant visiting populated cities like New York but he never felt at home anywhere but in the Arctic. His final journey to that hostile land, to film a movie that showed the true character of the Inuit, he became ill and never recovered.

Stephen R. Bown has written the first biography of the Danish Arctic explorer and ethnologist Rasmussen in English, which may be why few recognize his name. Since Rasmussen's extensive writings have not been translated into English, Bown was required to buy books, take them apart and tediously print them, scan them into a computer, then use software to translate them into English.

The book has charming black and white illustrations, maps, and photographs.
Read an excerpt from the book here.

I had never heard of Rasmussen before. I am thrilled by this book and now want to read his book The People of The Polar North.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic 
by Stephen R. Bown
DeCapo Press
Publication Date November 10, 2015
$27.99 hard cover
ISBN: 9780306822827

1911 Handkerchief Depicting Walrus Hunt, from my blog post here