Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition departed England in 1845 with two Royal Navy bomb vessels, 129 men and three years' worth of provisions. None were seen again until nearly a decade later, when their bleached bones, broken instruments, books, papers and personal effects began to be recovered on Canada's King William Island. These relics have since had a life of their own--photographed, analyzed, cataloged and displayed in glass cases in London. This book gives a definitive history of their preservation and exhibition from the Victorian era to the present, richly illustrated with period engravings and photographs, many never before published. Appendices provide the first comprehensive accounting of all expedition relics recovered prior to the 2014 discovery of Franklin's ship HMS Erebus.

"Intriguing [and] enjoyable." —Ian McGuire, New York Times Book Review Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1845—whose two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and their crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice—with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the recent incredible discoveries of the wrecks. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led one of the discovery expeditions, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story and reveals how a combination of faith in Inuit knowledge and the latest science yielded a discovery for the ages.

David Woodman's reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the disappearance of two British exploration vessels in 1845, under the command of Sir John Franklin, challenges standard interpretations and promises to replace them. Among the many who have tried to discover the truth behind the Franklin disaster, Woodman recognizes the profound importance of the Inuit testimony and analyzes it in depth. He concludes from his investigations that the Inuit probably did visit Franklin's ships while the crew was still on board and that there were some Inuit who actually saw the sinking of one of the ships. He maintains that fewer than ten bodies were found at Starvation Cove and that the last survivors left the cove in 1851, three years after the standard account assumes them to be dead. Woodman also disputes the conclusion of Owen Beattie and John Geiger's book Frozen in Time that lead-poisoning was a major contributing cause of the disaster.

Sir John Franklin's Narrative of the Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819-1822 recounts a hair-raising adventure of the "Golden Age of Discovery," the period from 1800 to 1847 when sailing ships from aroun Franklin entered the Royal Navy at the age of 14, went on his first exploratory voyage to Australia (1801-03), and served in the battles of Trafalgar (1805) and New Orleans (1814). He was co-commander of an Arctic expedition of 1818 that sought to reac In September 1846, during his final expedition, he became trapped in the ice in Victoria Strait, off King William Island (the midpoint between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans), which culminated, in April 1848, in the deaths of Franklin and 23 explorers AUTHOR BIO: Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), English rear admiral and explorer, is credited with expanding our geographical knowledge of the Canadian Arctic and adding greatly to the literature of exploration.