Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition [Paperback]

Scott Cookman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2001

"Absorbing.artfully narrat[es] a possible course of events in the expedition's demise, based on the one official note and bits of debris (including evidence of cannibalism) found by searchers sent to look for Franklin in the 1850s. Adventure readers will flock to this fine regaling of the enduring mystery surrounding the best-known disaster in Arctic exploration."--Booklist

"A great Victorian adventure story rediscovered and re-presented for a more enquiring time."--The Scotsman

"A vivid, sometimes harrowing chronicle of miscalculation and overweening Victorian pride in untried technology.a work of great compassion."--The Australian

It has been called the greatest disaster in the history of polar exploration. Led by Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, two state-of-the-art ships and 128 hand-picked men----the best and the brightest of the British empire----sailed from Greenland on July 12, 1845 in search of the elusive Northwest Passage. Fourteen days later, they were spotted for the last time by two whalers in Baffin Bay. What happened to these ships----and to the 129 men on board----has remained one of the most enduring mysteries in the annals of exploration. Drawing upon original research, Scott Cookman provides an unforgettable account of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, vividly reconstructing the lives of those touched by the voyage and its disaster. But, more importantly, he suggests a human culprit and presents a terrifying new explanation for what triggered the deaths of Franklin and all 128 of his men. This is a remarkable and shocking historical account of true-life suspense and intrigue.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By the mid-19th century, after decades of polar exploration, the fabled Northwest Passage seemed within reach. In 1845 the British Admiralty assembled the largest expedition yet, refitting two ships with steam engines and placing the seasoned if somewhat lackluster Sir John Franklin in command of the 128-man expedition. After sailing into Baffin Bay, they were never heard from again.

Drawing on early accounts from relief expeditions as well as recent archeological evidence, Scott Cookman reconstructs a chronicle of the expedition in Ice Blink. Cookman, a journalist with articles in Field & Stream and other magazines, excels when firmly grounded in the harrowing reality of 19th-century Arctic exploration. When he speculates about what happened to the Franklin expedition, however, he is on less solid ground and his writing suffers.

Particularly overwrought is the promised "frightening new explanation" for the expedition's demise. Cookman suggests that it was caused by the "grotesque handiwork" of an "evil" man, Stephan Goldner, who had supplied its canned foods. This is hardly new. As early as 1852, investigators determined that the expedition's canned goods were probably inferior and canceled provisioning contracts with Goldner. How a hundred men survived for nearly three years despite lead poisoning and botulism remains a mystery. In the end, as Cookman himself acknowledges, the expedition was ultimately doomed by its reliance on untested technology such as the steam engine, armor plating, and canned provisions. These criticisms aside, Ice Blink is an interesting narrative of this enduring symbol of polar exploration and disaster. --Pete Holloran --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin sailed into Arctic waters, the latest of many navigators to seek a "Northwest Passage" from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With him were 128 stalwarts of the Royal Navy; up-to-date maps and sophisticated tools; three years' worth of ample provisions; and two advanced ships, iron-clad, steam-heated and steam-powered. The ships were never seen again. In 1859, Lieutenant William Hobson, sunburnt and frostbitten, trekked across remote King William Island and found the last remains of the expedition: two notes attached to a cairn, a small, stranded boat and human bones, some showing evidence of cannibalism. Freelance writer Cookman's ably researched, sometimes eloquent account follows the doomed voyage, then proposes to solve the enduring mystery. Stuck in the ice, the men of the H.M.S. Terror and Erebus lasted months with barely a look outdoors; when cooking fuel ran short, something sickened the men. Cookman identifies the culprit as botulism, conveyed by the canned goods furnished by contractor Stephan Goldner. "Pinching pennies and cutting corners," Goldner defrauded the Navy by giving Franklin's men canned meats and vegetables "shoddily made and improperly sealed." Cookman drapes his central story with short accounts of the people involved, including Captain Franklin ("plodding, sober," and "fame-hungry" but steadfast) and Goldner, whose record of defaults and frauds (delivering ruptured cans, missing deadlines, packaging bones as meat) led the Navy to cease doing business with him in 1852. Hard-bitten readers who last year clamored over Shackleton's adventures will take to this grimmer tale of unscrupulous contractors, diligent historians and brave British explorers who never made it. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (March 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471404209
• ISBN-13: 978-0471404200
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Travel > Polar Regions > Arctic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent tale of an ambitious expedition gone wrong, February 15, 2000

By 

Charlotte Austin (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Hardcover)

What went wrong? How could 129 officers and men with the most technologically advanced ships and enough canned, baked and pickled food for three years on a journey to find the North West Passage in 1845 - vanish? There had been eight previous polar expeditions since 1819 and only 17 deaths out of 513 men. This was one of the greatest British navel disasters.

Ice Blink is about mismanagement, oversights, government foibles, prejudice and incompetence. The lessons of the Sir John Franklin's Expedition in 1845 are still sadly relevant. The same problems that doomed those men in the far North are around today. Governments and corporations often award contracts to the lowest bidder, prejudice means the right people do not get hired, top heavy management creates inefficiencies and over reliance on technology obscures common sense.

The lowest bidding manufacturer, Stephen Godner's Canned Food, was the exclusive supplier of canned food for the expedition. No one in the navy bothered to check the filthy conditions at this factory. The canned food arrived just a few hours before the launch, avoiding close inspection. Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, hired men of English birth and Anglican faith for the expedition, and dismissed ten experienced Scottish Seamen. One officer was in charge of four men.

Admiral Barrow and Captain Franklin believed in the latest machinery. Ships, scientific knowledge and canned food would lead them to victory. There were no hunters on board or native guides used. Despite all this, Ice Blink is also about the bravery, loyalty and resourcefulness of the men who served on the expedition. They did everything they could to survive and to help each other.

Scott Cookman brings alive the times that made this expedition possible. He probes into the mindset of the men who cleaned the decks, fixed the sails, shoveled the coal, polished the silver, cooked the meals and attended the sick. He also probes into the motives of Captain Franklin, his officers and Admiral Barrow, and puts the events in context. His details of life in the British navy, the medical profession, class dynamics and ship building of over a hundred and fifty years ago draw the reader into that world. The author's painstaking research has paid off in a griping non-fiction book that often reads like a novel. Cookman compares the expeditions to explore the last frontiers on earth to the current space missions. Going across the North-West Passage was similar to going to the Moon. It was as remote and uncharted.

Every one involved with the manned mission to Mars should read this book. It is a `what not to do' when organizing and preparing for an ambitious venture.

The Charlotte Austin Review

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love It/Hated It, February 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Hardcover)

As a compelling new study of potential causes for the failure of the Franklin expedition, I could not put the book down and quite enjoyed it. The experience was marred, however, by constant irratation at the grammatical and stylistic flaws (for instance, after repeatedly explaining scurvy as a vitamin C deficiency-caused disease, it at one point ungrammatically states that ship's biscuit causes scurvy). The author also has tendency to indulge in melodramatic speculation (a captain leaving his ship with a tear in his eye, etc.) into the actions and emotions of people who left no record of such. I felt this in particular weakened the work as a whole, undermining it as a legitimate piece of academia. Additionally, archaic lingual affectations (i.e.; "sore afraid") further distance this work from serious scholarship. Lastly, the conclusions tend to be highly redundant and overstated, as though the work had not been sufficiently proofread or edited. Overall, I think a thoughtful edit would have improved the texture of the work, although I did still find it quite engaging and thought-provoking.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Suggestive but overwrought, February 17, 2000

By 

Russell A. Potter (Providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Hardcover)

Cookman has certainly done some worthwhile new research; his study of Goldner and his patent canning factory is well-documented and backed by suggestive (though far from definitive) evidence. Goldner's tinned foods, supplied to the ill-fated Franklin expedition to the Arctic in 1845, certainly contributed to the disaster (they have already been fingered for causing lead poisoning).

Cookman, however, rushes breathlessly past all other factors that might have contributed to Franklin's failure, and ends up damaging his case by overstating it, and by expecting that his one explanation -- botulism -- will solve all the mystery and tie up all the loose ends. Cookman's lurid prose doesn't help matters, portraying the admittedly callous and greedy canner Goldner as an evil maniac of unintentionally comic proportions -- right up there with Lex Luthor.

There is some good and valuable research in this book, and in places the Franklin saga is ably retold, but the mixture of morality play and science lecture ultimately becomes rather tedious.