Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship [Hardcover]

Martin W. Sandler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2006

A riveting true adventure story….
An award-winning, bestselling author…
A page-turner that’s impossible to put down.
 

Almost everyone knows the photo of John F. Kennedy, Jr., as a young boy, peering out from under his father’s desk in the Oval Office. But few realize that the desk itself plays a part in one of the world’s most extraordinary mysteries—a dramatic tale that has never before been told in its full scope. Acclaimed historian Martin Sandler—a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, winner of seven Emmy® Awards, and author of more than 50 books—finally brings the entire story to light. This amazing high-seas adventure encompasses the search for the Northwest Passage in the early 1800s; a renowned explorer and his crew of 128 men who vanish during an 1845 expedition; 39 incredible, heroic attempted rescue missions; a ghost ship that drifts for more than 1,200 miles; a queen’s gratitude; and that famous desk. Fascinating rare photographs, paintings, engravings, and maps illustrate the book throughout.

It all began when, in one of the biggest news stories of the 19th century, Sir John Franklin and his ships the Erebus and the Terror disappeared while attempting to locate the fabled Northwest Passage. At the request of Franklin’s wife, Lady Jane, the first mission set out from England in hopes of finding him; many others followed in its wake, none successful.

Among these was the Resolute, the finest vessel in Queen Victoria’s Navy. But in 1854 it became locked in Arctic ice and was abandoned by its captain. A year later, a Connecticut whaler discovered it 1,200 miles away—drifting and deserted, a 600-ton ghost ship. He and his small crew boarded the Resolute, and steered it through a ferocious hurricane back to New London, Connecticut. The United States government then reoutfitted the ship and returned it to the thankful Queen. In 1879, when the Resolute was finally retired, she had the best timbers made into a desk for then-President Rutherford B. Hayes. It is still used by U.S. presidents today...one of the most celebrated pieces of furniture in the White House.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Captain John Buddington of New London, Conn., set out on a whaling expedition in September 1855, he discovered the HMS Resolute, a British navy ship without a soul on board. How the Resolute made it from its British home port to Arctic Sea whaling territory to a central place in the White House's Oval Office makes up the core of this gripping historical adventure. Describing the explorers who set out to conquer the Arctic "Otherworld" as the "astronauts of their day," Pulitzer nominee Sandler creates a taut, absorbing story and a multi-faceted portrait of heroism that encompasses the overwhelming missteps, hardships and almost irrational tenacity that sprung from British naval secretary John Barrow's decision that Britain would discover the fabled Northwest Passage around the new world-a task he believed would take no longer than "a single season." That decision would be followed by 40 years of failed search-and-rescue missions-of which the Resolute was just one-after the initial 1845 voyage, led by Captain John Franklin, disappeared. The discovery of the Resolute represented both a vital clue in Franklin's disappearance and a haunting symbol of its nation's inexhaustible determination to make navigating the passage a uniquely British triumph. Sandler eloquently illustrates how the expedition became a new quest for the Holy Grail and provides an adventure story worthy of that tradition. 20 photos, 30 b/w illustrations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Though there are plenty of detailed works about specific Arctic expeditions, a general history suffices for some readers. Sandler surveys the famous quest for the Northwest Passage, which the British navy actively pursued from 1818 to the early 1850s, when Robert McClure and crew made the first complete passage. But his renown was then and has ever since been eclipsed by the man he and several other commanders were dispatched to find: Sir John Franklin, whose disastrous fate is relayed in Ice Blink, by Scott Cookman (2000). Among the many stories Sandler tells, the strangest concerns a ship, the Resolute, which was abandoned by another of Franklin's would-be rescuers. Somehow, the Resolute drifted back to civilization, was discovered by an American whaling ship, and was returned to an appreciative Britain obsessed with any trace of Franklin. Later, Queen Victoria had a desk hewn from the Resolute and given to President Rutherford Hayes; it today occupies the Oval Office. Endowed with dozens of images, Sandler's enticement to a popular topic in exploration history is well suited to library requirements. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Sterling; First Edition edition (October 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402740859
• ISBN-13: 978-1402740855
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,046,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview of Artic discovery and a mystery ship too, November 27, 2006

By 

Bobby D. (Cerritos, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship (Hardcover)

What an historic HOOK this book has. In 1854 the HMS RESOLUTE is in the Artic searching for the lost John Franklin expedition. The RESOLUTE's captain gets stuck in the ice and abandon's the ship. A year later an American whaler discovers the RESLOTE drifting and deserted. The United States government reconditions the RESOLUTE and presents it as a gift to the Queen as an act of national friendship. Years later the Queen had the remains of the RESOLUTE carved into an ornate desk as a gift for President Hayes. And today that same desk still sits in the Oval Office. (Remember the famous picture with John John sticking his head out of JFK's desk.) This story alone would make for a great book but in what is a short 248 page narrative Mr. Sandler covers the totality of the British and American expeditions to the Artic as they all are in a rush to discover the Northwest Passage. Each chapter in the book is an example of excellent story telling covering a separate event or adventure. All amazing pieces of the story to building the big picture of what it took to explore and survive in the Artic. This is a fun, all be it light, overview of a topic you may not have given any consideration. I found the book very educational, entertaining, and very well presented. It even has an 18 page Epilogue reviewing what happened to the 36 explorer that make up the various expeditions. I might add here that I would recommend more highly the excellent book, The Ice Master about the doomed 1913 voyage of the karluk. This book really gets into the personal business of survival, luck and a super story. But not doubt about it, Martin Sandler has written a very entertaining page turner although with a more global overview.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Resolute, January 1, 2007

By 

R. Shores "rbshores" (Greenwood Village, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship (Hardcover)

Mr. Sandler can write well. The research quality is high. However, the completion of the book and its final editing are of very poor quality.

Several times in the book, very important small segments of the narrative are missing. For example, the book describes how McClure's ship gets frozen hard in the ice in Mercy Bay on Banks Island. It also describes how a sledging expedition from the Resolute gets to Winter Harbor on Mellville Island about 170 miles away and finds a message in a container from McClure. However, the event where McClure sledged from Mercy Harbor to Winter Harbor and back is entirely missing from the narrative. Thus, the narrative makes no sense. This omission is typical in the sloppy finish work of this book. Important earlier events that provide a logical understanding of subsequent events are randomly omitted from time to time.

Additionally, while Sandler puts forth a dozen good maps of the nineteenth century Artic, at least one quarter of the place names used in the narrative are not on any map. As it is unlikely that any reader has a nineteenth century Artic map, this makes the narrative completely unfathomable at times. There was an era when the creation of maps in history books was extremely expensive and horribly time consuming. This era is gone; any quality editor could check and rectify this significant problem with a full hard day's work.

Despite Sandler's good research and clear writing skills, I would not recommend this book. The book "Barrow's Boy's" is clearer and much better organized even though it is missing some excellent research on the personal qualities of the leaders that is found in Sandler's treatment here. However, it appears that this book was finally thrown together to meet a deadline and the final review, finish, and editing are very sloppily executed. This significantly diminishes what should have been a great history and frustrates and distracts readers so that they are quite dissatisfied.

I have not ever written a book review but, after having spent at least eight hours reading this book, I feel it important to report back to the author and editor the effects of their very poor finishing work.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Courage, the Vision, the Horror, January 7, 2009

By 

Ralph White (New England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship (Paperback)

It is exceptionally rare for a work of non-fiction to transport the reader to a landscape so alien that it defies the imagination, to meet characters whose particular combination of courage, determination, ingenuity, and vision drive them to feats beyond all experience. Resolute is such a story and were it not for Martin Sandler's scholarly writing, his copious end notes, appendices, and biographic epilogue, the reader might be forgiven for thinking it just so much fiction. But the images of skeletons languishing in open boats, of message cairns against bleak snowswept horizons, and the thought of hundreds of men cowering in the cold and dark for month after mind-numbing month awaiting the spring to break up the ice seizing their ships, cannot help but shock the modern reader. Sandler's scholarly history of the search for (and discovery of) the Northwest Passage, and of the search for the men who disappeared there both thrills and haunts us. It is extraordinary how much treasure, planning, and hope went into England's quest for a commercially viable route over the northern boundary of North America, but it is equally remarkable how large a role was played by wanton ignorance. The gentlemen (nearly all were eventually knighted), who took this stage, very rarely consulted the people who knew most about the geography and the terrain, that is, the whalers and the Inuit natives. And the disregard for fundamental science is startling. How could Second Secretary of the Admiralty, John Barrow, whose orders sent so many men into those icy seas, ever have imagined that the ice that blocked the sea at lower latitudes would somehow vanish as the pole was approached? And sending those men out with what amounted to experimental food canning technology amounted to negligent homicide.

Resolute is a book of history, of adventure, of biography, and to be perfectly truthful, it is also a book of horror. Read it for any of these reasons, but be prepared to be shaken up a little in the process.