- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (Jan 18 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0471377902
- ISBN-13: 978-0471377900
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.1 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#446,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in Books > History > Canada > Exploration
- #21 in Books > History > Americas > Canada > Exploration
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
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
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.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
The only thing Sir John Franklin left behind were two faded ship's muster books. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The only thing Sir John Franklin left behind were two faded ship's muster books. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Ice Blink,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Hardcover)
Unfortunately, this book is essentially a rehash of earlier research by both Parks Canada and the pioneering work of Owen Beattie and his colleagues who excavated the graves from the Franklin winter quarters at Beechey Island and documented lead poisoning. It is disturbing that Beattie and his co-author, John Geiger, are not given their due for their work and bestselling book, Frozen in Time, which asserted Cookman's case over a decade ago. Cookman has added more information, fleshing out the Goldner story, but like so many journalists who attempt to write history, he focuses on one aspect to the exclusion of other factors. David Woodman has done a far better job in looking at all factors in his two books about the fate of the Franklin expedition -- and while he asserts what he thinks happened, he doesn't smugly say he's nailed his points home. It is simply too "pat" and too 20th century smug in hindsight to completely blame an admittedly bad contractor for the entire fate of the expedition, and this book does a disservice to the reader in suggesting so. I'm no Goldner fan, and feel he shoulders some blame, but then so do Franklin, the officers, the bad ice year, the decision to push into Larsen Sound (albeit a bad decision only in hindsight) and of course, those who for whatever reason broke discipline and split up into unmanageable parties. The demise of Franklin is as yet still uncertainly known, with a few brief words, a handful of bodies, Inuit testimony and scattered campsites - and the "definitive word" is fraught with disagreement as to exactly what happened and why, as it has been since 1849. Cookman adds very little; if you are looking to gain a better understanding, read Beattie and Geiger's Frozen in Time or Woodman's Unravelling the Franklin Mystery, or his Strangers Among Us.Sorry, Scott. I will not buy your book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Suggestive but overwrought,
By
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 full of 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, ruses breathlessly past all other factors that might have contributed to Franklin's failure, and ends up ruining 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 -- 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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
More than Slightly Speculative,
By David Benjamin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Hardcover)
One reviewer has called the book "slightly speculative." That is too charitable. Cookman generally does not contradict known facts about the Franklin expedition, but he invents much more detail than he has evidence to support. The book is unsuitable for academic purposes, but it provides a compelling, though at times poorly written, story. I do not wish to be too harsh on the book. To its credit, many of Cookman's speculations are reasonable and provide information that serious historians withhold in their books on the expedition. It is best to read one of the many other books on the topic in order to know what parts of Ice Blink to trust, and which to take with a grain of salt.
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