Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition |  | Author: Scott Cookman
Publisher: Wiley
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 613072
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0471404209
Dewey Decimal Number: 919.804
EAN: 9780471404200
ASIN: 0471404209
Publication Date: March 7, 2001
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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
Product Description
"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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
 Haunting February 18, 2009
Marc A. Frisk (Boise, ID)
I originally read Ice Blink over two years ago. For some reason, the story has stuck with me ever since. Cookman does a top notch job putting the reader in the Hulls of the HMS Erebus and Terror. Stephan Goldner's greed is almost beyond belief. Warning- Ice Blink is not for the sqeamish!
 Riveting chronicle of (mis)adventure December 2, 2008
S. McGee (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The one certainty about Sir John Franklin's futile 1845 expedition in quest of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Artic is that all 129 who signed up for the voyage vanished and were ultimately proved to be dead.
But what caused this unprecedented catastrophe? Cookman has penned a lively account of what he believes is the probable culprit: the vast quantities of canned food on which the expedition relied for food and the botulism those food supplies caused among the crew. Although his appraoch is more journalistic than scholarly (so don't expect a detailed analysis of rival arguments), the narrative is both lively and compelling. Whether he is describing the gruesome process of preparing and preserving the canned supplies (described in such an appetizing fashion in the catalogs their provider produced and from which Cookman quotes) or calculating the mathematical impossibility of survivors abandoning their ship and being able to carry with them enough supplies, in termms of calories, to offset the energy expended dragging them across the ice, the result is a page-turner.
There are no heroes in this story. The British navy tried to save money by dealing with the cheapest contractors when it came to procuring food. Franklin himself, intent on having a final chance to prove his merit after a backwater post guarding convicts in the South Pacific, probably disregarded prudence in key strategic decisions. The ship's designers relied too much on "modern" technology (circa 1845), ranging from heavy metal cladding to a reliance on steam engines, when the Navy and expedition planners would have done better to question whether this would be a help or hindrance in such a hostile environment.
The most chilling part of the book -- literally and rhetorically -- comes when Cookman puts his imagination to work to interpret the final clues left behind by those who finally abandoned the doomed ships, stuck in the polar ice pack, and struck out for land far too far away to reach. These include a handful of bodies, cached goods and reports and tales from the native inhabitants of the land, who encountered some of these desparate survivors in their final days. Despite rumors that one of Franklin's senior officers, Francis Crozier, survived and lived out his days with one of these native tribes, it is likely that every one of those who survived the tainted canned food and started trekking halfway across what is now Canada ended up (after a few bouts of cannibalism) succumbing to starvation.
I'm rating this four stars because, flaws aside, it's a gripping tale of how everything that could go wrong, did, with this expedition, and because Cookman delivers such an authoritative rendering of naval life in the mid 19th century.
Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition June 2, 2008
Wendy Fortington (au)
I love this book. Could not put it down. The author has researched the facts and gives excellent detail to the history. It is a fascinating story and if you like to read about the real explorers you will not regret purchasing this book
A Haunting and tragic story of arrogance and greed. January 21, 2008
Bookworm (EL Paso)
I was always intrigued by the disappearace of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, having seen the NOVA presentation some years ago. So I sat down and read this book and couldn't put it down. The story in itself is tragic and heartfelt. The reasons behind it all the more tragic. The NOVA story focused on lead and botulism poisoning as well as scurvy. But having read this book, I've come to the conclusion the Cookman was too lenient on the Admiralty who employed Goldner. 29,000 cans of food is an astounding amount of food to the say the least even in this day and age of automation. In their race to find the passage, they didn't question where Goldner was going to obtain all this fresh meat he was contracted to provide. Not even Queen Victoria ha instant access to the gourmet food he offered. Canned Lobster? Curried rabbit? They didn't inspect his factory and being located in Whitechapel should have been enough to raise eyebrows. That's the place where Jack the Ripper plied his trade and where you wouldn't be caught at night! There was no quality control. No one in the Admiralty had the balls to question where all this fresh food was going to come from! He was contracted to provide fresh beef, roast beef, mutton, fresh vegetables ( all of which not even the very wealthy had access to at the time). All they knew was that he had this patented new process, he was cheap, and he was going to deliver on time. If Goldner was greedy, then the Admiralty was more so at wanting to save money on the deal. Though Cookman calls Goldner the culprit, he should have added the Royal Navy too! The chapter titled Houndsditch was quite disgusting and shocking. Goldner basically hired London's poor, dirty, bacteria riddled workers on the cheap, made the cans on the cheap, and put anything into dirty cans. He used what you and I throw out! The meat was poor quality ( he used any kind he could get his hands on, bones and cartilage even garbage!) rotten vegetables that he didn't wash and canned it and hoped his patented heating process would make everything okay! These were sailors and Royal Naval officers! You'd think a little more care would have been put into this by the Navy. Nope. I'll never look at another can of creamed corn again without thinking how fortunate we are that we've perfected the canning process to some degree and think how those poor souls should have gotten the same. Because of the faulty and careless canning method, most of the officers including Franklin most likely died from botulism poisoning and if you've read about it, it's not a pleasant way to die! Of the many things that killed the entire expedition one can also say that technological arrogance was partly to blame. The ships were huge! Why send so many men? With so many mouths to feed, didn't anyone question Barrow? The ships were heavy because of all that food they had to carry and most of their coal was depleted that first winter just heating the enormous things! The whole thing was a set up for disaster on the scale of the Titanic. It should have been planned more carefully and just like the Titanic (who couldn't sink because of the latest technology) but because of greed and faith in the latest technology, men got trapped and starved and turned to each other for food. I don't know of any disaster that shouldn't have happened but did all because no one thought these things through. I suppose if anyone's to blame, it is man's arrogance that he can defeat anything with anything. Canned food and steam engines would defeat the cold and the merciless artic. In the end, technology didn't amount to a hill of beans. They were poisoned by their food, ran out of fuel, didn't know anything about the land (save Crozier) and how to live off it, and were doomed from the get-go. If Crozier survived it was only because he knew the land and respected it for what it was. Hopelessly unforgiving. Great book, tragic story.
 Intriguing but not completely satisfying May 25, 2007
Nino Brown (Wisconsin)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In 1845, Captain John Franklin and the crews of the Erebus and Terror sallied forth from England in search, once more, of the elusive Northwest Passage. Despite the best technology the time had to offer, not one soul returned from the voyage. In this book, Scott Cookman retells the known story of the voyage and adds some discussion regarding the potential causes of the voyage's failure. Most notably, Mr. Cookman spends several chapters discussing how food canning was done at the time and how it could have, oddly-enough, been the deciding factor in the mission's failure.
Mr. Cookman does a fine enough job extracting the story of the voyage from the relative sparsity of the historical record. Similarly the digression into the nauseating world of mid 19th century food supplying and preservation is enlightening and compelling. Where Mr. Cookman falters , though, is in his somewhat less than convincing attempts to find a single villan of the story. Indeed, much of the discussion of the voyage's food supplier, Stephen Goldner, while quite possibly correct, seems based almost entirely on conjecture or the writer's imagination. Mr. Cookman should be applauded for retelling this interesting story and for adding additional important context. However, unsupported conjecture shouldn't masquerade as history, even pop history.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
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