From 1879-1881, a crew of thirty-three men, led by Lieutenant Commander George Washington DeLong, participated in an Arctic adventure that defines the limits of human endurance. The Navy-operated, but privately owned, steamer Jeannette left San Francisco, California, for the North Pole through what was then believed to be open water beyond the Arctic icepack. The Jeannette remained in the ice as it drifted to the northwest through the first half of 1881. During this time, the crew made scientific observations, hunted seals and polar bears. In May 1881, they landed on Henrietta Island, 600 miles from Wrangell. In June 1881 the ice parted and they hoped they might reach open sea, but on the 12th the flows closed in with such force that Jeannette's hull was crushed. Her crew removed three boats, supplies and some equipment and began a difficult trek, dragging the boats over the ice towards open water. They reached the Kotelnoi and Simonoski Islands in early September, after which the way was clear to sail to the Lena Delta. However, the three boats were separated in a storm. One, commanded by Lieutenant Charles W. Chipp and seven other men, was not seen again. The other two, commanded by DeLong with thirteen others and Chief Engineer George W. Melville with ten others, landed far apart on the delta. Melville's party was saved by local inhabitants. DeLong and his men trudged south over the desolate terrain. After one man died of the effects of frostbite and the others were weakened by exposure and hunger, Seamen Nindemann and Noros were sent ahead to find help. Before that materialized, the remaining eleven succumbed, with DeLong and two others surviving perhaps a few days beyond 30 October 1881, when he made his final journal entry. The bodies of ten were discovered in March 1882, as Melville conducted a search for the other members of the expedition, and were transported back to the United States in early 1884.

The true story of the greatest mystery of Arctic exploration—and the rare mix of marine science and Inuit knowledge that led to the shipwreck's recent discovery. Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Franklin Expedition—whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice—with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story: Sir John Franklin and the crew of the HMS Erebus and Terror setting off in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, the hazards they encountered and the reasons they were forced to abandon ship hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization, and the decades of searching that turned up only rumours of cannibalism and a few scattered papers and bones—until a combination of faith in Inuit lore and the latest science yielded a discovery for the ages.

The Franklin Conspiracy is an absorbing account of the single most enigmatic event in Canadian history. In 1845, two British Royal Navy ships, the Erebus and the Terror, commanded by Sir John Franklin, entered the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Neither ship returned. A fifteen-year search uncovered evidence of unparalleled disaster, but to this day no one knows exactly how the 129 men of the Franklin Expedition met their deaths. Although the expedition did not run out of food, there is clear evidence of cannibalism. The ships carried two hundred message cylinders with them, yet failed to leave records. Stranger still, an earlier explorer, Thomas Simpson, was reputedly murdered for the "secret of the Northwest Passage." What was this "secret"? The Franklin Conspiracy is an exhaustively researched, compellingly reasoned answer to that question. The result is a shocking saga of conspiracy, cover-up, and unbelievable secrets the.

A dozen women join a secret 1850s Arctic expedition—and a sensational murder trial unfolds when some of them don't come back. Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice? Set against the unforgiving backdrop of one of the world's most inhospitable locations, USA Today bestselling author Greer Macallister uses the true story of Lady Jane Franklin's tireless attempts to find her husband's lost expedition as a jumping-off point to spin a tale of bravery, intrigue, perseverance and hope.

Aboard the Alabama, Mikkelsen and his small crew initially set out to the scarcely explored regions of Greenland to recover the journals from the ill-fated Danmarks Expedition. On that mission, the crew had succeeded in mapping many uncharted parts of Greenland, but never made it back. During Mikkelsen's three-year journey he succeeded in recovering the journals, along with charting several parts of the east coast of arctic Greenland, however, not without surviving many hardships. Accounts of the physical difficulties are dwarfed by Mikkelsen's fascinating descriptions of the plunge into dementia as the days stretched to years.

In the summer of 1881, Lt. Adolphus Greely of the Fifth United States Cavalry and a crew of twenty-one men set out on the Proteus to explore the then relatively-unknown Arctic Circle. During their three-year journey, the Lady Franklin Bay expedition, as it came to be known, was meant to ascertain new astronomical data, to establish an observation station, and to record other meteorological data. And while they did accomplish those tasks, the crew of the Proteus will instead forever be remembered for the catastrophe that they encountered, one that yielded few survivors. After a relatively calm first year in the Arctic, the members of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition grew increasingly desperate as ships carrying essential supplies—food, clothing, and building materials, among other items—failed to reach them due to increasingly perilous conditions. Slowly but surely the harsh weather and low supplies decimated the crew, as one by one they succumbed to the merciless Arctic. When a rescue vessel finally reached the Proteus in 1884, only six members of the original expedition remained. Told in concise prose with stunning clarity, Proteus crew member David L. Brainard's Outpost of the Lost is an inspiring account of human spirit and perseverance, and is not be missed by any armchair adventurer or history buff.

The greatest mystery in all of exploration is the fate of the 1845–1848 British Arctic Expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin. All 129 crewmen died, and the two ships seemingly vanished without a trace. The expedition's destruction was a mass disaster spread over two years. With the vessels beset and abandoned, the crew confronted a horrific ordeal. They suffered from lead poisoning, were stricken with scurvy and, ultimately, resorted to cannibalism in their final days. The mysterious fate of the ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, has captured the public's imagination for seventeen decades. Now, one of Franklin's lost ships has been found. During the summer of 2014, the Victoria Strait Expedition, the largest effort to find the ships since the 1850s, was led by Parks Canada in partnership with the Arctic Research Foundation, The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and other public and private partners. The expedition used world-leading technology in underwater exploration and succeeded in a major find—the discovery of Erebus. News of the discovery made headlines around the world. In this fully illustrated account, readers will learn about the exciting expedition, challenging search and the ship's discovery. Featuring the first images of the Erebus, this stunning book weaves together a story of historical mystery and modern adventure.