Another Fine Book on the Exploration of Faraway Places
This fine book explains what happened to those British officers who were not discharged following the Napoleonic Wars: they were sent on suicidal missions of exploration, from darkest Africa to the Canadian Arctic. A few of them made it back.
It is also notably strong in describing the the London bureaucracy that directed them, particularly the activities of John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty.
I have not yet read The Arctic Grail but one reviewer suggests this is a good prequel (goes up to the 1840s).
posted by Anonymous at 9:19 PM
1 Comments:
One of the more amazing stories in the Arctic Grail was Frobisher, who sailed blithely into Arctic Canada looking for gold near Baffin Bay in Elizabethan times - later explorers didn't match this for well over 250 years (check of a map of Frobisher bay), and when they did, some of the Inuit had bits of red brick and other artifacts from Frobisher, as well as an oral history of the event.
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