Some Miscellaneous Notes on Arctic Expeditions

Based on my conversation tonight with the Laird and the First Sea Lord, I submit the following:

• In his position at the Admiralty, [Sir John] Barrow was a great promoter of Arctic voyages of discovery, including those of John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross, and John Franklin. Point Barrow in Alaska is named for him. He is reputed to have been the initial proposer of St Helena as the new place of exile for Napoleon Bonaparte following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
  
• Fergus Fleming has writte a very good book on Barrow.
• Sheila Nickerson's book about disappearances in the far north is here, along with evidence of Internet immortality (some reviews date to the late 90s!).
  
• Details on Frobisher here. But Baffin looks like he had a pretty good run at it, too.
  
• Lots on "poor Franklin" here. "Franklin was of a breed of imperial officers who believed in the subjugation of nature by civilisation, carrying silver plates and crystal decanters with him on the expedition. Perhaps the inevitable compromises of this strategy led to insufficient essentials, as well as an unwillingness or inability to learn survival techniques from the natives. Their ships were locked in the ice for two winters, a much longer time than they anticipated. It has also been suggested that the party died of lead poisoning or food poisoning from the canned food they were carrying with them. There is some evidence that they resorted to cannibalism. The most likely cause of death of most of the party, from the descriptions the Inuit gave of their end, was scurvy. In the end, it may have been a combination of bad weather, poisoned food, poor planning and bad health."
• But the man who impresses me most in this saga is Ross. After disgracing himself he goes back and sails "past Lancaster Sound to a previously unexplored area, where their ship became stuck in the ice. The crew was stranded for four [fucking] years, during which they explored the regions to the west and north, with the help of local Inuits. On one of these explorations, Ross found the magnetic north pole on the Boothia Peninsula. In 1832, Ross and his crew abandoned their ship and walked to another shipwreck which had been abandoned by a different expedition many years earlier. A year went by before a break in the ice allowed them to leave, on that ship's longboats. They were eventually picked up by a British vessel and taken home." In 1850 Ross went looking for Franklin, but didn't find him.
• Of course, the Vikings were there first (scroll down a bit).