Polar Exploration

Great and tragic tales of Arctic or Antarctic exploration are uncovered in these nonfiction titles.

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Finding Franklin : the untold story of a 165-year search

Finding Franklin : the untold story of a 165-year search

Potter, Russell A., 1960- author
2016

"In 2014 media around the world buzzed with news that an archaeological team from Parks Canada had located and identified the wreck of the HMS Erebus, the flagship of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Finding Franklin outlines the larger story and the cast of detectives from every walk of life that led to the discovery, solving of one of the Arctic's greatest mysteries. In compelling and accessible prose, Russell Potter details his decades of work alongside key figures in the era of modern searches for the expedition and elucidates how shared research and ideas have led to a fuller understanding of the Franklin crew's final months. Illustrated with numerous images and maps from the last two centuries, Finding Franklin recounts the more than fifty modern searches for traces of his ships and crew, and the dedicated, often obsessive, men and women who embarked on them. Potter discusses the crucial role that Inuit oral accounts, often cited but rarely understood, played in all of these searches, and continues to play to this day, and offers historical and cultural context to the contemporary debates over the significance of Franklin's achievement. While examination of the HMS Erebus will undoubtedly reveal further details of this mystery, Finding Franklin assembles the stories behind the myth and illuminates what is ultimately a remarkable decades-long discovery."-- Provided by publisher.

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Hunters on the track : William Penny and the search for Franklin

Hunters on the track : William Penny and the search for Franklin

Ross, W. Gillies (William Gillies), 1931- author.
2019

Captains of whaling vessels were experienced navigators of northern waters, and William Penny was in the vanguard of the whaling fraternity. Leading the first maritime expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, he stood out not just for his skill as a sailor but for his curiosity about northern geography and his willingness to seek out Inuit testimony to map uncharted territory. Hunters on the Track describes and analyzes the efforts made by the Scottish whaling master to locate Franklin's missing expedition. Bookended by an account of Penny's whaling career, including the rediscovery of Cumberland Sound, which would play a vital role in British whaling a decade later, W. Gillies Ross provides an in-depth history of the first Franklin searches.

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Icy graves : exploration and death in the Antarctic

Icy graves : exploration and death in the Antarctic

Haddelsey, Stephen.
2018

It is no secret that the Antarctic is one of the most dangerous, forbidding places for explorers to step foot in. The terrain is treacherous, the wildlife predatory and the climate fatal if not adequately prepared for. 'Icy Graves' uses a selection of the tragic losses of such famous explorers as Arthur Farrant, Belgrave Ninnis and Robert Falcon Scott to plot the forward progress of Antarctic exploration and sensitively tells, often in their own words, the stories of the men and women who have fallen in what Sir Ernest Shackleton called the 'White Warfare of the South'.

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Madhouse at the end of the Earth

Madhouse at the end of the Earth

Sancton, Julian, author
2021

In August 1897, thirty-one-year-old commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail aboard the Belgica. His destination was the uncharted end of the earth: the icy continent of Antarctica. But the commandant's plans for a three-year expedition to reach the magnetic South Pole would be thwarted at each turn. Drawing on firsthand accounts of the Belgica's voyage and exclusive access to the ship's logbook, this book tells the tale of its long, isolated imprisonment on the ice - a story that NASA studies today in its research on isolation for missions to Mars.

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Race to the polar sea : the heroic adventures and romantic obsessions of Elish Kent Kane

Race to the polar sea : the heroic adventures and romantic obsessions of Elish Kent Kane

McGoogan, Kenneth, 1947-
2008

"Race to the Polar Sea" is a tale of heroism, courage and conspiracy that evokes an age when the Arctic seemed a white, booming emptiness, beautiful and unknowable.

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