The long Arctic search the narrative of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U.S.A., 1878-1880, seeking the records of the lost Franklin expedition

by SCHWATKA, FREDERICK

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Mystic, CT: Marine Historical Association. Very Good. 1965. Soft Cover. Marine Historical Association. Publication no. 44 Edited by Edouard A. Stackpole. 117 pages, well illustrated, maps, wrappers, ex-library with usual library markings otherwise very good. The Foreword reads "The manuscript containing the record of 'Schwatka's Search' - as this almost forgotten Arctic expedition was named by William H. Gilder, second in command - had lain forgotten for more than 75 years when it was located by Dr. Neil Josephson and through the Curator of Mystic Seaport, acquired by the Marine Historical Association's manuscript collection." From the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition: Sir John Franklin, 1786-1847, British explorer in N Canada whose disappearance caused a widespread search of the Arctic. ~ After serving (1836-43) as governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Franklin set out in the Erebus and the Terror in 1845 to search for the Northwest Passage. When, three years later, no word from him had been received, there was dispatched the first of the more than 40 parties that in the following years were to search the Arctic for traces of the expedition. Although the geographical knowledge gained by the searchers was immense, no certain clues as to Franklin's fate were revealed until John Rae, in 1853-54, and Sir Francis McClintock, between 1857 and 1859, found evidence of the great arctic tragedy. The latter expedition, fitted by Lady Franklin, found records at Point Victory that established that Franklin's ships had been frozen in the ice between Victoria Island and King William Island. After his death in 1847, the survivors had abandoned ship in 1848 and had undertaken a journey southward over the frozen wastes of Boothia Peninsula toward civilization. Of the entire expedition of some 129 men, not one is known to have survived. Relics and documents of the Franklin party and of later search expeditions have been found as recently as 1960, and the quest for Franklin's diaries is still being continued. .

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