The book never descends into patriotic or romantic hero-worship, however, and Palin occasionally reminds the reader that this was simultaneously a period of tyrannical expansionism and colonialism by Britain. Though he has numerous letters written in the lyrical style of Victorian-era England to quote from, Palin’s own writing is equally majestic at times. The story of the Antarctic expedition takes up a large part of Palin’s book, and he has mined archives, logbooks, and personal correspondence to sketch a lively picture of the daily grind on board, the camaraderie between sailors holed up for years on small boats, their antics during shore leave, the unforgiving Antarctic conditions, the amazing landscapes, and the thrill of exploration. When Ross visited him in Tasmania, it must have been hard on Franklin. Both men had experience exploring the Arctic, but Franklin had accepted a position as governor of the new British penal colony in Hobart, Tasmania, so was not available to lead this expedition. Though Ross played no further role in future expeditions, he beat Franklin to this assignment. Before venturing North, Erebus and Terror first embarked on a four-year expedition led by the same James Clark Ross, approaching Antarctica three times and retreating to Tasmania and the Falkland Islands in between. Attention subsequently shifted to locating the magnetic South Pole and the decision was taken to convert Erebus from a warship into a reinforced ice-ship.įocusing his book on the ships allows Palin to tell two connected stories. While Erebus lay idle in a dockyard, James Clark Ross led an expedition that successfully located the magnetic North Pole in 1831. Used as a warship patrolling the Mediterranean during years of relative peace, Erebus was quickly mothballed and lay anchored for almost a decade.Īs mentioned in my review of The Spinning Magnet, this era of exploration was also when precise navigation became vital, spurring a race to study the Earth’s magnetic field (see also Earth’s Magnetism in the Age of Sail and The Illustrated Longitude). It was to be one of the two ships on Franklin’s fateful expedition (the other went by the equally cheerful name of HMS Terror). The book starts with the completion of the HMS Erebus in a Welsh boatyard in 1826. It stands out both for the sheer loss of life (129 men) and the mysterious fate of the expedition. One remarkable episode in this period was the Arctic expedition led by English Royal Navy officer Sir John Franklin. The 1800s and early 1900s were a golden age of polar exploration, and small libraries of history books have been written analysing or celebrating expeditions by famous explorers such as Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton or Robert Falcon Scott – their brave, perhaps foolhardy journeys often ending in tragedy. A tale of high-spirited British imperialism, marine camaraderie, a warship that wasn’t, and the enduring mystery of a vanished Arctic expedition. Michael Palin, known equally for his early work as part of the Monty Python troupe as for his travel documentaries, here tells a riveting story from the golden age of polar exploration. They say you should not judge a book by its cover, but in this case, it was the very attractive cover that drew me to read Erebus: The Story of a Ship. Vividly recounting the experiences of the men who first set foot on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, beyond the reach of desperate rescue missions, Erebus is a wonderfully evocative account of a truly extraordinary adventure, brought to life by a master explorer and storyteller. The ship was filled with fascinating people: the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier' the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus's final, disastrous expedition and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist – when he wasn't shooting the local wildlife dead. Michael Palin – Monty Python star and television globetrotter – brings the remarkable Erebus back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. In 1848, it disappeared in the Arctic, its fate a mystery. HMS Erebus was one of the great exploring ships, a veteran of groundbreaking expeditions to the ends of the Earth.
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