Discovering the North-West Passage
Subtitle: the four-year Arctic odyssey of H.M.S. Investigator and the McClure Expedition
By: Glenn M. Stein
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9780786477081
Subjects: Investigator (Ship); Travel; British; Search and rescue operations; Discovery and exploration; History
Description: From 1850 to 1854, the ambitious Commander Robert McClure captained the HMS Investigator on a voyage in search of the missing Franklin Expedition, which sailed from England into the Arctic in 1845 to map the last uncharted section of the North-West Passage. The Investigator and her consort the Enterprise were to pass through the Bering Strait from the west but a Pacific storm separated them, never to meet again. Obsessed with traversing the passage, McClure pressed on and HMS Investigator spent three years trapped in pack ice in Mercy Bay before the crew abandoned ship on foot.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The frozen grail, up to 1845; title: Into the fray, 1846/50; title: The Pacific, 1850; title: Western Arctic gateway, 1850; title: The wily Arctic, 1850; title: The coldest crucible, 1850; title: Decisions, 1850; title: Jack Frost, 1850/51; title: The grand sledding chorus, 1851; title: The trap is sprung! 1851; title: "The fatal error of our voyage," 1851/52; title: Starvation, madness; and mutiny, 1852; title: Infinity's brink, 1853/54; title: Scattered bones and frozen memories, 1853 onward; title: Epilogue: found beneath the ice, 2010/11.