January 12, 2015
The discovery of the wreck of British explorer Sir John Franklin's ship The Erebus in the fall of 2014 is likely to renew interest in this book, first published in 1987 by forensic anthropologist Beattie and Geiger, now CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, and fortuitously reprinted before the shipwreck was discovered. Franklin was appointed to lead an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic through the Arctic to the Pacific, but the expedition was lost in 1848. A number of relief expeditions revealed only scant information about the fate of Franklin and his crew, and the mystery remained for almost a century. This historical retelling is complemented by an account of the expedition led by Beattie in the 1980s, during which the remains of some crew members were found. It provided important evidence to answer questions about what ultimately killed the men and whether in desperation they resorted to cannibalism. The authors present a richly researched history of the expedition and the following relief expeditions and seamlessly merge the worlds of forensic anthropology and 19th-century history. Reading almost like a whodunit page-turner, Beattie and Geiger capture the thrill of making new scientific discoveries and finding important clues to solve a haunting mystery. Agent: Westwood Creative Artists.