Ice Ghosts

The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition

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Ice Ghosts

By: Paul Watson

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

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About this listen

Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Lost Franklin Expedition of 1845 - whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice - with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014.

Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story: Sir John Franklin and the crew of the HMS Erebus and Terror setting off in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, the hazards they encountered, the reasons they were forced to abandon ship hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization, and the decades of searching that turned up only rumors of cannibalism and a few scattered papers and bones - until a combination of faith in Inuit lore and the latest science yielded a discovery for the ages.

Arctic & Antarctica

Expeditions & Discoveries

World

Expedition

Polar Region

Transportation

Discovery

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The reading is mostly good, beyond the odd mispronunciation - surprisingly of British words; as far as I can tell he reads the Inuit names well, which is nice.

The story itself starts off fairly gripping, if a little florid at times. You occasionally get an odd mix of American exceptionalism with British Imperialism when talking about these 'brave men' who obviously did some pretty foolhardy, arrogant things. Yet the treatment of the Inuit who encountered Franklin's men and preserved their memories seems fairly sensitive.

I would have liked more detail about the archaeological finds and what they told us about these people's last days. We're told they likely turned to cannibalism, for example, but not how we know. I kept expecting to get deeper into that towards the end, but the text is really more concerned with the searchers than what the searches turned up. we learn a lot about the man who collected and preserved the Inuit oral tradition, but not very much about what the elders said. even if it's unconfirmed, I would have liked to hear those stories more than the chapter on the history of archaeological scuba diving.

Also, rounders is not a type of cricket, lol.

interesting, tails off towards the end