Palin - Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time

Advance praise for EREBUS

Beyond terrific. I didnt want it to end. Bill Bryson

What more could a reader ask for? Fascinating mystery, chilling adventure, compelling charactersone a powerful woman, another made of wood and sailsand simply terrific writing by Michael Palin. Roy MacGregor, author of Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada

At this late date, and against all odds, Michael Palin has found an original way to enter and explore the Royal Navy narrative of polar exploration. Palin is a superb stylist, low-key and conversational, who skillfully incorporates personal experience. He turns up obscure facts, reanimates essential moments, and never shies away from taking controversial positions. This beautifully produced volumecolour plates, outstanding mapsis a landmark achievement. Ken McGoogan, author of Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

One robust little tub of a boat, two death-defying voyages to the ends of the earth. Palin has given us a fascinating account of the extraordinary courage of nineteenth-century British sailors and officers. Even the sturdiest vessel is dependent on luck, climate and its captains skills as he faces ferocious weather, and Palin illuminates with enthusiasm and respect this chilly history of a bomb ship that made its name first as a polar pioneer and then later as a watery tomb. Enthralling. Charlotte Gray, author of The Promise of Canada: People and Ideas that Shaped Our Country

Michael Palin is a cracking good companion on this journey of ambition, longing, triumph and tragedy. His dauntless curiosity drives us through ice-infested waters from pole to pole, and his passion for weaving together the lives of the men who lived and died on Erebus infuses every page. More than that, though, Palins contagious spirit of exploration proves that the age of adventure lives on in us still. Alanna Mitchell, author of The Spinning Magnet: The Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It

With this irresistible and often harrowing account, Michael Palin makes a convincing case that one heroic little ship embodied the golden age of polar exploration better than any other: HMS Erebus. John Geiger, co-author of Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition and CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society

Expertly written and masterfully crafted, Palins story of one ships two bold explorations successfully weaves together two hundred years of history into page-turning entertainment. Adam Shoalts, author of A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright 2018 Michael Palin

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2018 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson, a part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, London. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers is reproduced by kind permission of Fogartys Cove Music. Copyright Stan Rogers SOCAN 1981.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Palin, Michael, author

Erebus : one ship, two epic voyages, and the greatest naval mystery of all time / Michael Palin.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780735274273

eBook ISBN 9780735274280

1. Erebus (Ship)History19th century. 2. Arctic regionsDiscovery and explorationBritishHistory19th century. 3. Northwest PassageDiscovery and explorationBritishHistory19th century. 4. AntarcticaDiscovery and explorationBritishHistory19th century. 5. Scientific expeditionsAntarcticaHistory19th century. I. Title.

G640.P35 2018910.916327C2018-901907-7

C2018-901908-5

Cover design: Andrew Roberts

Cover images: (centre) National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London; (maps) Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library.

New World, or, Western Hemisphere; Old World, or, Eastern Hemisphere.

The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1790.

Maps by Darren Bennett

v5.3.2

a

For Albert and Rose

And indeed, nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home, or to the battles of the seafrom the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasureto the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests and that never returned.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

CONTENTS

At the age of just twenty-two, Joseph Dalton Hooker joined the crew of HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon. He went on to become one of the greatest botanists of the nineteenth century.

INTRODUCTION

HOOKERS STOCKINGS

Ive always been fascinated by sea stories. I discovered C.S. Foresters Horatio Hornblower novels when I was eleven or twelve, and scoured Sheffield city libraries for any I might have missed. For harder stuff, I moved on to The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat one of the most powerful books of my childhood, even though I was only allowed to read the Cadet edition, with all the sex removed. In the 1950s there was a spate of films about the Navy and war: The Sea Shall Not Have Them, Above Us the Waves, Cockleshell Heroes. They were stories of heroism, pluck and survival against all the odds. Unless you were in the engine room, of course.

As luck would have it, much later in life I ended up spending a lot of time on ships, usually far from home, with only a BBC camera crew and one of Patrick OBrians novels for company. I found myself, at different times, on an Italian cruise ship, frantically thumbing through