Erebus: The Story of a Ship

Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin

Having recently read this book (an Ebook in Epub format) I felt compelled, for some reason, to write a review of it. It sounds like an unlikely candidate as a page-turner but once it gets going it’s a great read. Michael Palin writes well and the subject matter for lovers of the era of sailing ships and polar exploration is fascinating.

It follows the history of the Royal Navy ship HMS Erebus from drawing board to her disappearance in the Arctic in 1848 (along with fellow ship HMS Terror), to her eventual discovery in 2014, in shallow water off the south coast of King William Island in the north of Canada.

The following foreword from the book itself describes the gist of the book more eloquently than I can:

In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half. Its name was HMS Erebus.

Now Michael Palin – former Monty Python stalwart and much-loved television globetrotter – brings this extraordinary ship 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. He explores the intertwined careers of the men who shared its journeys: the dashing James Clark Ross who charted much of the ‘Great Southern Barrier’ and oversaw some of the earliest scientific experiments to be conducted there; and the troubled John Franklin, who at the age of sixty and after a chequered career, commanded the ship on its final, disastrous expedition. And he vividly recounts the experiences of the men who first stepped ashore on Antarctica’s Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, as rescue missions desperately tried to reach them.

The book is, as you would expect from Michael Palin, very well written and well-researched. It is richly illustrated throughout with an appendix of prints depicting the life of HMS Erebus and those associated with her. Michael Palin intersperses his own interesting experiences, during his globe-trotting days, of places visited by HMS Erebus, including the Falkland Islands.

The book covers the discovery of the ship in 2014 and prior attempts to discover the fate of both ship and its men. The local Inuit of the time were able to give clues as to what had happened to the crew. Suggestions of evidence of cannibalism, amongst one party of survivors, were dismissed as the rantings of savages, although later evidence gave credibility to the Inuit account.

Another aspect is the possibility that lead poisoning from the actual cans of tinned food – a relatively recent innovation at the time – was responsible for the debilitation of the men, as the symptoms can mirror those of scurvy.

A great read for anyone interested in the great explorers and/or the days of sailing ships.

Title: Erebus: The Story of a Ship. British edition,

Hutchinson 2018,

ISBN 9781847948120 (hardback)

ISBN 9781847948137 (trade paperback)

(ebook also available)

NB. The US edition is entitled, Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages & the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time (2018, Perseus Books, LLC – Greystone Books)

John Franklin’s expedition has aroused much interest over the years, and I discovered that quite a few other books have been written about it, all of those listed below being still obtainable (at least as ebook files: I haven’t investigated print editions).

These include:

Frozen in Time – Owen Beattie, John Geiger, Margaret Atwood – The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (2014, Greystone Books)

Unravelling the Franklin Mystery – Inuit Testimony, Second Edition (Volume 5) David C Woodman (McGill-Queen’s Indigenous and Northern Studies (Book 5))

James Fitzjames – The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition (2013, Dundurn Press)

Finding John Rae – Hamilton, Alice Jane – (2017, Ronsdale Press)

Finding Franklin – Russell A Potter – The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search (2016, McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Ice Ghosts – Paul Watson – The Epic Hunt For the Lost Franklin Expedition (2017, W W Norton & Company)

Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage – Alan Day (Historical Dictionaries of Discovery and Exploration) – Scarecrow Press (2006)

Captain Francis Crozier – Last Man Standing – Smith, Michael Marshall (2012-2006, The Collins Press)