Lady Franklin's Revenge

Last updated

Lady Franklin's Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the Remaking of Arctic History is a non-fiction book by Canadian historian and writer Ken McGoogan. It was published in 2005.

Contents

Summary

Denied a role in Victorian England's male-dominated society, Jane, Lady Franklin took her revenge by seizing control of that most masculine of pursuits, Arctic exploration and shaping its history to her ends. The author, Ken McGoogan, tells two intertwined stories in this book. The first focuses on how Jane Franklin became the greatest woman traveler of the age. She rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the Nile, climbed mountains in Africa and the Holy Land, and beat her way through the Tasmanian bush—all at a time when few Victorian women ventured beyond the security of the home, much less beyond the country's borders and the world's known frontiers. The second began when her husband, Sir John Franklin, disappeared into the Arctic in 1845. This book tells the story of how Lady Franklin orchestrated the ensuing twelve-year search, and so ended up contributing more to the discovery and mapping of the Canadian north than any explorer.

Awards

Editions

See also

Related Research Articles

John Rae (explorer) Scottish explorer

John Rae was a Scottish surgeon who explored parts of northern Canada.

John Franklin British Royal Navy officer, Arctic explorer and colonial administrator

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, in 1819 and 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later and the entire crew died, from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy.

HMS <i>Resolute</i> (1850) 19th-century British Royal Navy barque

HMS Resolute was a mid-19th-century barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy, specially outfitted for Arctic exploration. Resolute became trapped in the ice and was abandoned in 1854. Recovered by an American whaler, she was returned to Queen Victoria in 1856. Timbers from the ship were later used to construct the Resolute desk which was presented to the President of the United States and is currently located in the White House Oval Office.

Leopold McClintock Irish explorer in the British Royal Navy

Sir Francis Leopold McClintock was an Irish explorer in the British Royal Navy, known for his discoveries in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. He confirmed explorer John Rae's controversial report gathered from Inuit sources on the fate of Franklin's lost expedition, the ill-fated Royal Navy undertaking commanded by Sir John Franklin in 1845 attempting to be the first to traverse the Northwest Passage.

Elisha Kent Kane American explorer and military medical officer

Elisha Kent Kane was a United States Navy medical officer and Arctic explorer. He served as assistant surgeon during Caleb Cushing's journey to China to negotiate the Treaty of Wangxia and in the Africa Squadron. He was assigned as a special envoy to the United States Army during the Mexican–American War and as a surveyor in the U.S. Coast Survey.

Kenneth McGoogan is the Canadian author of fifteen books, including Flight of the Highlanders, Dead Reckoning, 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, How the Scots Invented Canada, and four biographical narratives focusing on northern exploration and published internationally: Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner, Lady Franklin's Revenge, and Race to the Polar Sea.

Jane Franklin British explorer

Jane, Lady Franklin was the second wife of the English explorer Sir John Franklin. During her husband's period as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, she became known for her philanthropic work and her travels throughout south-eastern Australia. After John Franklin's disappearance in search of the Northwest Passage, she sponsored or otherwise supported several expeditions to determine his fate.

Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin is a book by Canadian historian and writer Ken McGoogan. It was first published in 2001. The book formed the basis for the 2008 movie Passage from the National Film Board of Canada.

Henry Grinnell 19th century American merchant and philanthropist

Henry Grinnell was an American merchant and philanthropist.

Franklins lost expedition British expedition of Arctic exploration

Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point Franklin and nearly two dozen others had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.

Passage is a 2008 documentary film partly based on the book Fatal Passage about Sir John Franklin's lost expedition through the Northwest Passage. The film explores the fate of the doomed mission, including John Rae's efforts to uncover the truth, and Lady Franklin's campaign to defend her late husband's reputation. The film also features Inuit statesman Tagak Curley, who challenges claims made by Lady Franklin supported by her powerful friend, the story teller and "famous author Charles Dickens", widely reported at the time, that Aboriginal people were responsible for the signs of cannibalism among the remains of the doomed crew.

Mathinna (Tasmanian) Aboriginal Australian girl

Mathinna (1835–1852) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian girl, who was adopted and later abandoned by the Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin.

Lady Frankin may refer to:

Kiillinnguyaq Peninsula in Nunavut, Canada

Kiillinnguyaq, formerly the Kent Peninsula, is a large Arctic peninsula, almost totally surrounded by water, in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut. Were it not for a 8 km (5 mi) isthmus at the southeast corner it would be a long island parallel to the coast. From the isthmus it extends 169 km (105 mi) westward into the Coronation Gulf. To the south, Melville Sound separates it from the mainland. To the north is Dease Strait and then Victoria Island. To the west is Coronation Gulf and to the east, Queen Maud Gulf. Cape Flinders marks the western tip of the peninsula, Cape Franklin is at the northwestern point, and Hiiqtinniq, formerly Cape Alexander marks the northeastern point.

HMS <i>Investigator</i> (1848) Merchant ship used in Arctic exploration

HMS Investigator was a merchant ship purchased in 1848 to search for Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition. She made two voyages to the Arctic and had to be abandoned in 1853, after becoming trapped in the pack ice.

Cape Barrow

.

William Parker Snow (1817–1895) was a minor Arctic explorer, writer and mariner.

William Kennedy (explorer) Canadian explorer

William Kennedy was a Canadian fur trader, politician, and historian.

Cape Flinders is a headland in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. It is located on the western point of the Kent Peninsula, now known as Kiillinnguyaq.

The Canadian Authors Association is Canada's oldest association for writers and authors. The organization has published several periodicals, organized local chapters and events for Canadian writers, and sponsors writing awards, including the Governor General's Awards.