Horatio Clare

Heated debate over Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition

Opposing the experts, Ernest Coleman sets off solo to discover what really happened to the crew searching for the North-West Passage

The Erebus and the Terror search for the North-West Passage (From The Polar World by G. Hartwig, 1874) 
issue 18 April 2020

How refreshing in a time of general sensitivity to find a book intended to infuriate and debunk. Welcome to the desolate Canadian Arctic, to the mystery of the Franklin expedition, which disappeared in 1845 seeking the North-West Passage, and to a world of disagreement about what happened to it.


Ernest Coleman’s story of his search for clues to Franklin’s fate is delightfully prejudiced and pugnacious. The purpose of No Earthly Pole is, he writes, ‘to speak out in opposition to the clustering together of some academics and experts who have closed their minds’. Middle-aged lieutenant goes to the ends of the earth to defend the reputation of Queen Victoria’s Navy would make a lovely film.

The backstory: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, carrying 129 men under Sir John Franklin, were last seen by whalers in Baffin Bay in July 1845. There was no further recorded sighting until the discovery of the wreck of Erebus in 2014 and of Terror two years later.

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