BOOK REVIEW: The Man who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
By Anthony Brandt, Knopf, Hardcover, 2009, 464 pages, $28.95
In 1845, two sailing ships carrying 129 men, equipped as well with the experimental new technology of steam power, set out to find the Northwest Passage between Europe and the Far East through the icy straits north of the Canadian mainland. The ships and men, commanded by veteran Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, simply vanished, apparently without a trace, sparking a search by 19 expeditions between 1848 and 1854. "The Man Who Ate His Boots" is Anthony Brandt's interesting and well-documented history of Arctic exploration, leading up to and including Franklin's tragic expedition and the subsequent searches.
The effort to find the Northwest Passage was the 19th century British equivalent of the U.S. space program: an attempt to establish a presence in an area that was dangerous and uninhabitable (by European standards) for benefits that were at least questionable. Like our space program, the impetus for the exploration seemed to do with the mythic nature of the quest: to "boldly go where no [British] man had gone before."
Brandt traces the interest in the Northwest Passage from early English explorations in the 16th century, when there were hopes of finding an alternative shipping route to Japan and China. However, the dangers were immense: a sailing ship could be crushed by 40-foot thick sea ice in the winter; even in the summer, channels through the ice might close, trapping a ship for weeks, months or sometimes years if it didn't melt the next summer. Fresh food was scarce and crews that over-wintered in the Arctic almost inevitably suffered from scurvy, the nasty result of Vitamin C deficiency that starts with lethargy and rotting gums and ends with the body tissues literally falling apart.
Franklin's expedition was not the only one to suffer casualties: It was just the one where nobody survived. Eventually, Inuits were found who knew some of the story and it became possible to reconstruct what had happened. Franklin's ships had been stuck in the ice in a place where none of the authorities thought he would have gone. After two years, most of the crew was dying of scurvy and starvation; they abandoned their ships and headed for an area where they hoped they could find good hunting. They never made it and did much worse than eat their boots: They resorted to cannibalism.
Brandt finds tragedy and heroism in the mad dreams that kept ships sailing to the Arctic in spite of death in almost every expedition. He describes the imperial hubris that kept the British from learning from Inuits and fur traders who knew that the best way to survive in the Arctic was to travel in small parties that could live off the land, rather than mounting large expeditions that required years' worth of supplies. An empire conquers by force and numbers and this was the approach taken to Arctic exploration.
The British had trouble even learning from each other: one explorer, William Parry, discovered that scurvy could be held at bay by feeding his crew fresh sprouts, but the British Navy never adopted his innovation and later cut costs by sending ships out stocked with lime juice, which was cheaper but had much less Vitamin C than lemon juice. The assumption was that there was heroism in doing things "the British way," even if people died as a result.
Franklin was no exception. He'd already led a land expedition -- the trip that gave him the title "The man who ate his boots," where half his men died -- but rather than being branded a failure, he was considered a hero because most of the casualties weren't Englishmen, an outcome that reinforced prevailing notions of the superiority of the British race.
The starving crew on Franklin's last expedition did find the final link needed to complete the Northwest Passage (on foot). Franklin was therefore credited with its "discovery," even though he was dead by that time. He was lionized with several statues, as well as a monument in Westminster Abbey.
Brandt's book focuses almost entirely on ship captains and expedition leaders. He acknowledges the mostly nameless sailors who worked and died to make these expeditions possible, but gives little sense of what they thought of the risks they were taking and the life they led. He provides little description of the Arctic, which has to be counted as a major player in his history. He has almost nothing to say about Inuit culture or what the native peoples thought of all these Europeans "discovering," "exploring," and claiming the land where they'd lived and survived for millennia. To the extent that he discusses these subjects, he relies on accounts from the expeditions, rather than using information from other researchers.
Brandt is aware of the political and social issues behind the story. As he puts it, he is writing a book for the general reader. My guess is that market considerations kept him from straying too far from the mainstream narrative of Arctic exploration as heroic adventure, even though he's quite critical of some of the results.