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

By Michael Palin

Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.

The story of a ship begins after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, when Great Britain had more bomb ships than it had enemies. The solid, reinforced hulls of HMS Erebus, and another bomb ship, HMS Terror, made them suitable for discovering what lay at the coldest ends of the earth.
    In 1839, Erebus was chosen as the flagship of an expedition to penetrate south to explore Antarctica. Under the leadership of the charismatic James Clark Ross, she and HMS Terror sailed further south than anyone had been before. But Antarctica never captured the national imagination; what the British navy needed now was confirmation of its superiority by making the discovery, once and for all, of a route through the North-West Passage.
    Chosen to lead the mission was Sir John Franklin, at 59 someone many considered too old for such a hazardous journey. Nevertheless, he and his men confidently sailed away down the Thames in April 1845. Provisioned for three winters in the Arctic, Erebus and Terror and the 129 men of the Franklin expedition were seen heading west by two whalers in late July.
    No one ever saw them again.
    Over the years there were many attempts to discover what might have happened--and eventually the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves, confirming that it had been the dreadful fate of the explorers to die of hunger and scurvy as they abandoned the ships in the ice.
    For generations, the mystery of what had happened to the ships endured. Then, on September 9th, 2014, came the almost unbelievable news: HMS Erebus had been discovered thirty feet below the Arctic waters, by a Parks Canada exploration ship.
    Palin looks at the Erebus story through the different motives of the two expeditions, one scientific and successful, the other nationalistic and disastrous. He examines the past by means of the extensive historical record and travels in the present day to those places where there is still an echo of Erebus herself, from the dockyard where she was built, to Tasmania where the Antarctic voyage began and the Falkland Islands, then on to the Canadian Arctic, to get a sense of what the conditions must have been like for the starving, stumbling sailors as they abandoned their ships to the ice. And of course the story has a future. It lies ten metres down in the waters of Nunavut's Queen Maud Gulf, where many secrets wait to be revealed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780735274280

Michael Palin

MICHAEL PALIN is a comedian, novelist, actor, playwright, and founding member of Monty Python. He is the author of the novel Hemingway's Chair as well as several books on the history of Monty Python, including The Pythons, and numerous travel guides, including Brazil and Sahara.  He also happens to be one of the funniest people on the planet.  He lives in London, England.

Reviews for Erebus

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Palin is an entertainer, and this ship biography does read well, and conveys a good deal of information. He blends the data with a judicious use of personal travel and, the investigation of the efforts to find the vessel once it had gone missing. There is an amusing portrait of the British sense of ownership of exploration in the nineteenth century, and a good deal of coverage of the exploration of the Antarctic, a topic scanted here in North America. It is an interesting delve into what else a sailing warship could be used for in peacetime. Overall, a good investment of a couple of days reading.

[yukon92 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very detailed and engaging book about the British explorer ships "Erebus" and "Terror" and their travels in Antarctica and the Arctic. Michael Palin's writing style is always a joy to read and I learnt a lot about the hard life that these seafarers and explorers lived.

[robertday_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Michael Palin first made his name as one of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus in the 1970s; he later expanded his career to cover acting and has a number of films, both comedy and drama, to his credit. Then, in the 1980s, he gravitated into a career as a professional traveller for tv shows. Starting with one episode of Great Railway Journeys of the World for the BBC in 1981, he fronted a series of shows about worldwide travel - Around the World in Eighty Days, Full Circle and Pole to Pole to name but three. His personable approach made these highly popular and got him a world-wide reputation (though watched now, they do occasionally betray their age); and Palin was able to put his hand to producing the necessary tie-in books to go with the tv shows. He was already an accomplished diarist, so this was a natural progression.Anyone who has read about exploration, especially to the polar regions, will have heard of the Franklin Expedition, an attempt to navigate the fabled North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific around the north coast of Canada. Sir John Franklin led this expedition, with the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They sailed from London in May 1845; on 13th July of that year, they left Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, where they had put in for final provisioning. They were never heard from again.Over the years, many expeditions were launched to uncover the fate of the Franklin expedition; much has since been written about their possible fate, both factual and fictional. The story began to be pieced together as fragmentary remains of both ships and their crews came to light in the decades that followed. Finally, modern underwater survey techniques uncovered the wrecks of Erebus and Terror in 2014 and 2016 respectively.But Michael Palin has not set out to produce another book on the Franklin expedition. Rather, he has concentrated on HMS Erebus itself, tracing its career from its construction and launch in 1826 as a bomb ship - a specialist vessel intended to carry heavy mortars and to stand off from static targets and bombard them - its mothballing after a very few years as the naval requirements of the time changed, its identification as an ideal vessel of exploration in polar regions, and its expeditions, first to the Antarctic in 1839-43 and then to the Arctic under Franklin. Erebus was not built for speed; but her sturdiness and plain lines, intended to provide a stable gun platform for a very heavy weapon, was ideal for strengthening to withstand the rigours of sailing through ice.Palin goes into considerable detail about the Antarctic voyages, and also about Tasmania, where the expedition was based between voyages to the south. He also gives a lot of incidental detail about the Royal Navy of the time; how, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, it was searching for a role. Palin depicts well a navy drastically reduced in size with the coming of peace, and starting the transition away from the days of the press gang onto the long road to a thoroughly professional force. The success of the Antarctic expeditions and the qualities of the men who led it were an important part of that transition.The book is excellently researched and has an easy style, though it helps that the reader is likely to have a fair idea of how the story ends. Palin intersperses the account with his own observations of some of the places mentioned, drawn from his own extensive travels; some have seen this as an unnecessary intrusion, but I felt that these interludes, which are never long, gave a great sense of connection between the past and the present. The book ends, not with the discovery of the wreck of Erebus, but with an account of Palin's visit to the region in 2017 with an organised party on board a Russian icebreaker, made all the more poignant by the fact that the trip ends when the icebreaker has to turn back some considerable distance short of Erebus' final resting place because of ice. The first rescue expedition to attempt to find Franklin's expedition travelled to the region in 1848, when the Franklin party was still alive, trapped by the pack ice; yet they remained undiscovered. Palin's coda shows that even with our modern technology, the forces of nature can still thwart the best laid plans.The personalities come through well, illustrated with contemporary drawings and some early photographs. In particular, Sir john Franklin himself, an Arctic exploration pioneer, turns up in the story as the Governor General of Tasmania, later to resign under something of a cloud but elevated to lead the North-West Passage expedition, partially by virtue of his determined and energetic wife, Jane. The expeditions that attempted to find Franklin were in a large part due to her refusal to give up on her missing husband. Other members of the ships' crews are brought back to life by extracts from heir letters and diaries.This is a book that is well worth reading if you have any interest at all in accounts of exploration, history, the sea or the wild places of this earth. The UK hardback copy I have is a well-produced book on good paper stock. I was enthralled by the story and found the book absolutely fascinating.

[mithril_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A genteel pacing for most of the book, then an epic tragic acceleration. Disastrous and beautiful.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have to confess to having been completely ignorant of HMS Erebus until reading this book. That is a woeful confession because the ship had two notable, although quite separate, claims to fame.It, although perhaps by convention I should say ‘she’, was originally commissioned for the Royal Navy following the Napoleonic Wars, with her twin ship HMS Terror. After general service throughout the Mediterranean Sea, Erebus was reconfigured as a research and exploration vessel, with a specific view to sailing through the Antarctic. Her keel and body were strengthened with thick planks of oak, to help it sustain encirclement by pack ice in polar seas.Their first substantial expedition commenced in 1840 under the captaincy of James Ross, and saw her departing for Tasmania and New Zealand, before venturing deep into the Antarctic Ocean. This was a research expedition, and had a particular emphasis on the establishment of geomagnetic stations at various points around the southern hemisphere. Regulated by the then still fairly new technology of chronometers, these stations would be capable of taking readings simultaneously. There was also, however, a prevailing fascination with the still unexplored Antarctic regions. While probing the pack ice, HMS Erebus sailed further south than any voyage had previously managed.Following their successful return to Britain, in 1845 Erebus and The Terror were despatched to norther climes, under the command of Sir John Franklin and with crews totalling around 130 men, in an attempt to establish the Northwest Passage. They were now equipped with steam engines (not custom built but, rather, converted from railway locomotives) to complement their full set of sails. This expedition did not mirror the success of the first voyage, and both ships became icebound. They were eventually abandoned by the crew, who tried to make their way south across the ice pack, although none of them survived to make a return to occupied territory. There were encounters with indigenous Inuit hunters, who subsequently claimed that the final remnants of the crew had survived as long as they did by resorting to cannibalism. Forensic examinations of the remains of some members of the expedition that were uncovered during the 1980s appeared to substantiate that claim. They also gave clear evidence that the provisions carried by the two ships were also inadequate, and had in addition been compromised by lead poisoning and botulism. Both ships had been considered to be lost without hope of recovery, until 2014, when a cartographic survey of the Arctic Ocean commissioned by the Canadian government located remains subsequently identified as being from HMS Erebus. Two years later the wreck of HMS Terror was also found.Michael Palin’s account is very accessible, written with his customary clarity and cheery tone, although he does not allow that to compromise or detract from the integrity of his research. He flags up the delicious irony of one of the senior figures in the expedition, whose role was to record new wildlife, but whose greatest joy seemed to be shooting the various birds that proved foolish enough to fly within musket range. He also peppers the story with references to his own voyages throughout the polar regions.This is an engaging and informative book, and represents popular history at its best.

[infjsarah · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another enjoyable listen with the light touch I associate with Michael Palin. Not a story I knew so was interesting.

[alexbolding · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written Victorian arctic explorer travelogue with classic understated tongue-in-cheek humour (the man ‘who ate his boots’ turned into the biggest arctic hero Britain ever had). Of course the mystery of the disappearance into a void of the Franklin expedition in the 1850s and the discovery of the ship wrecks of both the Erebus (2014) and Terror (2016) plays an important role in creating suspense. I wonder why Palin decided not to refer to the thriller written about Terror, by Dan Simmons. Palin uses a mix of historical evidence (letters, biographies, drawings, maps) and present day description of his own visits and interviews about places or events of interest. I learnt a lot about Tasmania, its rule and its people, as well as about the things that naturalists, contemporary to Darwin, found interesting. And of course there is a cast of Victorian heroes and villains. The dashing James Clark Ross, the timid, second-in-command Crozier; the aloof John Ross the elder; the plumb John Franklin, turned unknown and unlikely hero (by his vanishing act, after a governorship that ended in disgrace), Lady Franklin, the matron who fought for her husband’s reputation, tooth and nails. The public craving for British heroes resulted in many busts, street names and eulogies, with no evidence whatsoever that Sir Franklin undertook any heroic acts during the last year-months of his life. Equally remarkable is the whimsical nature of whom to turn into a hero. Of all potential heroes of arctic exploration in the NW Passage region, the most successful early explorer is hardly mentioned (also not by Palin, possibly since he focuses on a ship rather than the cast of explorers). And the hero who went local, McCrae, is initially vilified, because of the suspected cannibalism perpetrated by members of the Franklin mission, whose remains were found. A typical case of prosecuting the messenger. Yet when one would apply objective criteria of heroism, McCrae may be the biggest explorer of all, learning the local vernacular, delving into a different world view, making arctic life his own, without the comforts provided to the members of officially endorsed arctic explorations. McCrae was rehabilitated over a century after his passing, and yet…

[tonyaj_62 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was thrilled to receive this book from the Early Reviewers September batch. Michael Palin excels in detailing the history of the bomb ship Erebus. Comprehensive in scope, you get to know the players involved and those we know from the limited TV series The Terror. Just wonderful.

[philogos_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fascinating book with a comprehensive account of polar exploration in Victorian times. The key characters are brought to life and we get a summary of what happened and the relevant historical research and bibliography. I found the overall effect marred by the point at which we end the story. This is inevitable as it's clear there's still a lot more to be discovered about the Erebus (and its sister ship) so we need to keep a look out for more as time goes on.

[dramman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well researched, detailed account of the life and times of HMS Erebus, from construction in 1826 to its rediscovery on the seabed in northern Canada, in 2014, including of course the ill fated Franklin expedition, in 1845. Palin tells a good tale, weaving in details of his travels to places associated with Erebus.

[lpg3d · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Michael Palin does a great job bringing the voyages of the HMS Erebus and Terror to life. Drawing from original sources, he details James Clark Ross's Antarctic Expedition and (as much as possible of) Franklin's doomed expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. Interspersed with the historical account is an account of Palin re-tracing the routes and stops of the two expeditions. Highly recommended for anyone interested in explorers.(Note: I am reviewing an Advance Reader's Copy provided by the publisher as a LibraryThing early reviewer.)

[noblechicken · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have read a lot of books on the tragic Franklin Expedition, obviously involving the fated ship Erebus. I have never read one specifically about the ship, nor have I read anything by Michael Palin. This was wonderful. A book easily geared toward someone who is interested in history but doesn't necessarily need excruciating detail, although this book is chock full of the many adventures of this formidable ship and its crew. Palin has a delightful way of adding his personality throughout, with little reflective moments of his own journeys following the ship's route, much like he does on his travel documentaries. Good facts, and quite interesting, a great read heading into the winter months.

[figre · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not knowing entirely what to expect, I went into this book with great expectations. Part of this came from the expectation that Michael Palin would bring a different and entertaining spin to the story. Note that I was not expecting Monty Python; I know that is not what he is currently doing. Rather, I was expecting something akin to what has driven the popularity of his travel documentaries. (Full disclosure here. I have not seen those documentaries, so any expectations were based on non-existent history.) The other part of those expectations came from reading Alfred Lansing’s excellent book, Endurance, about Shackleton’s exploration of the Antarctic. That book proved that the trials and travails endured by polar explorers could be captivating.Unfortunately, there is nothing of the charm I expected from Michael Palin, nor any of the fascination I found from Lansing’s book.While this is an accurate description of the voyages of the Erebus, the stories never come alive. Palin attempts to do this with his descriptions of the people, including details of his own voyages to some of the areas that were visited by the ship. But it never rises above words written on the page.Ultimately, the fault may be in the story that is to be told. The initial explorations, while of great scientific value, do not have much in the way of drama to compel the story. And the final voyage, when the Erebus is lost (no spoiler – you know this going in), cannot have the detail needed to make for a story worth telling.The attention to detail sometimes becomes cumbersome, some of the back stories of the people involved are superfluous (and either need fleshing out or eliminated), and the personal stories from Palin seem to show up randomly.To that last point, a decision should have been made. Is this a story about the Erebus, or a story of visiting the sites where the Erebus’ story was told? I have a feeling that more of the latter would have made a better book.It is not that this is a particularly bad book. It is just that it does not rise above the average. And with the author and the topic, there was a chance for this to be so much more.You will not waste your time reading this book, but neither should it be placed at the top of your must-read pile. For that, go to the Lansing book.

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received a free copy of Michael Palin's book "Erebus: One ship, two epic voyages and the greatest Naval mystery of all time" from LT's Early Reviewers program. I have a dread of books where the author's name is larger on the cover than the book title because I find authors with that practice tend to insert themselves into the story and this, sadly was one of those. As Palin didn't sail on the Erebus, there really isn't need to mention himself (or the places he went to do research) in the book, yet he does.I'm very familiar with both of the expeditions this book is focused on and they are both interesting stories.... this book really should have been a slam dunk for me. But I dislike the way Palin writes... he made a great story incredibly dry and boring.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Over the years, I’ve read several books that involved the 19th century Franklin Expedition and the succeeding efforts to discover its fate. Some have been non-fiction accounts and others fictionalized accounts (The Terror, by Dan Simmons and The Surfacing, by Cormac James to name two). Having done so, I was familiar with the background story and the travails faced by the arctic explorers of the era.This work is a little bit different, because it doesn’t focus on the Franklin Expedition, but upon the flagship of that expedition, the HMS Erebus. It describes the work done to convert it into a polar exploration vessel and then spends a majority of its pages describing its first and most successful voyage, the Ross “discovery” and exploration of the waters surrounding the continent of Antarctica. It then proceeds to the Franklin Expedition and the subsequent efforts made to find and rescue its participants. It culminates with the recent discovery of the sunken vessel.The author of this book is Michael Palin, a renowned member of the British comedy troupe, Monty Python. It was a pleasant surprise to find that Palin is a very good writer. The book is well researched and presented. Palin intersperses the history with vignettes concerning his visits to many of the ports visited by Erebus, including its final resting place. All in all, a very commendable piece of work and entertaining as well.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Michael Palin’s Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time recounts in painstaking detail the history of HMS Erebus’ role in the 1839-1843 Ross Expedition in search of the magnetic south pole and the third Franklin Expedition, which departed in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage. Palin begins in the present, with the discovery of the Erebus wreck in 2014 in Canada before moving to the shipyards, now a ferry launch, where Erebus began her life and career. Built as a bomb vessel in the style of similar craft from the Napoleonic Wars, Erebus instead entered a world with relative peace at sea after Britain’s victory over Napoleon. She served two years in the Mediterranean Sea, only firing her guns in salute or practice, before being refitted as an exploration vessel for Antarctic service. With no wars to win, Britain projected its power through feats of exploration, participating in studies of magnetism and oceanography.Palin follows Erebus, and her sister ship Terror, around the world from the Pembroke Dockyard to the Falkland Islands to Hobart, Tasmania, and on to Canada. He draws upon official Royal Navy records, personal correspondence of the crew, newspaper accounts, personal diaries of crewmembers’ families, scientific publications resulting from the scientific studies of the Ross Expedition, and more in order to recreate as faithfully as possible the period and the people. Palin demonstrates a remarkable ability to find the most interesting, entertaining, or meaningful anecdotes amid this mountain of data, though he also points out how the passage of time renders some of his actors’ behavior peculiar by our standard. He writes, “Nowadays our inclination would be to leave the natural beauty of such islands untouched, but the motive of Ross, and those who commissioned his expedition, was to expand and improve and enlighten. What we might now see as shameless exploitation, they saw as brining, wherever possible, the benefits of science to a savage and benighted world. McCormick shot birds so that he could better understand them. Ross, like Abraham Bristow before him, decided to leave livestock on Auckland Island, because he felt it was his duty to those who would inevitably come after him to begin the process of cultivating wild places, and to continue the process of spreading Western values across the globe” (pgs. 91-92). These criticisms notwithstanding, Palin also captures the romance of the period. According to Palin, “When taking measurements of depth and water temperatures, [the Ross expedition] discovered a coral reef growing out of the seabed, of such an extent that Ross estimated it might ‘in future ages form an island between New South Wales and New Zealand’. It is almost heartbreaking to read of coral growing, when now it seems almost everywhere to be shrinking” (pg. 124). He concludes of the Ross Expedition, “No other sailing ship would ever get as far south as Erebus and Terror did that day [23 February 1842]. In fact no ship of any kind reached that far south for almost sixty years” (pg. 138).Palin draws upon a wealth of data in reconstructing the final days of Erebus and Terror under the Franklin Expedition, including Lieutenant Hobson’s 1889 report, which history had forgotten and “came to light only recently from Library and Archives Canada” (pg. 254). He also evaluates theories as to the eventual decline of the crews such as those proffered by J.C. Drummond about tainted tinned food (pg. 268), discussions of lead poisoning from William Battersby as well as Peter Carney and Adrian Bowman’s rebuttals to Battersby (pg. 269), Richard Cyriax’s hypothesis of scurvy once the ships’ fresh fruit stores ran out (pg. 270), and studies of the crews’ remains by “Keith Millar, Adrian Bowman and others from the University of Glasgow” (pg. 271). Palin concludes, however, “Ultimately any attempt to find some answer, or some combination of circumstances, that might explain the fate of the expedition is a bit like navigating through the ice. As one lead closes, another opens up…In the end, though, all that can be said for certain is that those who served on the Franklin expedition were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They ended up in the least hospitably corner of a remote archipelago at a time that even the local Inuit referred to as ‘the years without summers’” (pg. 272). As to why this story continues to resonate, Palin himself writes, “History abhors a vacuum, and as long as we don’t know, there will always be those who want to know. A disaster of this scale looks for an explanation of equal magnitude. They must not have died in vain” (pg. 274).Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time will appeal to all those interested in the history of science or nineteenth century sailing. His skill at recreating the two expeditions’ day-to-day lives recalls Alfred Lansing’s Endurance. The book includes illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, many from publications commemorating the voyages in their own time, and the final version will feature 9 maps depicting various stages of the expeditions (these maps are not in the Advance Reader Copy).

[yoyogod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't to sure what to expect from this going in as I am mostly familiar with Palin from his work on Monty Python. This is a serious book about the HMS Erebus, a ship which successfully sailed the Antarctic, and tragically failed to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.This is the story of the ship from its creation to it's loss on the aforementioned Arctic expedition. Sprinkled throughout the narrative are mentions of Palin's own trips to places the Erebus visited. It makes for an interesting historical tale

[erickas-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Palin’s Erebus is a comprehensive account of one of the most famous Arctic and Antarctic exploration vessels. Palin provides a detailed yet compelling overview of the life of Erebus, recently rediscovered in only 36 feet of water in the Arctic, where she has remained since her last voyage with Sir John Franklin in 1845. Palin’s Erebus reviews the life of the ship, from her first uneventful days as a warship to her watery demise in the mid-1800s in the infamous and mysterious Franklin North West Passage expedition. He offers information and direct quotations from numerous primary sources with engaging narrative, often breaking the tension with some levity. The scholarship is commendable and thorough. I found myself taking copious notes while reading, as I didn’t want to forget a thing. Although there's not a lot of new information presented here, Palin’s historical account of Erebus is sprinkled with descriptions of his own travels — to Hobart, where Erebus and Terror visited while Franklin was governor of Van Diemen’s Land, to Antarctica in 2014, to various places where Erebus docked during her service, like the Falklands. Palin includes historical accounts of Erebus’s time in these places, as well as his impressions of the landscapes as it looks currently, and Erebus’s long-standing legacies. Palin left no stone unturned, often literally, while tracking Erebus’s journey. He even reviews the plans by the master shipwright who outfitted her for her expedition to the Arctic. He reviews Erebus’s time in Antarctica under James Clark Ross, as well her time under John Franklin, where she ended her tenure. The last chapter of Erebus covers the recent resurgence in the Franklin mystery, and ends with Palin’s visit to Antarctica in 2017, to see the final places along the parties’ sojourn across the ice. I wish he had actually gotten to Erebus, and I look forward to future books containing new information from the recently discovered ships. Some reviewers have complained that not enough time was spent discussing the Franklin expedition, but honestly, that's not what I was reading this for. The book is called Erebus for a reason; and there's more to this ship than just the Franklin expedition. If you're looking for Franklin information, I recommend Russell Potter's Finding Franklin; Palin's Erebus is a thorough account of Erebus, and I was excited to read this to learn of her lesser-known voyage with James Clark Ross. Erebus will appeal to Arctic scholars as well as armchair sailors like me. No sentence was superfluous and every chapter offered something engaging.Highly recommended.Many thanks to LibraryThing First Reviewers and Greystone Books for this advance copy in exchange for my review.

[erikschreppel · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to love Michael Palin’s new book “Erebus”. I really did. I am a fan not just of his comedy, but also of his travel shows. Additionally, the lost Franklin expedition that sank the Erebus and the Terror is something I have been interested in for years. I thought this would be a perfect storm (pun intended) for a reviewer’s book. Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book. Palin does an excellent job provided the facts and using period documents to tell the story of Erebus from birth to death. But he has fallen into the trap of historical non-fiction writing, it feels like a textbook. It is dry and has no real excitement. He also I feel lingers too long on the previous journeys of the Erebus and gives a small amount of time to the Franklin expedition. The book I think would have benefitted by a more in depth look at that fateful expedition as well the new discovery of both shipwrecks. This is a very well researched book, and I can sense that he loves this story of the Erebus. But I feel that the execution was just not very engaging.

[waltzmn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

HMS Erebus was abandoned 170 years ago. You'd think we'd know the end of her story by now.This is an unusual book in that it is specifically about Erebus. Usually books about this ship are also about James Clark Ross's or John Franklin's expeditions, and talk so much about Erebus and her frequent companion and near-sister HMS Terror that you'd think they were one ship, HMS Erebus-and-Terror. But this book isn't about the expeditions, really; it is actually about Erebus herself. It starts with her building in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and... it doesn't exactly end.

Of course, most of Erebus's two decades afloat were spent on routine duties, or in mothballs. Michael Palin spends a few pages on these, but there really isn't a lot to tell. As quickly as possible, he gets to the story of James Clark Ross's expedition to Antarctica. This expedition in fact is the subject of the largest part of the book -- which is nice, because Ross's expedition doesn't tend to get much attention in the histories. His was the most important expedition to the southern polar regions prior to the twentieth century, but it didn't actually get to anything bigger than some icy islands, so it is under-appreciated. It's in this section that one first becomes aware that this really is a book about Erebus. Not Ross, and not Terror, and not the Antarctic. We hear as much or more from Ross's men on Erebus, such as Joseph Hooker, as we do from Ross himself.Of course, the reason you're interested in this book (if you are) is almost certainly its coverage of the Franklin Expedition to the Northwest Passage, which is the subject of the last third of the book. Here again, we hear from the ordinary sailors, rather than hearing about the planning of the expedition, or the ways of the Arctic. It's an interesting and different take. It's not a particularly well-researched take (I have almost as many Franklin books as Palin does, including several important ones he does not cite. Of course, Palin also knows LibraryThing author Russell Potter, author of Finding Franklin, who is probably a better reference than just reading Yet Another Arctic Book), but it's not a common take. Sadly, there really isn't much that is new here; I think proportionally too much attention is given to the Franklin-Poisoned-by-Lead-or-by-Botulism-or-maybe-by-Space-Aliens hypotheses, and not enough to what we really do know. And can we maybe, someday, get a Franklin book that doesn't quote Stan Rogers's song "Northwest Passage?" Good grief, if there is a Rogers song we should be singing for Erebus, it should be "The Mary Ellen Carter," which "r[ose] again, That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men."Balancing that lack of detailed research is Michael Palin's own experiences of the places Erebus visited. Many Franklin scholars have been to the Arctic -- but Palin has also been to Tasmania and other places Erebus visited. Again, a different take.I do wish the book had had more of an ending. Erebus is found. Palin tries to visit her -- and fails because of ice. No mention of the finding of Terror except a chronological entry for 2016. No information gleaned from the finding of either ship; no new clues about the expedition's fate. C'mon, it's been four years! Maybe we haven't learned anything yet, but there are three older books (Potter's Finding Franklin, Watson's Ice Ghosts, and Hutchinson's Sir John Franklin's Erebus and Terror Expedition) which have more information than we get in this book. One of my own projects is a long discussion of the folk song "Lord Franklin/Lady Franklin's Lament," and I had hoped to find something here worth citing in that article. I didn't find anything in this book that I didn't already have from some other sources.And there are some nitpicky errors and irritating omissions -- at least in my Advance Reader's Copy, which also lacks maps and an index (let's be honest: I might have been more impressed had those been included; the book lost some usability without them). As a random set of examples, Page 27 skips directly from Parry's first Northwest Passage expedition to the third, omitting the second. On page 29, the dipping needle at the North Magnetic Pole is said to read 89°90' vertical -- never mind that there are only sixty minutes in an hour! And speaking of minutes, on page 102 and elsewhere, minutes are marked as ‘ (curled quote), not ' (straight quote). Page 204 refers to "4500 gallons of 130-140%-proof West Indian Rum." The "proof" of a whiskey is not a percentage! Page 247 ignores Robert McClure's mistakes, stubbornness, narcissism -- and attempt to kill off a big chunk of his crew so that he could survive. Balancing that is the book's high readability and human interest. If you don't know much about the Ross and Franklin expeditions, this is a good place to start. If you have more than a passing knowledge, you won't learn much you don't already know.