Arctic labyrinth the quest for the Northwest Passage
Prologue : 'There is no land unhabitable nor sea innavigable' -- 'All is not golde that glistereth' : the expeditions of Martin Frobisher -- 'The passage ismost probable'; 'there is no passage nor hope of passage' : the views of John Davis and William Baffin -...
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| Format: | UnknownFormat |
| Sprache: | eng |
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Berkeley u.a.
Univ. of California Press
2010
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| Ausgabe: | 1. Univ. of California Press ed |
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Tag hinzufügen | Zusammenfassung: | Prologue : 'There is no land unhabitable nor sea innavigable' -- 'All is not golde that glistereth' : the expeditions of Martin Frobisher -- 'The passage ismost probable'; 'there is no passage nor hope of passage' : the views of John Davis and William Baffin -- 'A sea to the westward' : the discovery of Hudson Bay -- 'To seek a needle in a bottle of hay' : the rival voyages of Luke Foxe and Thomas James -- 'Northward to find out the Straits if Anian' : the tragic voyage of James Knight -- 'The maritime philosophers stone' : the vision of Arthur Dobbs -- 'I left the print of my feet in blood' : Samuel Hearne and the speculative geographers -- 'No information could be had from maps' : James Cook's final voage -- 'Insults in the name of science to modern navigation' : fantasy voyages through the Northwest Passage -- 'Our prospects were truly exhilarating' : the gateway of Lancaster Sound -- 'The man who ate his boots' : John Franklin goes overland -- 'This set us all castle-building' : the later voyages of Edward Parry -- 'The very borders of the grave' : the ordeal of the Rosses -- 'To fill up the small blank on the northern charts' : the explorations of Back, Dease and Simpson -- 'So little now remains to be done' : the last voyage of John Franklin -- 'Franklin's winter quarters!' : clues on the ice -- 'The Northwest Passage discovered!' : the Pacific approach of McClure and Collinson -- 'A thorough downright catastrophe' : the search expedition of Edward Belcher -- 'They fell down and died as they walked' : the fate of Franklin's crews -- 'My dream since childhood' : Roald Amundsen and the passage -- 'I felt that I was on hallowed ground' : the voyages of Henry Larsen -- Epilogue : the Northwest Passage and climate change. For centuries British navigators dreamt of finding the Northwest Passage - the route over the top of North America that would open up the fabulous wealth of Asia to British merchants. We know now that, while several such passages exist, during the period of the search by sailing vessels they were choked by impassable ice. But this knowledge was slowly won, as expedition after expedition, under the most terrible conditions, slowly filled in their patchy and sometimes fatally misleading charts. Arctic Labyrinth tells this extraordinary story with great skill and brilliance. From the tiny, woefully equipped ships of the first Tudor expeditions to the icebreakers and nuclear submarines of the modern era, Glyn Williams describes how every form of ingenuity has been used to break through or try to get round the nightmarish ice barriers set in a maze of sterile islands. The heroism, folly and horror of these voyages seem almost unbelievable, with entire ships crushed, mass starvation, epics of endurance - and all in pursuit of a goal that ultimately proved futile. Williams's book is both an important work of exploration and naval history, and a remarkable study in human delusion and fortitude. |
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| Beschreibung: | Originally published: London : Allen Lane, 2009 Includes bibliographical references (p. 387-413) and index |
| Beschreibung: | XIX, 439 S. Ill., Kt 24 cm |
| ISBN: | 0520266277 0-520-26627-7 9780520266278 978-0-520-26627-8 |