Erebus: The Story of a Ship

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It is hard to imagine what the Erebus crew thought and felt as they sailed along the 30-metre (98ft) high ice cliffs of this shelf the size of France. 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. Initially, she explored the North Pole and allowed James Clark Ross to claim British discovery of the North Magnetic Pole to the disgust of his uncle, her captain. It might be a Canadian thing to be fascinated by the doomed Franklin Expedition that ended on our northern limits – I watched several documentaries with my Dad that came out on the subject as I was growing up – and from the (maybe) tainted tinned goods they consumed to the (unmistakable) signs of cannibalism that eventual recovery missions discovered, this is a tragic tale that has long piqued my interest.

We see their plans, we then sail with the crews and suffer with them as the ships explore and move through the Antarctic. Il titolo italiano è forse un po’ fuorviante, perché potrebbe far pensare ad un romanzo, ad una storia inventata; mentre il titolo originale “Erebus, The Story of a Ship”, testimonia l’intento dell’autore di riportare con assoluta fedeltà l’intera storia della nave. In 1831, he became a national hero when he reached the North Magnetic Pole by sled – and nearly died in the process.Palin] does an admirable job of recounting the life of this doughty ship , from construction at Pembroke dockyard in 1826 to her last days stuck fast in the ice .

With this irresistible and often harrowing account, Michael Palin makes a convincing case that one heroic little ship embodied the golden ago of polar exploration better than any other: HMS Erebus .

The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Michael Palin has written and starred in numerous TV programmes and films, from Monty Python and Ripping Yarns to The Missionary and The Death of Stalin . I also liked the way he places the importance of the expedition in contemporary Canadian politics, bringing the story right up to date.

The prose style is fluent, though Palin might have allowed himself more jokes and fewer anachronisms (“on all accounts a bit of a drip”; “there was no plan B”). In the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual.In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted the 30th favourite by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.