Erebus: The Story of a Ship

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It might be said it was James Cook who defined the Antarctic Region, and James Ross who discovered it’ wrote Captain Scott. The one complaint that I would have about this book is the way that Palin brings modern sensibilities to bear on the efforts of these intrepid explorers: I don't need to be told that imperialism, the extermination of native peoples, and the over-extraction of natural resources – and in particular, animals – isn't justified by “the spirit of Enlightenment”. The sternboard manoeuvre that Ross and his crew executed in the most dire and dangerous situation would have been a great gamble at any time.

A timely account of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find a way through the Northwest Passage . We work beside Sir John Franklin as the ships are rebuild and provisioned for their exploration to the Arctic. Palin is a superb stylist , low-key and conversational, who skillfully incorporates personal experience. He provides a historical overview of Erebus’s voyages and she had an exceptional one to the Antarctic in the late 1830’s early 1840s.

Tanto che, nel tempo, nuove spedizioni, testimonianze di inuit e iniziative isolate di marinai e studiosi, hanno portato a ricomporre il complesso puzzle della sciagurata spedizione. Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s. Magnifiche anche le fotografie in bianco e nero correlate,le mappe disegnate dagli ufficiali e i disegni dei bellissimi paesaggi artici. You feel you’re sitting in the pub with Michael Palin himself as he regales you with tales of the mighty seas. His journeys have taken him across the world, the North and South Poles, the Sahara desert, the Himalayas and most recently, Eastern Europe.

Although a longtime Monty Python fan, I had never read one of Michael Palin's travel books before, so I looked forward to starting with his Erebus; a biography of sorts on the ship that Sir John Franklin captained off to its final, frigid resting place. Erebus was the last but one of the warships known as bomb vessels, able to fling shells over coastal defences.His books include accounts of his journeys, novels ( Hemingway’s Chair and The Truth) and several volumes of diaries. 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”). It is an epic story, full of appalling human suffering (everyone died) and one constantly revised as fresh discoveries float to the surface.

We learn of the brave man who was so maligned when, having discovered, through the Innuit, the likely fate of the two ships and their crews, he was shunned for suggesting that any Englishman could be so depraved as to resort to cannibalism.

Vor allem auf die letzte, tragische Reise der Erebus mit dem Ziel der Entdeckung der Nordwestpassage war ich gespannt. 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. Nicholas Crane, current president of the Royal Geographical Society, has described Palin, one of his predecessors, as “the world’s most appealing practitioner of geographical curiosity”, and it’s that curiosity which drives his stirring new book . It's a well presented and detailed serious narrative history, done something of a disservice by the over-promising blurbs that claim it's full of zizz and laughs.