ICE BLINK: The Fate of Sir John Franklin’s Lost Polar Expedition
By Scott Cookman
John Wiley & Sons  (2000)

ICE BLINK—the name 19^th century sailors gave the haunting mirages they glimpsed on Arctic voyages—pierces one of the most fascinating and enduring mysteries in the annals of exploration. Led by veteran Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, two ships and 128 men left Greenland in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage. It was the most technologically advanced mission of the 19^th century. The ships were revolutionary: iron-plated, locomotive-powered, and steam-heated. The expedition was last seen by two Arctic whalers in Baffin Bay. It was never seen or heard from again.

Twelve years later, in 1857, on King William’s Island, searchers found a mountain of discarded equipment, two skeletons and a single sheet of paper bearing a chilling message. It reported the ships had been deserted, 24 officers and men—including Franklin—were dead of unknown causes and 105 survivors were embarked on a 900-mile march inland in an attempt to escape. Maddeningly, the message didn’t say why and the cause of the tragedy has remained open for debate to this day.

ICE BLINK, based on original research of Admiralty records, not only reveals the full story of the ill-fated expedition—but a new, frightening explanation for its doom, as well as evidence the Royal Navy suspected it and covered it up. It is a gripping account of an infallibly-planned polar expedition gone disastrously wrong.

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