Erebus: The Story of a Ship

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It may be just the nistory from the logs and diaries, but Micheal Palin makes it exciting and harrowing as the gales blow and the storms and cold drip the boats a crew. His books include accounts of his journeys, novels ( Hemingway’s Chair and The Truth) and several volumes of diaries. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.

It was named after the son of the mythological Chaos; not a big ship, at 32 metres (104ft) it was less than half the length of a standard man-o’-war, and, as Palin says, “at 372 tons she was a minnow compared to Nelson’s 2,141 ton Victory”. This is a very fine book about the travels of a ship and the people who were on it, and if that's what you're looking for, you've found it. It is when we are introduced to the various rescue missions and those who risked their own lives to try and find Franklin and his men, that the narrative seems to really come alive. I also liked the way he places the importance of the expedition in contemporary Canadian politics, bringing the story right up to date. 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.

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.

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.Please note: On occasion, due to the complexity and personal nature of some book signing requests, Michael may not dedicate and sign exactly as requested. Palin includes historical accounts of Erebus’s time in these places, as well as his impressions of the landscape as it looks currently, and Erebus’s long-standing legacies.

We see their plans, we then sail with the crews and suffer with them as the ships explore and move through the Antarctic. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.La cruda e cupa tragedia che colpì questa spedizione avrebbe potuto essere infatti raccontata quasi con stile documentaristico, senza gli inserti horror del libro di Dan Simmons. Especially the last portion of the book; I am riding a motorbike around Colombia at the moment and I actually stayed an extra night here just to finish Erebus off. Despite a lifetime interest in history and travel, I am ashamed to confess that until I read this book neither the names of the ships nor the names of their famous crew were known to me.

Palin presents so many details of the individuals and the geography that the book is easy to read and highly informative.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. The ship was filled with fascinating people: the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the ‘Great Southern Barrier’; the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus’s final, disastrous expedition; and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist – when he wasn’t shooting the local wildlife dead. The maps are good and self-explanatory, the index appears inclusive, the photographs and renditions of the engravings colourful and enhance the story, his comments on colonial expansionism and imperialism are appropriate if mild and my favourite book of last year, The Heart of Darkness provides an appropriate prologue. Che io vada matta per viaggi di scoperta e avventura lo sapete già (basta guardare la mia libreria), potevo farmi mancare questo libro?