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History Expeditions & Discoveries

The Franklin Conspiracy

An Astonishing Solution to the Lost Arctic Expedition

by (author) Jeffrey Blair Latta

introduction by John Robert Colombo

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2001
Category
Expeditions & Discoveries, General, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780888822345
    Publish Date
    Jun 2001
    List Price
    $22.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554880201
    Publish Date
    Jun 2001
    List Price
    $8.99

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Description

The Franklin Conspiracy is an absorbing account of the single most enigmatic event in Canadian history. In 1845, two British Royal Navy ships, the Erebus and the Terror, commanded by Sir John Franklin, entered the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Neither ship returned. A fifteen-year search uncovered evidence of unparalleled disaster, but to this day no one knows exactly how the 129 men of the Franklin Expedition met their deaths.

Although the expedition did not run out of food, there is clear evidence of cannibalism. The ships carried two hundred message cylinders with them, yet failed to leave records. Stranger still, an earlier explorer, Thomas Simpson, was reputedly murdered for the "secret of the Northwest Passage." What was this "secret"?

The Franklin Conspiracy is an exhaustively researched, compellingly reasoned answer to that question. The result is a shocking saga of conspiracy, cover-up, and unbelievable secrets the.

About the authors

Jeffrey Blair Latta has contributed popular science columns to Canadian newspapers, been published in the prestigious science journal Nature, and written two one-act plays as well as several screen plays. Though originally majoring in Physics at Queen's University, he graduated in Film Studies.

Jeffrey Blair Latta's profile page

John Robert Colombo, who edited and annotated Worlds in Small, is known as the Master Gatherer for his many compilations of the lore and literature of Canada. Colombo has complied, translated, and written over eighty books. He co-translated into English five books of Bulgarian literature, not to mention books of verse originally written in Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, etc. In the field of native studies he has compiled Windigo, Poems of the Inuit, Songs of the Indians, and Songs of the Great Land. Among his large-scale literary anthologies are The Poets of Canada and Colombo’s Book of Canada. He edited Other Canada, the country’s first anthology of science fiction and fantasy, and beginning with Mysterious Canada, he has written or complied six books of Paranormal Canadiana. These books, plus media appearances, have earned him the title "Canada’s Mr. Mystery."

John Robert Colombo's profile page