The Myth of the Franklin Expedition (by Ted Betts)
Sir John Franklin set out from Greenhithe, England, on the morning of May 19, 1845 to discover the Northwest Passage. He and his 129 member crew were never seen again. While bones and artifacts, and even graves, have been uncovered, their ships have never been found and the mystery of their disappearance has endured for 150 years. The resurgent interest in the mysteries of the Franklin expedition in the last 25 years was initiated by, and continues to be spurred on by Canadian writers. In a way, the historical and scientific writing, and the modern fiction it has inspired, is only catching up to generations of writing on Franklin by artists and folklorists and dramatists and poets. As Margaret Atwood noted in her 1995 book, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, though, the Franklin mystery has been told and re-told so many times that it has created a fundamental Canadian myth. Ted Betts is a Canadian lawyer and historian who occasionally writes at the Franklin's Ghost blog. http://franklinsghost.blogspot.com
