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    The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage

    Written by Anthony Brandt

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of nineteenth-century British exploration.

    After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over northern Canada. For the next thirty-five years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route, and then, after 1845, to find Sir John Franklin, the Royal Navy hero who led the last of these Admiralty expeditions and vanished into the maze of channels, sounds, and icy seas with two ships and 128 officers and men.

    In The Man Who Ate His Boots, Anthony Brandt tells the whole story of the search for the Northwest Passage, from its beginnings early in the age of exploration through its development into a British national obsession to the final sordid, terrible descent into scurvy, starvation, and cannibalism. Sir John Franklin is the focus of the book but it covers all the major expeditions and a number of fascinating characters, including Franklin's extraordinary wife, Lady Jane, in vivid detail. The Man Who Ate His Boots is a rich and engaging work of narrative history that captures the glory and the folly of this ultimately tragic enterprise.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 2, 2010
    ISBN9780307712295
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage

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    Reviews for The Man Who Ate His Boots

    3.5/5

    49 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      England spent a lot of time searching for a Northwest Passage for their ships. Brandt covers the gamut of efforts to find it, many of which ended tragically, and some which, miraculously enough, ended with everyone back home in England, although without having found the passage. One of the early attempts that was so incredible as to sound fictional was the 17th-century voyage of Thomas James. He had to winter in the Arctic, and to avoid having his ship crushed by ice or swept away, he and his crew deliberately sunk the ship, then pulled it back up in the spring, repaired it, and sailed it home. Now that's chutzpah.All the explorers were audacious, but some were poorly equipped to handle the rigors of Arctic exploration. The insistence on doing things the European way instead of learning from the Inuit often resulted in unnecessary deaths. Stubbornness and ethnocentrism blinded the explorers to the fact that the Inuit built igloos and wore furs not because they didn't know any better, but because these were actually great tools for survival. Stubbornness was also a big part of the reason there were so many missions to Canada in the first place. When captains and their crews keep disappearing, dying, or barely limping back home without results, it seems that sane people might start to wonder if finding the passage is even worth it; obviously, it's not going to be easy going even when and if it's found. But the English chose to hang their pride on the project, so sanity didn't enter into the equation.Many expeditions are discussed in the book, so it can sometimes be hard to keep track of the various names and the timeline. It would also probably be beneficial to familiarize yourself with a map of the area, as there are a lot of bays, straits and inlets described. The book seems like a pretty good overview of the whole endeavor, and it's made me want to read up some more on a couple of the expeditions, particularly John Franklin's, which is talked about at length and has apparently been an inspiration for a number of fictional versions of events.
    • 1/5
      To be fair, Anthony Brandt's "The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage" isn't really a bad book. However, I found it very dull.I am absolutely mad for polar exploration stories and was surprised that I didn't really enjoy this book at all. Mainly, I think, this book really focused more on administration details instead of the actual adventuring aspect, which is what I enjoy. This book is really comprehensive and I found myself wading through lots of detail that wasn't interesting to me. After a week and a half to get halfway through the book (and not even to Franklin's ill-fated final expedition) I gave up.
    • 4/5
      I know quite a lot about polar death, so it's remarkable that this book kept me relatively riveted despite treading familiar ground. It gives some fascinating insights into British imperialism while managing to tie itself to present day issues of global warming--always nice to read a history book that explicitly states its relevance. (I am being slightly facetious with this last comment but I do mean it: I am not a historian, just an interested freelancer, and I appreciate mightily when history is made relevant without bombarding me with a constantly restated thesis. Brandt struck a really nice balance, making a lot of larger connections that illuminated my own [very literature-centric:] experience with the British Empire while expanding my existing knowledge of polar death. Frankenstein is suddenly a lot more interesting when placed in its proper historical context and for that alone I am indebted to Brandt.)
    • 3/5
      A very readable history of the 19th century British attempts to discover a NorthWest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the northern coast of Canada, through the Arctic ice. The focus of the story is John Franklin who searched for the Passage several times and was lionised by the British public as an intrepid explorer. His failure to return from his last expedition generated a stream of rescue missions both privately and publicly funded through the rest of the century. Brandt is excellent at the geography and the history of exploration. His descriptions of the cold and the privations of the exploring teams adds enormously to our understanding of the implications of such expeditions and to the tensions arising from the rescue missions. His knowledge of 19th century British cultural customs is a little shakier, but does not detract from an overall exciting if ultimately tragic boy's own story.
    • 4/5
      Writing about the fate of John Franklin is always difficult. The man failed. Simple as that. But much of it was not his fault. Could a better man have done better? We cannot know.On the whole, this is a kind biography of a man who had many genuine abilities and equally many weaknesses -- a man who was genuinely kind, genuinely open to new ideas... and genuinely easy to push around. Franklin led one successful and two unsuccessful trips to the Arctic. His naval record was good. He was beloved in Tasmania, where he was governor -- but the civil service hated him.And, as it turned out, he died before he could know the disaster that faced his final expedition.This book tries hard to present the latest research and to see both sides. We do not know all we would like to know about Franklin's final expedition. But most of what we do know is here.
    • 4/5
      A fine history of the fabled, and nutzoid, 19th-century explorations of the Arctic. The author gets a little preachy about the diminishing ice of the polar region, though his point is certainly valid: In perhaps not many years at all, a Northwest Passage won't be the least bit hard to navigate and the days of boats being entrapped for years on end will seem even more inconceivable. Anthony Brandt aptly sums up the hubris and folly of the British expeditions and tells well the fascinating story of how the region was mapped by the many many ships sent in search of the lost Franklin Expedition and its 129 noble but idiotic men. One major failing: This book desperately needs more and better maps!
    • 4/5
      Well-written and compelling book about the politics, enthusiasms, intellectual background too, and the human misery of the search for the Northwest passage. Rather hard on poor Sir John Franklin, perhaps not undeservedly so, and another long overdue attempt to rescue the immense reputation of John Rae from the dustbin of history. Recommended reading as a survey of the search for the Passage.