Ken McGoogan – ~*LunaSea*~

McGoogan, Ken. Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero That Time Forgot. Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2001.

Reason read: the hero of the story, John Rae, was born in September.

McGoogle writes with a vivid imagination about what John Rae’s world must have been like. To orientate the reader to the times, McGoogan rattles off the Who’s Who of the day: Gottschalk, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Charles Dickens (more on him later). John Rae’s story reads like an action thriller as if he is side by side with Rae the entire time. Chosen to look for the lost Franklin on March 25th, 1848, Rae sounds a bit like Superman: impervious to the cold (temperatures sometimes falling to below negative sixty degrees Fahrenheit), legendary snowshoer and hiker, skilled doctor (qualified to be a surgeon at aged sixteen), successful hunter, fastest of the long-distance canoe-and-boat pilots, able to display impeccable timing when it came to deciding when to turn back or push onward. The list goes on. The one attribute Rae did not possess was the ability to communicate with tact. How he chose to describe Franklin’s demise was his downfall. Researchers questioned Rae’s reports; accusing him of leaving out key details or saying too much (like announcing the probability of cannibalism among Franklin’s men). Lady Jane Franklin never forgave Rae for the latter and successfully sought to ruin him and his reputation.
Despite Rae’s downfall it cannot be disputed that he was the first explorer to rightly surmise that Victoria Land was actually an island. Rae was the first to discover relics from the Franklin expedition. Rae also discovered the hidden gateway to the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, it was Amundsen some fifty years later who would positively confirm it.
Later in life, John Rae was hired to survey the proposed route for telegraph lines over 2,000 miles from the East Coast and over the Rockies. Sadly, the Hudson Bay Company never did build the telegraph route that Rae proposed.
As an aside, clearly, McGoogle wants justice for John Rae. By default he was not kind to Lady Jane Franklin in his descriptions of her or Charles Dickens. I had an on odd sense of vindication for Rae when McGoogan was able to travel to the very spot of Rae’s cairn and place a plaque in his honor.

Quote that had me giggling, “In 1843, Sir John Franklin, derided as a victim of petticoat domination…” (p 222).

Author fact: McGoogan has a website here (the coolest thing I learned is that McGoogan is also a musician).

Book trivia: Fatal Passage was a best seller in Canada.

Music: “Jenny Lind,” and Gottschalk.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “To the Ends of the Earth: North and South” (p 230). This is obviously to the North.

McGoogan, Ken. Lady Franklin’s Revenge: a True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the Remaking of Arctic History. London: Bantam Books, 2006.

Lady Jane Franklin is right up there with Freya Stark and Isabella Bird when it comes to fearless lady travelers – except Stark and Bird were barely born before Franklin started her travels. She truly exemplified a pioneer in female expedition. Although Nancy Pearl doesn’t include Franklin in her chapter on the subject in Book Lust, Franklin was the first to venture to far off places such as Russia, Africa and the wilds of Australia at a time when Victorian women were expected to stay at home, be dutiful wives and raise docile families. Jane Griffin was different. From a very young age she couldn’t be bothered with such domestic pursuits. She wanted an education, an adventure, and to be an outspoken voice. Even after marrying John Franklin and becoming an instant mother to his four year old daughter, Jane Franklin felt no parental responsibility for Eleanor and continued to travel on her “own” (servants and escorts not counted). It was only after her husband, now Sir John Franklin, disappeared in the Arctic that another obsession besides travel of Lady Franklin’s was realized- to bring her husband home. She spared no expense (even her stepdaughter’s inheritance) and pulled out all the stops to convince high-powered officials that her husband’s expedition was worth searching for. At a time when America and Great Britain were not on the best of terms, Lady Franklin worked deals with both countries to send rescue expeditions into unknown waters. She worked tirelessly to keep the missing ships in the minds of everyone on both sides of the pond. Even after the mystery of Frankin’s disappearance had been solved, Lady Franklin insisted his name should carry on as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage.

Can I just say I wish I could have known Lady Franklin? For some reason I find her incredibly cool. While I don’t admire her selfish behavior and prejudice ways, I value the strength in her independence, her tenacity and resolve.

Quoting my favorite lines, “She cloaked her need in the language of love, thus deluding even herself” (p 53), and “In her twenties, the studious Jane Griffin not only read prodigiously, but began keeping a special notebook, updated annually, in which she listed books and articles she perused” (p 63). I, too, keep a journal of such lists. Only my journal is updated monthly and I don’t include articles. Just books.

Reason read: Jane Griffin Franklin was born in December. Reading Lady Franklin’s Revenge in her honor.

Author fact: Ken McGoogan also wrote a biography of Samuel Hearn, another adventurer fascinated with Arctic exploration.

Book trivia: One of the great things about McGoogan’s Lady Franklin is the variety of photographs included. Something as simple as a photograph of a replica of the dress Jane would have worn as a young woman was appreciated. It added texture to the text, if you will.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “To the Ends of the Earth: North and South” (p 232).