...

Franklin Expedition Stuff

Erebus: The Story of a Ship
- Michael Palin (yes, the Monty Python guy)
The true story of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, repurposed bombships that did a successful expedition of the Antarctic, and then disappeared on their second expedition to the Arctic, both crews missing and dead (the book was written just after both ships were recently rediscovered!)

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition
-Owen Beattie, Jon Geiger
This is about the scientific team that dug up and autopsied the three ice mummies from the Franklin crew! This is where the lead poisoning hypothesis comes from. This also has a lot of great information about the early searches. Super super worth reading!!!


Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery
-Ken McGoogan
I’ll be honest (and won’t spoil it) but I wasn’t super convinced of McGoogan’s ‘new answers’ which was really just a theory. However, this gives a TON of coverage of Franklin’s Coppermine expedition which is worth knowing for background on him when he was younger.


The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
-Anthony Brandt
So despite the title, this one actually has VERY LITTLE about Franklin specifically but I’m putting it in this section since it still has SOME stuff, and is especially about the Northwest Passage. Gives good if brief overviews of other attempts at finding it though!

Adrift in the Arctic ice pack : from the history of the first U.S. Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin
-Elisha Kent Kane
Kane was on one of the earlier Franklin search expeditions and this is his account of it. Get a PDF scan off of Internet Archive because it has a lot of illustrations taken from his sketches. This has so much good detail about what life on a boat in the high arctic is like and so many weird little things like detailing some of the bizarre visual mirages that happen up there. Of course this was published in the 1850s so it gets kinda racist when he (briefly) talks about the Inuit, but otherwise he usually sticks to life on the ship and scientific observations. Oh also, he secretly married one of the infamous Fox Sisters (the joint-cracking spirit mediums). That isn’t in this book at all but it’s interesting!

General Nonfiction Boat Stuff

In the Heart of the Sea
- Nathan Philbrick
The true story of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a sperm whale, and the horrors of the survivors as they floated lost at sea (contains cannibalism)

Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night  
- Julian Sancton
First overwinter in Antarctica. Roald Amundsen and Fred Cook were there! Amazing that more people didn’t die.


The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition
- Caroline Alexander
Lots of photos! Just focuses on the Endurance, definitely one of the things I’d call a Shackleton hagiography (boo) but it’s a ripping yarn. Except for all the dead animals, I’m still mad about that. Justice for Mrs. Chippy.


The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party
- Kelly Tyler-Lewis
If you weren’t already mad at Shackleton about Mrs. Chippy, buckle up! People act like no one at all died on the Trans-Antarctic Expedition and they are wrong, they forgot about the Ross Sea Party. If Endurance makes you admire Shackleton at all, Lost Men will probably destroy that impression.

The Ice Balloon: S.A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration
- Alec Wilkinson
BALLOON!! A Swedish guy is REALLY REALLY sure he can take a gas balloon to the north pole. It uh, doesn’t work out.

In The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette
- Hampton Sides
The Jeanette! Wild that this story isn’t better known because it’s buck wild. They were looking for the fabled Open Polar Sea, so you can imagine how well that went. Sides gives you a lot of interesting background info, too. 

Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic
- Jennifer Niven
A really messed up story about an Inuit woman surviving on Wrangel Island after a bunch of shit goes wrong. This is a recommendation with a lot of caveats – I have a lot of issues with how this is written (the author defends using “Eskimo” exclusively even though she says she knows Inuit is the preferred term, some other stuff that is randomly kinda racist that gets parrotted like it’s fact for example). Ada deserves better!


Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition
- Bruce Henderson
This one is wild and involves Charles Hall who was one of the major Franklin searchers. There’s murder! And people surviving on an ice floe for way longer than you would think possible! From what I remember the back half gets a little tedious as it recounts the Naval court martial that followed the debacle and it gets repetitive. Otherwise worth reading since it connects a bit with the Jeanette.


In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon
- Joan Druett
What it says, it’s a mutiny on a whaleship. This one was worth reading, but also genuinely nauseating at points because one of the main causes of the mutiny was the ship’s captain horrifically abusing a Black crew member for months, and it doesn’t pull punches about what happened there.


In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of its Survivors
- Doug Stanton
Holy shit this one is incredible and harrowing. You’ve seen Jaws? You know the part where Quint says he was on the Indianapolis and everyone goes quiet? The sharks aren’t even the worst part! 

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder
- David Grann
A 1700s Royal Navy shipwreck off the bottom of South America! Doesn’t go great! Lord Byron’s Grandpa is there! Grann spins a great yarn. If you’ve already read a bunch about the Royal Navy some of the stuff he covers is remedial, but it’s a good intro to canons and whatnot if you haven’t.

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
- Caroline Alexander
Really good read, especially if you don’t know a lot about Bligh or the Bounty yet. Takes a more nuanced look at Bligh, like he sucked but the crew kind of sucked too probably?

Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe
-Gregory Gibson
Another whaleship mutiny, but this one it’s a crew member who was absolutely horrific and megalomanic.

The Great Polar Fraud: Cook, Peary, and Byrd – How Three American Heroes Duped the World into Thinking They Had Reached the North Pole
- Anthony Galvin
Good overview of what the title says. It takes a little bit, but it does address how much Peary was a terrible person, and it gives credit where it’s due to Amundsen and to Matthew Henson who was one of the few Black polar explorers.

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
- Joan Druett
Really interesting story about two shipwrecks that happened on the same island at nearly the same time, but they both had VERY different outcomes. Will make you wish you had the survival skills of an Australian gold prospector!

Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
-Buddy Levy
Another one where you’re amazed that anyone at all lived! Brutal but riveting. You will learn a surprising amount about the horrors of frostbite!

The Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft
-Alexander McKee
Horrific and riveting again. This doesn’t just go over what happened with the Raft, it also addresses what happened to some of the other survivors who reached land, as well as the subsequent court cases in France and the creation of the incredible painting by Gericault. This was published in the 70s so there are uh, a few kind of outdated terms for some people used but it’s just a few times from what I remember.

Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny
- Mike Dash
This is about a Dutch East India Company shipwreck all the way back in the 1620s. The main Horrible Dude in this reminds me of the guy from the whaleship Sharon. A bit gnarly but tells you some stuff about the VOC and a bit about the state of the Netherlands in that time period.

Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
-Andrea Pitzer
You’ve heard of the Northwest Passage, now get ready for the NorthEAST Passage! Learn about why you shouldn’t eat polar bear livers and why it’s called the Barents Sea.

Sort of Related To Boats Non-Fiction

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
-Dave Sobel
It’s about the guy who invented the chronometer! It also tells you about other attempts to solve the longitude problem, some of which involved looking at the moon and doing math equations for 6 hours.Yikes!

Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
-Stephen R. Bown
It is what it says! You will learn SO MUCH about scurvy! And how they kinda solved it and then just FORGOT…. MULTIPLE TIMES