Resolute : John Franklin’s Lost Expedition and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship

The disappearance of British naval explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew in the Arctic in 1845 spurred the greatest and longest search-and-rescue mission in history. This is the epic and harrowing story of that mission, a grand ship abandoned during one of the search expeditions, and the ship’s surprising connection to a cultural icon still in use today.

Few know that the president’s desk in the Oval Office plays a part in one of the world’s most extraordinary sagas; in Resolute, noted historian Martin Sandler brings the story to light. After Sir John Franklin and his ships disappeared in the Arctic while seeking the Northwest Passage, 39 rescue missions were launched, including one by the Resolute, the Royal Navy’s finest vessel. In 1854, it became locked in the ice and was abandoned. A year later, a Connecticut whaling ship discovered it drifting 1,200 miles away, a 600-ton ghost ship. The whalers boarded the Resolute and steered it through a ferocious hurricane back to Connecticut. The US government re-outfitted the ship and returned it to Queen Victoria, who, in 1879, had its best timbers made into a desk for President Rutherford B. Hayes—a desk still in use today. Rare photographs, paintings, engravings, and maps illustrate the book throughout. This edition is updated with a new chapter on the discovery of Franklin’s ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, in 2014 and 2016 in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. This legendary maritime epic is perfect for fans of David Grann’s The Wager and Hampton Sides’s The Wide Wide Sea.