Candles & Leather

It's been a while, but I need to post comments on the book I read last summer, seen here: The Man Who Ate His Boots. The story centers around Britain's foolish quest to discover the Northwest Passage in the early 19th century, and the man most closely associated with it, Sir John Franklin. Franklin's follies included two expeditions that resulted in disaster, one in which his underlings ran out of food and had to eat candles...and their own boots. The incompetent Franklin was eventually knighted, and later led an expedition in which 129 people perished in the Arctic after resorting to cannibalism. After that, the Brits called it quits, and the NW Passage was eventually discovered by a Norske who listened to the natives. He did this by adopting and adapting: adopting survival techniques like building igloos, which allowed him to adapt to the ungodly cold conditions. The Brits found the Inuits to be savages and figured they had no idea what they were doing, which of course is brainless. The one image I'll take from this book is the description of Greenland Inuits, who had never seen other people before. They thought British ships were alive because they had wings (sails) and were dumbfounded by wood. All around, an excellent read from the Hennepin County Library!