Fatal Passage

Long before the fictional Indiana Jones, there existed men like John Rae. This Scotsman endured extremes lesser men would never countenance and experienced adventures that belonged to the world of fiction in his quest to find the elusive North West Passage. Brought up on the Orkney Islands, he always wanted to travel and after qualifying as a doctor he signed up with the Hudson Bay Company. Part of the charter that had created the company obliged them to seek the elusive North West Passage, and Rae set off on an expedition into the Arctic. Although he did not succeed as he hoped, he managed to prove that the landmass Boothie Felix was in fact a peninsula, and after returning to England he set off again to discover the fate of a previous expedition led by Sir John Franklin. But when he provided irrefutable evidence of Franklin's death, coupled with Inuit tales that Franklin and his men had resorted to cannibalism in their last days, the explorer's widow Lady Franklin refused to accept his findings and began a campaign against Rae which was supported by luminaries including Charles Dickens. The whole affair left Rae an embittered man, and after 23 years with the Hudson Bay Company he resigned his position and started leading his own expeditions. Eventually he discovered a way through the North West Passage, but his reputation never recovered from Lady Franklin's vilification and he was the only important Victorian explorer not to receive a knighthood. This is a fascinating story, both a long-overdue reassessment of an able and courageous man and a revealing exploration of a great Victorian scandal. (Kirkus UK)