EREBUS
THE STORY OF A SHIP
MICHAEL PALIN Hutchinson, 334pp, £20, Oldie price £13.65 inc p&p
During its 20-year life, HMS Erebus saw service in the North-west Passage, the Antarctic, and finally, under the command of Sir John Franklin, the Arctic, until she was presumed wrecked with no survivors in 1845 (she was found in Canadian waters in 2014). ‘Palin regularly introduces his own experience of the places visited by Erebus,’ noted Allan Massie in the Scotsman. ‘Sometimes it is irritating and distracting when an author does this, but not on this occasion. Palin’s experiences, including a voyage on a Russian ship to the channel where the wreck of
Erebus was discovered, give a sense of immediacy and proportion to his narrative. The comparative ease of his travelling stands in sharp contrast to the grim realities of Arctic exploration in the days of sail, when those on Erebus and ships like it were cut off from any communication with home for years. This contrast serves to heighten the heroism of these men [the explorers]. One wonders at their fortitude and endurance… This truly is a marvellous book.’ Before reading Palin’s book, Daily
Telegraph reviewer Michael Kerr ‘knew little… about the earlier days of the Erebus, a 100ft “bomb ship” that never fired its mortars in anger but, in Palin’s phrase, explored a postWaterloo world “in which heroes fought the elements, not the enemy…” Palin gives ship, shipbuilders and sailors their dues, combining diligent work in the archives with passages on his own travels to places the Erebus called at, including Tasmania, the Falkland Islands and (with One Ocean Expeditions) the Canadian Arctic… His account is written in crisp, unshowy prose, though now and again (“pride before a fall”; “poisoned chalice”) it slips into language as whiskery as some of those intrepid Victorians.’