The Franklin File

This edition compiles the documentary record of the Franklin expedition of 1845: what was written, what was recovered, and what was later proven. It is assembled entirely from public archival sources, listed at the back.

Where the evidence is firm, this book says so plainly. Where historians still disagree — and on this subject they disagree often the disagreement is stated rather than resolved. Nothing here is reconstructed from memory or inference dressed as fact. Quotations from the Victory Point note follow the original spelling, abbreviation and punctuation as closely as plain type allows. The document itself is held by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, object AAA2069