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Product details

• Format Paperback | 330 pages
• Dimensions 156 x 234 x 17mm | 464g
• Publication date 01 Jun 2009
• Publisher Flare Publications
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• Illustrations note black & white illustrations
• ISBN10 1903353041
• ISBN13 9781903353042
• Bestsellers rank 12,659

Product details

• Format Hardback | 256 pages
• Dimensions 157 x 229 x 28mm | 431g
• Publication date 07 Apr 2020
• Publisher Twelve
• Language English
• ISBN10 1538733307
• ISBN13 9781538733301
• Bestsellers rank 52,557

Product details

• Format Hardback | 256 pages
• Dimensions 157 x 229 x 28mm | 431g
• Publication date 07 Apr 2020
• Publisher Twelve
• Language English
• ISBN10 1538733307
• ISBN13 9781538733301
• Bestsellers rank 134,188

Product details

• Format Paperback | 64 pages
• Dimensions 211 x 275 x 4mm | 150g
• Publication date 01 Mar 2005
• Publisher Teaching Resources
• Publication City/Country New York, NY, United States
• Language English
• ISBN10 0439466059
• ISBN13 9780439466059
• Bestsellers rank 854,006

Product details

• Format Hardback | 256 pages
• Dimensions 157 x 229 x 28mm | 431g
• Publication date 07 Apr 2020
• Publisher Twelve
• Language English
• ISBN10 1538733307
• ISBN13 9781538733301
• Bestsellers rank 134,188

Product details

• Format Mixed media product | 6 pages
• Dimensions 80 x 150 x 5mm | 27g
• Publication date 01 Dec 2004
• Publisher Dover Publications Inc.
• Publication City/Country New York, United States
• Language English
• ISBN10 0486436764
• ISBN13 9780486436760
• Bestsellers rank 89,126

Product details

• For ages 9+
• Format Paperback | 435 pages
• Dimensions 132.08 x 190.5 x 30.48mm | 290.3g
• Publication date 01 Oct 2001
• Publisher Scholastic US
• Publication City/Country New York, United States
• Language English
• Edition Statement Reprint
• Illustrations note w. ill. by Mary Grandpre.
• ISBN10 0439136369
• ISBN13 9780439136365
• Bestsellers rank 20,201

Product details

• Format Paperback | 448 pages
• Dimensions 129 x 198 x 25mm | 326g
• Publication date 30 Aug 2019
• Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 0141988517
• ISBN13 9780141988511
• Bestsellers rank 60

Product details

• Format Paperback | 384 pages
• Dimensions 129 x 198 x 24mm | 266g
• Publication date 22 Apr 2020
• Publisher Penguin Random House Children's UK
• Imprint Corgi Childrens
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 0552574244
• ISBN13 9780552574242
• Bestsellers rank 728

Product details

• Format Paperback | 464 pages
• Dimensions 129 x 198 x 28mm | 321g
• Publication date 05 Mar 2020
• Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 0241984998
• ISBN13 9780241984994
• Bestsellers rank 1

Product details

• Format Hardback | 352 pages
• Dimensions 160 x 236 x 40mm | 620g
• Publication date 09 Apr 2020
• Publisher Quercus Publishing
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 1787473805
• ISBN13 9781787473805
• Bestsellers rank 594

Product details

• Format Hardback | 400 pages
• Dimensions 160 x 236 x 40mm | 620g
• Publication date 09 Apr 2020
• Publisher Quercus Publishing
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 1787473805
• ISBN13 9781787473805
• Bestsellers rank 1,060

Product details

• Format Hardback | 400 pages
• Dimensions 160 x 236 x 40mm | 608g
• Publication date 09 Apr 2020
• Publisher Quercus Publishing
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 1787473805
• ISBN13 9781787473805
• Bestsellers rank 1,807

Product details

• Format Paperback | 368 pages
• Dimensions 188 x 235 x 18mm | 484g
• Publication date 02 Mar 2015
• Publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Publication City/Country New York, United States
• Language English
• Edition Statement 2nd Edition
• ISBN10 1118982088
• ISBN13 9781118982082
• Bestsellers rank 81,130

Product details

• Format Paperback | 336 pages
• Dimensions 129 x 198 x 23mm | 280g
• Publication date 07 Mar 2019
• Publisher Oneworld Publications
• Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
• Language English
• ISBN10 1786075199
• ISBN13 9781786075192
• Bestsellers rank 871

At the Edge: A life in search of challenge

By Stephen J. Trafton

Amazon Digital Services LLC, $37.50 paperback, $7.49 eBook

Reviewed by Regina Koellner



To say Stephen Trafton led an interesting life would be an understatement. His achievements are many and versatile. Climbing Boulder Peak in Washington State, at the age of twelve led to an impressive career in mountain climbing, with numerous first ascents and subsequent leadership in mountain rescue.  A college job in a bank became a professional career which peaked in taking the US government to court and so saving what became Citibank. Later in life, he discovered a passion for car racing, and there he also excelled. He set the Ferrari land speed record in a car that he restored himself, and had an impressive racing career including an unsuccessful attempt to complete the Peking to Paris Rally. His passion for exploring led him across the USA on solo hikes and by kayak and on eleven expeditions to the High Arctic. His interest in the Franklin Expedition brought him to King William Island, where on his second visit he discovered a note left by Franklin searcher Frederick Schwatka.

This, Trafton’s first book, is entitled At The Edge – A life in search of challenge and covers his adventurous life from the early beginnings in the 1940s to the present time. In the foreword, he encourages his readers to push their own boundaries and challenge themselves by walking up to their personal edge, peeking to the other side, and walking back, being proud of the achievement. For that he includes tools of self-evaluation and goal setting. He also takes us on a wild ride through his life on edges most of us wouldn’t even dream of taking on.

The first part of the book deals with his expeditions into the Arctic and stories of mountain rescue. They are not in chronological order which is not too distracting as all are stand-alone, easy to read and always entertaining chapters. You know you are in for a wild ride when in the acknowledgements Trafton apologizes to his brother for the “ice axe in the forehead incident”. Unfortunately we never find out what exactly happened but it’s a synonym for the compelling, nail-biting and often hilarious tone the book is written in.

We learn intimate details about the perils of rectal body temperature measurement for a sponsor while climbing a mountain on Ellesmere Island or doing one's business in double-digit sub-zero temperatures, not to mention spending a night in frozen sleeping bags while a polar bear sniffs out the camp. Trafton takes us on a thrilling glacier crossing where deep crevasses are hidden under fragile snow bridges that when crossed shed icicles into the abyss. We also find out how you use spit to get your bearing when buried in an avalanche. Living on the edge indeed!

A more light-hearted paragraph deals with the group arriving at the remote DEW station on KWI telling the stunned personnel that they came to sell magazines. This is not the only part that makes one chuckle while reading. If it’s practical jokes in camp, being (temporarily) declared persona non grata on Spitzbergen for messing around with Russian observers, or a photo illustrating what happens when you discuss politics in the Arctic, Stephen Trafton’s sense of humour makes the book a very enjoyable read.

For Franklin aficionados the most interesting parts of the book are without a doubt those about King William Island. Just much of an Arctic buff Trafton is himself shows in the chapters on Ellesmere Island ,when he describes how he named several of the newly ascended peaks – in true discoverer fashion – after Arctic explorers and their ships. Unfortunately, the Canadian government had other ideas and gave the mountains Inuit names instead.

For those new to the topic, Trafton provides an overview on the Franklin expedition and the subsequent searches. Even the most seasoned Franklin scholar will be fascinated by the account of how Trafton found Schwatka’s note, possibly wince a little upon reading how he fished it out of its bottle to read it, and ponder his still holding a grudge against the Prince of Wales Museum in Yellowknife for not handing it back to him after conservation. Although it was found on Canadian soil, Trafton is still convinced that, since it was written by an American explorer, it should have gone to the US. The bottle in which the note was found now is part of Trafton’s Arctic library.

The book is a handsome softcover, illustrated by clear, easy-to-read maps and numerous colour photographs. It provides an entertaining read, not only for Arctic buffs and the historically inclined, but also to anyone who just likes a good adventure story.

Product details

• Format Paperback | 288 pages
• Dimensions 191 x 232 x 16.76mm | 408.23g
• Publication date 17 Dec 2010
• Publisher Llewellyn Publications,U.S.
• Publication City/Country Minnesota, United States
• Language English
• ISBN10 0738720658
• ISBN13 9780738720654
• Bestsellers rank 167,104

by William Battersby

Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, £20

ISBN 978-0752455129

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

With the publication of this book, we now have full biographies of all of the chief officers of Sir John Franklin's final Arctic expedition of 1845. Franklin himself, of course, is a man of evidently endless fascination; Francis Crozier, his second-in-command, makes up in fortitude what he apparently lacked in charm, and has been seen by some as the "Last Man Standing." And yet it's Fitzjames, the third in line, who has had, in death as he had in life, the most charmed of reputations, despite the fact that so little was known about him. His lively letters sent home via the last port-of-call in Greenland, his gallant good looks (available in two different daguerreotype images), and his boundless enthusiasm ("I hope that we are forced to stay at least one winter in the ice," as memorably voiced by Thom Fell in 2005's Search for the Northwest Passage), are all part of his attraction. Indeed, he is the only figure from the expedition other than Franklin himself to have inspired a novel (John Wilson's North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames, 1999).

But who was this man? By all accounts, a spirited young fellow, with a heroic rescue and a dogged expedition in the Middle East to his credit, but no Arctic experience at all. His service and promotion? Well, there are a few blanks here and there. His parents? Ahem, may we have another question, please? And yet, as William Battersby shows us in this engaging and well-researched volume, his life up until the moment of his departure for the North is recoverable in a remarkable degree of detail.

Except, as it happens, with the matter of his parentage. Not wanting to disclose any trade secrets here, I will simply say that Battersby's solution to this longstanding mystery is, I believe, the correct one, although it is (in part) a very close conjecture. "Fitzjames," after all, means merely "son of James," and had known use before as a patronymic vague enough to both hint at and gently pass over any questions of legitimacy. And yet, though deprived of the privileges he might have had as a legitimate heir, Fitzjames in fact enjoyed in his relations precisely the kind of deep and satisfying intimacies which were so often lacking from natural parents in this era. His foster parents, Robert and Louisa Coningham, raised him with the same kindness and affection with which they did their own son, William, whom Fitzjames referred to as "Willie." The two of them had a brotherly bond which endured throughout Fitzjames's life, and it was to Elizabeth "the wife of him I love best," that he addressed the charming letters sent from Greenland.

And yet, despite their closeness, the destinies of William Coningham and James Fitzjames could hardy have been more different. Coningham, through inheritance, became by degrees a wealthier and wealthier man, while Fitzjames, who first volunteered for the Royal Navy at the age of twelve, had always to seek new assignments, and promotion, by the skin of his teeth. For although his upbringing was a very good one, he lacked the sort of "friends" that were usually required for Naval advancement, particularly in times of peace. The most difficult step of his rise through the ranks was his ascent to Midshipman, and here Fitzjames's determination motivated him to permit an untruth to go unremarked -- that he had not, in fact, served the requisite full year as a first-class volunteer. This was later discovered, but glossed over, as much to avoid embarrassment to the more senior officers involved as to spare Fitzjames, and he soon distinguished himself sufficiently that there was no reason to revisit the lapse.

And his career was in every respect a brilliant one. He cut his explorer's teeth on an expedition down the Eurphrates in 1835-36, a struggle of man, machine, and water of almost mythological proportions. He participated in the naval blockade in Syria in 1839, and then went on to serve in Britain's Chinese conflict, which involved both naval bombardment and hand-to-hand street fighting. It was here that Fitzjames met many of the men whom he would later select for "Erebus" and "Terror," among them Edward Couch and George Hodgson. But perhaps his most important new friend was John Barrow, the son of Sir John Barrow, whose advocacy for Arctic exploration was so powerful and influential that it had already shaped an era.

Still, as Battersby notes, this connection alone would scarcely be sufficient to cause Fitzjames to rise above hundreds of men with similar records to attain a coveted senior post on a vaunted Arctic expedition. In this case, his detective work cannot, ultimately, solve the problem, but it appears to have been some service that Fitzjames performed for John Barrow's brother George, something which caused his friend to feel he was very much in his debt, and to intercede with his father. The results were impressive, and fateful: a promotion to Commander, and a ship which, as Battersby notes, brought him to London "at exactly the right (or wrong) time to be appointed to the Franklin Expedition."

It also goes some way to explain why it was Fitzjames, and not Crozier, who selected the junior officers for that expedition. In his biography of Crozier, Michael Smith makes much of this, seeing it as almost a direct insult to an officer of Crozier's seniority to deny him the privilege traditionally accorded to seconds. Authorities seem divided as to whether this was really so severe a breach of protocol as Smith claims, but there has also, as Battersby notes, been criticism of Fitzjames's choices. And yet, as he demonstrates, his selection was not so anomalous as is often claimed; the small number of men with specific Arctic experience (Ross's Antarctic expedition had been sent with many fewer), the supposed regional prejudices (they were in fact quite a diverse and representative batch), or the preference for former messmates (which would have been expected no matter who was doing the choosing).

And, in any case, they sailed into an oblivion that would have been difficult to avoid, even had every man aboard been a hardened Polar veteran. As Glyn Williams has noted, it was precisely the Franklin expedition's success in reaching an area assumed by those who searched for it to be impassible that delayed -- fatally -- any chance of rescue. Battersby, unlike Smith and other biographers, avoids any speculation about the fate of Fitzjames or any other individual men after the abandonment of "Erebus" and "Terror" in 1848. It's a judicious and understandable caution, although given the remarkable detail he has given us of Fitzjames's earlier life and career, it feels somewhat like jumping off a cliff into the void (and perhaps that is his intent). He instead traces the sense of loss via Fitzjames's foster-brother William Coningham, and thus gives a fresh sense of the admixture of grief and admiration felt by those who knew Franklin and his officers personally. It's a fitting conclusion.

There are some additional thoughts and appendices, including a poignant poem, "A Sailor's Life," penned by Fitzjames, and several excellent maps. The illustrative material is rich and well-reproduced, though I hope I will be forgiven for saying that my favorite plate is that giving both of Fitzjames's photographic poses side by side. For some years, it frustrated me to see one or the other of these images reproduced, without any indication that two existed: here we finally have Fitzjames, with and without telescope, and without and with wry smile. Like this plate, Battersby's book is the first really full depiction that we have had, and it ably fills our previously incomplete portrait of Franklin and his senior officers. It's a book that no one with an interest in this expedition, or this period, will want to miss.