Tracing the Connected Narrative: Arctic Exploration in British Print Culture, 1818–1860 (review)

"Joining together the known areas of the Arctic by ship involved traversing a relatively small blank space on the map," says Janice Cavell when describing the British Navy's efforts to discover the Northwest Passage in the post-Napoleonic era. Her study, Tracing the Connected Narrative, performs a similar suturing of book reviews, letters, and articles published in response to narratives about returned Arctic expeditions, by men such as John Barrow, John Franklin, Leopold McClintock, and Sherard Osborn. Public interest in Arctic exploration was fueled by alternating naval interest, press coverage, and individual ambitions. The debate over rescuing John Franklin's 1845 expedition becomes a clear illustration of this symbiosis.

The book begins with McClintock's expedition (privately funded by Lady Franklin) returning to England in 1859 after seeking to verify reported sightings of Franklin's party and Inuit stories of cannibalism at King William Island. This beginning signals Cavell's structure: "The book begins with the end of the story because at no other time was public attention so intensely focused on Arctic exploration" (12). The doomed Franklin expedition of 1845 becomes the "connected narrative" threatening to overshadow other expeditions discussed in this study because of its iconic status. We read about the public interest created by other explorers in the periodical press but eventually shift to Franklin's mysterious disappearance, whereupon McClintock returns with his confirmation that Franklin's camp died from starvation, not cannibalism. McClintock may provide the "final chapter in the Arctic story" (230) for Cavell, but it might be more accurate to say he amicably resolved the Admiralty's reluctance to invest further in Franklin with Lady Franklin's private search for her husband. Other controversies lived on: in 1997 a team of anthropologists substantiated the Inuit claims about Franklin's cannibalistic sailors.

Some naval explorers, like Franklin, became celebrities, while others became infamous because their pursuit of individual fame and glory did not suit the developing ideal of the noble, modest hero boosting national glory. Journalists and publishers played a significant part in shaping the ideal, especially as coverage of Arctic exploration boosted sales. Cavell's examination of various periodicals and their articles on Arctic exploration offers fascinating examples of nineteenth-century "spin" and its importance to the numerous explorers who endeavored to fill in the empty spots on the map. A broad range of periodicals reveal how Arctic exploration could signify a wide variation in social and political positions while posting healthy sales. Starting with popular periodicals such as the Quarterly Review, the Edinburgh Review, the Examiner, the Illustrated London News, the Times, and News of the World, Cavell explores how debates over the political value of Arctic exploration magnified in 1859 with the burst of new publications.

Readers will find this study a useful and compelling narrative about how the periodical press helped create the heroes who found the Northwest Passage. Some may want to round out their reading with more about those men who finally worked out the Northwest Passage but receive less attention in the denouement of Franklin's expedition. Cavell's study is a compelling introduction to the colorful players and issues concerning the efforts to extend Britain's international reach from the Atlantic Ocean to the Bering Strait.