![]() ![]() This had him rubbing elbows with two of the most significant polar explorers of the era, and Crozier was instrumental to their successes. And for a career navy man like Crozier, it presented an opportunity to make a name for himself, and also earn decent pay.Ĭrozier signed on with William Parry’s 1821 Northwest Passage attempt, where he became close friends with James Ross. Attaining the poles and charting the Northwest Passage emerged as national obsessions. With the Napoleonic Wars over and no serious military threats remaining, England was able to spend several decades reaching the last unvisited locations on the globe. ![]() Crozier’s career there coincided with the onset and peak of intensive polar exploration by Great Britain, and there he found his life’s purpose. For reasons unknown, he enlisted in the navy at age 13. For this work alone it would be an important book, but it’s bolstered immensely by Smith’s enrapturing storytelling, which sets the man in his time and place, and shows how time and place made the man.Ĭrozier was born into an affluent Irish family in 1796. ![]() This is an omission that British author and historian Michael Smith sets out to rectify with “Icebound in the Arctic.” A revised and updated version of Smith’s 2006 book on Crozier, it tells the story of his rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become part of several of the most notable polar journeys of the first half of the 19th century. And so history has mostly overlooked him. But despite possessing remarkable talents in navigating frozen seas, Crozier never had his name attached to any of the great expeditions he joined. This despite multiple arctic excursions including an epic multi-year journey to Antarctica, where his ship suffered no casualties in a time when deaths were routine among British sailors in far less formidable waters. Yet in the stellar constellation of polar explorers, one rarely finds Crozier mentioned. What happened next is subject only to speculation, except to say that all the men died, primarily of starvation, and that some ate the remains of their fallen crew mates.Ĭrozier has long been familiar to Franklin obsessives, many of whom revere the man. We know this because of the one brief note ever recovered from the catastrophically failed expedition. By the time the Terror and its sister ship the Erebus were abandoned off the coast of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic after being trapped in the ice for two winters and a summer, Sir John Franklin had died and Crozier led the desperate, unsuccessful effort at guiding 110 survivors on an escape march after the expedition’s failed attempt at navigating the Northwest Passage. Placed in command of the Terror and thus second-in-command on the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, he was one of the British Empire’s most accomplished polar explorers, even if he stood in the shadows of others, mostly because, on his most notable expeditions, he was second-in-command.Ĭrozier finally did assume command, but in the worst of circumstance. One can be remarkably skilled, dependable in a crisis, and play an instrumental role in the success (or failure) of an endeavor, yet be largely forgotten as the marquee names hog the limelight. "Icebound in the Arctic: The mystery of Captain Francis Crozier and the Franklin Expedition," by Michael Smith Icebound in the Arctic: The mystery of Captain Francis Crozier and the Franklin Expeditionīy Michael Smith, O’Brien, 308 pages, 2021. Updated: SeptemPublished: September 11, 2021 ![]()
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