A Frenchman in Search of Franklin: De Bray's Arctic Journal, 1852-1854

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In 1845 two small ships bearing Sir John Franklin and nearly 200 British
seamen sailed into the Canadian Arctic and were never seen again. Over
the next decade, numerous expeditions were organized to search for the
lost expedition. In 1852, Ensign de Bray of Napoleon III’s Imperial
French Navy joined yet another naval expedition and kept a journal,
which is translated and published in this volume for the first time. For
anyone interested in early Arctic exploration or High Victorian drama,
this book is a must. DeBray was a fanatic for detail. His diary is
filled with sketches and maps of everything from tent stoves to
shipwrecks.

At first an outsider, de Bray is slowly drawn into the world of his
hosts and even takes part in two time-honored English traditions:
Christmas (in 1852, a holiday peculiar to England) and cross dressing.
The latter was in aid of shipboard theatricals. De Bray records that his
stint as a Bloomer Girl nearly cost him his toes as he strutted Her
Majesty’s deck in tight satin slippers at 27 below zero. Rule
Britannia.

De Bray’s original text is supported by copious endnotes compiled by
translator William Barr, who has already published another book on the
Franklin expedition, Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in
Search of Franklin. Barr’s translation of de Bray’s journal is a new
and exciting addition to the subject of Arctic exploration in general,
and the Franklin expedition in particular.

Although de Bray’s journal mouldered in a French archive until Barr
retrieved it, in the 1850s Jules Verne met de Bray and used him
extensively as a technical expert in his fictional work Captain Hattares
in the Arctic. Barr is to be commended both for producing this fine book
and for uncovering de Bray’s manuscript.

As of 1993, Sir John Franklin is still listed as missing.