William H. Gilder / William HGilder
In 1845, British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) embarked on his third and final expedition into the Canadian Arctic to force the Northwest Passage. After two years with no word, a £20,000 reward was offered to anyone who could find the expedition, leading to many rescue attempts. One such attempt was the De Long expedition on the “Rodgers” under Captain Berry, for which William Henry Gilder (1838-1900) was second in command between 1878 to 1880. After a disaster in which the vessel was burned on the western shore of Bering Strait, Gilder embarked on a journey of almost 2,000 miles across Siberia to relay the news of the disaster via telegram. A correspondent of the New York Herald, Gilder chronicled his death-defying experiences in “Schwatka’s Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records”. Contents include: “Northward”, “The Winter Camp”, “Our Dogs”, “In the Sledges”, “Native Witnesses”, “The Midnight Sun”, “Relics”, “Irving’s Grave”, “Arctic Costumes”, “Over Melting Snows”, “Amateur Esquimaux”, “Walrus Diet”, etc. Read & Co. History is republishing this classic memoir now in a brand new edition complete with an introductory biography by John Knox Laughton.
