David C. Woodman – författare

In 1868 American explorer Charles Francis Hall interviewed several Inuit hunters who spoke of strangers travelling through their land. Hall immediately jumped to the conclusion that the hunters were talking about survivors of the Franklin expedition and set off for the Melville Peninsula, the location of many of the sightings, to collect further stories and evidence to support his supposition. His theory, however, was roundly dismissed by historians of his day, who concluded that the Inuit had been referring to other white explorers, despite significant discrepancies between the Inuit evidence and the records of other expeditions. In Strangers Among Us Woodman re-examines the Inuit tales in light of modern scholarship and concludes that Hall's initial conclusions are supported by Inuit remembrances, remembrances that do not correlate with other expeditions but are consistent with Franklin's.

Woodman maintains that fewer than ten bodies were found at Starvation Cove and that the last survivors left the cove in 1851, three years after the standard account assumes them to be dead. Woodman also disputes the conclusion of Owen Beattie and John Geiger''s book Frozen in Time that lead-poisoning was a major contributing cause of the disaster. Much of the Inuit testimony presented in Unravelling the Franklin Mystery has never before been published. The earliest Woodman quotes was recorded by Franklin searchers only nine years after the disappearance of the Franklin team. Inuit testimony provided Woodman with the pivotal clue in his re-construction of the puzzle of the Franklin disaster: I proceeded from the assumption that all Inuit stories concerning white men should have a discoverable factual basis ... [and] managed to discover a scenario which allowed use of all of the native recollections, solved some troubling discrepancies in the physical evidence, and led to some significant new conclusions as to the fate of the beleaguered sailors. Whether or not one agrees with Woodman''s conclusions, his account is compelling and his analysis impressive.

In 1868 American explorer Charles Francis Hall interviewed several Inuit hunters who spoke of strangers travelling through their land. Hall immediately jumped to the conclusion that the hunters were talking about survivors of the Franklin expedition and set off for the Melville Peninsula, the location of many of the sightings, to collect further stories and evidence to support his supposition. His theory, however, was roundly dismissed by historians of his day, who concluded that the Inuit had been referring to other white explorers, despite significant discrepancies between the Inuit evidence and the records of other expeditions. In Strangers Among Us Woodman re-examines the Inuit tales in light of modern scholarship and concludes that Hall''s initial conclusions are supported by Inuit remembrances, remembrances that do not correlate with other expeditions but are consistent with Franklin''s.

David Woodman''s classic reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the tragic Franklin expedition has taken on new importance in light of the recent discovery of the HMS Erebus wreck, the ship Sir John Franklin sailed on during his doomed 1845 quest to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. First published in 1991, Unravelling the Franklin Mystery boldly challenged standard interpretations and offered a new and compelling alternative. Among the many who have tried to discover the truth behind the Franklin disaster, Woodman was the first to recognize the profound importance of Inuit oral testimony and to analyze it in depth. From his investigations, Woodman concluded that the Inuit likely visited Franklin''s ships while the crew was still on board and that there were some Inuit who actually saw the sinking of one of the ships. Much of the Inuit testimony presented here had never before been published, and it provided Woodman with the pivotal clue in his reconstruction of the puzzle of the Franklin disaster. Unravelling the Franklin Mystery is a compelling and impressive inquiry into a part of Canadian history that for one hundred and seventy years left many questions unanswered. In this edition, a new preface by the author addresses the recent discovery and reviews the work done in the intervening years on various aspects of the Franklin story, by Woodman and others, as it applies to the book''s initial premise of the book that Inuit testimony holds the key to unlocking the mystery.