BOOK REVIEWS William Barr. Arctic Hell-ship. The Voyage Arctic as commander of an exploring of the HMS Enterprise 1850-1855. expedition consisting of HMS Enterprise Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, and HMS Investigator, the latter www.uap.ualberta.ca, 2007. xiv + 318 pp., commanded by Robert McClure. illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, Given such an important command, index. CDN $ 34.95, paper; ISBN-13: Collinson dithers on his way around Cape 978-0-88864-433-6. Horn, first waiting on the slower Investigator, and then speeding on ahead. The number of books spun from the Collinson left Hawaii before McClure could dramatic failure of Sir John Franklin’s catch up with him, and then made an 1845-1848 expedition of in search of a inexplicably wide and slow arc into the Northwest Passage is beginning to approach Bering Sea. For reasons the author explores the number of biographies of Bonaparte. in detail, Collinson then decided that his The long and growing catalogue of ship should locate winter quarters by 1 Frankliniana includes more or less August, thereby losing half of his first straightforward general histories such as Arctic navigating season and allowing the Martin Sandler’s Resolute (2006); disaster intrepid McClure to pass him. While narratives like Scott Cookman’s Ice Blink McClure blazed north to Banks Island, (2001); forensic anthropology studies Collinson thought it more prudent to winter (Beattie and Geiger’s Frozen in Time in Hong Kong. The author hints broadly (1988)); literary non-fiction like Barry that McClure, being no fool and perhaps Lopez’ Arctic Dreams (1987); even novels, with a sufficient gleam of Collinson’s such as Robert Edric’s The Broken Lands character, pressed on by stretching his (1992). orders to their literal and figurative outer This study falls into one of the limits. Ultimately, McClure would claim newer sub-genre of Franklin works— the discovery of the Northwest Passage for studies of individual commanders involved himself. in the Franklin saga. It joins David Murphy’s Arctic Fox (2004), on Leopold The author’s remit is to examine McClintock—the man who solved the why Collinson found it necessary to hold so Franklin mystery; and Michael Smith’s Last many of his officers in chains for large Man Standing (2006), on Francis Crozier— segments of his otherwise competent whom one might say created it. voyage that spanned three Arctic winters. In the case of Arctic Hell-Ship, the Collinson did not learn the fate of Franklin, commander is Richard Collinson, a flinty, but was eventually able to sail along the by-most-accounts competent, British naval northern coast of North America all the way officer whose specialty was marine to an overwintering in Cambridge Bay on surveying. In 1850, Collinson’s linear Victoria Island, an impressive feat of ice career as a better-than-average chart maker navigation. was suddenly thrown a wicked curve. The The title of this work clues the Admiralty, desperate to find out what had reader immediately to the author’s judgment become of Franklin and his two ships, of Enterprise’s captain. Collinson, an Erebus and Terror, ordered Collinson to the officer largely overmatched by his The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, XVII No. 2, (April 2007), 67-92 68 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord assignment, is revealed as an indecisive since they only distract from the generally martinet. Yet this judgment is somewhat excellent flow of the text. Place names and undermined by the author’s eagerness to nomenclature are given in their original convict Collinson so quickly. Through the spellings and rather randomly accompanied use of exclamation points and aspersions, by modern spellings or English equivalents. the prosecutor sums up for the jury too early For example, the author insists on using the and too often. Virtually every move or Russian transliteration ‘mys’ without at missive by Collinson earns an immediate least once translating it for the general critique. A more subtle case that allowed reader as ‘cape.’ The modern name of the wonderful historical detail to speak for Chusan Island is given (Zhoushan Dao), but itself would have sufficed. The trap could the modern name of Oueehow (Niihau) is then have been sprung in a blistering final not. This is a bit strange since the author chapter. Instead, poor Collinson, inept uses the names Maui, Oahu and Hawaii in perhaps, possibly superstitious, almost the text, without first giving the archaic certainly a zealot and a tippler, is convicted Sandwich Islands spellings (Mowee; by the author before the reader has had a Woahoo; Owhyhee)—and one guesses that chance to hear all the evidence against him. ‘Oueehow’ and its yam fields are by far the The excellent nature of the primary least known of them all. source scholarship mirrors the care and The author is an exemplary polar expense taken to add colour plates of historian; the publisher should have seen to Assistant Surgeon Edward Adams’ paintings it that his manuscript received a copy-edit to the volume (a minor miracle in itself for a the equal of his scholarship. As for Richard university press). Unfortunately, this work Collinson, he should never have been taken is compromised by a poor copy-edit. There away from his chart table to be put in are numerous misspellings as well as charge of men on a desperate mission in a sentences repeated within short spaces. On remote and hostile landscape. p. 8 we are told that the purpose of Collinson’s expedition was “to search for P.J. Capelotti the missing Franklin expedition via Bering Abington, Pennsylvania Strait” and then three sentences later that the purpose was “to search for the missing Franklin expedition via Bering Strait.” Or Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman. on p. xi where we are told that this is the Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An “first detailed account of the voyage since Economic History Since 1750. New York, Collinson’s own narrative,” then, just two NY: Cambridge University Press, sentences later, that the book is “a detailed www.cambeidge.org, 2006. x+ 453 pp., study ( the first since publication of notes, tables, index. US $99.95, cloth; isbn Collinson’s own narrative in 1889).” (And 0-521-85749-X. no, the space between the parentheses and ‘the’ was not closed up.) By 1918 German civilians were consuming References to illustrations are off only 22 percent of their pre-war weekly diet by two pages, suggesting that the of meat and 27 percent of the fats. Small manuscript went through a final typesetting wonder that the privations of the civilian without the pagination being given a final population and shared memories of the check. References to previous or “turnip winter” of 1917 became so deeply foreshadowed events are wildly mis- ingrained in the national conscience, and for numbered, and should have been left out, the Germans, such a vivid legacy of the Book Reviews 69 Great War. The punishing shortages were points. To be fair, Davis and Engerman, also felt next door in the Netherlands, which despite frequently tentative conclusions, and had remained neutral: 1918 consumption of after weighing the opinions of various meat and fats was 29 and 53 percent of the authors, do decide that the British blockade weekly 1914 levels. Among the causes of against the United States in the War of suffering was a shortage of farm labour in 1812, the Union Blockade of the Germany due to the colossal cumulative Confederacy during the Civil War, and the manpower requirements of fighting a two- Second World War American submarine and front war. One of the key causes was the aerial mining campaign against Japan were dislocation of normal trade patterns caused clearly effective. by the Allied naval blockade implemented One of the attractive features of this in 1914. It was, in fact, maintained until the study is its broad scope. The authors sketch Treaty of Versailles was signed by a in the evolution of international law defeated Germany in 1919. These statistics governing blockades and embargoes and are found on pages 209-10 of a recent study underline how belligerents consistently by two American economists, Lance Davis violated agreements made in peacetime.The and Stanley Engerman. authors write that an embargo – the decision Davis and Engerman set out to by a government to stop or limit exports to examine the economic implications of naval harm an external power – is the mirror blockades in a series of case studies. Both image of a blockade, which is an attempt to have had distinguished academic careers choke off imports by an opponent. While and candidly write that they are not military they do not discuss in detail the economic historians. Their book is based on impact of recent embargoes, such as the one published secondary sources. Its usefulness which attempted to restrict imports of oil by for further study is limited by the lack of a Rhodesia in the seventies, there is extensive bibliography. The text is interspersed with coverage of a fifteen-month American 142 detail-crammed statistical tables. embargo on exports to Britain from 1807 to Unfortunately, there are only two graphs; a 1809. This was intended to pressure Britain diagram showing the bullion holdings by into ceasing seizures of American trading the Bank of England buttresses a discussion vessels on the high seas and the infamous of how Napoleon’s Continental System, impressment of American seamen by the aimed at choking off trade with Britain, Royal Navy. In fact, the embargo was leaky succeeded in drawing down specie holdings and cumulatively harmed the United States by his enemy.