Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin, 1878-1880

Heinrich Klutschak

Dec 1987 · University of Toronto Press

About this ebook

In May 1845 Sir John Franklin sailed westward from England in search of the Northwest Passage and was never seen again. Some thirty-five years later, Heinrich Klutschak of Prague, artist and surveyor on a small expedition led by Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the 3rd US Cavalry Regiment, stumbled upon the grisly remains at Starvation Cove of the last survivors among Franklin's men.

Overland to Starvation Cove is the first English translation of Klutschak's account. A significant contribution to Canadian exploration history, it is also an important anthropological document, providing some of the earliest reliable descriptions of the Aivilingmiut, the Utkuhikhalingmiut, and the Netsilingmiut. But above all, it is a fascinating story of arctic adventure.

About the author

Heinrich W. Klutschak (1848-1890) was an Austrian artist who accompanied the American sealing schooner Flying Fish to South Georgia in 1877–78 and published a narrative of his activities with a sketch map in 1881.

William Barr is professor of Geography at the University of Saskatchewan, editor and translator of A Frenchman in Search of Franklin: De Bray's Arctic Journal, 1852-1854, and Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin, 1878-1880.