The search for the North West Passage, the fabled northern route to the Orient, took many lives, not least the entire crews of Franklin's Erebus and Terror, and some of the men sent to find out what happened to the ill-fated expedition. Ernest Coleman's book tells the story of not just Franklin and his ill-fated expedition but also tells the story of the involvement of the Royal Navy in Polar exploration until Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1912.