Resolute, Revised Edition: John Franklin’s Lost Expedition and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship
About this audiobook
Few know that the president’s desk in the Oval Office plays a part in one of the world’s most extraordinary sagas. In Resolute, noted historian Martin Sandler brings the story to light.
After Sir John Franklin and his ships disappeared in the Arctic while seeking the Northwest Passage, thirty-nine rescue missions were launched, including one by the Resolute, the Royal Navy’s finest vessel. In 1854, it became locked in the ice and was abandoned.
A year later, a Connecticut whaling ship discovered it drifting 1,200 miles away, a 600-ton ghost ship. The whalers boarded the Resolute and steered it through a ferocious hurricane back to Connecticut. The US government re-outfitted the ship and returned it to Queen Victoria, who, in 1879, had its best timbers made into a desk for President Rutherford B. Hayes—a desk still in use today.
This edition is updated with a new chapter on the discovery of Franklin’s ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, in 2014 and 2016 in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
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About the author
Martin Sandler has received many honors, including winning the 2019 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature; two Pulitzer Prize nominations; a Boston Horn Book Award; and seven Emmys. His Library of Congress American History series has been a national bestseller, and he is one of the few historians to have published with the Library of Congress. Sandler was creator and cowriter for the twelve-part This Was America tv series. He has taught American history and American studies at the University of Massachusetts and Smith College. Sandler lives in Cotuit, MA.
A finalist in the 2020 Independent Audiobook Awards, Todd Menesses has recorded over seventy-five audiobooks to date, varying from fantasy, sci-fi, and horror to nonfiction and religion, all from his professional home studio. A twenty-five-year veteran voice actor, Todd continues his training with some of the best in the business, including Pat Fraley, Scott Brick, Johnny Heller, P. J. Ochlan, and Joel Froomkin. He has been praised for his believable character acting and accents. A native New Orleanian now transplanted in Kansas, when not watching his beloved New Orleans Saints (whom he used to work for in the broadcast booth) or collecting all things comic books as he has since age ten, he spends time with his family enjoying exploring the great outdoors.
