David Woodman’s reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the tragic Franklin expedition boldly challenges standard interpretations.Among the many who have tried to discover the truth behind the Franklin disaster, Woodman is the first to recognize the profound importance of Inuit testimony. From his investigations he concludes that the Inuit probably did visit Franklin’s ships while the crew was still on board and that some actually saw the sinking of one of the ships. He 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. Much of the Inuit testimony presented in Unraveling the Franklin Mystery -- the earliest recorded by Franklin searches only nine years after the disappearance of the Franklin team -- has never before been published. The Inuit testimony provided Woodman with the pivotal clue in his reconstruction 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.”
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