Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Sir Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.The story of a ship begins after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, when Great Britain had more bomb ships than it had enemies. The solid, reinforced hulls of HMS Erebus, and another bomb ship, HMS Terror, made them suitable for discovering what lay at the coldest ends of the earth.    In 1839, Erebus was chosen as the flagship of an expedition to penetrate south to explore Antarctica. Under the leadership of the charismatic James Clark Ross, she and HMS Terror sailed further south than anyone had been before. But Antarctica never captured the national imagination; what the British navy needed now was confirmation of its superiority by making the discovery, once and for all, of a route through the North-West Passage.    Chosen to lead the mission was Sir John Franklin, at 59 someone many considered too old for such a hazardous journey. Nevertheless, he and his men confidently sailed away down the Thames in April 1845. Provisioned for three winters in the Arctic, Erebus and Terror and the 129 men of the Franklin expedition were seen heading west by two whalers in late July--never to return.    Over the years there were many attempts to discover what might have happened--and eventually the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves, confirming that it had been the dreadful fate of the explorers to die of hunger and scurvy as they abandoned the ships in the ice.    For generations, the mystery of what had happened to the ships endured. Then, on September 9th, 2014, came the almost unbelievable news: HMS Erebus had been discovered thirty feet below the Arctic waters, by a Parks Canada exploration ship.    Palin looks at the Erebus story through the different motives of the two expeditions, one scientific and successful, the other nationalistic and disastrous. He examines the past by means of the extensive historical record and travels in the present day to those places where there is still an echo of Erebus herself, from the dockyard where she was built, to Tasmania where the Antarctic voyage began and the Falkland Islands, then on to the Canadian Arctic, to get a sense of what the conditions must have been like for the starving, stumbling sailors as they abandoned their ships to the ice. And of course the story has a future. It lies ten metres down in the waters of Nunavut's Queen Maud Gulf, where many secrets wait to be revealed.

The success of HMS Erebus’ voyage to the Antarctic in 1839-43 led to renewed interest in the Northwest Passage, and two years after arriving home the ship set sail on another epic journey. Here, Michael Palin traces Erebus’ story, from being hand-built in a Pembrokeshire dockyard, through her achievements in the south, to the disastrous Arctic quest and the fate of John Franklin and his crew.

Records kept by two of Britain's most famous explorers early years of the last century show there has been remarkably little change in the extent of sea ice at the other end of the world.

HMS Erebus was one of the great exploring ships, a veteran of groundbreaking expeditions to the ends of the Earth. In 1848, it disappeared in the Arctic, its fate a mystery. In 2014, it was found. This is its story. ____________________________________ 'Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end.' - Bill Bryson ____________________________________ Michael Palin - Monty Python star and television globetrotter - brings the remarkable Erebus back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. The ship was filled with fascinating people: the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier'; the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus's final, disastrous expedition; and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist - when he wasn't shooting the local wildlife dead. Vividly recounting the experiences of the men who first set foot on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, beyond the reach of desperate rescue missions, Erebus is a wonderfully evocative account of a truly extraordinary adventure, brought to life by a master explorer and storyteller. ____________________________________ 'This is an incredible book. I couldn't put it down. The Erebus story is the Arctic epic we've all been waiting for.' - Nicholas Crane 'One robust little tub of a boat, two death-defying voyages to the ends of the earth. Palin has given us a fascinating account of extraordinary courage' - Charlotte Gray, author of The Promise of Canada: People and Ideas that Shaped Our Country 'What more could a reader ask for? Fascinating mystery, chilling adventure, compelling characters ... simply terrific writing by Michael Palin.' - Roy MacGregor, author of Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada 'Michael Palin is a cracking good companion on this journey of ambition, longing, triumph and tragedy... the age of adventure lives on' - Alanna Mitchell, author of The Spinning Magnet: The Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It