I have long been fascinated by tragedy brought about by ignorance or stupidity - the Scott/Amundsen race to the South Pole being a prime example. Berton, author of [b:Arctic Grail|2019793|The Arctic Grail The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909|Pierre Berton|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1225948201s/2019793.jpg|2449293] recommended a book by Vilhjalmur Stefansson that deals with several examples of Arctic foolishness, including Franklin's mysterious disappearance.
Many "riddles" evolve simply out of ignorance, if not outright fraud, (witness Charles Berlitz's Bermuda Triangle nonsense). Usually, a careful researcher can find solutions to these puzzles by objectively analyzing all the data. Such is the case in Stefansson's book. He meticulously destroyed the Franklin enigma.

Franklin left Britain in 1845 with 129 men on his second expedition to search for a northwest passage. He had written after his first excursion how important native hunters were to locate food, but in true imperialist style, he made no effort to learn their skills. The British took only shotguns and muskets for hunting. (In Britain it was fashionable to use only shotguns to hunt fowl, so the explorers could not conceive of hunting in any other manner.) Two months after they left, letters from them were received in England; then Franklin's party, ship and all, vanished, seemingly without a trace.

Stefansson illustrates how the evidence overwhelmingly reveals they died of malnutrition and scurvy in a region that had supported hundreds of Eskimos for centuries. It was inexcusable. Franklin had the lessons of his first expedition. He had access to the writings of Ross who, in 1829-1833, had learned that a diet of raw seal and fish would prevent scurvy and that the Eskimo diet kept them healthy and fat. Franklin had insisted on taking the traditional salted meat and hardtack.
There were other weaknesses. A Hudson Bay Company trapper, after observing conditions of the first expedition, wrote: "the officer who commands the party [Franklin:] has not the physical powers required for the labor of moderate voyaging; he must have three meals per diem, tea is indispensable, and with the utmost exertion he cannot walk above eight miles in one day, so that it does not follow if those Gentlemen are unsuccessful that the difficulties are insurmountable."

Another mystery was the disappearance of 9,000 Greenlanders? Stefansson traces the settlement of Greenland from its discovery in 986 A.D. by Erik the Red, who arrived with some 400 settlers and many animals. During the next few centuries a regular trade was established between Europe and the fledgling republic in Greenland, and archaeological evidence has since revealed settlements as far north as 400 miles beyond the Arctic Circle.. After 1448, trade ceased, much of it because of plagues sweeping Europe. When Scandinavians reoccupied Greenland in 1721 only ruins were found, no descendants of Erik the Red. Stefansson convincingly shows that the "disappearance" of these people could only be considered such if interpreted from a nationalistic point of view. What had happened was amalgamation. The ex-Europeans had adopted the ways of the natives and had intermarried with the Eskimos.

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