A significant contribution to Canadian exploration history, it is also an important anthropological document, providing some of the earliest reliable descriptions of the Aivilingmiut, the Utkuhikhalingmiut, and the Netsilingmiut.

Heinrich W. Klutschak (1848-1890) was an Austrian artist who accompanied the American sealing schooner Flying Fish to South Georgia in 1877–78 and published a narrative of his activities with a sketch map in 1881.

William Barr is professor of Geography at the University of Saskatchewan, editor and translator of A Frenchman in Search of Franklin: De Bray's Arctic Journal, 1852-1854, and Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin, 1878-1880.

'A fascinating saga.'

W. Gillies Ross:

'Always interesting, often exciting, and sometimes amusing ... a delight to read.'

Peter Ward:

'Undoubtedly one of the best of the hundreds of books which have been written about the fate of Franklin.'