Mark Synnott, Dutton,
Penguin Random House, $32
You can fill a lot of shelves with books about Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, and whenever I see a new one I wonder: How will this be different? But Mark Synnott’s Into the Ice really is different—as well as informative, refreshingly honest, and page-turning. What sets it apart is that it’s a sailor’s tale first and foremost, with the story of the Franklin mystery woven into Synnott’s own mission to sail his Stevens 47 through the infamous passage.
This is Synnott’s MO as an explorer. He chooses an intense place and then goes there, weaving in some other outside narrative to help frame the journey. In his book The Third Pole, the place was Everest and the climb was to find Sandy Irvine, climbing partner of George Mallory, and perhaps the camera that captured their hypothetical summiting of the mountain. In Into the Ice, Synnott set out to find the elusive tomb of Franklin on King William Island while also sailing quite literally in his wake. From the start, Synnott skillfully weaves the two narrative threads—his own story of discovering a passion for bluewater voyaging, with the Northwest Passage as a nautical Everest, and the story of the Franklin mystery. He covers a lot of ground, literally and narratively, but what I found most interesting was his take on contemporary Inuit life and how the Inuit feel about the Franklin story, past and present. Ignored and maligned for generations, the Inuit’s oral history of the expedition’s fate only recently was accepted by outsiders and proven entirely accurate. Synnott wears no rose-colored glasses here: “The Inuit have always held the keys to this kingdom…One very uncomfortable truth about our trip is that we were never really welcomed anywhere in the Arctic,” he writes. “And I guess I understand that if Franklin’s voyage was ultimately pointless, misguided, and foolhardy, then perhaps too was our own.”
It’s that kind of forthright observation and honesty that I appreciated most, whether it had to do with complicated relationships and tensions onboard (he had several crew, including well-known bluewater sailor Ben Zartman who was an old climbing buddy), occasional doubt about his decisions as a sailor or team leader, or even fear at times during the voyage. It imbues the book with an authenticity that can easily go lacking in sailing narratives.
Yet at the same time, he introduces us to some unforgettable people, landscapes, and adventures. While “it’s hard for me not to feel conflicted about my tiny part in the story,” he says, he’s proud of his sailing accomplishment, “and my time spent amongst the Inuit in the land of the midnight sun makes me feel like I have touched something divine.”
May 2025
