For whatever reason, the 19th-century exploration, predominantly by British crews and ships, of what would become the Canadian Arctic is a big part of this country’s national mythology and cultural consciousness. The official goals of these efforts were the discovery of a Northwest Passage and the rescue of previous expeditions that had disappeared.

Locating the doomed Franklin Expedition was what Robert McClure, captain of the HMS Investigator, was ostensibly doing on an Arctic journey that began in 1850. In reality, he wanted to discover the fabled passage and reap the riches and fame that would accrue to such a feat. Though it took him several years, during which he himself had to be rescued, he eventually made it. The fact that McClure is not exactly a household name today reflects the practical worthlessness of his achievement. Franklin was already dead when he was discovered, and the passage was not a viable route for shipping.

Fans of the Arctic voyage genre will know what to expect, and they will not be disappointed: the claustrophobia as the pack ice locks the ship’s crew into winter quarters and the sun disappears for months, the sleds being pulled by men (not dogs) in harness over the rough terrain, the gradual weakening of those same men as they succumb to scurvy, madness, hypothermia, and slow starvation. Payton, whose resume boasts a lot of nature writing (including the 2006 volume Shadow of the Bear), works in frequent digressions on Arctic wildlife such as caribou, musk ox, polar bears, lemmings, and Arctic foxes. Finally, the voyage is placed in the context of the vanishing cryosphere as Arctic ice continues to contract due to global warming.

Despite Payton’s attempts to freshen things up and make the story read more like a novel, the result falls short of the best work in what is now a crowded field. The real McClure was a complex, divisive figure about whom Payton remains frustratingly neutral. In addition, there is little suspense despite how close (and how frequently) the expedition came to catastrophe. Still, the book is easy to recommend to armchair explorers and anyone with an interest in the past, or future, of the Arctic.