Resolute (Revised Edition): John Franklin’s Lost Expedition and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship

Few know that the president’s desk in the Oval Office plays a part in one of the world’s most extraordinary sagas. In Resolute , noted historian Martin Sandler brings the story to light.

After Sir John Franklin and his ships disappeared in the Arctic while seeking the Northwest Passage, thirty-nine rescue missions were launched, including one by the Resolute , the Royal Navy’s finest vessel. In 1854, it became locked in the ice and was abandoned.

A year later, a Connecticut whaling ship discovered it drifting 1,200 miles away, a 600-ton ghost ship. The whalers boarded the Resolute and steered it through a ferocious hurricane back to Connecticut. The US government re-outfitted the ship and returned it to Queen Victoria, who, in 1879, had its best timbers made into a desk for President Rutherford B. Hayes—a desk still in use today.

This edition is updated with a new chapter on the discovery of Franklin’s ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror , in 2014 and 2016 in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.