There is no saga in Canadian history as full of hardship, catastrophe and mystery as the search for the Northwest Passage. Since the 15th century, the ice-choked Arctic waterway has been sought and travelled by daring men seeking profit, glory or a chance to test themselves against the merciless North. Frances Hern takes us aboard ships with the explorers whose names are memorialized on modern maps of northern Canada: Martin Frobisher, daring privateer in the service of Elizabeth I; Henry Hudson, a navigator who may have driven his crew to mutiny; John Franklin, whose last voyage became an enduring northern mystery; the talented Orkneyman John Rae, a surgeon and surveyor on the trail of Franklin.