Slow and deliberate from boyhood, John Franklin seemed destined to be a misfit. But he escaped from the ever-expanding world of Industry and Empire to the sea's silent landscape, where the universe seemed more manageable. At fourteen he joined the Navy, and, after the harrowing battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar, went in search of the Northwest Passage. As he journeyed from Canada to the Arctic he replayed in a kind of slow-motion mental frieze the bloody frenzy of the battles he had so deplored. Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that they were dealing with a rare man, one who as out of his time and who moved to a different, grander beat. The beat later led Franklin into the Arctic in search of a frozen dream; it was a voyage on which time stopped.