Fergus Fleming

“Almost everything about Barrow's missions had been wrong - the orders, the ships, the supplies, the funding and the methods. Perhaps no man in the history of exploration has expended so much money and so many lives in pursuit of so desperately pointless a dream. But what a reign it had been! ....
Never again, either, would such a disparate and entertaining band of explorers stalk the world. ...Maybe Barrow had produced no great benefits for mankind - unless one counts such benefits as Lyon's ear-numbing conclusion that the aurora borealis made no noise. Maybe too, his judgements might have been more accurate - although, to give him his due, it is hard to be accurate about the unknown. But he had filled so many gaps on the globe, had instigated so many dramatic events, and had stretched the known world to limits that would not be surpassed for half a century. Was that so bad?...
Ultimately, for all his failures, Barrow had done something very important: he had set a benchmark for exploration.”
― Fergus Fleming, Barrow's Boys: The Original Extreme Adventurers: A Stirring Story of Daring Fortitude and Outright Lunacy