If you’ve got a reader with a taste for adventure on your
Christmas gift list, you might want to consider buying them a copy of Hampton
Sides’ new book, “In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of
the USS Jeannette.”
Published on Aug. 5 by Doubleday, this 454-page tells the
story of an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole in 1879. The expedition was
officially a U.S. Naval expedition, but it was funded by James Gordon Bennett,
the eccentric owner of The New York Herald newspaper.
Bennett was the man who sent H.M. Stanley to Africa to find
Scottish missionary David Livingstone. The resulting story was such a hit that
it made Bennett a very rich man. With the USS Jeannette, he was looking to
recreate the sensation he created with Stanley and Livingstone.
To lead his expedition to the North Pole, Bennett picked
35-year-old Naval officer George Washington De Long of New York City. De Long
was ambitious and was out to make his name as an explorer. He left a wife and a
young daughter at home and as things turned out, he would never see them again.
The USS Jeanette, which was reinforced by experts to
withstand the crush of the Arctic icepack, set sail from San Francisco on July
8, 1879. The expedition included 33 men, and they hoped to be the first to
“discover” the North Pole. Sadly, many of them would never return home.
At the time of their voyage, no one was sure what lay at the
North Pole, but there were plenty of theories – most of them incorrect. De Long
consulted with many experts while preparing for his trip, including August
Petermann, a German considered to be the foremost geographer and mapmaker in
the world. Peterman believed (incorrectly) that warm currents sustained a
balmy, jungle-like island at the top of the planet.
As fate would have it, De Long and his men would never find
out because on the way to the North Pole, the USS Jeannette became trapped in
the ice and randomly “drifted” for almost two years. Eventually, the ice
crushed the ship and it sank on June 13, 1881. The crew then found itself in a
race against time as they attempted to make their way south across the frozen
icepack before it thawed. Some of them reached Siberia, only to find themselves
in one of the most hopeless, inhospitable places on earth.
Eventually, the few Jeannette survivors remaining
encountered a group of natives, but language barriers, bad weather and other
factors slowed rescue efforts for survivors who remained waiting for rescue. On
the other side of the coin, a newspaper correspondent that had been on the
Jeannette found himself racing to a frontier telegraph to tell the world of the
fate of the missing Jeannette.
In the end, I really enjoyed “In the Kingdom of Ice” and
highly recommend it to those of you who enjoy reading about true life
adventures. The book retails for $28.95 and is available in major bookstores
and online through Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles.
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