in the KINGDOM of ICE

Hampton Sides...you did it again! A narrative nonfiction book that is factual but told in a way that seems fictional. It doesn’t get any better than that. Having read Blood and Thunder, I knew what to expect...exciting reality. This book somewhat reminds me of three novels that I have previously read, Dan Simmons’s The Terror, Dan Simmons's The Abominable (see my review of 1/8/2014) and Carsten Jensen’s We, the Drowned (see my review of 7/9/2011). Maybe I’m a fan of true Arctic adventures that emphasizes man’s ability to survive the harshest challenges. In 1879, the idea was that once a ship got through the Arctic ice, it would sail into an "open polar sea" is hard to believe, yet the world’s leading cartographer, Professor August Petermann from Germany, convinced the world that it was true. This is the story of the U.S.S. Jeannette’s attempt to prove that theory correct. On page ten, Hampton Sides says the essential question was: “How would man reach the North Pole? And once there, what would it be like? Were there open sea routes? Unknown species of fish and animals? Monsters that lived on the ice? Lost civilizations, even? Were there whirlpools, as many people believed, that led to the bowels of the earth?” Jules Verne’s 1864 novel, Journey to The Center of the Earth, made this speculation seem feasible.    

Enter eccentric James Gordon Bennett, owner of The New York Herald, fresh off his fake "Wild Animal Hoax" and his 1870’s sending of reporter Henry Stanley to remote Africa to find David Livingstone. Combine Bennett with Lt. Commander George W. Delong, who, to his chagrin, missed all the action in The Civil War. Bennett said that he would fully fund the trip to the North Pole, and Delong would get a leave of absence from the U.S. Navy to make the attempt to sail to the North Pole. Bennett had to set up his home office in Paris after he became a pariah in New York City because, among other things, he urinated on his fiancee’s piano at a holiday party in full view of all the guests. Bennett meets with Professor Petermann in Germany and decides that they could reach the Arctic via the Bering Strait. The Centennial Expo (1876) in Philadelphia provides Delong’s exploratory trip with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephones and Thomas Edison’s arc lamps (the incandescent light bulb was still in the test phase). They will light up the Arctic! Delong finds a ship,The Pandora, on the Isle of Wight and sails it to France. Bennett renames it The Jeannette after his sister. By a special act of Congress, it becomes an American ship. They sail it from Le Havre, France to San Francisco in 166 days (18,000 miles). Then the expedition gets bad news...Professor Petermann, suffering from Manic Depression, hangs himself. Does this story read like a novel, or what?

Once in San Francisco, Delong hires Lt. John Danenhower as his navigator. Delong heads to Washington, D.C. to meet the Secretary of the Navy and hire the ship’s doctor, James Ambler. The doctor warns Delong that Danenhower has had previous bouts with insanity. But Delong finds out that Danenhower is doing a great job in San Francisco hiring people and reinforcing the ship for Arctic travel. The wacko Bennett is paying for everything. He also wants Delong to look for a lost ship (the Finnish ship, The Vega) led by explorer Adolf Nordenskiöld, who was trying to find a Bering Strait passage to the North Pole. Delong finally leaves the U.S.A. with a total of thirty three men and provisions. Once he reaches the Bering Strait area, he finds that Nordenskiold is not lost and, in fact, has proven Petermann’s theories wrong. The Bering Strait entry is “but a cul de sac." Wow, this is bad news. 

So is The Jeannette on a failed mission course? They proceed anyway. On September the 7th, 1879, they are stuck in the ice! Winter comes, the ice presses the ship, Edison’s lamps don’t work. Seventy one days in the dark doesn’t make the men happy. Many times during the winter…"the ice began to squeeze the ship-literally, to strangle it. Beads of oakum tar and pine pitch oozed from the seams. At one point, the decks bulged.” Danenhower starts showing symptoms of syphilis, the ship springs a 4,000 gallon per hour leak, and they are drifting with the ice flow. While drifting, Delong finds two unknown Islands. He names them, Jeannette and Henrietta Islands. The crew develops lead poisoning from the canned tomatoes. What else can go wrong? In the summer of 1881, the ice opened and The Jeannette was set free. Great, right? No. The ice came back with a vengeance and crushed the ship! On page 228, “Finally it came, the call they had been dreading but preparing for, off and on, for many months: Abandon ship!”

Now, if you think I gave the story away...think again, knuckleheads! (Bill Murray of Meatballs fame and Charles Barkley (Outrageous!) both said this). This is where the story gets interesting. They are stranded on the ice, one thousand miles from Central Siberia. Who will make it and who will die? Will anyone make it back? I can’t tell you...buy your own copy of this bestseller. As usual, this type of writing is ‘the cat’s meow’ to me.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: As you know, I like books or novels that deal with hardships on the ice or in the cold weather. That said, the following are books that amazon.com recommends (including their commentary), other than the books that I mentioned in my review:

The People's Act of Love (2005) by James Meek: “In the outer reaches of a country recently torn apart by civil war lives a small Christian sect and its enigmatic leader, Balashov. Anna Petrovna, a beautiful, restless photographer, is raising her young son by herself amid this brutal landscape. Stationed nearby is a company of Czech soldiers, desperate to get home but on the losing side of the recent conflict. Each soldier lives in a fragile co-existence and a troubling uncertainty prevails. Into this isolated community trudges Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison camp. Immediately apprehended, he is brought before Captain Matula, the Czech company's megalomaniac commander. But the stranger's appearance has caught the attention of others, including that of Anna Petrovna. And when a local shaman is found murdered, suspicion and terror engulf this village. To be published in twenty countries, The People's Act of Love is quite simply magnificent storytelling and it promises to be an auspicious literary event.”

Arctic Dreams (2001) by Barry Lopez: “Barry Lopez's National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.
Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an indelible classic of modern literature.”

The Rifles (Seven Dreams) (1995) by William T. Vollmann: “Vaulting through time to another flashpoint in the long struggle between Indians and Europeans, William T. Vollmann's visionary fictional history now focuses on the white explorers of the mid-1800s, desperately dreaming of forging a Northwest Passage. As Sir John Franklin embarks on his fourth Arctic voyage, he defies the warnings of the native people, and his journey ends in ice and death. But his spirit lingers in the Canadian north, where 150 years later, in 1990, Inuit elders dream of long-gone seal-hunting days and teenagers sniff gasoline. And when a white man seduces and leaves pregnant a young Indian woman, he becomes Franklin reincarnated, bound for the same fate. Vollmann's vivid characters and landscapes weave together the stories of the past and present to live out America's ongoing tragedy of greed, ignorance, and violence.

Now, tell me, don’t you feel a little bit cold? Burr...burr!

The Jeannette stuck in the ice: