In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette

by Hampton Sides

On July 8, 1879, Captain George Washington De Long and his team of thirty-two men set sail from San Francisco on the USS Jeanette. Heading deep into uncharted Arctic waters, they carried the aspirations of a young country burning to be the first nation to reach the North Pole.

Two years into the voyage, the Jeannette's hull was breached by an impassable stretch of pack ice, forcing the crew to abandon ship amid torrents of rushing of water. Hours later, the ship had sunk below the surface, marooning the men a thousand miles north of Siberia, where they faced a terrifying march with minimal supplies across the endless ice pack.

Enduring everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and labyrinths of ice, the crew battled madness and starvation as they struggled desperately to survive. With thrilling twists and turns, In The Kingdom of Ice is a tale of heroism and determination in the most brutal place on Earth.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Adventure, Survival, Audiobook, American History, Historical

454 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2014

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”About the same time the sun vanished, the ice began to move again. The noise was terrible---first the sounds of the ice warring with itself, then the more dreadful sounds of the ice warring with the ship. The turbulence started early on a cold November morning. De Long was awakened by a ‘grinding and crushing---I know of no sound on shore that can be compared to it,’ he said. ‘A rumble, a shriek, a groan, and a crash of a falling house all combined might convey an idea.’”


USS Jeannette

Little was known about the Arctic in 1879, but there were a lot of theories regarding the best way to reach the Arctic and also regarding what the explorers would find once they reached their goal. Though the science of these theories may have been suspect, the enthusiasm that these theorists possessed was infectious and represented the desire that most explorers, amateur and professional, had for discovering the secrets of the Arctic. One such theory, that there was a warm polar sea on the other side of the ice barrier, was used in a story by Edgar Allan Poe called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.


George Washington De Long

George Washington De Long had long been bitten by the pagophilic bug. When the chance came for him to command a vessel to explore a route through the Arctic, he gleefully volunteered. With the financial assistance of the very rich owner of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., they found a ship, refitted it for Arctic travel, and christened it the USS Jeannette, named after Bennett’s sister.

De Long and Bennett were an odd pairing, a matching of the self made and the silver spooned. De Long was very serious, but also determined. He was not afraid to ask for what he needed or go after what he wanted. Bennett was born rich and was quite capable of acting like a self-obsessed ass. ”Bennett had a habit of strolling into one of the finest establishments in Paris or New York and snatching the table linens as he proceeded down the aisle, smashing plates and glassware on the floor, to the horror of the dining patrons, until he reached his reserved table in the back. (He never failed to write a check for the damages.)” I couldn't imagine myself sitting there and allowing a man to walk by and yank my meal out from under my nose without taking exception. (Duel level exception.) He also lost an engagement by arriving at his fiancee’s house roaring drunk and pissed in the fireplace. I’m sure he had some good qualities, but on the most basic human level, he was lacking manners and completely undisciplined.

Bennett was the man who sent Henry Morton Stanley after David Livingstone. He sold piles of newspapers by, in a sense, creating news. As it turned out, Livingstone wasn’t in need of finding, so this idea to explore the Arctic felt like a similar story opportunity to Bennett.


James Gordon Bennett, Jr.

The subtitle of the book is ”The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette.” The grand part was the excitement and anticipation of preparing for the trip with the hope of returning as conquering heroes of the frozen North. The whole rest of the trip was the terrible part, tragic really. They become trapped in the ice and spent two years drifting with an ice pack until the day the ice shifted and crushed the Lady Jeannette into pieces.

Then began a desperate bid for survival that took them across the ice with the help of their dogs and three small boats. They fought hunger and frostbite…”...when he pulled off his boots, Leach saw that his toes were turning blue-black, the skin and nails curling backwards, like feathers singed by a flame.” Needless to say, the conditions were abominable with howling winds, storms, and cold temperatures that plunged well below anything most of us will ever experience.

I was enthralled. I could not put this book down. Once the tale sunk it’s icy needles into my bloodstream, I was freezing off important body parts right along with the men of the Jeannette. Hampton Sides benefited from the fact that numerous members of the crew made detailed journal entries. They were well aware that what they were attempting was historic. One of the poignant aspects of the book was the letters that Emma and George De Long wrote to each other while apart. Here is one of my favorites from Emma:

”All this will be forgotten when we meet again; it will seem only as a bad dream---a fearful nightmare that has been successfully passed through. However dangerous your surroundings are at present I can still trust God and hope a little longer. I often dream of you and you seem all right, only sad and not as strong as you used to be. Oh darling! I cannot show you my love, my sympathy, my sorrow for your great sufferings. I pray to God constantly. My own darling husband, struggle, fight, live, come back to me!”


Emma De Long

The bravery and resourcefulness that was exhibited by nearly every crew member spoke to the wonderful job that De Long did in finding the right men for this arduous and dangerous trip. A few suffered from melancholy as the months passed, but most of the crew was intent on carrying their own weight and contributing to the well-being of the entire group. George Melville, a distant relative of Herman Melville, was the Macgyver of the group. He could take any pile of junk and turn it into some amazingly useful piece of machinery. He went on to have a long, successful career in the Navy. ”Melville presided over an expansive redesign of the fleet, largely completing its conversion from wood to metal, and from wind to steam power. When he retired, in 1903, the U.S. Navy boasted one of the most powerful modernized fleets in the world.”

Pull on your boots and your thickest parka, and experience the grand and the terrible. You will find, like me, that you will become fond of these men and maybe even more fond of their dogs.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

By endurance we conquer
-- Sir Ernest Shackleton's family motto

The tree has been dragged to the curb. The lights are all packed. The wrapping paper has been recycled. All the new toys have been forgotten by the children, who are already asking for newer toys. Christmas is over. The long dark of the year has begun.

The other day I had the following conversation with my five year-old. It started when I asked her if she could sing something other than Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. You know, before I punched myself into unconsciousness.

MILLIE: Is Christmas over?
ME: Yes.
MILLIE: Then how come it’s still winter?
ME: Because it’s a cruel world.
MILLIE: What’s “cruel”?
ME: You know, it’s like we’re in Narnia, under the White Witch.
MILLIE: Is that the movie with Bilbo?
ME: [Rubbing temples] Just sing something from Moana, okay?
MILLIE: Can I watch the iPad instead?
ME: [Resigned nod of head]

The beacon of winter, the parties, the wine, the cookies, is in the past. Now it’s just cold. Cold without joy. Books are an escape. But escape to where? One school of thought says to read something warm. Pretend you are in a better place, without freezing rainstorms, lung-aching wind chills, and dress shoes eaten away by road salt.

I didn't go in that direction, though. I steered into the skid. I went to my bookshelf to find the most miserable title about winter I could find. Hampton Sides’ In the Kingdom of Ice turned out to be the perfect choice.

In the Kingdom of Ice tells the true story of the 1879 Polar expedition of the U.S.S. Jeanette. The expedition was run by the U.S. Navy, but was funded by the wealthy, unconventional James Gordon Bennett, Jr., who owned The New York Herald. It was Bennett who’d sent Stanley to find Livingstone, and he understood the advantages of both making and reporting the news.

The expedition set sail from San Francisco under the command of Lieutenant Commander George De Long, who’d already proven his mettle and courage among the ice floes of the Arctic The purpose of the Jeanette expedition was to reach the North Pole via the Bering Strait. The ship did not make much headway before getting stuck fast in the ice pack, northeast of Wrangel Island.

For nearly two years, the Jeanette drifted in a northwesterly direction. The ship had been well designed and well provisioned, and the men handled the situation with remarkable aplomb. The greatest trials they faced during this time was irritation with one another, especially a civilian expedition member who loved punning.

Then, on June 12, 1881, the unrelenting pressure of the ice crushed the Jeanette and sent her to the bottom. All 33 crewmembers survived the initial sinking. They also managed to salvage a decent supply of provisions and three small boats. Now the real adventure began. A journey of hundreds of miles across a frozen sea, through a maze-like labyrinth of ice. They overcame hunger and storms, blindness and despair. One guy even had progressive syphilitic conditions, which is tough enough on dry land (or so I’m told). Most never made it home again.

Sides tells this story brilliantly. To my mind, he is one of the best author-historians working today. It begins with his characterizations, which are deep and well-rounded. The people who walk across this stage are brought memorably back to life. Start with Bennett, the founder of the feast. The word eccentric doesn’t do him justice. This is a man who once covered the front page of his newspaper with a fake story about animals getting loose from the zoo and running amuck. Wait, you say, fake news is nothing. That happens every day now. But this is also a man who lost his fiancé when he went to her house, drank some punch, and then urinated into the grand piano. Sides also develops August Petermann, the troubled German cartographer who believed that warm ocean currents created an Open Polar Sea, and Emily De Long, wife of the commander, who wrote countless poignant letters with no sure destination for them to be mailed.

In Sides' hands, the crew of the Jeanette become like old pals. There is Melville, the chief engineer, a sort of 19th century MacGyver; Nindemann, a hearty quartermaster of “ferocious competency”; and Jerome Collins, a meteorologist, Herald correspondent, and pun-master extraordinaire. The calm center of this storm is Commander De Long. In photographs he does not appear imposing; bookish, rather, and sometimes bespectacled. But he was strong and brave and tough as hell.

Sides delivers this epic saga with a wealth of detail. He does an excellent job setting the context of Polar exploration, describing in detail Petermann’s theory that a ring of ice floes surrounded a life-sustaining landmass at the top of the world. The evocation of shipboard life once the Jeanette has wedged into the ice is fascinating. Days, months, years went by, and the men remained in place, hunting, taking scientific measurements, exercising, celebrating holidays, and gradually moving at the pace of the sea. The crew’s trek once the Jeanette sinks is told in excruciating detail. You are right there with them as their chances to survive ebb and flow.

It helps that Sides has a good historical record to work with. When the Franklin Expedition went missing, there were no survivors to tell the story, and precious little evidence. Here, men survived to explain what happened. Books were written by the survivors. More than that, De Long went to extraordinary lengths to save the expedition’s logs and journals – even to the extent of hampering their escape. This means there is a wealth of eyewitness testimony to give depth to this story. We are often privy to the thoughts and feelings of the crew as their plight unfolds.

Of course, having a bunch of material to work with is one thing; actually using it to your advantage is another. Sides is more than up to this challenge. He does an excellent job structuring the narrative to create tension and suspense. My general rule, as I’ve stated elsewhere, is that works of history do not require “spoiler” tags, for the simple reason that we’re dealing with actual human beings. When we speak of men who actually walked the earth, the answer of who lives, who dies, is not typically an article of amusement. Here, though, Sides writes with an assumption (in my case accurate) that you are unfamiliar with this tale. He teases out the drama without being exploitative. The result is compelling, even powerful. Sides is a natural and effortless storyteller.

There is something almost perverse in De Long’s mission. They sailed up north knowing they’d get stuck in the ice, but did so anyway, in pursuit of a chimera, a warm water ocean surrounded by ice. The Jeanette expedition disproved that idea and mapped some islands, but nothing they did can be said to have been worth a life. Yet they followed an ancient human impulse; and while many (so, so many) human impulses are small and petty, this one is large and spirited and big-hearted. Sometimes it takes a fool’s errand to discover how transcendent of pain and obstacles a person can be.

In the Kingdom of Ice doesn’t need me to imbue it with any platitudes. More than anything else, it is damn entertaining history. It certainly puts winter in perspective. Yes, it is a pain to scrape my car’s windshield in the morning, but at least it was not crushed by enormous blocks of ice. And though I do not enjoy shoveling my driveway before dawn, in order to get to work, at least I don’t have to boil my shoes and eat them for sustenance.

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some fiction books read like not that exciting non-fiction, and some non-fiction books turn out to be really unputdownable. For me, this was the case with In the Kingdom of Ice. The story of the Jeannette and her crew who committed themselves to sail to the North Pole, terra incognita in the second half of the 19th century, is compelling. Mr Sides provides us with all details regarding the preparations for the voyage of which I had known nothing. Thorough research is one thing, another thing is how the authour manages to put all the facts into a story and here Mr Sides yet again is a master of story telling.
In the Kingdom of Ice is a book which I highly recommend to anybody interested in brave and tough men who wanted to know more ...

[Taufiq Yves · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides tells the true, grand, and tragic story of a 19th-century American polar expedition.

Post-Civil War America, brimming with youthful vigor, yearned for adventures as grand as the war itself. With the Industrial Revolution in full swing, a generation of American scientists like Bell and Edison emerged, eager to put their inventions to the test in far-flung expeditions.

While Nordic and British naval fleets had traditionally dominated exploration of the New World, the passing of legendary explorers like Cook and Franklin shifted global expectations towards the burgeoning nation of America.

At 28, naval Lieutenant George De Long, captivated by the Arctic after rescuing the stranded Polaris expedition, was consumed by a desire to plant the American flag at the North Pole.

When the USS Jeanette departed from Le Havre, France, Captain DeLong and his crew of 32, comprised of the era's most skilled individuals, set sail with 3 years' worth of supplies, state-of-the-art equipment, and the hopes of a nation. Their destination: the unknown expanse of the Arctic, a frozen kingdom.

While modern technology allows us to easily map the Arctic, a century ago, even the most skilled geographers and navigators could only rely on perilous expeditions to uncover the secrets of the polar regions. DeLong's era was marked by the belief in a navigable polar sea, free of ice. However, the Jeanette became trapped in the ice and was carried away by polar storms, proving these theories wrong.

For 4 years, De Long and his crew endured unimaginable hardships, never giving up hope of returning to home. Even after abandoning the Jeanette and trekking across vast ice sheets, they remained united, their spirits unbroken. Their detailed journals serve as a testament to their courage and perseverance.

I would say this is a meticulously researched work, based on authentic letters and scientific records. It paints a vivid picture of this epic expedition, capturing both its triumphs and tragedies.

Comparing a modern satellite image of the Lena River Delta with the challenges faced by De Long and his crew is mind-boggling. Without accurate maps, reliable navigation, or any means of resupply, they traversed thousands of miles in temperatures as low as -67 degrees Celsius.

Human history advances not only through the inventions of geniuses but also through the sacrifices of brave explorers. Even in the face of insurmountable odds, these pioneers provided invaluable data for future generations.

Today, monuments in Russia's Siberian region commemorate the Jeanette expedition, and various Arctic features are named after De Long, Bennett, and Melville. And this book was named one of Amazon's best books in 2014.

In the heart of Emma De Long, her husband remained the greatest explorer, deserving of everlasting admiration.

As I listen to Amazing Grace, I find myself filled with deep respect for these courageous explorers, the author, Sides who brought their story to life, and the talented translator who ensured its fidelity.

It is really that good.

4.6 / 5 stars

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I just added this book yesterday, but I opened it at 1 pm when it arrived, let everything else go, skipped dinner, and read the entire night through because I could not put it down. I guess you might say that I LOVED this book:

a) It's about polar exploration, probably my favorite nonfiction reading topic in the universe, b) it's by Hampton Sides, who has not let me down yet with any of his books, and c) it's just so engrossing that I couldn't stop reading it. I'm pretty tired and cranky right now, but what the hell -- it was so worth it. Once again Hampton Sides has proven that he is not only a master of his topic but also a master of storytelling.

I've written up my thoughts about this book at the nonfiction page of my online reading journal; feel free to click on over. For now, I'll just reiterate how fanbloodytastic I found this book.

I seriously can't do this book the justice it deserves, but In the Kingdom of Ice is an absolutely phenomenal story told by a master storyteller, and it deserves as wide of a reading audience as possible. Even readers who might not normally be excited about the history of polar exploration would love this book -- the story is harrowing enough, but Mr. Sides highlights the humanity and the sheer bravery of these heroic men facing the unendurable in one of the most unforgiving environments in the world. The book literally reads like a novel, complete with cliffhangers, moments for rejoicing, and above all, page-turning scenes making it impossible to set the book down. It's an ultimate true "rollicking adventure" story, one that should be on everyone's reading list. To answer other reader criticism, yes, there's a lot of detail involved, but none of it is wasted space or used as padding as so often seems to be the case. I cannot recommend this book highly enough -- on the favorites list of 2014.

... someone should get in touch with Ken Burns -- this would make a fascinating PBS special.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the fall of 2006, I drove from Santa Fe to Taos, New Mexico and walked into the Kit Carson Home and Museum. When I entered I spotted an individual sitting behind one table while another nearby table held a stack of books. It was obvious that he was a writer promoting a book.

Taos, which hosts a number of festivals and celebrations every year, can be a busy little village at times, but not that day. There wasn’t much going on. In fact, there were only two other visitors besides me in the museum and they were indicating no interest in the book. More out of a sense of compassion than anything else, I walked over to the table containing the books, and when I looked at the cover I immediately recognized the author’s name. It was Hampton Sides.

I recognized his name because I had just recently read one of his other books. Ghost Soldiers, published in 2001, the story of a successful World War II mission to liberate over five hundred POW's being held in the Philippines, including the last survivors of the Bataan Death March, was a well-told tale of heroism.

I thought Ghost Soldiers was an excellent book about a little known, but extraordinary event and this new book, Blood and Thunder, really aroused my curiosity, too. It is the story of a controversial chapter in the life of Kit Carson. Most people know that he was a mountain man, trapper, explorer and scout, but few know that he was a union officer during the Civil War, and that in that position he played a major role in the brutal subjugation and repression of the Navajos.

So, what more appropriate place to promote a book about Kit Carson than in the Kit Carson Home and Museum? Appropriate, yes; successful, no.

Naturally, I purchased a copy, not out of compassion, but because I was hooked by the subject matter. Because nobody else was taking up any of his time, I not only had a signed first edition, but I was able to hold a rather lengthy conversation with him, in which I was able to tell him how much I had admired his earlier book. I found out that he was a native of Memphis, Tennessee and that he lived in Santa Fe, which is not all that far from Taos. It turned out to be a good day for me, but I'm afraid not a profitable one for him.

Well, you probably know that the critics praised Blood and Thunder to high heaven and that the book became a best seller, and that a film adaptation is even in the works.

In 2010, Hellhound on His Trail was another critical and popular success. The subtitle tells the tale: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin. And it too may become a film.

It goes without saying that a lot of readers besides me have discovered Hampton Sides. If any further evidence is needed all one has to do is check out the number of ratings, reviews, and average ratings of these books here on Goodreads. And the critical acclaim for all three has been, as far as I can tell, almost universal.

What could he possibly write that would top his other books? Well, how about writing about an arctic expedition that nobody remembers? Not a good idea? But how many people knew about that WWII rescue mission or Kit Carson's Civil War experiences?

The result is In the Kingdom of Ice and I think it is as good, and in some respects even better, than his other work. The subtitle tells us much about this book, too: The Grand and Terrible Voyage of the USS Jeannette. It is the story of George Washington DeLong’s attempt in 1879 to sail his ship and its crew to the North Pole. The expedition was based on the faulty notion that if a ship could break through the ice barrier that it would sail into an open polar sea. Unfortunately, after only two months the ship, the three-masted and steam-powered Jeannette, became entrapped in ice at the 72nd parallel and remained confined for two years, drifting with the ice pack.

What follows is a harrowing tale of gritty and desperate determination by the crew of thirty-three to survive and return home despite the fact that they were a thousand miles from the nearest land.

Because I don’t want to ruin the story for others, I choose not to reveal what happened thereafter.

Sides’ great strength is that he is not only a thorough researcher and talented writer, but that he also knows how to tell a story. He graduated college with a degree in American history, but his background is in magazine journalism. Thus, he is an historian who became a journalist, rather than the other way around, which is more often the case. He is editor at large for Outdoor magazine and has written for various other publications including National Geographic and The New Yorker.

His work reminds me of that of three other writers whose admirable storytelling skills are such that they are able to write nonfiction that reads like a novel. Those three are Jon Krakauer, Sebastian Junger, and Nathaniel Philbrick. I once thought that Sides might someday rank with those writers, but I now think that with his latest book he has surpassed them.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read 5 or 6 of these types of polar adventure books and this one is one of the best I've found. I am not usually keen on non-fiction and I only read a handful a year, but this is exceptional.

The last one I read was on the Greely expedition and was entitled Ghosts of Cape Sabine. Greely was a terrible captain and not the shining example seen here in George Washington De Long. De Long was smart, capable, and a natural leader whose men followed him willingly.

The terrible things that occurred on the doomed voyage were not because of lack of planning, poor materials, or lack of brave and stalwart men, it was instead, the unknown information on the arctic region that stymied them. Maps were poor or non-existent because no one had been there past certain points. Foolhardy ideas about what they would find there were in circulation, put forth by cartographers.about a warm vortex of ocean water, like the Gulf Stream, that would open up the polar sea after a certain point to smooth sailing. It was all tragically too much for the poor men to overcome.

[Paula K · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a journey!

I listened to this audiobook and was totally enthralled. The struggle for survival the crew of the USS Jeannette went through was a fight-for-your-life adventure. Lt. George DeLong and his engineer, Melville, were heroic characters that everyone would love. Their expedition to the North Pole was amazing and harrowing. What the crew went through to get to the Siberian Coast was an edge-of-the-seat listening experience.

Don't miss this nonfiction tale of survival, starvation, and the will to live.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific read about a doomed American attempt to sail to the North Pole via the Bering Strait in 1879. I didn’t set out thinking I wanted to read a harrowing account of an Arctic exploration. But based on five-star reads of two previous books by Sides, I took to heart that when a great cook asks you for dinner, you don’t need to bother asking what is being served. I knew I could count on him to make stories from history come alive with all the drama and character development you expect from great fiction.

The premise of the sea voyage of the U.S.S. Jeanette was based on a widespread belief that the polar region was an area of open sea due to the warm currents of the Gulf Stream and a comparable northerly flow in the Pacific (the Kuro-Siwo Current). People hungry to fill in the huge geographical blank in human knowledge came to trust the world famous Austrian cartographer August Petermann on this concept. While others like Franklin concentrated on finding a sailing route for the Northwest Passage , a number of expeditions tried and failed to get past the ice pack above Greenland. A young Navy Lieutenant, George De Long, proved his mettle on a rescue search for one such attempt and acquired a fervor for the remote and dangerous beauty of the high latitudes. It took little for money man James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald, to wind him up to plan and lead a new attempt via the Pacific under his funding.


George De Long, showing wisdom and character--would you follow him to the ends of the earth?

De Long and Bennett make an odd partnership. De Long is totally pragmatic, organized, warm hearted, and a natural leader. Bennett is extravagant, mercurial, selfish, tyrannical, and so outrageously eccentric that he out trumps Donald Trump. He was notoriously for regularly racing his buggy around Central Park at night in the nude. He ruined a chance at marrying the aristocratic woman of is dreams by openly peeing at a fancy party at her folks mansion. Yet, was successful in running the largest newspaper in the world, upping circulation by such tricks as a false story of rampaging animals from the city zoo and by sending Stanley on a quest to find Livingstone in Africa. Above all, he excelled in competition, such as yacht-racing and polo, and so was game for beating other nations to the pole (and selling lots of papers as a side benefit).

The story of De Long finding his ship, assembling his crew, picking all the equipment he might need, and refitting the ship to withstand iceberg collisions makes for surprisingly fascinating reading. Effective political maneuvering got the initiative placed under U.S. Navy auspices. His courtship and marriage to Emma reveals much about his character and source for some of his endurance on the journey to come. Her tolerance of his quest was enhanced by watching him in action on the long sail from New York to San Francisco, where the long refitting was accomplished. The 30-man crew of sailors, scientists, engineers, a physician, a Chinese cook, and dozens of sled dogs was the best that one could imagine.

I won’t spoil the fun by revealing much on the outcomes. I can say that some far northern islands were discovered, that the ship was trapped in the ice for a long time, and that at one point the crew has to make about a thousand mile trip in cutters to reach Siberia. With one exception of a neurotic naturalist and a navigator whose syphilis affected his brain, the voyage overall was marked by generous humanity and harmony, and their teamwork, courage, and feats of endurance were magnificent to experience. Only upon reaching the boggy and labyrinthine delta of the Lena River as winter approached did their supplies, skills, and luck fail them. Some made it and many did not. Your heart will glow over the accomplishments of the former, and you will likely weep as I did for the latter. Take heart: no cannibalism!


Landing on what they named “Bennett Island” after a cutter excursion from the icepack where they were marooned--800 miles more to go to reach the Siberian mainland

I will look forward to reading anything Sides writes in the future, the same as I do for Nathaniel Philbrick. This book gave me the same level of pleasure as I got from Philbrick’s “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex”, and it was more enjoyable for me that his more comparable tale of exploration, “Sea of Glory”, which covered a wide-ranging U.S. Navy expedition including an early probe of Antarctica around 1840.

[Jill Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book started out with a bang and just kept getting better the longer I read. In the late 19th century, the world was fascinated by the North Pole since very little was known about it. Numerous explorers attempted the voyage and the majority were never heard of again. All of them began their trek from Greenland but one noted geographer believed that traveling through the Bering Sea from Alaska would be a better starting point. He also stated that there was a warm sea (the Open Polar Sea) surrounding the Pole just beyond the ice barrier and might be actually semi-tropical.

A young Naval office, George DeLong caught the North Pole fever and was determined to reach it, believing in the theory of the above mentioned geographer. He gather an excellent crew, received total financial backing from the wealthy newspaper owner, James Gorden Bennett Jr. and had the ship, the Jennifer built which he felt would withstand the dangers ahead. In July, 1879, the expedition into the unknown was launched.

I will not spoil the story except to say that the bravery of this crew was almost beyond belief. The author describes in detail the horrible conditions that faced them and their efforts to reach the Pole. His research is excellent and it is as if he was actually on the ship.

The story holds your attention from page one and the experiences of the ship and crew practically jump from the pages. Highly recommended.

[LIsa Noell "Rocking the chutzpah!" · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Jeanette is my absolute favorite of what I call my "arctic, armchair exploration" books. It's the most harrowing thing that I've ever read.
This book by Mr. Sides isn't my favorite of these, but it's definitely second! It's still a messed the hell up tale!
I would have been one of the crazy people to set sail or steam to see the North. The Northwest passage? Sign me up.
I have an app that I fall asleep to, and it's the sound of ice, breaking off of a wooden ship. I love it.
Would I have been so brave after my ship was crushed by ice, and I had to take to land?
I think not! But, I often surprise myself with how stubbornly brave I can be.
Eh! I hate the heat. Good thing I live in Montana!
-17 now, and the snow is beautiful!

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the kingdom of ice, far from the world,
lamentations rise from the ship,
As she battles the slabs and growling swirls,
and writhes in their throttling grip.
The crusted floes crack in fits and sprees,
and in fury flog her planked hide,
Spent sailors fall upon supplicant knees,
yearning for kith and hearthside.
The hungry ice clutches more tightly,
to check the flight of its prey,
The captain’s command rings forthrightly,
“All hands quit while ye may!”
See how the rough men pine and weep,
as she falters and slips,
High in the masts, the haunted winds whine,
a dirge to the truest of ships
That bore them so long, yet now in the murk,
the proud boat twists to her bed,
And when the day hath ended its work,
Northern Lights paint her grave purple-red.
—— “The Sinking of the Jeannette,” by Joachim Ringelnatz

And so begins In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides. And this is why I will read anything that this man writes. This adventurous tale takes place in the nineteenth century when people were obsessed by the one of the last unmapped areas of the globe, the North Pole. Despite explorations no one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the Arctic Seas. There was the eccentric and very wealthy owner of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, Jr. Hoping to surpass his previous blockbusting story of the discovery of Dr. Livingston in Africa by one of his reporters dispatched to find the story, Bennett became very interested in the further exploration on the Arctic Sea. He funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the North Pole. The leader of this expedition was a young officer named George Washington DeLong, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland.

On July 8, 1879, DeLong bid his young wife, Emma, good-bye as the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to wild cheers as the world was captured by arctic fever. Commander DeLong led a team of thirty-two men, each representative of a young country wanting to become a world power in the field of exploration, deep into uncharted waters. After journeying north of the Bering Strait, the USS Jeannette became trapped in pack ice. After two years into harrowing voyage, the hull of the majestic ship was breached and sank to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The crew was marooned on the ice cap nearly a thousand miles north of Siberia, left with only three open boats and few supplies. It is here that they begin their long, fateful march across the frozen sea. It is regarded as one of the greatest struggles for survival in history, as they battle ferocious storms and bewildering labyrinths of ice as they journeyed on determined to find the Siberian coast.

Because of the ship’s logs and records and DeLong’s personal diaries, all fiercely protected by Captain George DeLong, it was as if we were accompanying the USS Jeannette on its perilous journey in the unforgiving Arctic landscape. And then there were the faithful and ever-hopeful letters from Emma DeLong and later from his young daughter, Sylvie. I found myself drawn to the ice from the very beginning, not wanting to leave these brave and courageous people until the fate of each was known, in spite of incredible moments of horror and heroism. Hampton Sides is a magnificent storyteller and this gripping narrative non-fiction is not to be missed.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating book! In the Kingdom of Ice has some of my favorite things: a grand expedition, outdoor adventure and an amazing survival story. There's even an eccentric media mogul to provide extra color.

In 1879, George De Long and his crew sailed away from San Francisco in search of the North Pole. They never reached it — the ship got trapped in ice and sank, stranding the men on an ice cap with only meager supplies. Incredibly, most of the crew survived for several more months and reached the Siberian coast, where the survivors were eventually helped by local tribes.

The expedition had been backed by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the wealthy owner of The New York Herald. Bennett's goal, besides helping to find the Pole, was to get exclusive details of the journey for his newspaper. (Bennett once said that man doesn't matter — the only thing that mattered was the newspaper.)

The book alternates between De Long's journey and what was happening back home. When the crew hadn't been heard from in a while, a rescue mission was attempted, but the ship wasn't found. It seemed ages before De Long's poor wife learned what happened to her husband.

One of my favorite details of the book was about the myths of the North Pole. At the time, there was the mistaken belief that there would be an "open polar sea" at the pole, and that ships would have no trouble sailing straight there. It was fun seeing the different ideas debunked as the crew continued on their journey.

Hampton Sides is an excellent and engaging writer. Here he pulls together compelling details from journals, letters, newspaper accounts and other works, and the result is a thrilling work of history. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to delve into a good adventure story.

Favorite Quotes
"[De Long] became more and more intrigued by the Arctic, by its lonely grandeur, by its mirages and strange tricks of light, its mock moons and blood-red halos, its thick, misty atmospheres, which altered and magnified sounds, leaving the impression that one was living under a dome. He felt as though he were breathing rarefied air. He became intrigued by the phenomenon of the 'ice blink,' the spectral glow in the low sky that indicated the presence of a large frozen pack ahead. The scenery grew more impressive: ice gouged fjords, towering bergs calved fresh from glaciers, the crisp sound of cold surf lapping against the pack, ringed seals peeking through gaps in the ice, bowhead whales spouting in the deep gray channel. This was the purest wilderness De Long had ever seen, and he began to fall in love with it."

"James Gordon Bennett's most original contribution to modern journalism could be found in his notion that a newspaper should not merely report stories; it should create them. Editors should not only cover the news, he felt; they should orchestrate large-scale public dramas that stir emotions and get people talking."

"The North Pole. The top of the world. The acme, the apogee, the apex. It was a magnetic region but also a magnetic idea. It loomed as a public fixation and a planetary enigma — as alluring and unknown as the surface of Venus or Mars. The North Pole was both a physical place and a geographer's abstraction, an pinpoint-able location where curved lines met on the map. It was a spot on the globe where, if you could stand there, any direction you headed in would be, by definition, south. It was a place of perpetual darkness for one half of the year and perpetual sunlight for the other. There, in a sense, chronology stood still, for at the pole all the time zones of the world converged."

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of exploration and an incredible struggle to survive--this is the story of the voyage of the USS Jeannette into the Arctic Ocean by way of the Bering Strait. All the more interesting to me because I had never heard of this expedition, knowing only when I started the book that the expedition was doomed to fail and not reach the North Pole-- or find an icefree route through the Arctic (the long-sought for "Northwest Passage"). I did not know how many of the 33 men (with dogs) would survive the ordeal, so the story kept me in suspense up to the end to see if anyone-man or canine- could make it back alive.
This mission which set off in 1879 was based on faulty premises that certainly helped to doom it from the start. A leading cartographer in Germany named August Peterman believed there was an Open Polar Sea at the North Pole warmed by sea currents from the south. Based on that idea, it was believed that a ship would be able to reach the North Pole. As many expeditions had failed to get past Greenland, it was felt there was a better chance to reach the Pole from the Bering Strait. Furthermore, Peterman believed that there was a transpolar continent stretching from northern Greenland to the mysterious "Wrangel Land" north of Siberia. This land had been reported by Baron von Wrangel, who heard of it from Siberian natives but was unable to get through the ice to even see it. So one purpose of the expedition was to ascertain if Wrangel Land existed and, if it did, to see if it was part of an unknown continent (and also to plant the US flag and claim it for the USA-- if it existed!). Now, it seems that people back then had some laughable ideas---but they didn't know and perhaps anything could have existed in what was the biggest remaining blank spot on the map. After all, no one had imagined the Americas blocking Asia from Europe.
In the end, it's an almost unbelievable (and well-told) story of heroism and survival. And we meet some remarkable--and now forgotten--persons, some surviving--and some who didn't.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
If your back was up against an iceberg these are the kind of men you would want by your side. Extraordinary fortitude and courage in the grand and terrible kingdom of ice. Hampton Sides writes nonfiction that reads like an epic adventure story. The audio was excellent.

[LA · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't always read nonfiction, but when I do, it's the good stuff. Since reading The Birthday Boys with Kirk and the A-Team Readers, the allure of the icy poles has hit me hard. Well, as long as it is the turn of the 19th century, time-wise...

First up, here is a happy spoiler: MEN SURVIVED THIS! Don't ruin the experience by reading the blurb or googling the journey of the Jeannette. Go in blind (or snow-blind), and let the story unfurl like an American flag planted in the ice.

The basics? In the late 1800s, the world was looking toward discovery in its wildest, far flung reaches. Remember hearing that old phrase, "Livingston, I presume?" Yeah. Livingston was apparently happily living in the Congo, collecting anthropological l information when some NY newspaper correspondent named Stanley showed up checking in on him.

The correspondent was hired by a high-powered, eccentric newspaperman named Bennet. This same ridiculously wealthy man also wanted to cover THE voyage that would discover the open sea at the north pole of the world. Um, yeah. Until global warming heats up a little bit more, there is no such thing as an open sea up there... but on they went! You might have read about the Franklin expedition and others from great Britain which failed in achieving access to the pole. But how about an American attempt? It would bring national glory and a quick commercial trade route with Asia - a short cut across the top of the world.

An extremely well prepared and excited commander was found. DeLong was up for it, and he started the journey with his wife and five-year-old daughter aboard. God, how he hated to later cast off without them for the three year journey, but the fever of exploration was on him.

With total respect and utmost reverence, the commander of this selfless quest and his crew get way more than the five stars we can present here. DeLong and his men went through ridiculous and bizarre circumstances and came out hopeful and happy to have taken on their task. Ice, sea, and more assailed them...but sled dogs, native Inuits, a German whose feet would NOT submit to frostbite, and HUGE courage from the 30 men compounded to save some of them.

This book is extremely well researched, and the published journals of the commander and others made me feel like I was right there with them. While this is not Indiana Jones, the tension that ebbs and flows was written like something from an action adventure script.

If you are up for some real world history and courage like little we have seen recently, I highly recommend this.

Honestly? Part of me fantasizes that I could be worthy of being an explorer like this, and if my vision were better (and I did not vomit with even a touch of motion sickness while in the car), the astronaut program is something I might have wished for. Im a geologist and geophysicist - my dreams are totally Exploration-bound. These men? In the 1800s? They WERE our astronauts and my heroes.

I hail DeLong and the others and their descendants. That a happy ending reached more than a dozen of them cheers me!!

They had the right stuff, and I am ever grateful to the author for allowing me to glimpse a bit of their stardust.


Nearly five stars

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We are not yet daunted.”

IN THE KINGDOM OF ICE is a good dose of narrative nonfiction. There are moments in this text where the Gilded Age felt very much alive. As the subtitle indicates, this book is about a Polar expedition that left for the North Pole in the summer of 1879. Those who survived did not return to civilization for three years. I had never heard of the USS Jeannette, and how this expedition came to become a reality (privately funded by a newspaper mogul) and the competing theories about the Artic that were floating around in the 19th century. It all makes for fascinating reading.

This was my first book by Hampton Sides. Others are in my “to read” pile. Mr. Sides does a nice job of fleshing out the larger cultural context that surrounds the focus of this narrative. The second half of the nineteenth century was an endlessly fascinating time in the world. A period of vast and immense change, and Sides captures that nicely.

Quotes:
• “The American invents as the Greek sculpted and the Italian painted: it is genius.”
• “We have a good crew, good food, and a good ship, and I think we have the right kind of stuff to dare all that man can do.”
• “Stay good friends and pull together…you must succeed!”
• “We face the future with the firm hope of doing something worthy of ourselves, and worthy of the flag that floats above us.”
• “The Fates seem to be against us.”
• “If ever Divine Providence was manifested in behalf of needy and exposed people, we are an instance of it.”
• “The magnitude of their struggle had forged a forgiving brotherhood.”
• “I can only say that we did our whole duty, that we did all that we could do, and that if we had not tried to do that, we would have been no men at all.”

When some of the inevitable things happened, I found myself unexpectedly sad. I had built a connection with the book’s subjects, and that speaks to Mr. Sides’ skill with the narrative. The last 100 or so pages of IN THE KINGDOM OF ICE are hard to put down. I had never heard of this expedition, so I had no foreknowledge of what happened to it. It made for exciting reading.

I learned some cool things, and I enjoyed the experience too. Great combination.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS is one of those books that very many will enjoy.

It is both plot and character driven.
It is non-fiction that is never dry.
It keeps your interest from start to finish.

Hampton Sides is an author you can rely on. He delivers well composed books that are accurate, interesting and engaging.

The book will appeal not only to those curious about polar history.

I was drawn by the author’s attention to biographical detail. There were thirty-three onboard the Jeanette. Readers are given an in-depth description of many of them. It is often difficult for authors to bring to life such a large cast of characters, but Sides does. Above and beyond the thirty–three on the ship, Hampton Sides also engagingly depicts Captain George Washington De Long’s wife, Emma, the expedition’s financial sponsor, James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841 – 1918) and German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann (1822-1878). If you have perhaps read The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, your interest will be piqued to hear of fellow geographer and Gotha resident Petermann! It is, at least for me, the people, the historical figures, who make history interesting. In this book you learn about them, not only what happens and diverse facts about the weather, the ship, the food and all that the ship carried.

You learn about how people of the 1870s believed it to be up on the North Pole, before anyone had ever been there. Their guesses were all wrong! You learn about the era’s age of invention through a description of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The author makes every topic interesting. The New York Herald’s publisher, James Gordon Bennett, Jr.’s eccentricities, his speed-walking race with John Whipple and his engagement with Caroline May are amusingly described. Anecdotal stories make each person’s idiosyncrasies come alive. You learn about Inuit traditions and beliefs. Some might say the author gets off track. I say, he makes historical events interesting, amusing, captivating.

I have not spoken of the officially named U.S. Arctic Expedition (1879-1881), led by George W. De Long, because that you already know is the book’s central focus. It is good to know that Hampton Sides makes the reader feel what it is like to be in these cold, frigid, frightening expanses. One shivers from both cold and fear.

Arthur Morey narrates the audiobook perfectly. I have given his narration five stars.

If you have enjoyed the classic, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, you must read this.


*******************

The Voyage of the Jeannette: The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, Lieutenant-commander U.S.N. and Commander of the Polar Expedition of 1879-1881, Volume I & II by George Washington De Long
Icebound: the Jeannette Expedition's Quest for the North Pole by Leonard F. Guttridge

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage 4 stars by Alfred Lansing
The Ice Master 2 stars by Jennifer Niven
The Long Exile 4 stars by Melanie McGrath

By Hampton Sides: Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West 4 stars

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

In July 1879 the USS Jeannette, captained by George Washington De Long, sailed from San Francisco heading for the North Pole. According to August Petermann, the foremost geographer of the time, the North Pole lay in the Open Polar Sea. A belt of ice lay around the sea and all that was required to reach the North Pole was to breach through this barrier. It would then be plain sailing. Thousands lined the hills of the bay to watch the ship leave on its voyage to claim the North Pole for the US. Three years later, between May and September 1882, the remaining survivors sailed into New York, their goal unachieved, their friends and colleagues lost.

This was the age of true Polar exploration. So little was known about the North Pole and its environment. Knowledge of the polar regions was largely gleaned from hunters, whaling ships and speculation. This expedition was funded partly by the US Treasury and partly by James Gordon Bennet Jnr, publisher of the New York Herald and wealthy playboy bachelor. [British readers: yes, this is where the expression ‘Gordon Bennett’ comes from!] The Herald was known for its sensationalist news stories. It was Bennett who had sent Stanley to look for Livingstone and that had been a resounding journalistic success. He saw this Arctic venture as another scoop and he had deep enough pockets to fund it. It was Bennett who met with Petermann in Germany to obtain maps and it was Bennett who supplied the ship that would become The Jeannette, named after his sister.

Hampton Sides has written a richly detailed and exciting account of this expedition. By the time the ship sails, we know the crew intimately and their original accounts are used to bring the journey to life. When the ship was feared lost, others were sent to look for her including, in 1881, The Corwin whose crew included the environmentalist John Muir. He had accepted the invitation more because it offered an opportunity to cross the Arctic Circle and experience the icy seas and unspoilt islands than through any desire to find De Long and his crew. He later wrote his own account of that voyage. The Corwin failed as did the others. A whaling ship spotted The Jeannette trapped in the ice pack early on its voyage and it was never seen again. After 21 months drifting with the ice pack, the crew eventually had to abandon ship and watch her sink before crossing a thousand miles of ice and icy seas to reach Siberia. Not all of them made it.

The strength and courage of these men is extraordinary. The temperatures and terrain, the privations, the fear, the starvation, and the pain of frostbite, are unimaginable. In Siberia, their constant movement kept them from freezing to death. Sounds became brittle. The fluids in their faces hardened. ... The cold had become a physical presence, silently snatching the life from the delta in the way that a fire consumes the oxygen in a room. In the coldest hours of the night, their breaths froze in the air and drifted to the ground in glittery clouds which, according to local tribesmen, made a faint tinkling melody called the ‘whisper of the stars’

By most accounts, the men continued to work in teams and respected De Long’s decisions throughout. Despite trying to survive by chewing the leather of their clothes and boot soles, it seems they didn’t resort to cannibalism at any point. The distances they covered are remarkable. Even today, with modern equipment and technology, the terrain is challenging. Hampton Sides account of this story can’t be faulted and is an easy 5 stars. What a splendid way to start my reading year!

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It'll be a terrible injustice (and frankly perplexing) if this book doesn't become one of the big hits of this fall and holiday season.
It's a completely amazing and terrifying real story, which you can look up online fairly easily--DON'T. In the Kingdom of Ice reads like the most unputdownlable fiction and once you start reading you won't want the ending spoiled for you. Save the internet search for after you finish the book, when you'll be dying for just another drop of detail about these larger than life characters.
It does take some 100 pages or so to get into sea voyage itself, and while the first chapters don't have the same urgency as the rest of the book, they are completely engrossing in their own way, thanks to the way Hampton Sides jumps from colorful character to another each chapter, introducing us to the key players in the story and to the whole zeitgeist (in the U.S and abroad) which led to the expedition. You'll get to visit the 1876 Chicago World Fair and get a first taste of ketchup and banana, visit the premier map-making publishers in the world, tucked away in a remote corner of Germany, and their fateful leader, whose theory about the North Pole will leave you astounded it could have been once upon a time considered as truth. You'll also get to meet the society of Gilded-Age New York, including some of its notorious members who can certainly hold their own against the badly-behaved celebrities of today. And this is all before you even get aboard the Jeanette.
The word hero gets tossed around a lot but I don't know what else to call these men who exhibited so much resilience, valor, and superhuman endurance in the most unthinkable of circumstances. Every time you pause your reading to wonder how could have these men survived their hardships, their predicament gets even worse and your fear for their lives increases tenfold again. This happens multiple times and it makes you consider whether you are handling your own very minor problems with the same courage, team spirit, and plain reasonableness as these 30 or so men mustered in an extremely unreasonable situation.
If this could even be adapted into a 3-hour film I can imagine it would be showered with awards, because it's that sort of story, told in the best way possible. As a book, the experience is even more rewarding so make sure you read this one.

[Zora · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. A disappointment. The author almost lost me in the first 200 pages of background information. But I came here and read tepid reviews and was assured it got going 1/3 of the way in, so I skipped ahead to that point and had a better reading experience.

Let me assure you, the author's style is pleasant, and his research is exhaustive. If you're interested in any of his other topics, I suspect you'd enjoy those books. But what is this deal with recent NF books? They include every extraneous detail the author happened upon in his researches into this and that cul-de-sac, and all that has nothing at all to do with the central tale. I don't care that the funder of the expedition had a failed engagement or a pistol duel where everyone missed. In fact, everything about the funding could have been reduced to one paragraph and this would have been a better book for it. I ask you what exactly the duel has to do with a polar adventure! I've complained before about the awful editing of grammar in YA books and wondered if NY editors simply quit doing their jobs about the turn of the century. Here, either Sides or his copy editor (I suspect the former) knows what constitutes a sentence, but someone should have drawn a thick blue line through 175 manuscript pages.

The narrative of the polar survival is pretty good. There are people to root for (De Long, his wife, the doctor, Melville the engineer) and people you're supposed to hate. Sides turns the surviving logs and diaries into a believable story. I thought he missed some opportunities during the long walk to Siberia. He says people have frostbite and chillblains and fell into the thirty-degree water and that they were exhausted...but I never really felt it. The narration is distant, without ever taking us into the body of any sufferer/marcher to feel what that cold was or to smell the rotting flesh or to taste moccasin soup.

Also, the publisher keeps the ebook price insanely inflated, despite that ebooks have no printing or distribution costs. I got my version from the library. If I added that fact in, I'd rate it two stars, but I shan't blame the author for his publisher's poor business practices.

[Namera [The Literary Invertebrate] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I sat here for like five minutes just staring at the screen, trying to think of a way to distil over 400 pages of Arctic glory into a coherent review. I wasn't very successful so here are some random points:

⤅ Hampton Sides is an excellent writer. His pacing was great - it was like reading a horror novel, slowly unfolding before me.

⤅ With fulsome use of biographical detail, he brings all the major players in the De Long polar expedition to life. And what players they are! I'm stunned by the honour and courage his men showed almost to a man, right until the end - a stark contrast from the petty thefts and violence that haunted some other expeditions, like Greely's. Melville, Ambler, and of course De Long himself loom larger than life throughout the book.

⤅ I felt like I was IN the Arctic - or, as they poetically called it, the High North. England might be gripped by high summer, but in my head I was thousands of miles away, freezing and starving and drowning.

A highly recommended read.

[Veeral · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the 1800's was mostly dominated by the Royal Navy as far as the Arctic was concerned. The desire for conquering something uncharted, almost unobtainable, did play a part in that. But the main – and somewhat disenchanting – reason for Britain’s Arctic excursions was purely financial. The English navy, having defeated Napoleon, had nothing major left to do. Most of the seamen were laid off and the officers were working at half pay, so any chances of promotions were really out of the question. Moral was low, and the more ambitious men were getting impatient.

The English Navy saw its salvation in solving the “Arctic problem”, as it came to be later known. In those times, reaching the North Pole (and also discovering the North West Passage) seemed as elusive as colonization of Mars might seem to us today. Theoretically not impossible, but not entirely possible if looked at in a practical way. So, a successful Arctic exploration could bring instant fame, promotion, and not to mention a book deal or two, which really attracted the men of otherwise temporarily stagnant English navy.

Nobody knew what exactly lay at the pole or if there existed a trade route (the North West passage) through the Arctic connecting Asia and Europe. There was even a theory that the North Pole was not covered in ice but there existed a tropical ocean, which the proponents of the theory had dubbed as “Open Polar Sea”, in which they further conjectured that might be teeming with marine life and may even be host to a long lost civilization.

One ardent supporter of the “Open Polar Sea” theory was a prominent German geographer and mapmaker August Petermann, whose maps were renowned for their accuracy. Petermann also thought that Wrangel Land (situated above the north eastern coast of Siberia) was an extended part of Greenland (to visualize: think as if Greenland was a lying Pinocchio and its nose extended right up to the north eastern coast of Russia). Petermann was often scoffed at by many explorers and Arctic experts for his Wrangel Land theories, so he wanted to prove them wrong. But being strictly an armchair explorer and Arctic “expert”, he needed someone, a real explorer, to do that for him.

But Petermann never got along with the English, so when he visited the United States at its Centennial Exposition (World Fair) in 1876 where he saw the inventions of geniuses like Graham Bell and Thomas Edison among others, he was convinced that finally the United States was capable of launching a major Arctic expedition.

But as I said earlier, he needed a proven explorer. Enter George Washington De Long. De Long was involved in the search of the United States’ disastrous Polaris expedition which made him a hero back in the United States, thanks to the coverage given by a reporter of the New York Herald who had accompanied De Long on his search for the men of Polaris Expedition.

The New York Herald was owned by an eccentric multimillionaire, James Gordon Bennett Jr. who was a firm believer of sensational journalism (I am sure the term did not exist back then). And Bennett was really weird. Think Howard Hughes weird. No, he didn’t piss in jars, in case you were wondering. Because why waste jars when you can expose yourself in front of guests in your fiancée’s party and urinate perfectly in her drawing room?

Yes, he really was strange and Hampton Sides has done a really good job of depicting all his eccentricities in the book. But it was Bennett who sent Stanley in Africa to search for Livingstone. It didn’t really matter that Livingstone didn’t need to be found in the first place, Bennett was just looking for the scoop of the decade. The coverage of Stanley’s encounter with Livingstone made both Stanley and New York Herald a household name. So, Bennett eagerly agreed to fund De Long’s whole Arctic voyage to recreate the same sensationalism he had achieved by sending Stanley to find Livingstone.

George De Long acquired a proven ship in Britain (HMS Pandora) which Bennett renamed Jeannette (for his sister). De Long and his wife, Emma, then crossed the Atlantic on the Jeannette to San Francisco, where Jeannette was refitted ably with the guidance of US Navy engineers. Emma, De Long’s wife, unlike other wives of the explorers of the era, took active interest in planning of the voyage. She became so much adept in her knowledge of the Arctic that at one time, she even thought of accompanying her husband on the voyage.





De Long prepared meticulously for the voyage. So much so that he even took two of Graham Bell’s telephones and Edison’s lighting devices (arc lamps) with him.

The proposition for USS Jeannette was to sail through the Bering Strait. One (then) recently published article suggested that a powerful warm ocean current (like Gulf Stream which originates from the Bay of Mexico) called Kuro Siwo flowed from Japan towards the north, which flowed under the “ice ring” that surrounded the “Open Polar Sea”. So, it might be possible to push through the ice by following the Kuro Siwo where the ice pack might not be as formidable as it was in other places on the ring.



Thus, based on these erroneous assumptions, De Long sailed for the “Open Polar Sea”.

I am not going to discuss the actual voyage of USS Jeannette here as Hampton Sides has done it quite wonderfully in the book. Hampton Sides has stuck to a more or less chronological timeline while writing about the events which, I think, makes this book highly readable. So if you don’t know anything about the voyage of USS Jeannette (I didn’t), and if you are planning to read this book, my advise would be to refrain from searching anything about it on the internet.

But even without knowing anything beforehand about the polar voyage of USS Jeannette, it's not hard to guess that De Long didn’t find the “Open Polar Sea” (spoiler: It doesn’t exist). But he was able to prove “experts” like Petermann wrong. The Wrangel Land was only an island, not a part of Greenland. He also found that Petermann’s maps were nowhere near accurate. He noted ruefully that the “Open Polar Sea” theory should be put to rest forever. He also discovered some new islands — Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett — which in Russia, are now known as Ostrova De Long. So in a way, De Long didn’t really go on a fool’s errand after all.

George Washington De Long was a competent leader. He had a good ship, a capable crew (33 in all, including De Long), and Bennett had spared no expense to provision the ship. If only the theories were true, there is no doubt that he would have succeeded in discovering the “Open Polar Sea”. Maybe he was born a couple of hundred years too early. Global Warming might yet melt all the ice in the Arctic (2050’s-60’s, according to modern science) and in fact make it possible to reach the North Pole in a ship after all (though I think finding a lost civilization there might take a little bit longer than that).

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: Do not read anything about this book before you actually read the book. Going in cold made it so interesting.

Such a great book. Everybody kept telling me how good it was but I’ve left it sitting on the shelf because I really didn’t see the appeal of reading a 400-page book about tragedy.

Fortunately, this book is not about tragedy. It’s about exploration. And that’s why you shouldn’t read anything about the story ahead of time. If you go in without any information then you get to make the journey with them, seeing everything from their perspective. Sides only gives you information when you have to have it so that you are right inside the atmosphere of the time.

Sides does a great job with this book. He had a lot of information to work with and puts it all together brilliantly. He knows just when to move you from place to place but also exactly how to move you in a way that gives you the most bang for the buck.

[Bon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very scarred now! But a fantastic depiction of how it All Went Wrong. Up there with Erik Larson for skilled nonfiction storytelling for me.

[Alisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that keeps me firmly rooted as a nonfiction reader. You just cannot make this stuff up! The author had a wealth of original source material at his disposal and with his fine storytelling and writing skills delivers a gripping account of this little-known rugged polar mission in the late 1800s.

The book starts out with the story of James Gordon Bennett Jr., the newspaper executive who would become the primary sponsor of the mission of the USS Jeannette. Bennett was wealthy, eccentric, impulsive, and when it came to his newspaper, the New York Herald, he was enterprising. Bennett was always seeking out notoriety and didn't care much if the story was entirely true as long as his name was associated with it. He sent his reporters everywhere chasing stories and published the most sensational. That included a story of exotic animals busting out of their cages in the Central Park Zoo and wildly mauling people on the streets of New York. It turned out not to be true, but no matter. It certainly captured people's attention. Bennett craved a big project he could associate with and when he was approached by George De Long seeking a benefactor for a polar expedition, it was the perfect match. The two men could not have been more different, but the passion project became their shared bond.

In 1878, the polar ice cap was largely unnavigated. There were theories about what existed on the northern cap. It was thought that an ocean current from Japan swept toward the arctic, under an ice ring, and surfaced to form calm seas and navigable waters creating a Polar Sea. There was a theory that there was a hole at the top of the earth that created a kind of ocean whirlpool. There was some speculation it could be an ice field that housed exotic wildlife that could survive subzero environments. No one really knew of course because many expeditions that set out to explore it never returned. The few that did return reported horrifying encounters, barely surviving their frozen ordeals. But this was also a time of exploration, and America had an appetite for proving their worth. What better way than to send a ship to navigate the north pole!

De Long was a worthy seaman, and was ready to captain such an adventure. He pitched his cause to the US Navy for their support, and was heartily endorsed. Bennett purposed a ship out of England, sailed it to the US for refitting into an arctic sailing vessel, and financially backed all the needed upgrades, supplies, and resources that De Long needed. De Long, with his wife and young daughter and a few crew members, sailed the ship from New York to San Francisco where the it was structurally reinforced and outfitted with all manner of food and supplies, and De Long set about to hire and assemble a crew. The USS Jeannette and its crew of 32 set sail for the Polar north out of San Francisco in July 1879.

And then navigation adventure really takes off.
It's hard to go into any detail of the expedition without hinting at how it all turns out, and although it is hardly a spoiler to reveal it 140 years later I'm reluctant to do so for fear of ruining the reading experience. The expedition that set sail in the summer of 1879 from San Francisco ended in Siberia in late 1881. Recognition, ceremonies, receptions were had in the US in 1882.

The characters in this book are well developed as is the action, the scenery, and atmosphere. The relationships and sense of order the men form is fascinating. At one point they pick up sled dogs and a couple of Alaskan Native tribal members to join them, which introduces another dynamic. The maps they had were crude and proved inaccurate. The tools they had were rustic yet the men were very resourceful in making good use of what they had at their disposal. The scientific information they collected along the way contributed important knowledge to navigation and the conditions of the polar north.

This was a compelling book and I could not put it down.
I read it on my Kindle but wish I would have bought the book. It has maps which were hard to enlarge and lots of pictures in the back. Whatever the format, highly recommend this one.

[Sheila · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish this book. There was way to much filler in it.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

To tell the truth, polar exploring never held much fascination for me. The only thing that makes me think it might be magical is that so many explorers have mentioned the quality of the light. But the idea that one would risk one’s life and spend more than two years to “get through the ice pack” really seems like a dumb idea to me.

Given that, I probably was not the ideal reader for this book, but I took on this story because I thought maybe all would become clear. Sides tries to make it sound exciting, but he spends a lot of time going over the lives of the financial backers (James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of The New York Herald), and detailing the previous failed attempts to reach the North Pole. By the time the men leave San Francisco bay July 8, 1879, it already feels too late.

The U.S.S. Jeannette was first burdened with the task of trying to locate Adolf Nordenskiold's Scandinavian expedition to find a "Northeast Passage" which was seriously past its return date. The detour to Siberia meant the Jeannette's crew was late in getting off on the real purpose of their journey and indeed, once through the Bering Strait, they became stuck in pack ice. “Wintering in the pack may be a thrilling thing to read about,” DeLong wrote. Well, not so much, really.

Anyway, for two years these folks tried to free themselves and their ship from the relentless cold and shifting ice. The ice pack would move them northwest, only to circle back later. Eventually all choice was taken from them when their ship was crushed by the enormous forces of the ice. It is a frustrating story of hardship and heartbreak, though some of the men made it out alive to tell the tale and pass on locations of the ship’s log, which had to be abandoned.

What they learned was practically all negative: the maps and theories of the polar regions being floated at the time, notably those of the German cartographer August Petermann, were dead wrong. But they did discover a couple of islands (Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett seen below) and they learned that arctic ice is constantly in motion. In 1884, some years after Jeannette was wrecked in 1881, some of Jeannette’s wreckage (one of DeLong’s sealskin boots), washed up in Greenland, proving the ice movement absolutely.

Sketches of Islands Discovered by U.S.S. Jeannette

Sides does a remarkable job of research, and for those interested in polar exploration, this book must be a wondrous cache of riches. Sides collected the mass of information in a complete and rounded way, stretching long before and long after the two-and-a half years of the expedition. I, however, came away wondering at the choices of some folks. They prepared the best way they could at the time, and did amazingly well finding folks they thought might be able to take the isolation and challenges they were to face. I note that the innovative Mr.-Fixit-Melville was the man who ended up writing the stories of the others who died. He had both heart and brains and survived to tell the tale. There were other exceptional men among their number, Neidermann among them, who could take any amount of cold and physical toil. Tales of their exploits still thrill us. But the cost? These are the trade-offs men make.

[Chris Steeden · Rating 5 out of 5]

The South Pole seemed unobtainable to those explorers and adventurers in the northern hemisphere in the 1870s. They had their eye on the North Pole instead. They had no idea what they would find up there. New colonies or species? How about minerals that could be seized? Ultimately, they wanted to get to a place where no human had been before.

Americans were coming out the other side of the Civil War. What better way to unite a divided country than an ambitious expedition of discovery? They had bought Alaska in 1867 pushing the country even further north. There was a cautionary tale though that they needed to take heed of. That of the ‘Polaris’ that got into immense trouble in the Arctic. The wonderfully named author, Hampton Sides, provides the details of that disastrous voyage before the polar expedition undertaken by the USS Jeannette.

You certainly do not think of the US as a great seaworthy nation during the Victorian times and you’d be right to think that, ‘Although the U.S. Navy was slowly making advancements, many European nations viewed the tiny, anti-quated American fleet as a joke. According to naval historian Peter Karsten, it was “a third-rate assemblage” of “old tubs” in “various states of disrepair . . . the laughingstock of the world.”’ They were, though, coming to the fore with engineering inventions to the chagrin of some Europeans. An eminent German professor and the most famous geographer of the time, August Petermann, was convinced that the age of discovery should now include the US. He felt that the US was best placed for Arctic discovery.

Sides introduces us to the main characters and what characters they are. The stories of them are wonderfully told. Then he turns to the preparation and the actual expedition. You feel you know the characters and you do urge them on after they hit obstacle after obstacle, but you know their fate from the start. This is really great storytelling. I was all in to this book.

I’ll leave the last words to the man who led the ill-fated trip on the USS Jeannette, George De Long. The ship was stuck in ice at the time: “Wintering in the pack may be a thrilling thing to read about alongside a warm fire, but the actual thing is sufficient to make any man prematurely old. A crisis may occur at any moment, and we can do nothing but be thankful in the morning that it has not come during the night, and at night that it has not come since the morning. Living over a powder-mill waiting for an explosion would be a similar mode of existence.” I’ll take the warm fire option.

[Nicole R · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the moment I saw the description of this book I knew I was going to love it. Tales of survival intrigue me and tales of survival in the polar reaches of our planet are simply mind-blowing.

I take for granted all of the science we know about our planet and how relatively safe it is to travel to its far reaches. But it wasn't too long ago when that wasn't the case. In the 1870's, no human had been to the North Pole, few explorers had even forayed into the Arctic Circle, and hypotheses ran wild as to what man would eventually find at the top of the world.

The prevailing hypothesis was that there was an Open Polar Ocean teeming with life that could easily be explored if the ring of pack ice that surrounded it could be penetrated. Explorers from all countries dashed north along the coasts of Greenland only to turn back tired, injured, and dejected by the frigid climes...if they survived at all. Then, one man, George De Long, decided to take a different approach.

Backed by New York Herald mogul, Bennett, and informed by map extraordinaire, Petermann, De Long assembles a top-notch (and U.S. Navy approved) crew to sail from San Francisco, through the Bering Strait, and on to the North Pole in the USS Jeannette. The expedition is riddled with slight mis-timings and unforeseen events from the beginning, events that were completely unpredictable because the prevailing scientific through of the Arctic was completely false at the time. These events add up to a harrowing three years enduring gridlock in the ice, traversing the polar sea, and trudging through Siberia.

There are no words to describe what these men went through. I just cannot comprehend the mental and emotional trials to put one foot in front of the other, to get through one more day. Their story is amazing and I had never even heard of it before Mr. Sides brought it to life in vivid detail and thrilling prose. While the story of the Jeannette is enough to keep you riveted, Sides works in compelling personal stories, brief historical sidebars, and absolutely fascinating scientific history on the theory of oceanic currents and the Arctic.

I read Endurance last year and was struck that the story of the USS Jeannette is even more harrowing, more unbelievable, and more challenging than that of the iconic Shackleton. I highly recommend this book!