Two key words in the subtitle set the stage for this enthralling and mesmerizing tale--grand and terrible. Hampton Sides has a knack for bringing history to life, as he did in Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder; In the Kingdom of Ice is another winner.
Sides adds to our ongoing fascination with heroic tales of voyages to the polar caps. To the list that includes Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary, Ernest Shackleton, we can now add U.S. Navy Commander George W. DeLong, of the USS Jeannette. New York Herald newspaper tycoon James Gordon Bennett Jr., fresh from bankrolling Henry Morton Stanley's successful expedition to find Dr. David Livingstone, was ready for another grand investment. After personally securing the best maps available from the great Arctic expert August Petermann, Bennett was ready to hire his commander. DeLong was already famous for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland in 1873, and when Bennett offered, DeLong "leapt at the opportunity."
The "Polar Problem," as it was called then, loomed large and mysterious. Scientists believed that the Arctic Pole was warm, the open water tepid and easy to sail, teeming with strange new species of sea life. Petermann believed the best route to the Arctic was the Bering Sea; Bennett and DeLong agreed. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette--outfitted with a steam engine, desalination apparatus, three years of provisions and cases of Budweiser--set sail from San Francisco with a crew of 30 chosen by DeLong (a newspaperman from the Herald accompanied them). Sides notes that an 11-gun salute roared from the ramparts of the Presidio. DeLong's journal, later recovered, provided Sides with many of the details that give his book depth and credibility.
In August, the ship stopped in Alaska to take on more coal, as well as dogs and two Inuits to handle them, then sailed on. In early September, an American whaling fleet spotted the Jeannette several miles to the north near Herald Island, trailing a shifting plume of black smoke. It was the last sighting of the ship. That month, ice 15 feet thick and massive floes battered the ship, eventually trapping it. On November 13, the sun set and the crew was "plunged in nearly complete darkness." The year turned. In January 1881, the ship began to leak. The grand part was over; the terrible part had begun.
Even though the outcome is known, adventure-loving readers will find much to enjoy in Sides's suspenseful telling of this tragic and heroic tale. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher
Shelf Talker: A powerful tale of a little-known 19th-century Arctic expedition that was both grand and terrible.