In The Kingdom of Ice; The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette

If you want to be in the proper frame of mind to read Hampton Side's gripping tale In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette (#464) it's probably best to read it in the depths of winter.  The privations that the crew of the Jeanette endured over the course of their quest to be the first to succeed in sailing to the North Pole are no prettified Disney Frozen version.  The telling of their story encompasses ambition, ego, eccentricity, grit, determination, nobility, and bad luck in equal measures.  Hampton Sides does a masterful job in bringing this now-forgotten episode of naval history to life.

In the 1870s, when the idea for a grand expedition to sail to the North Pole was launched, it's amazing to realize that the best scientific minds of the time thought that the North Pole was a place of temperate, even tropical seas, and that once a vessel succeeded in breaching the girdle of ice in the northern latitudes, that it would be smooth sailing to the Pole itself.  James Gordon Bennett, the young eccentric playboy owner and editor of The New York Herald had sent out his reporter Stanley to deepest, darkest Africa to report on Dr. Livingston.  Livingston wasn't lost, but those headlines "Doctor Livingston, I presume?" sold millions of papers.  Bennett was looking for another sensational story to boost the circulation of his paper, and what better way than to fund a voyage to the North Pole, the Holy Grail of explorers at the time?

He found the perfect expedition leader in the person of young naval Lieutenant George Washington DeLong.  With Bennett providing unlimited funds, DeLong was able to locate and outfit the ship Jeanette for the purpose, along with a crew of thirty-three hearty souls, all volunteers.  Of course, one member of that number was a reporter for The New York Herald.  All members of the crew knew that they would be gone for several years at least.  That is, if they made it back at all.

After reading the harrowing story of  the USS Jeanette being locked in the polar ice cap for two years, it seemed that the remarkable crew might all make it home alive, but that was the point where their luck disappeared.  It is astonishing under the circumstances that any members of the expedition made it back to the United States alive, but a number of them did.  Even more amazing was the fact that Lieutenant DeLong preserved the log books and records from the voyage, and that these papers eventually were returned to the United States as well.  This real-life saga of determination and endurance is not to be missed if you are interested in forgotten American history.