Since reading The Worst Journey in the World a few years ago
I’ve been fascinated by explorers, particularly those venturing into the polar
regions. Where Scott and his men were attempting to reach the South Pole, In
The Kingdom of Ice is concerned with the other side of the world and takes
place in the previous century, at a time when it was believed that once you
broke through the ice around the Bering Strait you’d follow warm currents into
a warm, open sea around a temperate Pole.
Unfortunately for the USS Jeanette and her
men, they were soon to discover that this was very far from the case.
A non-fiction book that reads like a thriller (which was no
doubt helped by the fact that I hadn’t the first clue about this expedition or
its outcome) I read this book in two sittings, huddled under a duvet and
tearing through the pages long into the night as the ship became first trapped
in ice (for over a bleeding year!) and then sank, leaving her men stranded in
the Arctic with no hope of rescue.
The sheer determination it must have taken
for them not to have given up there and then is unimaginable to me – and that’s
even before the attempts to try and cross the ocean, then Siberia, in the hopes
of stumbling across salvation. That anyone made it back at all is astonishing.
That someone then went back in the hopes of finding those still missing is truly
astounding.
I take my hat off to all of the incredible people in our
history who have taken on such incredible feats, and to the people who write
about them and let me experience (albeit from the comfort and safety of my
living room) even a little of their magnificence.
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