In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
Hampton Sides
The great achievement of Hampton Sides’ unforgettable new book about a group of American Arctic explorers only becomes apparent halfway into its 400-plus pages.
In the Kingdom of Ice tells the story of an almost entirely forgotten episode that unfolded at the very end of the Age of Exploration, when the U.S. sent off an expedition to one of the last corners of the globe as yet unknown to man: the North Pole.
It’s 1879 and there are no satellites to warn the men of unseen hazards, or freaky turns in the weather. The men might go to sleep sailing on an open ocean and find it completely frozen over the next morning.
Before the adventure begins, Sides (author of the best-selling World War II story Ghost Soldiers) spends 15 chapters setting the stage for the expedition, which was led by George Washington DeLong, a U.S. Navy officer, and financed by the bon vivant James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of the New York Herald.
Several ill-fated expeditions had tried to map the pole before. DeLong had helped rescue the crew of the 1871 Polaris expedition, which helped make him a national hero. When a new effort to reach the pole was proposed, DeLong seemed the logical man to lead it.
Many people had died exploring the Arctic, but DeLong had no trouble finding men to join him. “These young men thirsted for some of the glory their fathers had won on the battlefields of the Civil War, and they yearned to test their manhood in some suitably daunting and adventurous endeavor,” Sides writes.
He describes the personalities who joined to organize the expedition: a legendary German geographer, newspaper mogul Bennett, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and assorted other entrepreneurs and inventors.
It’s when the USS Jeannette finally sets sail that Sides’ book comes most fully to life as a pulse-racing epic of endurance.
As DeLong and his men approach the Bering Strait, the native peoples and the animal life they see have been brought down by the same plagues and excesses that devastated the western United States.
In the Arctic Sea, the men search for a legendary place called Wrangle Land. It’s been seen by local whalers but only as a shadow on the horizon. DeLong sails toward it — and promptly gets stuck in the ice.
Sides’ descriptions of the physical challenges the men face and the eerie landscape that surrounds them are masterful. As DeLong and his crew attempt to save themselves, the story grows in suspense and psychological complexity. Several of the men turn against one another. They improvise solutions with driftwood. They head for the northern coast of Asia, and Siberia — even then it was known as a land of frozen nothingness and exiles.
Strange and fantastic turns follow, involving uncharted and uninhabited lands. Sides’ book is a masterful work of history and storytelling, and it rewards patient readers with scenes of human strength and frailty they will long remember.