The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole 1818-1909 (First Edtiion) - Hardcover

Berton, Pierre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771012667 ISBN 13: 9780771012662

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 1988

Synopsis

Berton brings the story of the remarkable adventurers in the history of the Arctic exploration to life in all their glories and eccentricities--including some shocking revelations about who really reached the Pole. Tour.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Scores of nineteenth-century expeditions battled savage cold, relentless ice and winter darkness in pursuit of two great prizes: the quest for the elusive Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific and the international race to reach the North Pole. Pierre Berton's #1 best-selling book brings to life the great explorers: the pious and ambitious Edward Parry, the flawed hero John Franklin, ruthless Robert Peary and the cool Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He also credits the Inuit, whose tracking and hunting skills saved the lives of the adventurers and their men countless times.

These quests are peopled with remarkable figures full of passion and eccentricity. They include Charles Hall, an obscure printer who abandoned family and business to head to a frozen world of which he knew nothing; John Ross, whose naval career ended when he spotted a range of mountains that didn't exist; Frederick Cook, who faked reaching the North Pole; and Jane Franklin, who forced an expensive search for her missing husband upon a reluctant British government.

Pierre Berton, who won his first Governor General's award for The Mysterious North, here again gives us an important and fascinating history that reads like a novel as he examines the historic events of the golden age of Arctic exploration.

From the Back Cover:

Culled from extensive research of handwritten diaries and private journals, Arctic Grail is the definitive book on the age of arctic exploration and adventure. Journey across the ice with a Who's Who of polar explorers, men of every temperament, including the pious and ambitious Edward Perry, the first explorer to probe deep into the Arctic labyrinth; Adolphus Greely, a Civil War veteran who had to watch his men starve to death on Ellesmere Island; Robert McClure, who claimed that he was the first to find the fabled Northwest Passage; and the flawed hero John Franklin, a meek naval officer whose expeditions were responsible for the deaths of more men than those of any other Arctic explorer. Travel with the adventurer Roald Amundsen, the cool Norwegian who completed a voyage in a tiny sloop that the British Navy failed to accomplish with its great three-masted ships; Frederick Cook, who lied about reaching the North Pole; and finally, the ruthless and paranoid Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909. As much about the explorers who braved impossible odds as it is about each expedition, Arctic Grail is an epic account of the Golden Age of Exploration at the top of the world. (6 X 9, 672 pages, b&w photos, maps, illustrations)

About this edition

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0771012667
• ISBN 13: 9780771012662
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672