The Ice Master - Hardcover

Niven, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333779606 ISBN 13: 9780333779606

Publisher: MacMillan, 2000

Synopsis

This is a story of a disasterous expedition, treacherous crew members and extraordinary bravery. Drawing on previously unpublished letters of journals of crew members, their decendants and interviews with survivors, this book is the account of one of the most ambitious - and disasterous - Artic expeditions ever mounted. The Karluk set of in September 1913 and the ship and its crew were soon imprisoned in ice, abandoned by the expedition's leader. For five months those left behind eked out an existence on board, until they were forced to leave the ship when she was crushed by powerful ice floes. The ship went down in january 1914, and for two more months the ship's company lived on the polar icepack. Finally, the captain left his crew and walked seven hundred miles across the Artic to search for help. He reached civilization in May 1914 and the handful of survivors were finally rescued by a tiny schooner in September 1914. This is their story.

About this title

Review:

Eighty-five years after a famous but ill-equipped Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 had sacrificed 16 lives, some artifacts appeared on an Internet auction site. They had originated at a "ghost camp," discovered in 1924, where four of the expedition's 28 men, one woman, and two children had perished. Jennifer Niven has completed the unfulfilled mission of survivor William McKinlay to produce a "more honest and revealing account" of the wreck of the Karluk and its aftermath.

The explorers became split into several dispersed groups living "in the shadow of death." Their simultaneously grim and gruesome experiences are interwoven in this minutely detailed and atmospheric retelling, created by combining and comparing firsthand accounts and other sources. The characters are vividly re-created, from the expedition's self-interested leader, whom McKinlay called "a consummate liar and cheat," to the heroic ship's master, who struggled over 700 miles to organize a rescue. Supplemented by haunting and fascinating photographs, The Ice Master makes for harrowing and compulsive reading. This is a momentous story of the Arctic; of adventure, misadventure, and the heights of human endurance. But it is also a story of human failings and the waste of young lives, as poignant now as it was when it was big news in 1914. --Karen Tiley, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Jennifer Niven read English at Drew University, New Jersey and then took an MFA at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. She has worked as a screenwriter and, most recently, as an Associate Producer at ABC Television. She lives in LA and this is her first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: MacMillan
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0333779606
• ISBN 13: 9780333779606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416