In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder was perhaps my favorite book of this entire journey so far, so I was eagerly anticipating my next read from this hugely entertaining writer. Sides is a master storyteller, and all of his gifts are on magnificent display here, detailing the ‘grand and terrible’ voyage of the USS Jeannette and her fateful exploration of the Arctic.

The story of the Jeannette seems to have been lost to history for most Americans. I had certainly never heard of the ship or the story of its crew. It’s a shame because the mission riveted the entire world in 1881 when word spread that the vessel had vanished. Its exploits were front-page reading for most Americans.

The USS Jeannette was an exploring expedition that set out in 1879 to discover what exactly lay at the top of the Earth. At the time, the Arctic was a mystery, though surveyors and cartographers like Silas Bent and August Petermann had developed a theory of an Open Polar Sea, a tepid Arctic basin fed by two warm water currents - the Atlantic’s Gulf Stream and the Pacific’s Kuro Siwo. By following these streams, an explorer could, theoretically, make their way safely through the ice pack and uncover not only the Open Polar Sea but perhaps lost civilizations as well.

Fearing the fate of a previous disastrous expedition that took the Gulf Stream route, the crew of the Jeannette opted for the Kuro Siwa instead, traveling through the Bering Strait on their path to fortune and glory.

The expedition was to be led by George Washington De Long, a US Navy officer and explorer with previous Arctic experience, and funded by newspaper editor and international playboy James Gordon Bennett Jr.

We’re treated to extensive profiles of both men in the book’s opening chapters, and the passages on Bennett especially make for hilarious and head-shaking enjoyment. We tag along as Bennett fabricates newspaper stories of rampaging zoo animals, competes in fast-walking competitions, and drunkenly pisses into a piano at his fiance’s New Year’s Eve party, ostracizing him from New York City high society and speeding him on his eventual abscondment to Paris.

De Long meanwhile puts together a crew of 33 mostly extraordinary men for his mission. They prepare for a minimum two-year journey and haul along a staggering amount of supplies, food, and scientific gear - almost all of which would serve them well.

The early part of their journey unfolds well enough. Sailing from San Francisco, they pick up more men and dogs in Alaska and replenish their coal supplies, before entering the ice pack. But it’s here that the journey takes a turn that beggars belief. The ship gets stuck in the ice - that part was predictable - but they proceed to wait out their confinement for nearly two years!

With determination and esprit de corps that seems unimaginable now, the entire crew waits out their imprisonment while engaging in scientific experiments and exploratory forays along the way.

Eventually, they break free of their frozen cage but the ship is then pulverized by new ice flows that shatter its hull, eventually crippling the vessel beyond repair, sending it to the bottom of the sea.

The men abandon ship and then undertake a harrowing, months-long journey across the mishmash chaos of slush, ice, and the occasional permafrosted island as they make their way south to Siberia. But even this doesn’t begin to describe the incredible feat that these men engaged in. One of the officers, Danenhower, noted that each day, every man “voted this the hardest day’s work he had ever done in his life.”

Keep in mind that this entire time, these men are hauling multiple boats, incredible amounts of food, journals, tools, journals, and supplies, and in spite of their struggles, they actually are floating away from their destination due to the ice flows they found themselves inhabiting.

From the place of the Jeannette’s sinking, they had covered nearly a thousand miles—though most of the men, having backtracked multiple times across the ice cap to haul belongings, actually had trekked a distance in excess of twenty-five hundred miles.

2,500 miles! Across ice! Hauling literally multiple tons of gear.

There was far too much to haul in one trip, so they had to double back—and sometimes triple back—to bring up everything from the rear. This meant that for many of the haulers, each mile of forward progress actually represented a distance of five miles traversed. A full day of this Sisyphean business could mean twenty-five miles or more of ceaseless struggle. It would have constituted slave labor even on hard, dry ground, but this slob ice, with all its gaping holes and intervening sea-lanes, was the most trying terrain imaginable—as a landscape, said De Long, it was “terribly confused.”

And they did this for months! All the while suffering from a variety of ailments from frostbite to snow-blindness, lead poisoning, even for Danenhower, syphilis.

Finally, they come upon open water again just a few miles out from the coast of Siberia’s Lena Delta. But unfortunately, this would be the beginning of the end for the crew. They separate into three different boats and get separated during a brutal winter storm that rages for days. One of the boats never reaches land. The other two end up hundreds of miles apart.

And somehow, in spite of all they’d survived, Siberia would be their stiffest challenge yet. Many of the remaining men die of starvation and exposure but a handful, with the help of native tribes and Russian officials, make it to civilization and are rescued.

The degree to which I’m condensing this story feels almost criminal as there is so much packed into Sides’ book - you really just have to experience it for yourself. I loved every minute of this brilliant, page-turning tale. It’s a shame that men that made such sacrifices for scientific discovery have largely been forgotten. As for the book, it’s another masterful accomplishment for Hampton Sides.