Eighty-five years after a famous, but ill-equipped, Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 had sacrificed 16 lives, some artefacts appeared on an Internet auction site. They had originated at a "ghost camp" discovered i n 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 simultaneous grim and gruesome experiences are interwoven in this minutely detailed and atmospheric retelling, created by combining and comparing separate first-hand accounts and other sources.
The characters are vividly recreated, from the expedition's self-interested leader, whom McKinlay named "a consummate liar and cheat", to the heroic ship's master who struggled over 700 miles to organise a rescue. Supplemented by haunting and fascinating photographs, The Ice Master can be harrowing and touching. It makes exciting 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.
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