Títutulu Original: In the kingdom of ice: the grand and terrible polar voyage of the USS Jeannette
Year of publication: 2015
Translation: Miguel Marqués
Valoración: Highly recommended
Although for the title it may seem, this is not a review of Frozen. So Keep Calm and to endure a new turra on polar dreams! The trip that we bring you today (can this be considered an oxymoron?) Is that of the American Arctic Expedition (1879-1882), which, aboard the USS Jeannette and in command of George W. de Long, intended to reach the North Pole crossing the Bering Strait and bordering the Siberian coast.
Spoiler: They did not arrive. Moreover, what happened to them, in the words of George Melville, an expedition engineer, was:
(…) that the ship had split from America and crossed the ocean, which had been trapped in the ice and sailed to drift for 2 years, that the banquis crushed it and ended sinking, that 33 men were forced to march For 3 months on the ice, dragging 3 vessels, until they find open waters, which the 3 vessels had separated during a storm (…)
You can imagine, therefore, that the USS Jeannette’s expedition was, for the most major decisions and dilemmas that can change destinations.
In this sense, the entire book can be read as a great adventure novel, both for the facts itself and by the structure chosen by the author. Now that I think about it, I find it strange that there is no series or a film about the expedition because there is a very clear poetic in the book on everything that one leaves behind until reaching death (wife and children, the ship, the sleds, the papers, the companions …) and the occasional image has a tremendous visual power (some men emerging from the mud on a beach, as if the semi -legal creatures of Ramiro Pinilla were treated). Fix, for example, in the Laconism of the last entries of the Long’s diary, infinitely less known than those of Scott but as terrible and bleak as those of the British:
Monday, October 24. Day 134. It has been a hard night.
Tuesday, October 25. Day 135
Wednesday, October 26. Day 136
Thursday, October 27. Day 137. IVIVER IS MORIBENTE
Friday, October 28. Day 138. IVIVER HAS DEAD AT THE TIME
Saturday, October 29. Day 139. Dressler has died during the night
Sunday, October 30. Day 140. Boyd and Görtz have died during the night. Mr. Collins is about to die.
In any case, it would be extremely reductionist to keep that reading because every trip of these characteristics is the result of circumstances and a social, political, scientific, cultural, etc. Thus, the author dedicates about 200 of the 550 pages of the book to that context and for this it is served, in addition to Long’s own, in two characters as antagonistic as the magnate of the press, and patron of the expedition, James Gordon Bennett and German geographer August Petermann.
Through characters like these, such as the Naturalist of Scottish origin John Muir or the aforementioned George Melville, the author tells us about a nation under reconstruction, of the Arctic dream as incarnation of the aspirations of the young republic of becoming a world power , of economic interests and the scarce or zero respect for the original peoples (right now that a certain character of orange leather wants to “buy” Greenland), etc. It is these other aspects of the book that make this rise beyond a polar epic.
Finally, In the ice kingdom It is a magnificent and terrible history very well told, of those that make one pass later (and for) hours looking for data on places such as the land of Wrangel, the Diomedes Islands, the Aleutian Islands or New Siberia or peoples such as the Yakutos or The Chukchis. Will it be serious, Doctor?
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/02/hampton-sides-en-el-reino-del-hielo-el.html
