Exploration & Discovery, General & Miscellaneous World History

Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole

Name: Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole
Author: Fergus Fleming
ISBN: 9780802140364

by Fergus Fleming

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Overview

"In the nineteenth century, the North Pole was a tantalizing mystery. Was it a continent of alien beings? Was it a portal into unknown inner worlds? Was it an open sea or a wilderness of ice? When Sir John Franklin went missing in 1845 explorers welcomed the opportunity to find out. Over the next one hundred years Britain, the United States, Russia, Germany, and dozens of other countries raced to be first at the top of the globe." Picking up where his widely acclaimed Barrow's Boys left off, Fergus Fleming's Ninety Degrees North is a high-octane, swash-buckling history of the "ice-clumped lunatics" who vied to conquer ultimate north. Intrepid, obsessive, sometimes just plain insane, they endured scurvy, months-long ice traps, unspeakable deprivation, polar bear attacks, and sunless -100 degrees F winters that often led to mutiny and madness. Their methods - ships, sledges, skis, hot-air balloons, planes, and zeppelins - were as varied as their theories were fantastical. Some of them returned as national heroes; others, such as the impostor Frederick Cook, returned to be denounced as charlatans; still others, such as the mysteriously poisoned Francis Hall, never returned at all. Fleming's larger-than-life cast of characters includes the playboy and media mogul James Gordon Bennett, who orchestrated expeditions solely to sell newspapers; and of course, the most controversial figure in Arctic exploration, Robert Peary, who perservered in his quest for fame despite having lost eight toes to frostbite. Was Peary the first to reach the Pole in 1909, as he liked to claim? Or was it almost forty years later when a Soviet team, shrouded in Cold War secrecy, became the first to set foot there?

Synopsis

In the nineteenth century, theories about the North Pole ran rampant. Was it an open sea? Was it a portal to new worlds within the globe? Or was it just a wilderness of ice? When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in 1845, explorers decided it was time to find out. In scintillating detail, Ninety Degrees North tells of the vying governments (including the United States, Britain, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) and fantastic eccentrics (from Swedish balloonists to Italian aristocrats) who, despite their heroic failures, often achieved massive celebrity as they battled shipwreck, starvation, and sickness to reach the top of the world. Drawing on unpublished archives and long-forgotten journals, Fleming tells this story with consummate craftsmanship and wit. Ninety Degrees North is a riveting saga of humankind's search for the ultimate goal.

Publishers Weekly

Whether it was believed to be surrounded by a vast, temperate sea that would facilitate speedy trade between the West and the Orient or, by one fanciful account, the gateway to a subterranean universe of wonder, there is no doubt that the North Pole exercised a powerful pull on the 19th-century imagination. Fleming (Barrow's Boys; Killing Dragons), whose first book outlined the ambitious program of British exploration set in motion by John Barrow, begins this exceptional account roughly where that one left off, recounting the major expeditions sent in search of the top of the world from 1845 to 1969. The book is fascinating for how Fleming renders the haughty, post-Enlightenment brio of the principal adventurers and the extreme, often fatal ends toward which it pushed them. Fleming beautifully weaves together intriguing journal excerpts and exhaustive expedition details to form an unforgettable impression of both the characters involved and the hardships they faced. And the hardships here are gruesome. Scarcely one of the many glory seekers from Britain, the U.S., Germany, Russia, Italy and elsewhere return from their quests wholly intact, either physically or mentally. They ate their dogs, they ate moss and, sometimes, they ate each other, but even when it became clear that nothing but a wasteland awaited them at the pole, they pressed on. Stoires like this make for a captivating look at the best and worst possibilities of the human spirit, told by an author who has established himself as one of the best adventure writers today. (Oct.)

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

It was once believed that the North Pole was surrounded by an open polar sea. Some of the attempts to prove this theory and to reach the pole itself once the theory was abandoned are the subject of this book. Fleming, author of the critically acclaimed Barrow's Boys, provides an entertaining history of the many failed attempts to reach the North Pole, from the hardship of the Kane expedition of 1853 through the Amundsen-Ellsworth North Pole sighting via airship in 1926. Though not all polar attempts in this time period are covered, many of the major attempts are recounted and analyzed, providing a story that is both awe-inspiring and humorous. Drawing on research from published and unpublished accounts, Fleming tells the stories of the failed land/sea attempts by such polar adventurers as Edward Nares, Fridtjof Nanson, Charles Francis Hall, August Petermann, and George Washington de Long, as well as the fatal attempt by Sweden's Salomon August Andr e by balloon. The controversial topic of who first stood at 90-degrees North is not answered here; only through the investigation of Frederick Cook's and Robert Peary's expeditions does the reader learn that neither can conclusively claim this achievement. Suitable for both public and academic library collections. Sheila Kasperek, Mansfield Univ., PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The author of Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps (2001) returns with another rousing real-life adventure: a chronicle of the determination, madness, mendacity, suffering, and incredible endurance of the men who sought to be the first to stand at the North Pole. Picking up where Barrow’s Boys (1998) ended, with the ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1847, the author shows Sir John Franklin’s successors one after another learning the bitter lessons of life and death north of the Arctic Circle. He closes with the passing, in 1940, of the widow of Lieutenant George Washington De Long, who starved and froze to death in 1881 while searching for the mythical "thermal gateway" to the Pole. De Long’s sufferings, horrible as they were, are common fare on Fleming’s menu, along with foolishness, foolhardiness, and fecklessness. For decades, explorers sought the "Open Polar Sea," a warm lake of water at the Pole that putatively pushed the icecap and its baby burgs southward. Another popular theory held that both poles featured gateways to the inner earth, where civilizations waited to be discovered. Once again, Fleming displays razor-edged wit and an unerring sense of what we want to read. He tells of a polar bear dragging a doctor around by the head. Of temperatures so cold that human exhalations freeze and hit the ground with a tinkle. Of a dog’s tail freezing to the ground. Of desperate men reduced to eating their own dogs—and eyeing one another hungrily. We learn, too, about continent-sized egos, especially that of Robert Edwin Peary, whose controversial claim to have reached the Pole Fleming disputes. All the polar lunatics and heroes are here: Kane, Hayes, Hall, Hegemann, Weyprecht, Osborn,Nansen, Cook (liar extraordinaire, says the author), and Amundsen, each one reanimated by fluid, vivid prose. A superb, well-researched saga, crackling with intelligence and wit. (4 maps, 24 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)