THE ARCTIC GRAIL: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909

by Pierre Berton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1988

This magnificent history is the first comprehensive account of Arctic conquest from the earliest British expeditions to Robert Peary's disputed achievement of 90 degrees north latitude. Berton (Starting Out, The Invasion of Canada, etc.) spins one extraordinary tale after another, concentrating on the bizarre personalities of the great Arctic explorers as well as on their stunning exploits. He begins with a scene of mind-boggling surrealism: two British sailors in cocked hats and tailcoats confronting a group of fur-clad Eskimos on the Greenland coast, the first encounter between these two alien cultures. The Englishmen were William Parry, first white man to winter in the Arctic, and John Ross, plagued by a terrible ego and by accusations of cowardice and plagiarism. Their amazing adventures serve as prelude to the story of Sir John Franklin, a dour, courageous man whose expedition disappeared in 1845. The subsequent hunt for Franklin became the prod to all further polar expeditions. When Eskimos finally revealed the truth--that Franklin and his men had perished in a tragedy involving starvation, even cannibalism--Charles Dickens huffily damned the Eskimos as ""treacherous and cruel."" Berton tells these stories with tremendous flare, and shows rare sense among Polar writers by describing in detail the women left behind by these driven men. He then dives into late-19th-century exploits and, in a smashing finale, delivers a harsh, meticulous look at Cook and Peary--painting the former as a jolly con-man, the later as a ruthless paranoid, concluding that both were frauds who faked their achievement of the Pole. An absolutely thrilling history of one of the most peculiar quests in human record, for a Passage that ""has no commercial value and an almost unidentified pinpoint on the top of the world that has very little scientific significance."" This should be the definitive study of Arctic exploration for years to come.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION