WIND, FIRE, AND ICE

In this memoir, a man recounts his adventures as a physician on an icebreaker’s voyage to Antarctica.

Amid the tumult of 1969, Bunes volunteered to be the doctor aboard the United States Coast Guard Cutter Glacier, the “largest, toughest, and most powerful icebreaker in the free world.” The author was partly motivated by a desire to avoid deployment to Vietnam but also by a longing for the excitement of travel to exotic locales. Yet he was unprepared for the perils of a mission in the “most remote place in the world” as well as the coldest and the freight of responsibilities with which he would be saddled as the ship’s physician. While navigating the treacherous Bismarck Strait, the vessel collided with a glacier, and later became “imprisoned” in the Weddell Sea—the crew of 200 was trapped in a cage of ice, with the nearest open water 100 miles away. Bunes places the drama of the ship’s immobility at the center of his memoir, which also briefly chronicles his life before service on the Glacier. He repeatedly draws parallels between the vessel’s plight and the famous explorations of Antarctica accomplished by Ernest Shackleton, who sailed on the “ill-fated” ship the Endurance. The author’s remembrance is brimming with insights as well as captivating photographs by Bunes and others. But the comparison with the Endurance sometimes diminishes the drama the author relates. Rather than let the powerful facts speak for themselves, he tirelessly reminds readers of the perilousness of the Coast Guard ship’s position. Commenting on the turbulence experienced during a storm, Bunes writes: “I thought we were all going to die. And that brink-of-disaster scenario kept happening over and over. It was a nightmare. It felt like someone was holding a six-gun to my head and playing Russian Roulette. He’d pull the trigger and the hammer would fall on one of the five empty chambers. Then he’d grab a new gun and repeat the whole process.” This theatrical style finally becomes exhausting, a shame since the author’s memoir is full of riveting details.

A gripping but uneven account of a dangerous voyage.