The Most Glorified Strip Of Bunting

The United States North Polar expedition of 1871-73 was a disaster-strewn adventure that counts amongst the most bizarre and exciting in the annals of Arctic exploration. Commanded by Charles Francis Hall, a romantic idealist with an obsessive interest in the frozen north, the converted river tug Polaris carries a multinational crew of scientists and sailors, assisted by two Inuit families, along the so-called American Way to the North Pole - the icy channels between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. For Hall, the planting of the Stars and Stripes on the top of the world is a sacred and patriotic duty, but his enthusiasm is shared by few of his companions, and the expedition, under the strain of conditions in the high Arctic, quickly disintegrates into warring factions. With their ship embedded in the ice, the explorers plunge into a maelstrom of anarchy and paranoia fuelled by the clash of two civilisations – Inuit and European – and the mutual misunderstanding and hostility that arise from it.

John McGill’s novel chronicles the events leading up to the strange and suspicious death of the commander, and in a parallel narrative, tells the astonishing tale of the nineteen crew members separated in a storm and cast adrift on an ice floe. Their story is one of the truly great Arctic adventures, a six-month drama of narrow escapes coloured by the ever-present threats of rape, murder and cannibalism, and acted out on a shrinking platform of ice exposed to all the horrors of the most inhospitable climate on earth.