Book Review: Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer
Not long ago I read and reviewed Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk by Buddy Levy. It takes place in the early 1900s and tells of a ship caught in polar ice off the north coast of Alaska and the crew’s efforts to survive when the ship breaks up near Siberia. It is a harrowing story of survival, but as I read Icebound, I reflected upon all the advantages that the crew of the Karluk had that William Barents’s crew in Icebound lacked. In the 1900s most of the world had been explored and mapped, so polar travelers at least knew where they were going; they had rifles that reliably fired; they had better methods of preserving food; they knew what scurvy was and how to prevent it. Barents and his men, on the other hand, had none of these advantages.
Icebound takes place in the late sixteenth century. It tells of the three polar voyages of William Barents, after whom the Barents Sea in the Arctic is named, focusing especially on the third voyage, when Barents and his men became trapped at the northern end of the island of Nova Zembla, north of Russia, and had to spend the winter. They managed to build a cabin, but they were cold, filthy, malnourished, sick with scurvy, and under frequent attack by marauding polar bears. Their ship became hopelessly frozen into the ice, so the survivors finally, in spring when the ice broke up and they found open water, had to make their way down the island’s coast in two small open boats.
The expedition’s purpose was to find a trade route to China by sailing north and east from the Netherlands. It was believed that beyond the icebound northern latitudes was a warm open sea. However, even in summer, the way was impassable due to the proliferation of icebergs and sheet ice.
The sailors must have been miserable indeed as they lay sick in their small cabin, struggling to stay warm, while outside polar bears stalked them and storms raged, sometimes completely covering their shelter in snow. Pitzer compares this expedition with others that were trapped in the Arctic and points out that the harmony and cooperation the castaways displayed throughout their ordeal was extraordinary. No matter how difficult conditions became, they never ceased to look out for each other and to tend to the needs of the weakest among them. Their unity was one of the key factors in the eventual survival of many of the crewmembers, although Barents himself died during the homeward journey.
In a coda, the author describes her voyage from the Russian port of Murmansk to visit the site of Barents’s cabin in an Arctic reserve on Nova Zembla. Nowadays the sea is open and the passage is fairly easy. She explains that there is even the possibility that a tourist cruise might open to the cabin and other nearby locations. The difference between the icebound sea in Barents’s day and the open waters in the present is a stark reminder that the world indeed has been warming up.
This is a gripping adventure story set in the time when, in European eyes, much of the world was still unknown and swathed in mystery. The motivation to finance expeditions to discover new lands and new routes to them was mainly commercial, but this allowed visionary explorers such as Barents to, as Captain Kirk would say, “boldly go where no one has gone before.” In this case the expedition failed, but the men displayed much courage and cooperation in their struggle to survive.
