Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

by Buddy Levy

982 Erik the Red explores Greenland and becomes its first permanent settler. 1497 John Cabot explores the Grand Banks fishing grounds off Labrador and Newfoundland and claims the territory for England. 1594–97 Willem Barents searches for the Northeast Passage, wintering over at Novaya Zemlya in 1596–97. 1610–11 Henry Hudson searches for the Northwest Passage, wintering at Hudson Bay. His crew mutinies, setting Hudson adrift along with his son and seven men. They are never seen again. 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company is founded. 1778 Captain James Cook attempts a maritime route through the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean, crossing the Chukchi Sea. The voyage is blocked by sea ice near Icy Cape, Alaska. 1829–33 Captain John Ross explores the Canadian Arctic and becomes the first European to reach the north magnetic pole. 1845–48 Sir John Franklin and Captain Francis Crozier sail HMS Terror and HMS Erebus into the Arctic, searching for the Northwest Passage. The ships are trapped in ice, and 129 expedition members are lost. After many decades and some forty expeditions searching for the lost ships, in 2014 and 2016 the two ships are found, solving a 170-year-old mystery. 1878 Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld successfully completes the first confirmed navigation of the Northeast Passage in SS Vega. 1879 Lieutenant Commander George Washington De Long, in USS Jeannette, attempts to reach the North Pole. His ship is trapped in ice near Wrangel and Herald Islands in Chukchi Sea and beset for two wint...