Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World [Hardcover]

David Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

When David Roberts came across a reference to four Russian sailors who had survived for six years on a barren Arctic island, he was incredulous. An expert on the literature of adventure, Roberts had never heard the story and doubted its veracity. His quest to find the true story turned into a near-obsession that culminated with his own journey to the same desolate island. In "Four Against the Arctic" Roberts shares the remarkable story that he discovered, perhaps the most amazing survival tale ever recorded.

In 1743 a Russian ship bound for Arctic walrus-hunting grounds was blown off course and trapped in ice off the coast of Svalbard (Spitzbergen). Four sailors went ashore with only two days' supplies to look for an abandoned hut they knew about on the island. They found it and returned to tell their shipmates the good news, only to find that their ship had vanished, apparently crushed and sunk by the ice.

The men survived more than six years until another ship blown off course rescued them. During that time they made a bow and arrows from driftwood (Svalbard has no trees) and killed nine polar bears in self-defense. They survived largely on reindeer meat, killing 250 of the animals during their ordeal.

Fascinated as he was by this remarkable story, Roberts wondered how it had dwindled into obscurity. For two years he researched the tale in libraries and archives in the United States, France, and Russia. In Russia he traveled to the sailors' hometown, where he met the last survivors of their families, who knew the story from an oral tradition passed down for more than 250 years. Finally, with three companions he organized an expedition to the barren island of Edgeoya insoutheast Svalbard, where he spent three weeks looking for remnants of the sailors' lost hut and walking the shores while pondering the men's astonishing survival.

"Four Against the Arctic" is a riveting book about man versus nature and a delightfully engaging journey deep into an obsession with historical rediscovery. But it is more even than that: It is a meditation on the genius of survival against impossible odds that makes a story so inspirational that it still fires the imagination centuries later.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Escape from Lucania uncovers an extraordinary tale, set in the mid-18th century, about four Russian hunters stranded on a desolate Arctic isle with scant resources, who survived for six years. Initially, Roberts is so preoccupied with debunking earlier histories of the shipwreck that the drama barely comes to life. He fumes at the shortcomings of other historians such as the "pomposities" and "basic mistakes" of the writer P.L. Le Roy. But these records give the author significant information as he embarks on his own Arctic journey in order to better understand his subjects. Luckily, few things can get in the way of a good story, and when Roberts manages to get out of his own way, he captures it with precise, thoughtful prose. With each discovery and every interview, he pieces together the mystery of how the four men actually survived. Whether detailing how these men fashioned clothing from animal hides, drank the warm blood of reindeer to prevent scurvy or crafted bows and arrows from "driftwood, polar bear tendons, flattened nails, and bird feathers," Roberts succeeds in creating an inspirational survival story.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In 1743 a Russian ship bound for walrus-hunting grounds in the Arctic was wrecked by ice during a gale, stranding the vessel's four survivors on the barren island of Svalbard. They survived for six years with almost no provisions. The men miraculously found a prefabricated log cabin left behind by an earlier expedition. Their only possessions were a musket, a knife, an ax, a kettle, 20 pounds of flour, a tinderbox and a small amount of tinder, a pouch of tobacco, and four pipes. Roberts tells how they killed 10 polar bears with homemade lances and how they made bows and arrows to kill reindeer and foxes. Roberts, the author of 14 other books, writes that their lives depended on keeping a fire going, fueled only by driftwood. In researching the book, Roberts went to libraries and archives on two continents, and he led a four-man expedition to Svalbard. The book is an astonishing story, an almost unbelievable feat of survival. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743224310
• ISBN-13: 978-0743224314
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #994,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > History > Europe > Norway

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Definitely Not a Survival Story, December 24, 2003

By 

Scott Sauchuk (Plympton, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World (Hardcover)

I hate to write this, but I don't want others to make the mistake I did and pay $20 or more for this book. If you expect this to be a riveting survival story, as I did, you would be wrong. The book is about David Roberts and his research into a survival story. Details about the libraries he visited, the books he read, how he found various documents, his correspondence, his disdain for all previous efforts to document this story, his ability to read various languages, even friends of his family, etc. I only made it through 1/3 of the book. The rest of the book appears to be more about David Roberts and his trip to the arctic. I wanted to learn about the "Four Against the Arctic", instead I learned all I'll ever need to know about David Roberts.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not enough info for a book, May 7, 2004

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World (Hardcover)

It's amazing the story of four Russian sailors' survival on the sub-arctic island of Svalbard for six years isn't better known, considering it's probably the most amazing feat of arctic survival in the long and checkered history of arctic and antarctic exploration.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with many of the other reviewers here that the "signal to noise ratio" of the book is pretty low; there really isn't that much information about the sailors' story, and most of the book is really about the extensive research the author did and his own personal journey to discover the facts of the story. Unfortunately, very little real information seems to be available and the result shows in the final book.

There is no doubt that the author went to considerable trouble and did very thorough and extensive research to glean what little information was available, and the author certainly deserves credit for that. As a former researcher myself I understand the fascination of doing research and the thrill of discovery in ferreting out all the facts, but the end result here unfortunately is still pretty thin.

The author also spends too much time finding fault with the French academic's style who originally interviewed the sailors, considering that Roberts's style itself is a little too ponderous and grandiloquent at times, especially about pretty trivial matters.

On the positive side, however, I did learn a few interesting details of how the sailors managed to survive for the time they did, and I enjoyed that. For example, they were able to build a wooden hut from the driftwood that floats up on Svalbard's rocky shores. Svalbard itself has no trees, but what it does have is literally tons of driftwood. This is due to the prevailing currents which cause the logs that float out to the sea from Russian rivers to end up on the coast of the island. The sailors also had to kill several polar bears. That's probably the most exciting fact in the book although nothing else is known about it.

If you do decide to buy the book the best way to read it would be to skip over the sections about the author, the French professor, and most of the details of the research and just read the passages about the sailors, because there is some interesting information and material there. This would have made a fine magazine article but there just isn't enough information to justify a book-length treatment as the author has done here.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Four Against the Arctic, December 20, 2003

By 

Thomas G. McCloud (Frederick, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World (Hardcover)

I kept reading, and reading, in anticipation of learning the story of 4 Russian sailors shipwrecked on an arctic island for 6 years, because that's why I bought the book. It wasn't until near the end that I realized that this book was really about the author and his 3 cronies hanging out in a cabin on an arctic island for two weeks, drinking fine French wine. From this book I also learned that the author reads French, is a Harvard grad, has a very large vocabulary, and a pathology regarding polar bears. None of this sheds light on the topic given in the title, thus a disappointment.