Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of Elisha Kent Kane [Hardcover]

Ken McGoogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2008

In the mid-1800s, geographers revived the ancient idea that at the top of the world, encircling the North Pole, lay a temperate “Open Polar Sea.” Without doubt, the voyager who discovered this balmy basin would etch his name forever in the annals of exploration. Among those drawn to the challenge was Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, a handsome, charismatic figure from a leading Philadelphia family who was already a well-known adventurer and explorer. In 1853, Kane sailed to the Arctic to seek both the Open Polar Sea and the lost British explorer John Franklin. After sailing farther north than anyone yet, Kane and his men became trapped in the ice. Besides treacherous icebergs and violent currents, Kane battled starvation, disease, and a near mutiny before abandoning ship to lead a desperate escape in sleds and small boats. Race to the Polar Sea tells this story in heart-pounding detail. Drawing on documents never before seen, author Ken McGoogan brings to life a heroic figure famous in his day as America’s greatest explorer and celebrates a shining example of American courage and survival.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McGoogan's fascinating biography focuses on a neglected figure from the early era of polar exploration. Born to a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1820, Elisha Kent Kane surmounted his poor health to embark on a series of globe-spanning adventures. Kent's attention turned to the Arctic when he was assigned as an assistant surgeon to an expedition searching for the lost British navigator John Franklin and an Open Polar Sea believed to surround the North Pole. Kent's first taste of the Arctic proved addictive and on his return to the States, he organized his own Franklin expedition. After his ship became trapped in ice off the coast of Greenland for over a year, Kane led a daring escape that brought most of his men back to civilization. A sympathetic and intelligent observer, Kane befriended the Inuits camped near his ship and adapted many of their practices for surviving the harsh climate. McGoogan's depiction of Kane's early life is perfunctory and lacking in historical context, but the story comes to life with the narration of the second polar expedition and Kane's doomed love affair with the spiritualist medium Maggie Fox. With his access to previously unknown Kane logbooks, McGoogan makes an impressive case for the bravery and importance of the explorer who first identified the Greenland ice sheet. (Oct.)
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From School Library Journal

Starred Review. McGoogan (Fatal Passage) frames this exciting biography in terms of the mythological concepts of the hero and the transformative quest. Trained as a physician, Elisha Kent Kane served in the U.S. Navy in locales around the globe, describing the geography, cultures, and his experiences in his journals, which were later published. Kane is most famous for his participation in two Arctic expeditions, 1850–51 and 1853–55, launched to find and rescue Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845 that had disappeared while searching for the Northwest Passage. Selected to lead the second rescue expedition, Kane was also challenged to locate the Open Polar Sea, a geographic concept since debunked. McGoogan discovered three previously lost journals Kane wrote during the two Arctic expeditions. These journals fill in many previously missing details and help answer criticisms regarding Kane's decisions that led to two men's deaths. Forced to turn back on both expeditions, Kane and the rest of his men survived an 800-mile trek south to Greenland. Although the nation mourned when Kane died of ill health not long after, he has languished in relative obscurity since. McGoogan's readable biography ensures Kane's place in the pantheon of polar explorers. Highly recommended.—Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582434409
• ISBN-13: 978-1582434407
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #816,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars I don't buy it., November 2, 2011

By 

Charles S. Fisher (Woodacre, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of Elisha Kent Kane (Paperback)

Having read the author's two previous, excellent books on the travels of Samuel Hearne Ancient Mariner and John Rae Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot in the Canadian Arctic, I find this third book unconvincing. Who was his present hero and why was he so important? Although I have read much Arctic history, when I picked up the book the name Kane didn't register. I must have heard mention of him but it certainly didn't stand out. Why? McGoogan's book is an attempt to resurrected a forgotten hero and I think the author gets swept away in that attempt. Kane certainly was a great adventurer, traveling the world, crewing on an American attempt to find Franklin and then mastering his own ship. McGoogan portrays Kane's efforts as noble, initiating Inuit ways of survival and democratizing a captain's relationship with his crew. McGoogan bases much of his argument on a here-to-for undiscovered journal of Kane. With this, Kane's published books, and known journals McGoogan claims that most other versions of what went on during his ship's imprisonment in Greenland are distorted. The Rashomon like picture of events reminds me somewhat of the different descriptions of the tragedies which occurred on Everest in 1996 portrayed in Krakauer's Into Thin Air (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition). Although I prefer the much maligned Russian Anatoli Boukreev's version The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest, Beck Weathers, who died there three times, was right that everyone was so whacked out of their minds by hypoxia and egotism that no one's reports are trustworthy Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest. The scurvy and winter depression that Captain and crew suffered do not inspire confidence in a balanced report of events, especially conflicts. And Kane apparently destroyed a diary to his beloved which would have added more insight into his psychology. As for ego, Kane had lots. He wanted to discover Franklin alive to make his own fame. Kane's brother acted as his promoter, particularly on his heroic return. But Kane's ideas about Franklin's survival were certainly cockamamie: a flowing Polar Sea surrounded by a ring of ice, any evidence for which was at most wishful thinking. He imagined Franklin and his men living there off an also imagined abundance of fish and marine mammals. Every bit of ice free water that Kane saw became his potential Sea and so he kept pressing northward along Smith Sound between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. His northern most sighting of open water he was sure proved his point. McGoogan does not say much about this claim on Kain's return. He says that the route between Ellesmere and Greenland would be the American path to the North Pole, but that really had little to do with Kane's aims.

As to Kane's initiating Inuit ways of survival, McGoogan makes the same claim for Samuel Hearn seventy five years earlier, and whaler's had been stopping off for hundreds of years trading with Eskimo communities for Eskimo made gear. The Eskimo communities, like the Nez Perse and the Oregon Trail, moved to whalers' stopping points to supply the trade. And here I was a bit shocked after reading about the hardships of Kane's ship's first year ice bound to find out that Inuit living some 70 miles distance, who rescued them in their second winter, had made an appearance much earlier. So while the ship's crew did go through very hard times there was available more help than they thought to seek out. Many whalers and explorers depended on Eskimos for winter supplies.

At some level these guys were all nuts. Many of the crew were inexperienced and desperate for work. They had no idea what hardships awaited. The two most significant counter view of events were written by one of Kane's nemesises, William Godfrey (ghost written) and his most trusted assistant, the southern Greenland Christian Inuit, Hans Hendrik. While both the author and Kane, regarded Kane as having humanely democratized relations with the crew, and given the standards of the day he efforts were extraordinary, Godfrey accuses the captain of cruelty and arbitrariness, while Hendrik, who Kane felt was devoted to him, ends up abandoning ship because he felt Kane was going to murder him. Hendrik's hunting skills were invaluable until the encounter with local Inuit, yet Kane does not blame Hendrik at all whereas Godfrey is seen as almost incorrigible. Godfrey comes trough time and time again even, if I remember correctly, saving the captain. Rather than spend a second winter trapped, a goodly number of the crew, with Kane's permission, leave. He feels deeply betrayed but accepts them back after their attempt to sail south fails. He needs them. In the interim contact with Eskimos has made survival possible. Without that they would all have died. Kane is faithful to injured crew way more than was the habit of the day. On Everest efforts to rescue an injured mate often meant death, so team members were sometimes left to die. Kane expends life threatening energy to save everyone he can. That Kane's efforts to sail south were successful was due more to luck than his and the author's claim of greater skill than possessed by the deserters whose earlier attempt failed. If you succeed, as on Everest, is proof of your skill. Yet highly skilled climbers die because secure ice falls out beneath them, even though another skilled climber might claim that he could have avoided it.

McGoogan rightfully sees Kane as some kind of poetic, artistic adventurer. His descriptions are poetic. But the illustrations in the book are not Kane's original work. They are renditions of his sketches by skilled artists. I would loved to have seen the originals. The picture of Inuit woman in a winter dwelling, show none of facial tattooing most isolated Inuit of the time bore and the beautiful pictures of other scenes are no mere sketches but finely finished engravings.

That Kane vanished into obscurity is true, whether it is because of his socially unacceptable affair with an erstwhile spiritualist and the coming civil war, I am not sure. The Crimean War did not obliterate the romance of Franklin, but then Lady Franklin was a better PR person than Kane's brother. Being a momma's boy and afraid of his father Kane never made legal his "marriage" to his ex-spiritualist lover, and another brother, whom Kane trusted, defrauded her of her inheritance.

I guess I know who Kane is now. Thank you Ken McGoogan. I loved your book about John Rae.

Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World