Customer Reviews

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

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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