AN ARCTIC EPIC OF HUMAN ENDURANCE
Icebound Andrea Pitzer S&S £20
Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas in 1492 was the catalyst for an era of exploration unparalleled in human history. Columbus, of course, thought he had reached the Indies, and had no idea that he had stumbled on a new continent. One of the reasons he was so mistaken was that he thought the world much smaller than it really was – a miscalculation that would also bedevil other explorers.
A few years later, Portugal’s Vasco da Gama discovered that it was possible to reach the rich markets of Asia by sailing around the tip of Africa, but the voyage was long and immensely hazardous. Could there be a quicker way?
One man who certainly thought so was the Dutch navigator William Barents (above right). Barents had made his name mapping the Mediterranean, but he was convinced it had to be possible to sail through the Arctic directly to China. The three voyages that he undertook in search of this elusive ‘north-east passage’ are the subject of Andrea Pitzer’s gripping book.
The first two voyages, in 1594 and 1595, made it further north than anyone had ever travelled before but failed to find a navigable route between Russia and the Arctic ice. Undeterred, the following year Barents embarked on his third and final expedition.
The motives and actions of the early European explorers are often called into question by modern commentators all too aware of narratives of colonialism and slavery, but their courage cannot be doubted. Equipped only with rudimentary charts and primitive navigational tools, they set off into the unknown in what was essentially a leap of faith.
Barents believed in the then-fashionable theory that there was open water around the North Pole, because the sun shone constantly throughout the summer and therefore had to warm the sea. With this in mind he determined to head directly north rather than try to head east and hug the Russian coast.
It’s hardly surprising that it all ended in disaster, but the story Pitzer unfolds is one of the great epics of human endurance. Trapped in ice at the island of Nova Zembla, the 17 Dutch sailors were forced to abandon ship and seek sanctuary on the frozen ground. With astonishing ingenuity, they were able to fashion a cabin out of driftwood and planks cannibalised from their vessel, but they were woefully ill equipped to survive the Arctic winter.
Believing they would be sailing through the mythical warm polar sea, they had brought no winter clothing, and their diet, almost entirely lacking Vitamin C, soon left them racked with scurvy.
As if the dreadful storms and freezing weather were not enough to contend with, they also had to fight off attacks from ferocious polar bears, which had killed and eaten two of their shipmates on a previous expedition.
Miraculously, 12 of the crew returned home to Holland the following summer, after an epic voyage in small open boats reminiscent of Captain Bligh’s exploits after the infamous mutiny on the Bounty. Sadly, William Barents was not among them, but his indefatigable spirit and unquenchable optimism made him a hero in his homeland and an inspiration to future generations of adventurers and explorers.