– Customer review on 29/10/2007

‘The Ice Master’ documents the extraordinary events of an arctic expedition that went badly wrong. In 1913, well-known explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson organised and led the so-called ‘Canadian Arctic Expedition’. Its goals were to discover new landmasses in the Arctic, and continue documenting the lives of Inuit people.
Although vastly experienced in the arctic, Stefansson’s organisation was poor. He supplied inadequate and substandard equipment, and spent insufficient attention on crew selection. One of the expedition’s three ships – the Karluk – was woefully unsuited to polar travel. All of these factors were to lead to needless suffering and eventual tragedy.
When the Karluk became frozen into the Arctic sea ice, Stefansson abandoned most of his men, and set out with the best dogs and a small group of companions for the nearby Alaska coast. At the time he claimed he was just heading out on a short hunting trip, but he was never to return to the ship, and it remains doubtful he ever intended to do so.
After drifting across the arctic towards Siberia, the Karluk was crushed and sunk, leaving the crew to fare for themselves on the sea ice.
Author Jennifer Niven has compared the Karluk’s fate with that of Shackleton’s 1914-16 ‘Endurance’ Antarctic expedition. Both ships never reached their destination, both were trapped in the sea ice and both sunk. Both expeditions required epic journeys to receive help for the survivors. There the parallels end.
Shackleton - through inspired leadership, careful provisioning and cautious planning - saved all his men, and the story ranks as one of the greatest and well-known survival stories ever.
In stark contrast, Stefansson jumped ship at the first opportunity, leaving the leadership to the ship captain, Robert Bartlett. Bartlett certainly demonstrated Shackleton-type leadership skills, but the irresolvable divisions in the crew were to prove disastrous.
The Karluk expedition has since largely been forgotten, despite at least two of the crewmembers publishing accounts of the trip. One of these, Scotsman William McKinley, was haunted by the events of the expedition for the rest of his life. He once wrote, “Not all the horrors of the Western Front, not the rubble of Arras, nor the hell of Ypres, nor all the mud of Flanders leading to Passchendael, could blot out the memories of that year in the Arctic.”
Niven has drawn extensively from McKinlay’s and other crew members’ journals to write a comprehensive account of the Karluk journey. While the story is certainly gripping, in places Niven has drawn out events with perhaps too much detail. While her research has obviously been extensive, unfortunately the finished result is often over-written.
That aside, the journey of the Karluk, along with Shackleton’s Endurance expedition, marked the end of the great age of polar exploration – before the advent of aeroplanes and radio changed the nature of expeditions irrevocably.
While not a great book, ‘The Ice Master’ ensures the journey of the Karluk will live on in minds of modern readers. It’s worth a read.

Shaun Barnett