front cover of Abandoned
Abandoned
The Story of the Greely Arctic Expedition 1881-1884
Alden Todd
University of Alaska Press, 2001
Launched as part of the United States participation in the first International Polar Year, the Greely Arctic Expedition sent twenty-five volunteers to Ellesmere Island off the northwest coast of Greenland. The crew was commanded by Adolphus W. Greely, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps. The ship sent to resupply them in the summer of 1882 was forced to turn back before reaching the station, and the men were left to endure short rations. The second relief ship, sent in 1883, was crushed in the ice. The crew spend a third, wretched winter camped at Cape Sabine. Supplies ran out, the hunting failed, and men began to die of starvation. At last, in the summer of 1884, the six survivors were brought home, but the excitement of their return soon turned into a national scandal-rumors of cannibalism during that dreadful, final winter were supported by grisly evidence.

Abandoned is the gripping account of men battling for survival as they are pitted against the elements and each other. It is also the most complete and authentic account of the controversial Greely Expedition ever published, an exemplar of the best in chronicles of polar exploration.
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front cover of Explorations in the Icy North
Explorations in the Icy North
How Travel Narratives Shaped Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Century
Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021

Science in the Arctic changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century, when early, scattered attempts in the region to gather knowledge about all aspects of the natural world transitioned to a more unified Arctic science under the First International Polar Year in 1882. The IPY brought together researchers from multiple countries with the aim of undertaking systematic and coordinated experiments and observations in the Arctic and Antarctic. Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating of scientific knowledge. At the same time, changes in ideas about what it meant to be an authoritative observer of natural phenomena were linked to tensions in imperial ambitions, national identities, and international collaborations of the IPY. Through a focused study of travel narratives in the British, Danish, Canadian, and American contexts, Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund uncovers not only the transnational nature of Arctic exploration, but also how the publication and reception of literature about it shaped an extreme environment, its explorers, and their scientific practices. She reveals how, far beyond the metropole—in the vast area we understand today as the North American and Greenlandic Arctic—explorations and the narratives that followed ultimately influenced the production of field science in the nineteenth century.

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front cover of Starvation Shore
Starvation Shore
Laura Waterman
University of Wisconsin Press, 2019
In the summer of 1881, the twenty-five men of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition watched their ship sail for home from Discovery Harbor, just 500 miles from the North Pole. Commanded by the ambitious yet underqualified Adolphus W. Greely, this crew represented the first U.S. attempt to engage in scientific study of the Arctic. The frigid landscape offered the promise of great adventure—and unknown dangers. It was an expedition Greely eagerly anticipated long before it began. Standing there on that sunny summer afternoon, no one could have known how much would go wrong.
Drawing upon historic records, diaries, and letters of the men who inhabited the makeshift shelter they called Camp Clay, Laura Waterman reimagines the true story of polar explorers fighting for their lives and their sanity under dehumanizing conditions. This gripping, tragic tale of hunger, fear, and hope is told through the eyes of men at their worst—and most desperate—moments.
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