
In 1913, what was to have been the grandest & most elaborate Arctic expedition in history ended just six weeks later with the HMCS Karluk trapped by polar ice. Five months later, hopelessly off course & still encased in ice, the captain gives the order to abandon ship. With nothing but half the ship's store of supplies, twenty-one men, an Eskimo woman & her two small daughters, nineteen dogs & one pet cat were hopelessly shipwrecked in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Nine months later, twelve survivors were rescued by a small whaling schooner & brought back to civilisation. In this incredible book, Jennifer Niven tells the spellbinding story of the doomed 1913 voyage of the Karluk drawing on previously unpublished letters & journals.