{"id":4047,"date":"2013-04-05T08:07:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T08:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4047"},"modified":"2013-04-05T08:07:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T08:07:56","slug":"the-ice-balloon-by-alec-wilkinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4047","title":{"rendered":"The Ice Balloon by Alec Wilkinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Fourth Estate 28 March 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

299pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by John Petherbridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ice Balloon<\/em> is the story of Sweden’s S.A. Andr\u00e9e\u2019s attempts to reach the North Pole by balloon in the 1890s.\u00a0 Interspersed with his story are accounts, some several chapters long, of other nineteenth-century Arctic expeditions.\u00a0 There are also chapters on ballooning, ancient myths about the region and the numerous different terms for ice.\u00a0 Indeed Andr\u00e9e\u2019s story is only the backbone of a book which is as much about Arctic exploration in general as it is about the exploits of a single man.<\/p>\n

The fate of Andr\u00e9e\u2019s second and final attempt to reach the North Pole is revealed early as the book opens with the discovery of Andr\u00e9e\u2019s remains and those of his two companions in 1930, thirty-three years after they took off.<\/p>\n

Their balloon came down on an ice floe, having travelled 517 miles in 65 and a half hours, at the time the longest ever balloon flight.\u00a0 But they were still 300 miles from the North Pole. Andr\u00e9e and his two companions gave up their attempt to reach it and set out to trek overland to a food depot.<\/p>\n

Travelling across the Arctic is fraught with difficulties, in addition to combating the biting cold.\u00a0 Unlike the Antarctic there is little land, only ice.\u00a0 In summer the ice moves and breaks up, throwing the unsuspecting traveller into the icy waters.\u00a0 Marauding polar bears are a real danger.\u00a0 Hauling heavily loaded sledges through slushy ice and over the rough Arctic terrain makes, in the words of one Arctic explorer, all other physical work \u2018child\u2019s play in comparison’.<\/p>\n

The three men died three or four months later having reached White Island where they were preparing to winter. The actual cause of their deaths has never been satisfactorily established. Various suggestions have been made; food poisoning, scurvy, trichinosis, carbon monoxide poisoning, dehydration, murder, suicide, polar bear attack or simply fatigue.\u00a0 However the state of the men\u2019s corpses and their subsequent cremation has made any certainty impossible.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9e had been treated as a national hero.\u00a0 His expeditions had been sponsored by the King of Sweden and Albert Nobel.\u00a0 He was described as a hero ‘with the old Viking blood in his veins’.\u00a0 On his departure from Stockholm, he was cheered with shouts of ‘Long Live Andr\u00e9e’.\u00a0 Accounts of his attempt to reach the North Pole were published in papers across the world.\u00a0 The ashes of the three men were buried in Stockholm in 1930 in the presence of the King of Sweden.<\/p>\n

Although Alec Wilkinson shows that Andr\u00e9e’ s preparation were inadequate he rejects modern claims that Andr\u00e9e\u00a0 was a sensationalist who wanted to be famous for the sake of being famous and was prepared to lead his much younger companions to their death if that was the price to be paid.\u00a0 Instead he regards Andr\u00e9e as an engineer and scientist, overcome with the romance of the North Pole, who realised that if he didn’t risk setting out when he did, the opportunity might be lost forever.<\/p>\n

Alec Wilkinson\u2019s starting point for his book was a photograph that his wife showed him.\u00a0 Intrigued by the caption, ‘Andr\u00e9e’s balloon on the ice’, Wilkinson, a staff writer for The New Yorker<\/em> and the author of nine other books, researched the subject and wrote his book.<\/p>\n

The Ice Balloon<\/em> is an extremely readable account of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration with Andr\u00e9e’s balloon journey at its centre.\u00a0 It is a shame that the maps reproduced in the book are too small to do justice to the epic journeys they depict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by John Petherbridge<\/p>\n

Travelling across the Arctic is fraught with difficulties, in addition to combating the biting cold. Unlike the Antarctic there is little land, only ice. In summer the ice moves and breaks up, throwing the unsuspecting traveller into the icy waters. Marauding polar bears are a real danger. Hauling heavily loaded sledges through slushy ice and over the rough Arctic terrain makes, in the words of one Arctic explorer, all other physical work \u2018child\u2019s play in comparison'[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4047"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4074,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions\/4074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}