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Part adventure narrative, part love story, this extraordinary chronicle captures a crucial moment in the history of exploration, the mid-nineteenth-century romance with the mystery of the Arctic. Combining fact and fiction, Andrea Barrett focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a scholar-naturalist accompanying the expedition of the Narwhal.
Through his eyes we meet the various crew members and the expedition's blustery commander, obsessed with the search for an open polar sea, and we experience the wild, disturbing beauties of that last unexplored region.
In counterpoint to his views are those of the Esquimaux, witness to the expedition's exploits, and of the women left behind in Philadelphia, who can only imagine what lies beyond the north wind. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and history. In the real nineteenth-century expeditions, explorers' documents always cast the writer as hero. But what really happened up there, in the long winter darkness, trapped in ice?
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Fiction, Explorers, Discoveries in geography, Historical fiction, Adventure stories, History, Scientific expeditions, Discovery and exploration, Naturalists, Fiction, action & adventure, Fiction, historical, Arctic regions, fiction, Large type books, Fiction, historical, generalPeople
John Franklin, the InuitPlaces
Arctic regions, Polar regionsTimes
1855-1856Edition | Availability |
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Voyage of the Narwhal: A Novel
September 1999, W. W. Norton & Company
in English
0393319504 9780393319507
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Voyage of the Narwhal: A Novel
September 1999, W. W. Norton & Company
in English
0393319504 9780393319507
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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Libraries near you:
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First Sentence
"He was standing on the wharf, peering down at the Delaware River while the sun beat on his shoulders."
Work Description
The novel draws on the experiences and discoveries of real expeditions to the Arctic; sections of the novel are preceded by quotations from writers, naturalists, and scientists of the 19th century.
Erasmus Darwin Wells is a naturalist aboard The Narwhal as it sails from the Delaware river for the Arctic with the goal of discovering the fate of expedition of John Franklin (a real expedition). Zeke Voorhees, a childhood and family friend of Wells, is the commander of the expedition. For Wells, the expedition also becomes an inner journey as a rift develops between himself and Voorhees.
With the Narwhal's arrival in Arctic waters Voorhees begins the search for the lost expedition by exploring Arctic bays, sounds and coastlines. But as the Arctic winter approaches, the outlets to open waters set into a deep freeze. The Narwhal becomes barricaded by ice in a cove. The challenge now becomes surviving the Arctic winter. The men must deal not only with the harsh physical environment of the Arctic, but they must keep alive their spirit and determination to live.
When spring and summer arrive, as more of the frozen waters open up, Voorhees treks inland alone. He leaves Wells in charge of the Narwhal. When Voorhees does not return by the due date, the crew persuade Wells they must leave before winter sets in again. They retrofit a whale boat, so that it can be pulled or sailed along the frozen land, until they reach open waters.
«...they fell and stumbled and were relieved only once, when the ice field was smooth and the wind blew from the northwest. That day they set the sails and glided for eight miles: a great blessing, never repeated ...» ( from The Goblins known as Innersuit).
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