Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

This book recounts the harrowing 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who shaped it. In 1913, Captain Bob Bartlett, the world’s greatest ice navigator, led the expedition aboard the Karluk. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a flamboyant impresario, was the visionary leader.

Six weeks after departure, the Karluk became icebound. Stefansson left with five companions on a caribou hunting trip, never to return. Twenty-two men and an Inuit woman with two daughters remained on the ice floe. Under Bartlett’s leadership, they built shelters and survived the freezing darkness of Polar night. Bartlett made a courageous decision: he would take one of the young Inuit hunters on a 1000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors. This book explores the audacious and disastrous expedition, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery.

(This book may contain a sharpie mark on the top or bottom edge and may show mild signs of shelfwear.)