Book Review: Fatal North by Bruce Henderson

Fatal North: Murder Survival Aboard U S S Polaris 1ST U S Expedition North Pole by Bruce Henderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Following the Civil War President Grant wanted to unite the country through various ways, one being the exploration of the North Pole masterminded by a two-time Artic explorer from Cincinnati. Fatal North: Adventure and Survival Aboard the USS Polaris, the First U.S. Expedition to the North Pole by Bruce Henderson follows the internally divided and essentially doomed expedition that see’s its leader most likely murdered, and its crew allowed to go undisciplined afterwards that its surprising he was the only casualty.

Henderson essentially follows the expedition from the perspective of George Tyson, a subordinate officer on the ship, who like its leader Captain Charles Francis Hall, wanted to reach the North Pole but is stunned by the lack of motivation and decline of discipline by Hall’s successor. Tyson latter becomes the nominal leader—due to the drastic decline of discipline on the ship—of a group of crew and the expedition’s Inuit abandoned by the ship on the ice and survived six months before rescue. One of the biggest questions that Henderson attempts to tackle is if the expedition’s leader was murdered and if so who did the deed, but the evidence and time result in no hard conclusion.

Fatal North is historical book of adventure and survival with a dash of mystery that Bruce Henderson wraps together in easy-to-read prose that shows great research.

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