Ghosts of Cape Sabine
Subtitle: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: February 7, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 354
ISBN-13: 9780399145896
First sentence: ON 10 JULY, 1881, overloaded with a detachment of seasick American soldiers and a cargo ranging from 200 scientific instruments to 2,000 pounds of canned potatoes, the Proteus, which had left St. John's harbor only forty-eight hours before, was suddenly battered by heavy seas.
Description: "Ghosts of Cape Sabine is an extraordinary, true Arctic drama of man against nature - and man against man." "Twenty-five men went north. Only six returned alive.".

"In July 1881, an expedition composed mainly of American soldiers sailed off to establish a scientific base in the remote Arctic region of Lady Franklin Bay. What happened afterward is a remarkable three-year saga of human achievement and human frailty, of heroism, hardship, bad luck and worse judgment.

Compounded by deliberate political negligence back home, especially on the part of Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the late president, and increasingly fierce dissension in its own camp, the expedition's fate, and that of its would-be rescuers, eventually encompassed starvation, mutiny, suicide, shipwreck, execution... and cannibalism.".

"The story has been only partly known, and full of dark riddles, but more than seven years of research by historian Leonard Guttridge have uncovered journals, letters, diaries, and other documentary material that for the first time provide intimate day-by-day details of the swirling events surrounding that ill-fated voyage, from turbulent birth to bizarre and tragic finale."--BOOK JACKET.