The Open Polar Sea: A Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery Towards the North Pole, in the Schooner 'United States.'

xxiv, 454 pp. 8vo. Original green cloth, gilt titles, gilt walrus motif on spine, gilt sled dog motif on front board, pink endpapers. Includes 9 plates, including maps and engravings by Darley, the author, and other artists. The Open Polar Sea was one of the most prevalent myths of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration. Several explorers had hypothesised a stretch of ice-free sea between Greenland and the North Pole, and several expeditions set out in search of it. One of these was planned and led by Isaac Israel Hayes (1832-81), an American physician and explorer. This account of the expedition, first published in 1866, was compiled from his journals. Having left Boston in a small schooner so overloaded with equipment that a passenger could lean over the deck rail and touch the sea, Hayes and his crew almost faced shipwreck off Nova Scotia and regularly saw their cabins flooded on their way to Greenland, where, in calmer weather, they encountered the first palatial ice floes. Written for the general reader rather than for scientific purposes, this book still serves as an accessible, entertaining guide to the voyage. Arctic Bibliography 6795: "Narrative of Hayes Arctic Exploring Expedition, 1860-1861, in the schooner United States to the Smith Sound region, to extend northward the explorations of the Second Grinnell Expedition, and to make scientific observations and collections. Contains an account of the organization and course of the expedition; the wintering at Port Foulke; survey of 'My Brother John's Glacier'; death of Augustus Sonntag; sledge journeys north along coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island; voyage in Smith Sound; with comments throughout on Eskimos, physical features of the region, and on the daily work."