Sublime

George Melville would serve as the Jeannette’s engineer. Said to be distantly related to the great author, Melville was an improvisational genius with machines—a greasy-fingered savant who seemed most at home among thumping boilers and sharp blasts of steam. The engineer, thirty-eight years old, had a booming voice, a stout physique, and an

With a love of adventure and penchant for the impossible, dad, husband and captain Matt Knight was recommended to me by a mutual friend as the ideal man to lead my crew.

He can’t imagine what could have caused this, except the wrath of some angry sea god. But it wouldn’t surprise him in the slightest to learn that Britain had angered a sea god since the last time he was up and about.

The faulty compass that seemed adequate for navigation eventually proved otherwise. This realization partly explains a heartrending picture recorded by the Times: “Later the two Captains met, clasped hands, and sobbed on each other’s shoulders.” The sobs of these two burly seamen are a moving reminder of the tragic consequences of misorientation.14