Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World

In 1743, a ship carrying 14 Russian sailors was headed for whaling grounds near Norway when a violent storm blew it far off course, where the ship froze into the ice. Some of the sailors remembered that other sailors had erected a hut on a nearby island and spent the winter there. Four sailors volunteered to go ashore to look for the hut in hopes of finding supplies or using it as a refuge should the 14 sailors be forced to spend the winter before the summer thaw could free their ship. Remarkably, the sailors found the hut, but when they returned to the shore, the ship had disappeared. Four Against the Arctic is the incredible story of the survival of the sailors on the tiny island, barren of all foliage and inhabited only by reindeer, foxes, and polar bears, before they were rescued by another ship six years later. Read more