The German surgeon and explorer Emil Bessels (1847 88) was head of the scientific team on the American-sponsored Polaris Expedition, which in 1871 3 made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole. Some of the crew spent months adrift on an ice floe and others were marooned in Greenland. Astonishingly, they survived, but much of the expedition's scientific research remained unpublished as a result of financial wrangling. This 1879 publication is a popular account of the journey, with a substantial scientific appendix based on the expedition papers and additional data shared with Bessels...