Ancient Mariner

by Ken McGoogan

Ken McGoogan has done it again—written a vivid, real-life adventure that restores an extraordinary yet forgotten figure to his rightful place in exploration history. Among fur-trade experts, Samuel Hearne is grudgingly recognized as the eighteenth-century British adventurer who, during a remarkable three-year odyssey, became the first European to reach the Arctic coast of North America. In Ancient Mariner , McGoogan demonstrates that Hearne was far more complex, accomplished and influential than the history books suggest. Beginning with Hearne’s entry into the Royal Navy at twelve years of age, McGoogan paints an authentic portrait of eighteenth-century British life, both on and off the wooden sailing ships. After serving as a midshipman during the tumultuous Seven Years’ War, Hearne moved to London and, in 1766, just twenty-one, joined the Hudson’s Bay Company. Based at the company’s northernmost fort, an ambitious Hearne embarked on an overland quest for rich veins of copper supposedly located “far to the northward where the sun don’t set”—and also to discover the Northwest Passage. In his posthumously published journal, Hearne described the three-year odyssey—a harrowing journey marked by hardship, hunger and disappointment, and mitigated only by his friendship with the legendary Dene leader Matonabbee. Hearne trekked more than 3,500 miles. His epic adventure culminated in the infamous and still-controversial massacre at “Bloody Falls”—an event that, as McGoogan shows, changed him forever. Drawing on naval history, fur-trade history and literary history, McGoogan portrays Hearne as a skilled navigator, a pioneering anthropologist, a ground-breaking naturalist and a gifted natural artist. He fell in love with a native woman and never fully recovered after she died tragically. In a fascinating bit of literary detective work, McGoogan also determines that, having returned to London to live out his final days, Hearne met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and inspired the poet to write “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Suffused with McGoogan’s inimitable passion and insight, sparkling with discoveries and reinterpretations, Ancient Mariner is destined to become the non-fiction book of the fall season.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Adventure

333 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Nancy Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating book, about a British explorer in northern Canada who should be more famous than he is.
Samuel Hearne begins his adventures at the age of 12, when his widowed mother travels with him to Portsmouth to be enlisted as a "captain's servant" for the commander of a ship. This is not quite what it sounds; in this capacity, the "Young Gentleman" was more a "captain's protege" than a servant, and his duties included lessons, with other young fellows, from an onboard teacher; his family was also required to provide him an allowance of 30 pounds annually. So it was more an apprenticeship than simply service. Young Samuel, a strapping, curious boy who disliked his studies, was insistent upon going to sea.
Hearne proved an able sailor but found the navy to be ruthless and brutal. After nearly a decade he found himself working for the Hudson Bay Company, and thereafter begin his adventures exploring what sounds like some of the most hostile environs on Earth. He matured into a competent writer, learned several native languages, and detailed the customs and features of the American Indians, specifically, the Dene, Cree and Inuit; he was also an accomplished artist and his drawings and maps are very charming. He was also an observant and accurate naturalist and described the habits of the wildlife in the area, going so far as to wind up with a house full of pet squirrels, beavers and various other adoptees. Although too impatient as a boy for school, he became very literate and philosophical as he matured and his writings and actions reflect this.
Rather than summarize the whole book, I will comment on 3 points that struck me, particularly.
First, of course, is that I don't think many people of our era can comprehend the hardship and great risks these early explorers endured. These journeys involved backpacking in temperatures plunging well into the double-digits below zero, in areas with few if any trees, carting provisions but still dependent on hunting along the way ... Hearne and his parties, often only native Americans, went without food for days. During the "summer" seasons, snow, sleet and freezing rain still occurs, interspersed with temperatures, incredibibly, soaring to near 100 degrees, or dropping to near freezing or below, after having been rained on for days, unable to build a fire nor get dry, and with the added torment of clouds of mosquitoes. The misery sounds unimaginable.
Interestingly, while European women were left home, the Indian women not only participated in these expeditions, but were regarded as necessities: although the men did the hunting, the women were responsible for just about everything else: turning dead game into food and turning skins into clothing and building snowshoes and serving as beasts of burden. In these societies, Hearne notes that men, even the lowliest in status, ate their fill before the women could have their share, and at times were left without a morsel. Starvation happened. At one point during their travels, an Indian woman spent 2 days in painful labor, while the party waited. Once she had the baby, onto her back it went and off she slogged with the expedition, through swamp and snow, moaning in pain and still toting her regular burden as well as her baby, although someone else did pull her sledge for one day after her travails. Hearne, still a gentleman, expresses some horror at the way women were treated in these societies.
Haunting him for the rest of his life, according to his writings and accounts of witnesses, was a massacre of innocent Inuit by the Dene party who had been contracted to escort Hearne to a rumored rich copper mine and hopefully the northwest passage the British had been fervently hoping to find. Coming upon a small family of Inuit, the Dene warriors apparently unleashed their demons on them, brutally torturing and killing men, women, children and the elderly, seemingly for their own amusement. Hearne, the only European in the party, was powerless to stop them and was seen as weak for trying to dissuade them. The only thing he could do was document the massacre.
Hearne, and other British travelers, were betrayed, robbed and abandoned by their native American cohorts quite often, it seems; casks of rum were hauled inland for trading expeditions (it was also customary to offer gifts) and by the time it was all over, it turned out the men in charge of the casks had consumed it themselves and replaced it with water.
Politically incorrect it may sound now, but I can see where frictions might occur when the European and Indian cultures collided.
The author's notes at the end of the book ... a section I usually tend to just skim through ... is in the case enlightening. The author revisits Hearne's childhood town, and the areas of London where he lived after his retirement, while working on his book, and finds out, disappointingly, that the noble and brilliant explorer has been all but forgotten.
Hopefully this book will help to remedy that!

[Vickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved reading about the trials and travails of this mear child who was thrust into the world to fight wars, who braved hostile environments, and who became this rough and rugged person surviving in a strange land with strange people, but who never seems to lose his gentlemanly character. I appreciated the simplest details that elicited my emotions. Like when Samual Hearne was attempting to use his fragile equipment to measure locations along his trek, we knew how important a mission it was to map out his travels, and when the wind blew and broke his equipment, the disappointment was palpable.  Likewise when he had been more than a year out on his first journey to find the Northern Sea, and he was forced to turn back, one could feel the exhaustion and the fear at the prospect of having to go through again what they had just experienced and without the experience of triumph for reaching their goal. I appreciated the author's matter-of-fact description of the event at bloody falls, without any judgements.  And I appreciated the difficulty in Hearne's decision to support Matanabbee, in spite of the seeming injustice of the attack. He accepted the Chipewyan leader's decision, even tried to understand it. Hearne was earnest in his approach to learning about native culture, language and lifestyle.  Hearne's constitution was further tested when the French arrived and threatened the Fort, and he showed himself capable of making a wise decision for the inhabitants of the fort.  By doing so, he probably saved lives, but at great sacrifice to himself.  The author finishes the book by following in Hearne's footsteps in England as well as Canada, and it was a gratifying end to the story for me. During the reading of the book I felt the desire to see the places described, and the author satisfied the need with pictures and descriptions of these places in modern times. It was somewhat sad to discover that Hearne's home town had not lauded him much more than history itself. He hadn't met a brutal death or been imprisoned or courtmarshalled upon return like other famous explorers.  If not for the famous poem by Colleridge, or in my case the song by Iron Maiden, many might never have heard about Hearne at all. Thanks to Ken McGoogan, many more can learn about him.

[Dean Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about Samuel Hearne in grade 6 social studies here in Canada So when I spotted this book in a local used book store I picked it up. The book is a biography of Hearne and tells the story of how he came to work for the Hudson Bay Company and to explore much of northern Canada. He was the first European to see the Arctic Ocean and walked there from what is now Churchill, Manitoba. The success of his trek depended entirely on native peoples who travelled with him and supported him throughout. Hearne wrote a detailed memoir of the trek which was widely published after his death. The book is popular history but thoroughly researched and well written. A few scenes are dramatized a bit but not unduly so, and the author argues that Hearne did the same thing with his memoir. The book moved along well and was a fun read for someone interested in Canadian pre- confederation history, the history of New World exploration, and relationships between indigenous people and Europeans in early colonization.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

McGoogan's accounts of historical figures and events read as engagingly as novels. As he did with Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot, he succeeds in developing Hearne as a fully rounded personality, a man of many talents and strong passions, not just an historical figure. McGoogan is also to be commended for accurately portraying the relationships with and among the aboriginal peoples (primarily Cree and Dene) their traditions and behavior and their crucial role in Hearne's explorational journeys.
Considering what Hearne accomplished and the conditions under which he did so, it's remarkable that he is largely forgotten here in Canada and totally forgotten in his birthplace Beaminster and in London where he spent the remainder of his life after retiring from the HBC. It may be that one reason neither Rae nor Hearne received the recognition they deserved was that they told their own countrymen truths that they wished not to hear and chose not to believe. Too often, our accepted version of history is colored by the prejudices and vested interests of those who have custody of the records.

[Mook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly did not know the name Samuel Hearne before picking up this book. It took a bit of work to actually read; I do't usually read biographies, which is essentially what this book is. I wanted to read it mostly because of the tagline "the sailor who walked to the Arctic Ocean." Hearne's actual life is engaging - full of details about life in Britain, his time in the navy, his decision to go work for HBC in Canada. I especially enjoyed the latter half of the book where it narrated the life of the settlers and the natives who worked together through the fur trade. The pictures were a nice touch.

Unfortunately the writing style really wasn't to my taste. The author made a lot of references to other works in vague mentions that did not really illuminate anything for me. There was quite a lot of repetition (I don't want to go back and count how many times he mentioned Hearne's love of Voltaire).

Did I learn a lot? Probably. Would I read this again? Probably not.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more of a 3.5 rating. There are lots of interesting stories and information but as someone else pointed out the author's imagined dialogue as opposed to real quotes was a bit annoying. But I could see how the author would like to suppose the dialogue would have played out.

I remember studying (and promptly forgetting about) Hearne in school. But then it was all about memorizing names, dates and treaties. Why can't they make history in school as interesting as it is in this book? It really took some strength, mental and physical, to walk the 3,500 miles from Churchill Manitoba to the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine River. The cold and damp and hunger that Hearne and his Indigenous guides had to deal with was amazing.

He was an interesting man; sailor, Hudson's Bay Company man, explorer, naturalist and many more things; all of which he recorded only to be published after his death.

[Elizabeth Judd Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually a 3.5... I liked this book, but I wanted to like it more. I think the main problem I have is that I feel a little uneasy when biographers write "conversations" between people, or tell us what someone was thinking when they could not possibly know (ie that someone was thinking only of his wife when he died). I understand that in many cases an educated guess can be made, a believable dialogue invented; still, it just feels weird to me. However, the author obviously has an affection for his subject, and Samuel Hearne is fascinating. If nothing else this bio made me want to learn more about him.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Except for very little actual information linking Coleridge and the Ancient Mariner poem to the subject of the book, this is an interesting read. Samuel Hearne seems to have been an extraordinary and overlooked contributor to early European exploration of the North American Continent. But other than a few slight references to a poem of Colerdge's which preceded Ancient Mariner by a number of years, it's hard to make the exact connection. Read it more as a biography of Hearne than as a fan of Coleridge, and you probably won't be dissatisfied.

[Reader Rob B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book about a true northern hero. Forget Franklin - Samuel Hearne is the man that should have streets and schools named after him. He’s the guy that explored the North and made it back alive. He didn’t get lost. Ken McGoogan is an amazing writer.

[Elynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an overall exciting novel but if you like history and reading about early expeditions of discovery then you would probably enjoy this.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book some time ago, but it was memorable for the description of native Canadians killing other native people for the 'fun' of it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good description of a forgotten explorer.

[Jim Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ken McGoogan brings Canadian history alive and in this book the reader feels very much a part of Hearn's amazing travels.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot to offer readers who enjoy non fiction history, biography, exploration and adventure/survival. It is a well researched biography of Samuel Hearne, based largely on Hearne's journals, notebooks, drawings, maps and his published memoir. To say that Hearne lived a full and adventurous life would be an understatement. He was a sailor, naturalist, artist, explorer, map maker, fur trader, company manager, and a published writer. He also spoke several North American indigenous languages.

At the heart of this book is a 13 month, overland exploratory expedition that Hearne undertook for the Hudson's Bay Company in 1769-70 with a small group of Chipewyan-Dene natives. They travelled more than 3500 miles from Prince of Wales Fort on the west coast of Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Coppermine River on the Arctic Ocean and then returned by a different route to Hudson Bay. The journey was dangerous, an extreme test of endurance and a year long immersion in the Dene culture for Hearne, who, by way of this experience, became the first European to reach the Arctic shores of North America.

I found this a well written and most interesting read. Hearne's life, with all of its trials, tribulations, successes and sorrows, makes a very compelling story. The book concludes with a brief epilogue by the author that includes details of a visit to Prince of Wales Fort in Manitoba and his on-site investigations of Hearne's later years in London and Beaminster, England.

[Lyle Probert · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounding up. An enjoyable tale of Arctic exploration. Samuel Hearne was not only a pioneering explorer but a keen naturalist and early ethnographer. I particularly enjoyed the parts discussing the different indigenous groups he interacted with, and the author gives us a great insight into how forward thinking he was compared to his contemporaries. An enjoyable read for anyone infested in Northern Exploration.

[Alan Porter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off at a cracking pace ... I loved his indoctrination into life at sea....but the moment we get to the exploration side of the biography it becomes a little dry....this is the author of "Fatel Passage" and "lady Franklin’s Revenge"....unfortunately for me this biography doesn't reach the heights of those books.

[Max Richmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating story and a rare look at the exploration of northern Canada and its peoples. Hearne's honest observations are raw and uncensored. Life was tough back then and people moved from one food source to another and starved when unsuccessful. Weak members who were a burden were left to die. Intertribal warfare and genocide were witnessed and documented by Hearne.

[L.C. Tang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an autographed copy of this book. Reading it was a slow start, as the first few chapters were hard to get into, but I enjoyed reading about this adventurous sailor. I appreciated the table of contents, and the chapters are organized into three parts. The epilogue was quite interesting, as the author, Ken McGoogan, shares about this journey of tracking the mariner Samuel Hearne in order to gather the research to publish this book. At the end of the book, there is a list of illustration credits and a bibliography, which is a great reference tool. Acknowledgements start at page 321, and you can read about his experience with the journey of writing and publishing this book. Overall, an interesting read, especially for this sailor.