Hammond Innes · 1949 · survival

Hammond Innes's 1949 thriller. A whaling captain goes over the side in the Antarctic and his daughter refuses to believe it was suicide. Duncan Craig follows her south from Cape Town to South Georgia and into the pack ice aboard the factory ship - where a feud between two hard men leaves the fleet crushed in the floes and its crews walking on the ice.

1. 1
   London

   News reaches London that Captain Nordahl of the Bland whaling company has gone over the side of a factory ship in Antarctic waters - and his daughter Judie, refusing the verdict of suicide, sets out to learn why.

2. 2
   Cape Town

   At Cape Town, the last civilised port before the ice, Duncan Craig throws in his lot with her and takes passage south - into a company riven by the old feud between the Bland family and the men who crew their ships.

3. 3
   South Georgia

   At the whaling station on South Georgia, among the flensing plans and the rusting tanks, the fleet takes on stores for the season - and the enmity aboard hardens into something that will not wait for calmer water.

4. 4
   The Weddell Sea

   Driven too deep into the Weddell Sea after the whales, the ships are caught and crushed by the closing pack, and the survivors take to the floes - a nightmare of cold and hunger in which the feud plays itself out to the end.