 First edition | |
| Author | James Aldridge |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Youngman Carter |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton, London |
Publication date | 1962 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 376 pp |
| Preceded by | The Last Exile |
| Followed by | My Brother Tom |
A Captive in the Land (1962) is a novel by Australian writer James Aldridge. [1]
While undertaking a meteorological survey of the Arctic the crew of a Dakota aircraft observe a wrecked plane on the ice with one person moving around the area. With the Dakota unable to land Rupert Royce volunteers to parachute down to the wreckage to offer assistance. He succeeds but soon learns that the Dakota itself has crashed on returning to base with the loss of all the crew. Royce and the survivor spend the winter in the fuselage of the plane and then Royce decides to seek help by trekking 20 miles across the Arctic ice. He succeeds and is invited to Moscow to receive a medal for his deeds. As he is about to leave British intelligence requests he undertake some espionage activities during his travels in Russia.
A reviewer in The Canberra Times was very impressed with the first 100 pages of the novel, but found problems after that: "In recounting this journey Aldridge is brilliant and convincing. Like the doyens of all adventure books he has an incredible eye for detailed realism. After this, Mr. Aldridge goes on far too long." [2]
The novel was adapted for the screen in 1990. The adaptation was directed by John Berry from a script by John Berry and Lee Gold. It featured Sam Waterston, Aleksandr Potapov and Keir Giles. [3]
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages.
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole.
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, in 1819 and 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later and the entire crew died, from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy.
Ice Station Zebra is a 1963 thriller novel written by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. It marked a return to MacLean's classic Arctic setting. After completing this novel, whose plot line parallels real-life events during the Cold War, MacLean retired from writing for three years. In 1968 it was loosely adapted into a film of the same name.
The last voyage of the Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–16, ended with the loss of the ship in the Arctic seas, and the subsequent deaths of nearly half her complement of 25. In August 1913, Karluk, a brigantine formerly used as a whaler, became trapped in the ice while sailing to a rendezvous point at Herschel Island. After a long drift across the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, in January 1914 the ship was crushed and sunk. In the ensuing months, the crew and expedition staff struggled to survive, first on the ice and later on the shores of Wrangel Island. In all, eleven men died before rescue. The Canadian Arctic Expedition was organised under the leadership of Canadian anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and had both scientific and geographic purposes. Shortly after Karluk was trapped, Stefansson and a small party left the ship, stating that they intended to hunt for caribou. However, the ice carried Karluk westwards, far from the hunting party who found it impossible to return to the ship. Stefansson reached land and then devoted himself to the expedition's scientific objectives, leaving the crew and staff on board the ship under the charge of its captain, Robert Bartlett. After the sinking, Bartlett organised a march across the ice to Wrangel Island, 80 miles (130 km) away. Conditions were difficult and dangerous; two four-man parties were lost before the island was reached.
Sir George Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar, commonly referred to as Captain Wilkins, was an Australian polar explorer, ornithologist, pilot, soldier, geographer and photographer. He was awarded the Military Cross after he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers during the Battle of the Hindenburg Line, and became the only official Australian photographer from any war to receive a combat medal. He narrowly failed in an attempt to be the first to cross under the North Pole in a submarine, but was able to prove that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap, thereby paving the way for future successful missions. The US Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959.
Robert "Bob" Abram Bartlett was a Newfoundland-born American Arctic explorer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A Captive in the Land is a 1990 Soviet–American survival drama film directed by John Berry and written by Berry and Lee Gold. The film is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by James Aldridge and stars Sam Waterston, Aleksandr Potapov and Keir Giles.
Harold Edward James Aldridge was an Australian-British writer and journalist. His World War II despatches were published worldwide and he was the author of over 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction works, including war and adventure novels and books for children.
Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880–1971) was a Danish polar explorer and author. He is most known for his expeditions to Greenland.
The Adventures of Captain Hatteras is an adventure novel by Jules Verne in two parts: The English at the North Pole and The Desert of Ice.
Vladimir Ivanovich Voronin was a Soviet Navy captain, born in Sumsky Posad, in the present Republic of Karelia, Russia. In 1932 he commanded the expedition of the Soviet icebreaker A. Sibiryakov which made the first successful crossing of the Northern Sea Route in a single navigation without wintering. This voyage was organized by the All-Union Arctic Institute.
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point Franklin and nearly two dozen others had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, having presumably perished.
Nansen's Fram expedition of 1893–1896 was an attempt by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to reach the geographical North Pole by harnessing the natural east–west current of the Arctic Ocean. In the face of much discouragement from other polar explorers, Nansen took his ship Fram to the New Siberian Islands in the eastern Arctic Ocean, froze her into the pack ice, and waited for the drift to carry her towards the pole. Impatient with the slow speed and erratic character of the drift, after 18 months Nansen and a chosen companion, Hjalmar Johansen, left the ship with a team of Samoyed dogs and sledges and made for the pole. They did not reach it, but they achieved a record Farthest North latitude of 86°13.6′N before a long retreat over ice and water to reach safety in Franz Josef Land. Meanwhile, Fram continued to drift westward, finally emerging in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Arctic exploration is the physical exploration Arctic region of the Earth. It refers to the historical period during which mankind has explored the region north of the Arctic Circle. Historical records suggest that humankind have explored the northern extremes since 325 BC, when the ancient Greek sailor Pytheas reached a frozen sea while attempting to find a source of the metal tin. Dangerous oceans and poor weather conditions often fetter explorers attempting to reach polar regions and journeying through these perils by sight, boat, and foot has proven difficult.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1962.
Thomas Abernethy was a Scottish seafarer, gunner in the Royal Navy, and polar explorer. Because he was neither an officer nor a gentleman, he was little mentioned in the books written by the leaders of the expeditions he went on, but was praised in what was written. In 1857, he was awarded the Arctic Medal for his service as an able seaman on the 1824–25 voyage of HMS Hecla, the first of his five expeditions for which participants were eligible for the award. He was in parties that, for their time, reached the furthest north, the furthest south (twice), and the nearest to the South Magnetic Pole. In 1831, along with James Clark Ross's team of six, Abernethy was in the first party ever to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
Nor 6 was a prawn trawler that sank on 25 April 1963 after a collision with the Zuytdorp Cliffs off the coast of Western Australia.