A true story, told in the words of one who survived shipwreck on the forbidding shores of Siberia in 1880. Patrick Cahill was one of the explorers sent in the "U.S.S. Rodgers" in 1880 to seek out the fate of the lost "Jeannette." That ship was doomed to be wrecked by the ice, while the "Rodgers" was likewise doomed to never return when she burned to the waterline in St. Lawrence Bay. Cahill's log provides a witty view of the life of the seamen among their unwilling but still generous hosts--a culture shock to both sides of the arrangement.