Fury Beach

Brisk recounting of the harrowing sojourn that led naval commander Ross to conclude that searching for the Northwest Passage was an utter waste of time. Returning in 1819 from an Arctic expedition that produced no new discoveries or information, Scottish-born John Ross, who went to sea originally as a boy of nine, incurred the rancor of a key superior and as a result did not get another ship for ten years. In frustration, he turned to a private sponsor to fund an 1829 voyage aimed at either finding the fabled Arctic water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or putting the idea of its…