He was known as the King of the Arctic, and "Fifty Years below Zero" was his best-selling autobiographical account. Charlie Bower was only nineteen when he arrived in Point Barrow, Alaska in 1883. He had left San Francisco with the intention of making a short dash north on a whaling ship bound for the mythic Arctic Circle. 
Yet adventure had a way of following Charlie Bower. That initial landing turned into a fifty-year-long ice-bound lifestyle. Once he stepped off the whaler and back onto dry, albeit frozen land, Bower took a job as master of the whaling station. But, though commerce brought him north, it was the people that helped keep him there for Charlie soon became fast friends with the native Inuit people. They taught him how to hunt seals on the ice, caribou on the tundra, and whales out on the sea. He learned their secrets, lived in their igloos, navigated in their kayaks and avoided being murdered in their feuds. Plus the young adventurer observed the great dramas of the Far North play out. He saw the last of the sailing ships disappear over the horizon, and watched the first airplane fly in. 
For fifty-seven years, through ice storms and northern lights, Charlie Bower maintained both this lonely outpost and his claim as "Uncle Sam's most northerly citizen". A book to remember, "Fifty Years below Zero" is illustrated with photos by the author.

Fifty Years Below Zero

Travel

Brower, Charles D.

Travel Writing

Dodd, Mead

Fifty Years Below Zero: A Lifetime Of Adventure In The Far North

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Kessinger Publishing

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Fifty Years Below Zero - A Lifetime of Adventure in the Far North

Sanborn Press

Historical

Fifty Years Below Zero: A Lifetime of Adventure in the Far North

Farrelly, Philip J

ANSON, LYMAN

FIFTY YEARS BELOW ZERO- A Lifetime of Adventure in the Far North By CHARLES D. BROWER. INTRODUCTION: ON AND off for the last half century Charlie B rower has been Uncle Sams most northerly citizen. The honor was taken for a spell by his partner an old friend Tom Gordon, who had a house three miles farther north at another time Charlie Klengenberg camped six miles beyond, towards the Pole. But Klengenberg moved to Coronation Gulf and Gordon to Demarcation Point both places farther east but also farther south. That left Brower what he had been earlier Americas most northerly pioneer. Brower is what a loyal American likes to think of as a typical American. He is what you might expect of Manhattan Island born somewhere around Twenty-third Street when that street was far uptown he is the logical development of a boy who was ad mitted to Annapolis but who left that road of gold-braided pro motion for the paths of high and free adventure on unknown seas and shores. Meet him at the City Club in New York, and you think him what in a sense he was born to be, a typical successful and genial New Yorker meet him at the Explorers Club of New York, to which he also belongs, and you will have difficulty in localizing him among that far-traveled company. For he talks Africa, and Australia of the Ballarat days, till you think him a Tropic rather than a Polar-man. I write this to introduce a book which I have read in its origi nal and rough draft, but I shall read it again with eagerness when it comes from the press in its finished and, I understand, more compact version. For if Charlie finally imparts a third of what he knows about whaling, pioneering, and about the Arctic, it will be a source-book on f rendering and high adventure if he writes with a third of his conversational zest and charm, it will be lit erature. But in any case the tale will be to me the life-story of one of my oldest and dearest friends and in subscribing myself a friend I speak for most of the explorers, whalers, traders and missionaries who have reached or passed the north tip of Alaska since 1884. I speak, too, I am sure, for many captains and officers of the U. S. Coast Guard, for reconnaissance workers of the U. S. Geological Survey, for teachers whom the U. S. Bureau of Educa tion has been pushing up toward Barrow of comparatively recent years, and for nearly everyone else who for any reason has come within reach of Charlie B rowers help and his cheer at any time during his fifty-eight years of keeping open house to all comers about three hundred and thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle, Vilhjalmur Stefansson. ILLUSTRATIONS: King of the Arctic Charles D. Brower . . . Frontispiece FACZNXS PAGE Eskimo women carrying their children piggy-back . . 38 Whaling scene 54 A whaling camp located out on the ice , 54 Old Eskimo woman enjoying her cigarette in quietude and peace 70 A Point Barrow native, smoking his home-made pipe . . 70 Eskimo kayak 86 Walrus hunting on the floating ice 102 Full-blooded Eskimo woman at right, married to a white man and her family of half-breed children 118 SL Paul, one of the Seal Islands, halfway between the Aleu tian Islands and Behring Straits 134 Tessie George, a Barrow Eskimo schoolteacher . . . .150 Typical Eskimo camp in the summer 182 Summer at Barrow, showing Mr...

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