“In no way do I make any claim as a writer,” Will Hudson tells his readers in the foreword to “Icy Hell,” his account of his epic 1913 voyage into the Bering Sea, the far waters of the Arctic Ocean, and then overland down into Interior Alaska.
He’s being far too modest. For what becomes immediately apparent from this book’s earliest pages is that he was, in fact, an exceptional writer. An author whom most of us presently plying the trade can only envy. A bit repetitive at times with his wording perhaps, but blessed with remarkable descriptive skills and a seemingly unending sense of humor. Both of which he maintains throughout the telling, even as disaster strikes him and his shipmates and a desperate run is made for civilization. Or what passed for civilization in that post-gold rush era of Alaska.