Kane, Elisha Kent

Kane, Elisha Kent( 1820–57),
naval surgeon and Arctic explorer, wrote of his first voyage to the Arctic in the popular narrative The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin (1853), abridged and reprinted as Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack (1915). Kane made a second expedition with the Grinnell, reaching 80° 10′ N., a “farthest North” record. The rigor of this journey caused his death after the publication of Arctic Explorations (2 vols., 1856). A scurrilous anonymous publication, The Love-Life of Doctor Kane (1866), tells of his romance with the spiritualist Margaret Fox.