Voices from the Wilderness

On a blustery January day in 1757, a young widow and her son set out by stagecoach from their Dorset village—a trip prompted by twelve-year-old Samuel Hearne’s wish to join the Royal Navy.His mother had used family connections to arrange an interview at Portsmouth’s admiralty offices. Luckily, the captain who interviewed them was impressed enough to hire the boy on the spot.

Within days, Hearne was aboard this captain’s ship as one of his protégés, a newly minted “young gentleman.” According to his biographer, Ken McGoogan, he “enjoyed donning his tarpaulin hat and parading around the quarterdeck with a dirk in his belt.” In Ancient Mariner: The Amazing Adventures of Samuel Hearne, The Sailor Who Walked to the Arctic Ocean, McGoogan recreates naval life as Hearne would have known it during the Seven Years War. The young sailor seems to have been adept not just at the ceremonial tasks that fell to a presentable midshipman, but also at keeping a cool head in...