Adrift on an Ice Pan

By Sir Wilfred Grenfell

On Easter Sunday, 1908, Dr. Wilfred Grenfell was summoned to treat a boy with osteomyelitis who had been operated on two weeks earlier. The young man needed immediate attention to save not only his leg but his life, so the doctor set out from St. Anthony, Newfoundland, with his komatik and his eight best dogs.

To save a few miles, Dr. Grenfell took a shortcut across a bay, but the ice broke up beneath him, his komatik sank, and one dog drowned. He and the other dogs climbed out of the water onto an ice pan, which drifted out to sea in an offshore wind. In the cold and solitude of a day and a night on the ice, the doctor was now in peril. Frostbitten and snow-blind, he turned to his remaining dogs and performed one final, desperate act in an attempt to save his life.

Adrift on an Ice Pan is the best known of the autobiographical accounts of Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, the famous Labrador doctor. Originally published in 1909, it has sparked much discussion over Dr. Grenfell’s character: his legendary ingenuity, evangelical faith, and love of adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: Jul 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771175876

Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell was born in 1865 at Parkgate, Neston, Wirral, England, the son of Reverend Algernon Sidney Grenfell, headmaster of Mostyn House School, and Jane Georgiana Hutchison. Grenfell moved to London in 1882 and studied medicine at the London Hospital Medical College, graduating in 1888. The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen sent Grenfell to Newfoundland in 1892 to improve the plight of coastal inhabitants and fishermen. He married Anne Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan of Chicago, Illinois, in 1909. They had three children and retired to Vermont after his work in Newfoundland. In 1927, Grenfell was knighted for his years of service on behalf of the people of Newfoundland. Grenfell died in Charlotte, Vermont in 1940.

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Reviews for Adrift on an Ice Pan

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I very much enjoyed this short audiobook. I had heard of Grenfell's work in Newfoundland but have never read anything by him. This book is about a journey he took with his dog sled team to render medical help. He decided to take a shortcut across a bay but found that the ice was not solid. He and his dogs went into the icy water but they finally managed to make it to a small sheet of ice. For the rest of the day and the night Grenfell and his dogs were on this ice pan. Miraculously he survived but he had to kill three of his dogs to do so. Everywhere he lived since then he had a plaque to the memory of those three dogs.