The North Water: A Novel

The North Water is a historical novel by Ian McGuire. Published in 2016, it garnered a number of awards and honors. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and named one of the Best Books of the Year by both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. A BBC miniseries based on the novel went into production in late 2016.

Patrick Sumner is a doctor assigned to work in the British colony of India. After serving several years during a period of great unrest, Sumner is replaced at his post. He signs on with the crew of a whaling vessel, The Volunteer, thinking it will be an easy assignment compared to the one from which he has come. He brings along a good supply of drugs for his personal use, hoping to spend the majority of his time on board getting high to escape reality.

Unbeknownst to Sumner, the crew of The Volunteer is composed of career criminals who have plans to sink the ship to collect the insurance money. One of the harpooners, Henry Drax, a depraved person who commits rape and murder without remorse, is the mastermind of the plot. The captain of the ship, Brownlee, is complicit in the plot, though he is more or less a good man who attempts to protect his crewmembers.



On his first day in the North Sea, Sumner slips between two ice flows, becoming partially submerged in freezing water. Members of the crew find him after a few hours. Sumner is comatose but alive; as he slowly revives in the hold of the ship, he flashes back to the violent fighting he saw in India. Otto, one of the harpooners on board, is a spiritual man who believes Sumner achieved a higher level of consciousness while near death.

Sumner goes to work treating the men on the ship for injuries and illnesses. The crew holds him in high regard for his skills, but Sumner does not think he has done anything remarkable. One day, he treats a young deckhand Joseph Hanna for a stomachache and finds that the boy has been sexually assaulted. Joseph will not tell Sumner who has been assaulting him. Brownlee also attempts to get answers out of Joseph; when Joseph won’t talk about it, Brownlee forbids anyone to speak of the incident. A few days later, Joseph is murdered.

Brownlee vows to find the murderer, but his investigation is largely ineffectual and swayed by the opinions of the men on the ship. A crewman named McKendrick mentions that he suspects Drax of committing the murder. Almost at once, popular opinion turns against him, and McKendrick becomes the primary suspect. However, as McKendrick’s physician, Sumner knows that he could not have killed Joseph because of a previous injury to his hand. Sumner goes on to perform a physical on Drax, finding evidence that Drax is the murderer.



Sumner approaches Brownlee with his concerns, but before Brownlee can act, Drax attacks him. Drax is taken into custody; Brownlee retires to his cabin with injuries that kill him a few days later. Crewman Cavendish takes over command of the ship, planning to go ahead with the insurance fraud scheme. The plot to sink the ship requires the help of all the crew members, and so Cavendish is forced to temporarily free Drax.

The crew traps The Volunteer in the ice and sinks it. They then hike over the ice to where another whaling ship is anchored to secure passage for the crew. The crew prepares to carry their supplies over the ice, but a storm interrupts them. The ship they were supposed to board leaves to escape the weather, and the crew is left stranded on the ice. Fighting breaks out and several men are seriously injured or killed. Cavendish decides they should hike to Pond’s Bay to look for another ship.

During the journey, Drax escapes, killing several crewmembers, including Cavendish, before fleeing into the snow. Otto becomes the leader of the crew. Sumner spots a bear and takes a rifle to kill it for food. He follows the bear so far onto the ice that he becomes lost. Native hunters rescue him. Sumner stays at their village to recover from frostbite and exhaustion. Eventually, he finds a ship to take him home.



Once back in England, Sumner is determined to find Drax to force him to face prosecution. Drax gets wind of this, and along with Baxter, a shipping agent who helped with the insurance fraud scheme, conspires to kill Sumner. Drax and Baxter confront Sumner in the shipyard, but Sumner turns the tables on them. He kills Drax and forces Baxter to pay him a large sum of money. Then, he signs on with a German whaling ship and leaves England behind.