Kent’s boat, The Kathleen, Tierra del Fuego, 1922 |
Kent’s increasing fame
was his passport to New York’s high society, where he met a
woman who bewitched him with her beauty and rebellious
nature. The stormy affair that followed left him dazed and
distraught. “If there’s a worse place than New York City,” he
declared, “I will go there.”
The artist signed on as a clerk on a freighter bound for Chile
and developed a vague scheme to brave the legendary hazards
of Cape Horn. After transforming an old lifeboat into a sailing
vessel and then abandoning it in Admiralty Sound, Kent
and a colleague crossed through a mountain range on foot to
Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
There, he rented a small sloop and somehow convinced a
Swedish settler named Christopherson to guide him through
the intricate, uncharted waterways of the Wollastons, the most
exposed islands of the archipelago.
From Voyaging, Kent’s written account of his journey:
It was a restless, tossing sea, not wind blown but more
terrible in that it seemed to lift and fall by some energy
within itself.
Christopherson turned to me. “I think,” he said, softly,
“we must turn back.”
Did I cry out in strong defiance, “Hell, keep her south”?
No. We were wet and cold and miserable, and I was afraid.
And we turned and ran for shelter. And the voyage of
6000 miles was ended, and the Horn was lost.
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 | Voyaging: Frontispiece, Portrait Of Me (Improved), 1923
linecut on paper
Gift of Sally Kent Gorton
[X1978.2.62] |
 | Admiralty Sound, Tierra del Fuego, c.1922-23
oil on panel
Gift of Sally Kent Gorton
[X1978.1.7] |
 | Voyaging:, 1924
wood engraving
Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton
[P52000.9.63] |
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