De fatale reis van ‘The Neverthought’
Winner of the Dutch Small Press Award 2022
To say that we’re delighted would be an understatement. De Fatale reis van ‘The Neverthought’ (The final journey of the Neverthought) won the Dutch Small Press Award 2022, a prestigious prize for comic strip writers, initiated by Stripdagen Haarlem and Cross Comix Rotterdam. Joost Swarte, who sat on the jury, had this to say: ‘It’s a book you just can’t put down. Berend J. Vonk is a master of storytelling whose imagination knows no bounds. That’s immediately apparent from how the product is packaged: the (fictional) journals of a member of a fateful expedition to the North Pole written on loose sheets and discovered bound in a piece of canvas and accompanied by a chart, a tin of sardines and a drawing of his sweetheart.’
* unique publication *
De fatale reis van ‘The Neverthought’
The spinechilling journal of Petekin Macantyre, crew member of ‘The Neverthought’. A gripping 60-page tale (in Dutch) about the last journey of the ship sailing into the unrelenting ice floes of Franz Josef Land in 1898.
The journal is a limited edition (100 copies). The journal comes with a separate navigational chart and a personal message written by Petekin to his sweetheart Meredith.
The story has been recorded in illustrated form by Berend J. Vonk, an illustrator who is able to portray the madness of a polar explorer like no other. Graphic designer Roelant Meijer was responsible for the special design and production.
Both the first edition, as well as the second (and more simplified) edition have sold out.
How did the idea come about?
In the Covid lockdown of 2021, instead of travelling to the mountains, we took out to sea. After our boat, the Winkbuul became stranded on a sandbank, we made a remarkable discovery … see video below.
Bound in a piece of canvas, we found the lost diaries of Petekin Macantyre, crew member on ‘The Neverthought’, together with a sea chart, an original photo, his last rations and a personal message from Petekin to his beloved Meredith.
The original copy was presented and auctioned at the eleventh Dutch Mountain Film Festival in November 2021. Afterwards, the journal was published in a limited edition (likewise bound in canvas) and sold out within a month. We decided to produce a more simplified second edition. This special album, De fatale reis van ‘The Neverthought’ ED.02, was published in February 2022.
