WEBVTT - Why Go to the North Pole? 0:00:01.880 --> 0:00:03.880 The Quest for the North Pole is a production of 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:15.000 I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. The late winter sun 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.119 shines weekly on the six man party, who are bundled 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.120 in furs against the endless white sea ice. Nothing breaks 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.040 the horizon in any direction, and they are hundreds of 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.360 miles from their supply ship. For weeks, they've struggled against 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.519 extreme cold and exhaustion to reach this place. Veteran explorer 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:36.959 Robert E. Peery sets up a sexton and a pan 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.680 of mercury to observe their position. They have reached the 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:45.320 top of the world, the North Pole. Pierry's longtime assistant, 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.520 Matthew Henson, and four in New Week guides scraped together 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:51.000 a large amount of snow and then stand in front 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.760 of it, holding the expedition's flags. Perry takes out his 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.320 Codak camera and snaps the image, a rare moment in 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.400 which he isn't the center of attention. The Pole at last, 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.040 Perry writes in his journal, the prize of three centuries 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:10.160 my dream and ambition for twenty years mine, and here 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:15.479 he underlines the word mine. At last. This group would 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:17.679 be called the first men on Earth to reach the 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.320 North Pole. Peery would be lionized throughout the world as 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.479 the man who succeeded where all others, and there were 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.120 a lot of others had failed. What made Henson and 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:30.680 the rest of the crew follow Peery to the North Pole? 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.160 What made Peery and generations of explorers before him want 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.040 to unlock the mysteries of the Arctic And what did 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.000 they get in return? That's what we're going to find 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:52.440 out from Mental Floss and I Heart Radio. This is 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.760 the Quest for the North Pole. I'm your host, Cat Long, 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.240 Science editor at Mental Floss, and this is episode one. 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:10.320 Why go to the North Pole? Before we dive in, 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:12.359 I want to tell you a bit about why I'm 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.720 so fascinated with the story of the North Pole and 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.760 Arctic exploration in general. When I was little, my grandmother 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.600 mentioned in a very casual way that we were related 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.680 to an Arctic explorer named William Scoresby Jr. I didn't 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.600 think much about it until years later, but eventually I 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.399 got curious about who this person was and what he did. 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.160 In researching his life, I was introduced to the perils 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.520 and excitement of polar history, and I felt a strange 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:43.600 affinity for these feats of bravery and sometimes foolishness. We'll 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.560 hear more about him in this podcast. By the way, 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.000 around this time I read a fantastic book by the 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:54.080 British author Fergus Fleming called Barrows Boys. It's a lively 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.120 history of the many British expeditions to different corners of 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.280 the world in the nineteenth century, but primarily to the tick. 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.760 It's filled with accounts of courage as well as hardship 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.640 and suffering. In one expedition, the men got so hungry 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.840 that they ate their leather boots. When I finished it, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.960 I wanted to plumb the mystery of human kind's attraction 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.640 to the unknown and uncharted. I had an incurable case 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:22.320 of Arctic fever. Many explorers have probably felt the same way. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.160 A reporter once asked the mountaineer George Mallory why he 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.359 wanted to climb to the summit of Mount Everest, a 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:32.239 feat that had never been achieved. He answered, because it's there. 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:35.600 We can apply the same thinking to the quest to 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.880 reach the North Pole. It has attracted adventurers, explorers, and 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.760 scientists for centuries. On their quest to reach it, men 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:48.120 have faced an unbelievably harsh and dangerous climate. People have 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.200 lost fingers and toes to frostbite, or even cut off 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.920 their own body parts to survive. But while the tales 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.440 of North Pole adventure are filled with heroic sacrifice and achievement, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:03.040 the ills of society still trickled in. Nationalism was a 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.400 driving force in the race to claim the Pole. Racist 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.800 attitudes and exploitation were common. White men took all the glory, 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.160 while the black and indigenous people, without whom many expeditions 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:18.280 would have failed, received little if any credit. But we're 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.520 getting ahead of ourselves. Before we get there, we need 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.360 to try to understand what made these guys go north 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.559 in the first place, and also what the North Pole 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:31.120 even is. Today we know that the North Pole is 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.760 actually a point in a vast ocean. It's almost permanently 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.120 covered in sea ice. But until the early twentieth century, 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:40.599 no one had gotten really close to that point on 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.520 the globe. It remained one of the last blank spots 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.560 on the map of the Earth. The North Pole has 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:51.560 served as a literal loadstar for European geographers, astronomers, mathematicians, 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.760 and sailors. Because extensive polar ice blocked ships from reaching it, 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.680 no explorers really knew what existed there. But in the 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:03.680 mid sixteenth century it became critical to find out European 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.400 nations needed new trade routes to Asia. Spain and Portugal, 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.720 already controlled well established southern trade routes circling the globe 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.719 from Africa to the America's England and the Netherlands, launched 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:19.120 voyages to find northern routes, which would avoid conflict with 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.240 Spain and Portugal, but they would be an uncharted territory. 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.719 To find those mythical passages, European navigators used a number 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:31.680 of tools. One was a compass. These instruments have a 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.159 magnetized needle pivoting in a liquid and pointing to directions 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.440 marked on the case. The needle always pointed north, but 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:43.160 which north. The farther they sailed, navigators realized that their 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.120 compasses were influenced by a magnetic force that didn't correspond 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:51.120 with the directions on their charts. Accurate navigation depended on 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.640 calculating the difference between what the compass pointed to and 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.679 where they were actually sailing. That's because there are two 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:02.919 North poles and they're in different places. Magnetic north is 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:05.599 a spot that compass needles point to in response to 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:11.640 Earth's magnetic field. Its location is always shifting. During Perry's expeditions, 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.320 it was an Arctic Canada, but it's been moving towards 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:19.919 Siberia in recent years. True North is a geographical spot 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.240 located at ninety degrees north latitude. It's the pinnacle of 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.920 the grid of latitude and longitude devised by Greek geographers 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.200 as early as the third century BC that allows people 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.560 to pinpoint their position on Earth. True North is what 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.160 we think of as the North Pole. If you were 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.560 to stand at this point, you would face south in 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:44.159 every direction. So imagine yourself as a sixteenth century European 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.080 looking at a map. Between Europe and the North Pole 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.080 lay a vast, uncharted belt of ocean punctuated with volcanic 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.680 islands and impassable ice. To the west late unexplored Greenland 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.159 and North America, and to the east stretched the frozen 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:04.200 seas North Siberia. One possible route through this unmapped expanse 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.040 was the hoped for Northwest Passage, believed to go westward 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.720 across the Atlantic and over the top of North America 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.920 to the Pacific Ocean. The other, the Northeast Passage, allegedly 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:18.880 extended the length of the Siberian Seas to Japan. No 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.239 one knew if these roots truly existed or what mortal 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:27.680 dangers explorers would face. An English adventurer named Martin Frobisher 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.480 was determined to find the Northwest Passage. Born in Yorkshire, 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.920 around Frobisher had sailed around the Eastern Atlantic as a 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:39.920 privateer before setting his heart on the passage. He convinced 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.040 a group of English traders to sponsor his voyage. He 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.760 promised the riches of Cathay as a return on their investments. 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.800 Frobisher first obtained a fleet of tiny ships. The two 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.200 larger vessels, the Gabriel and the Michael, weighed only thirty 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.920 tons each, about a quarter of the size of the 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.320 Golden Hind the ship Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.280 The third ship was smaller than a dinghy. Frobisher departed 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.000 in fifteen seventy six and Queen Elizabeth waved farewell. He 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.800 rounded the southern tip of Greenland, and then a huge 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:17.760 storm separated the ships. The smallest was never seen again, 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.240 but Michael turned back to England. Frobisher sailed onward to 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.280 the north, eventually coming to an enormous bay at the 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:28.880 southern end of what is now called Baffin Island. He 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:32.319 mistook the bay for a strait to Asia. Inuite men 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.480 and kayaks approached the ship, and their appearance convinced him 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.400 incorrectly that he had indeed sailed through the Northwest Passage 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:43.400 and reached some part of Asia. The first part of 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:47.079 his mission quote unquote achieved. Frobisher got down to the 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:51.080 second part, locating ridges, but after a few weeks of 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.440 exploring the area, cold weather forced the Englishman to leave. 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.400 Frobisher made sure to gather some souvenirs, one of which 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.079 was a rock as great as a halfpenny loaf. A 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:05.320 government official route back in England. Three appraisers said the 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.400 stone was worthless, but a fourth set it contained gold 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.320 that was enough to launch Frobisher's second voyage to North America, 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.720 and what happened next would have huge consequences for the 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:20.520 future of British exploration in the area. After landing at 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:24.600 a place Frobisher called Countess of Warwick's Island, the crew 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.080 began filling the ship's holds with as much of the 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.440 glittering rock as they could find. Unfortunately, they also clashed 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.880 with the Inuit killing several and taking some this hostages 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.400 back to England. We'll talk about what led to this 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.720 event in a future episode. Frobisher escaped to England with 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.480 two hundred tons of ore, thinking that it would prove 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:48.400 the Northwest Passage was everything they'd hoped for. You might 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.600 think that those deadly battles would have kept Frobisher away, 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.160 but you would be wrong. In fact, he had even 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.720 bigger plans. In eight he set off from England with 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.120 the Queen's blessing and a fleet of fifteen ships laden 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:07.240 with supplies to establish a colony, England's first in North America, 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:12.040 to guard and extract the gold. The crew had high hopes, 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.679 but nothing went as planned. As they neared their destination, 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:19.240 a huge storm sank the ship containing their housing materials. 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.960 It was snowing in summer, so they knew it would 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.360 be impossible to build a colony that year. Instead, the 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.160 crew filled their cargo holds with more than a thousand 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:31.760 tons of ore and departed just a few days later. 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.319 But the worst news was yet to come. The ore 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.439 didn't contain any gold. It was iron pye write, appropriately 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.600 known as Fool's gold. The so called Northwest Passage was 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:50.960 a bust, Queen Elizabeth and the English merchants lost their investments. 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:56.160 The company founded to organize the colony went bankrupt. Brobisher's 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:59.280 reputation was ruined, and it seemed like a northwest passage 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.880 would remain elusive. England was out of the game for now, 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:08.520 but another country was up for the challenge. We'll be 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:23.600 right back. M explorers from the Netherlands were determined to 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:29.000 find a northeast passage. Following Frobisher's defeat, several Dutch expeditions 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:31.920 had fanned out to the east, searching along the ragged 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.360 coast of Siberia for an opening for Dutch merchants and 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.319 traders seeking to expand commerce with Asia. It was their 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.560 best option. The Dutch were fighting a war of independence 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.440 with Spain for almost a century and eighty years work 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.120 and so it was going on this whole time, and 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:50.760 Spain had such a fleet. The last thing they wanted 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.079 to do was to be running into the Spanish fleet. 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.800 That's Andrea Pitzer, journalist and author of the new book 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.480 Ice Bound Hip Wrecked at the Edge of the World, 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.040 which recounts the three polar voyages of Dutch explorer William 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:09.079 Barrens If Spain had these southern roots that they were using, 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:11.600 then it made a lot of sense for the new 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:13.920 Dutch nation, which was trying to get away from Spain 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.000 and established his own empire and its own independence. It 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.160 made sense for them to go north, and so they 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.800 were very vested at first in this northern passage, as 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:26.080 were England for some of the same reasons. There was 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.040 one problem, you know, very little was known in Europe 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.040 at this time about the hierarchic above the continental landmasks. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.679 People had gotten to southern Nova Zembla before people had 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:40.679 gotten around to Archangel and had started trade with Russia. 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:42.840 But when he got up to the Hierarchic, there was 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.680 just so much that was still unknown. Nova Zembla, now 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.800 often known by its Russian name Novaya Zemblia, is a long, 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.280 skinny archipelago off the coast of northern Russia, and it 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.360 was William barrenss first destination on his search for a 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.240 northeast passage on the fir to his three voyages in 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.560 Barns and his crew sailed his ship Mercury as far 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.720 as Nova Zembla's western shore. The island lies north to south, 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.959 creating a barrier for sailors going east. Barren sailed north 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:17.560 along the coast and reached its uppermost point. Then he 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.800 encountered a seed shop with ice. As historian Jeanettemursky writes 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.880 in her book To the Arctic, he maneuvered his ship 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:30.199 from patch to patch of open water, advancing, retreating, dodging, advancing, 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:33.880 zig zagging over fire miles, looking for a way through. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.080 After struggling for twenty five days, Barrens was forced to 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.200 return home, but not before he and his men attempted 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.720 to kill a herd of two thousand pound walruses with 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:47.800 their hatchets. They got a couple of ivory tusks. One 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.400 of the things Barents discovered was Nova Zembla was not 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.920 connected to any polar continent. For a long time, it 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:54.480 was thought there was a group of islands or a 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.079 continent at the top of the globe, and so when 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.320 he was able to sail around these islands to the north, 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.040 it was clear that it wasn't connected to a polar continent. 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:07.079 That discovery prompted another voyage the following year, but Barons 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:11.480 found his route barred by ice. In fifte six, Barons 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.640 convinced a group of Amsterdam merchants to back another voyage. 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.280 They outfitted two ships captained by Jacob von Heemskirk and 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:23.520 Jon Cornelis Rip, with Barrens serving as Van Heemskirk's pilot 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:27.120 and navigator. This time, instead of sailing east along the 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.800 coast of Scandinavia, they took what they hoped was a 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:35.680 shortcut and sailed due north. A month after their departure, 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.240 they reached a small island where they killed a polar bear, 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.240 naming it Bear Island. They realized they had discovered a 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.840 large archipelago of polar islands just six hundred miles from 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.880 the North Pole. The waters teemed with whales walrus. The 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.080 men collected thousands of birds eggs on the beaches and cliffs. 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:58.000 They charted the coast and named the island Spitzbergen, meaning 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.000 jagged Mountains. Today's pittsburg In refers to the largest island, 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.680 and the entire archipelago is named Small Bard. The two 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.640 ships couldn't agree on what to do next. Rip eventually 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.680 sailed home, while Barrens and Van Heemskirk sailed east to 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:14.600 Nova Zembla, hoping that the fortune of their journey thus 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:19.480 far would continue, it did not. While they were able 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.520 to dodge massive icebergs and round the northern point of 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:26.240 the island, the constantly moving sea ice soon closed in 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:30.320 and threatened to crush the ship. Only Barrens's skills saved 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:34.200 them from disaster. As the temperatures dropped and signaled the 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:36.800 coming of winter, they anchored in a small bay on 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:40.720 the northeast coast. The men suddenly understood that they had 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.080 no choice, but, as crew member Garrett de Verer later 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:48.600 wrote in Great Cold, poverty, misery, and grief, to stay 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:53.080 all that winter. The men built a crude shelter out 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.880 of driftwood without the help of their carpenter, who had 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.760 inconveniently died during its construction. They had to lug the 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.560 over frozen terrain eight miles to the side of the hut, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.520 all while being followed by hungry polar bears. They burned 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.640 more driftwood to stay warm, but even inside the shelter, 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:14.000 one side of a freshly washed shirt would dry while 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.760 the other side remained frozen. An inch of ice coated 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:22.360 the walls. Inside the hut. Darkness rained twenty four hours 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:24.560 a day, which was fine because it was so cold. 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.160 That their clock froze. They had to tell time by 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:32.000 a twelve hours sandglass. The climate there basically turns to 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.280 arctic desert. You know, it's really another world. And I 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:37.520 think of how amazing it must have been for them 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.920 to kind of come across the setting and then live 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.360 in it. When the men managed to shoot a polar bear, 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:45.720 they used the bears fat as fuel and lived on 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:49.720 the meat. Weeks pass and then months. But wait, it 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.720 gets worse. They eat polar bear liver and they almost die. 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:58.000 Not the vitamin A. Here's the thing about polar bear liver. 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:01.760 It contains a near lethal amount of vitamin A. Their 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:08.120 skin peels off. They got hyper vitaminosis. The men grew 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.240 weaker and came down with scurvy and often deadly vitamin 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.119 C deficiency. But in February the sun returned, and in 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:19.520 May they seized the opportunity to escape. Their ship was 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:23.200 beyond repair. That left two small rowboats, and the men 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:27.359 made them seeworthy as best they could. In June seven, 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:29.720 more than a year from when they set out from Europe, 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:32.520 barrens and the crew began their way down the icy 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.919 coast for home. They hadn't gotten far when a gale 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:38.160 threatened to capsize their boat, and they had to seek 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:42.080 refuge on an ice flow. There After, sustaining the hopes 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:44.639 of the crew for as long as he could, William 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.160 Barrens died, but his men pressed on for more than 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:52.760 sixteen hundred miles. Finally, the Arctic castaways were rescued by 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.120 a ship sailed by Jon rip from whom they had 0:17:55.160 --> 0:18:00.119 parted at Spitsbergen. The value of Barrens's discovery of spitzburg 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:04.000 and his exploration and mapping of Nova Zembla was immediately 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.439 apparent to European geographers and the public. He is the 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.240 first in recorded history that actually rounded it and saw 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.639 like what was that far north? And Small Bar is 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.919 even farther north in the northern end of Nova Zembla. 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.560 And so the fact that on that third voyage he 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:24.680 both discovered Spitzbergen, got that far north about just above 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.479 Small Bard, and then came over and went over Nova Zembla, 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:31.440 that's pretty incredible. They were not actively scientists, but they 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.000 were sort of these proto scientists. They didn't always understand 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.480 their discoveries, but they made it possible for us to 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.840 understand what they saw. Even when they weren't able to 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:45.640 understand it at the time. Not long after survivors got 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.800 back to the Netherlands, Garrett devere published his journal of 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.040 Barnes's three voyages and the hardships at the men faced 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.560 before they were rescued. The drama of the final voyage 0:18:55.680 --> 0:19:00.760 captivated readers within two years of the survive having sailors 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.800 getting back. There were additions in Dutch and in German 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.680 and Latin, in French right away, in Italian and then 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.600 a few years later in English, and their adventures were 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:15.240 so legendary that William Shakespeare actually mentioned their ordeal in 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:18.679 passing in Twelfth Night, and you know, it's kind of 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.359 incredible to have this international bestseller in this pretty early 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.879 era of printing at that point. And then in addition, 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.800 there were journals from Huigan von Wyncholten, who was on 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:34.240 Barren's first two voyages, another Dutchman, and uh, those really 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.480 changed some of the terrain and cartographical understandings of the 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.960 territory that they saw as well. So you know, it's 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.679 an amazing adventure story and it changed people's awareness of 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:47.000 like the existence of the Arctic and what was going 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.760 on there. But they did also make these scientific discoveries. 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:52.920 They didn't just map the geography of the High Arctic 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.080 above Europe from Spitzberg and across the Nova Zembla. They 0:19:56.119 --> 0:20:00.280 also made discoveries in ornithology and optics. They really change 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:05.440 the popular understanding of the Arctic. They also introduced the 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.680 popular character of an explorer. In the published account, Barren's 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.640 displayed remarkable endurance in the face of hardship. His courage 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.720 when threatened by storms and ice, lifted the men's spirits 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.040 despite near impossible odds. Barrens helped save the men's lives 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:26.120 and even sacrificed his own. These characteristics defined explorers from 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:31.280 then on. Barren's suffering was so extraordinary, and the Arctic 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.560 setting was so unique, particularly as we were saying, in 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.000 terms of having this long account from the trip from 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.639 the point of view of the people who actually survived it, 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.560 and it kind of ended up redefining in some ways 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:47.439 the nature of what the explorer was. After Barrens, a 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:51.159 few more explorers added important details to Europe's growing knowledge 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:55.320 of the Arctic. English navigator Henry Hudson explored the possible 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:59.919 northeast and northwest passages for his first two voyages, Hudson 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:04.080 sailed east, reaching Spitsbergen in seven and reporting on the 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.440 abundance of whales and seals. On the second voyage, in Sight, 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:10.679 he was blocked by ice in the land mass of 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.480 Nova Zembla, just as Barns had been. The following year, 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:18.119 working for the Dutch East India Company, Hudson investigated a 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.720 possible northwest passage he'd heard about, the New York River 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.600 that now bears his name. He explored it for a 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:28.040 hundred fifty miles before realizing it went nowhere near Asia. 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.399 On his final expedition, again under the English flag, he 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:37.360 sailed into Canada's Hudson Bay, named after himself. Hudson mistook 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.159 the giant inland bay for an ocean and sailed to 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:44.560 its southern extremity before realizing it was a dead end. Eventually, 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:49.040 the crew turned restless and homesick. They mutinied, forcing Hudson, 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.040 his teenage son, and several sick crew members into a 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.800 small boat. The boat was set adrift and never seen again. 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.800 A few years later, English mariner William Baffin, the eponym 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.920 of the island search for the Northwest passage by sailing 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:06.920 up the western coast of Greenland, farther than any European 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.159 had at that time. He realized the waters west of 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:13.880 Greenland were basically a large bay. He sailed down the 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:17.119 eastern coast of Arctic Canada and observed the entrances to 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.520 three large waterways that appeared to go west from Baffin Bay. 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.719 One of them was a true northwest passage, but Barons 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.679 didn't know that because he saw the passages completely blocked 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.000 by ice. He returned home and told his sponsors that 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:35.440 the roots he found were unnavigable. Explorers less interest in 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:38.560 the region after that, and no navigators sailed that far 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.600 north in Baffin Bay for another two hundred and thirty 0:22:41.600 --> 0:23:04.040 six years. We'll be right back over the seventeenth and 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:07.399 eighteenth centuries, explorers continued to fill in the blank spaces 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.439 on the Arctic map. They were learning the rules of 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.239 surviving in the Arctic and what dangers lay in the 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:19.320 unforgiving region. They had mapped portions of the coastline of Spitzbergen, Greenland, Canada, 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:24.480 and Russia. They discovered uninhabited islands and waterways. They'd met 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:28.359 indigenous peoples and traded goods in exchange for geographical information, 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:34.639 but beyond that, the Arctic was unknown territory. Was it 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:38.000 land or water? Was it cold all the time? Did 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:41.440 the ice melt? Or did an as yet undiscovered tongue 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:44.320 of land linked Greenland to Siberia Across the top of 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.320 the world. People were only too willing to fill in 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:49.159 the blank space at the top of the map with 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.880 their aspirations and dreams. It seemed that the less people 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:55.480 knew about the conditions at the North Pole, the more 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:58.800 fantastic the theories, and the more important it became to 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:02.879 find out if they were true. Armchair geographers seized on 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:06.240 the observations made by the early explorers and devised their 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:09.639 own theories about what lay beyond the ice. One theory 0:24:09.680 --> 0:24:12.720 was called the open Polar Sea. The idea was that 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:14.919 the North Pole lay in the center of a warm 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:18.840 polar sea surrounded by a ring of thick ice. It 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.280 seems ludicrous now, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 0:24:22.560 --> 0:24:26.920 it dovetailed with the information explorers had published. Some suggested 0:24:26.960 --> 0:24:29.520 that the warm water currents that appeared to influence the 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:32.680 growth of vegetation in the polar regions might stem from 0:24:32.680 --> 0:24:35.439 a large, warm sea at the north Pole, and it 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:39.320 was wrong to presume that extremely cold temperatures duly recorded 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:44.280 by explorers got progressively colder in higher latitudes. The open 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:48.760 Polar Sea theory emerged mainly from wishful thinking. Barns, Hudson 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:52.280 and others failed to navigate the northwest or northeast passages, 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:55.920 so many navigators hope that a passage due north over 0:24:55.960 --> 0:25:00.480 the North Pole would prove easier. Here is Andrea Pitzer. First, 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:02.840 we have to remember that they're imagining a land that 0:25:02.880 --> 0:25:04.639 they don't know at all, and they're trying to picture 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:07.119 what's possible there. But also there is a kind of 0:25:07.160 --> 0:25:10.840