Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's June and Norwegian
Speaker 1: polar explorer fritch Off Nonson is waking up after another
Speaker 1: frigid night spent on Frontio's of Land. It's an uninhabited
Speaker 1: archipelago north of Siberia in the Arctic Ocean. With his
Speaker 1: assistant Yalmar Johansen still snoozing nearby, Nonsense starts a fire,
Speaker 1: tosses some meat into a pot to make soup, and
Speaker 1: climbs the top of Rocky Hill to admire the view.
Speaker 1: That's when he hears it, the unmistakable sound of dog's bargain.
Speaker 1: He's shocked because their last sled dog died months ago.
Speaker 1: The two explorers haven't laid eyes on another human since
Speaker 1: they abandoned their ice bound ship, the From on March.
Speaker 1: They had left Norway, and soon after the From was
Speaker 1: stuck in ice. This was by design. Nonson wanted to
Speaker 1: drift to the North Pole on ocean currents, but after
Speaker 1: a year and a half a drift, Nonson realized they
Speaker 1: weren't going to make it. He and Johnson tried unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: to ski to the pole. Now they'd retreated hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles over ice and open water to this spot, and
Speaker 1: they had many more to go before rescue could be contemplated.
Speaker 1: So when Nonson hears far off barks, he tells himself
Speaker 1: it's probably just birds. Then he hears the noise again.
Speaker 1: Now he's almost certain that dogs and their human handlers
Speaker 1: must be close by. He wakes Johnson, but his companion
Speaker 1: doubts this news. Nonson locates what he thinks are dog tracks,
Speaker 1: and then he hears an even more thrilling sound, a
Speaker 1: human shout, which he returns with a mighty cry of
Speaker 1: his own. He hurries towards the noise and sees a
Speaker 1: figure he later describes as a civilized European in an
Speaker 1: English check suit and high rubber water boots, well shaved,
Speaker 1: well groomed, bringing with him a perfume of scented soap.
Speaker 1: It's Frederick Jackson, a British explorer task with charting a
Speaker 1: land route to the North Pole. Nonsense, shaggy hairt and
Speaker 1: caked and soot in Walver's grease is much less identifiable.
Speaker 1: Halfway through their conversation, Jackson finally places the face. Aren't
Speaker 1: you nonsen? He exclaims, and Nonson confirms it. I congratulate
Speaker 1: you most heartily, Jackson says, amid lots of beaming and handshaking.
Speaker 1: You have made a good trip of it, and I'm
Speaker 1: awfully glad to be the first person to congratulate you
Speaker 1: on your return. A surprising encounter with any long lost
Speaker 1: explorer is caused for celebration, but nonsense safe return was
Speaker 1: extra thrilling. Until then, the quest for the North Pole
Speaker 1: had been mostly a procession of massive expeditions. Government and
Speaker 1: private investors had funneled their money into ships that carried
Speaker 1: over a hundred crew and luxury is like libraries and
Speaker 1: printing presses. Nonsense expedition was the opposite, a custom engineered
Speaker 1: vessel with a small crew and equipment he designed for
Speaker 1: polar travel. His success not only astonished people, it also
Speaker 1: ushered in a new era of polar exploration that favored
Speaker 1: test and theories over wishful thinking, self organization over government sponsorship,
Speaker 1: and minimalism over the idea that bigger was better. But
Speaker 1: before Nonsense triumph, British explorers were still trying to reach
Speaker 1: the North Pole the old fashioned way. In the seventies,
Speaker 1: polar explorers were professionals backed by world powers and independent
Speaker 1: adventurers with big dreams but little experience. Some failed and
Speaker 1: some died, but others got closer to the mythical point
Speaker 1: on the map than ever before and lived to tell
Speaker 1: about it. The international competition to be the first of
Speaker 1: the poll was on from Mental Floss and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This is the Quest for the North Bowl. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Cat Long, Science editor at Mental Floss and this is
Speaker 1: episode three, the turning Point. By the second half of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, many of Britain's esteemed pioneers were no
Speaker 1: longer leading the Arctic charge. Admiralty's second Secretary, Sir John Barrow,
Speaker 1: who had spearheaded Britain's polar exploration campaign for decades, had
Speaker 1: passed away in eighty eight. The fate of Sir John Franklin,
Speaker 1: who became the most famous explorer on Earth because he
Speaker 1: and all of his men perished in the Arctic, had
Speaker 1: come to light in eighteen fifty nine. For all the
Speaker 1: British effort put towards navigating the Northwest Passage, the discoveries
Speaker 1: of the last several decades had proven what William Scoresby
Speaker 1: asserted back in eighteen seventeen that it just wasn't worth
Speaker 1: it commercially speaking, but the country's huge emotional and financial
Speaker 1: investment in polar discovery made throwing in the tell now
Speaker 1: seem almost disgraceful. As nations like Russia, the US and
Speaker 1: what is now Norway set their sides on the region,
Speaker 1: Britain started viewing the North Pole as a symbol of
Speaker 1: its continuing dominance. As Arctic veteran and British Army general
Speaker 1: Edward Saban wrote in the eighteen sixties, to reach the
Speaker 1: Poll is the greatest geographical achievement which can be attempted,
Speaker 1: and I own I should grieve if it should first
Speaker 1: be accomplished by any other than an Englishman, it will
Speaker 1: be the crowning enterprise of those Arctic researches in which
Speaker 1: our country has hitherto had the pre eminence. The public
Speaker 1: easily latched onto this idea of a single glamorous spot
Speaker 1: on the map. The North Pole was a fundamentally romantic goal,
Speaker 1: promising glory to anyone who could achieve it. That's Edward J. Larson,
Speaker 1: a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the author of An
Speaker 1: Empire of Ice, Scott Shackleton and the Heroic Age of
Speaker 1: Antarctic science. Now, the winner might cash in through publishing
Speaker 1: contracts and speaking these in his country, I guess would
Speaker 1: gain prestige in an ever more imperialistic and nationalist engage.
Speaker 1: But no one, and this is important to remember as
Speaker 1: distinguishing Arctic exploration with Antarctic, or with African or with
Speaker 1: South Pacific exploration. No one expected a conquest of concrete
Speaker 1: value because the North Pole was merely a point on
Speaker 1: fifting ice with no appreciable scientific value. Maybe that last
Speaker 1: part is a bit mean. In eighty five, Sir Clements
Speaker 1: Robert Markham, then Secretary and future President of the Royal
Speaker 1: Geographical Society, gave a long list of scientific advancements that
Speaker 1: could only be accomplished by trying for the poll. The
Speaker 1: British citiz sins and key officials were pushing for a
Speaker 1: government sponsored expedition to plant the Union Jack at ninety
Speaker 1: degrees north, and scientific value ranked much lower on the
Speaker 1: list of priorities. While earlier Arctic exploration was all about
Speaker 1: charting the entire Northwest passage, this latest phase focused on
Speaker 1: simply getting to the North Pole. Here's Larson again. Once reached.
Speaker 1: Some ask even at the time, who would ever want
Speaker 1: to go again. But it was that sort of a
Speaker 1: romantic goal. At a time when machines were replacing men
Speaker 1: as the engines of production, and faceless bureaucrat seemed to
Speaker 1: be taking the place of principal leaders, here was an objective,
Speaker 1: a goal requiring invincible will, indefagable drive, and indomitable courage.
Speaker 1: In short, attaining the goal was a fundamentally human achievement.
Speaker 1: The British Admiralty would need a dauntless, dashing leader to
Speaker 1: be the face of that uniquely human spirit for the
Speaker 1: new mission. They found it in Sir George Strong Nare's
Speaker 1: Nars was a forty four year old career naval officer
Speaker 1: with a dynamite resume and limitless ambition. After enlisting in
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy at the ripe old age of fourteen,
Speaker 1: he embarked on a series of voyages that whisked him
Speaker 1: through the Mediterranean, South Pacific, Red Sea, Australian Waters and beyond.
Speaker 1: He was captain of the HMS Challenger on its mission
Speaker 1: to study the Ocean. He served in the Crimean War.
Speaker 1: He even authored a best selling naval manual titled Seamanship.
Speaker 1: Naire's was no stranger to the Arctic either. In eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, he joined an expedition to find Sir John
Speaker 1: Franklin and his missing ships. They didn't, of course, but
Speaker 1: they ended up saving a previous rescue expedition which was
Speaker 1: marooned and ice. As the Admiralty prepared to send Nears
Speaker 1: north again, the British public was swept up in a
Speaker 1: nationalistic fervor, much like the feeling in the US during
Speaker 1: the twentieth century space race. The North Pole was the moon,
Speaker 1: George Naire's was a hopeful Neil Armstrong, and newspapers like
Speaker 1: The Illustrated London News and The Graphic reported faithfully on
Speaker 1: every emerging detail. It soon became clear that while the
Speaker 1: government had updated its primary goal, it hadn't updated the
Speaker 1: strategy or structure of the expedition at all. This wasn't surprising.
Speaker 1: Most expeditions from the era followed a certain predictable pattern.
Speaker 1: There's a series of absolute, catastrophically mismanaged and or fatal
Speaker 1: expeditions to the North Pole or attempts on the North Pole.
Speaker 1: That's p J. Cappellotti, a professor of anthropology at Penn
Speaker 1: State Abington's and the author of the Greatest show in
Speaker 1: the Arctic. The US Army had one, the Navy had
Speaker 1: one in the U s Navy had one. The British
Speaker 1: Nari's expedition in the middle of the eighteen seventies have
Speaker 1: been pretty much of a disaster. So these big national
Speaker 1: expeditions were turning out to be complete flops. The because
Speaker 1: they were big, they were unwieldy, overplanned, staffed with the
Speaker 1: East you know, dozens and dozens of crew members and
Speaker 1: so forth. Nares Expedition, which was formally christened the British
Speaker 1: Arctic Expedition, would consist of two similarly sized ships. Nares
Speaker 1: would command the flagship, a one d and sixty foot
Speaker 1: steam sloop named the HMS Alert, and Henry F. Stevenson
Speaker 1: would captain the HMS Discovery, a one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: six ft steam whaler. Anticipating ice flows battery, the ships
Speaker 1: builders had outfitted their holes with sturdy wooden beams and
Speaker 1: iron plating. Each ship would house thirteen officers, which comprised captains, lieutenants, surgeons,
Speaker 1: and scientific leaders, basically anyone allowed to give orders. The
Speaker 1: rest of the men on board followed those orders. In
Speaker 1: addition to able seamen, stewards, and cooks. This group also
Speaker 1: included carpenters, Cooper's furnace stokers, and ice quartermasters. There was
Speaker 1: even a rope maker. Altogether, one and twenty people would
Speaker 1: set sail for the poll, just slightly smaller than the
Speaker 1: number that perished with John Franklin a few decades earlier.
Speaker 1: With that catastrophe still fresh in memory, the Admiralty might
Speaker 1: have tried to risk fewer lives this time around, but
Speaker 1: people were reluctant to entertain the idea that the Naires
Speaker 1: expedition would be anything besides a smashing success. Naire's downplayed
Speaker 1: the hazards in a lecture at the Winchester Guildhall weeks
Speaker 1: before departure. According to the Paul Mall Gazette, he claimed
Speaker 1: that the danger of the present expedition became mere child's
Speaker 1: play when compared with what previous explorers had undergone. Naires
Speaker 1: may have had enough experience to feel like he could
Speaker 1: speak so confidently, but the same couldn't be said for
Speaker 1: his officers, who had limited Arctic experience at best. This
Speaker 1: might have been okay if they had taken the advice
Speaker 1: of previous explorers and or study the time tested techniques
Speaker 1: of Inuit. In the North. They didn't do either. For example,
Speaker 1: Innuit favored loose fitting, fur lined sealskin for apparel, complete
Speaker 1: with hooded parkas that prevented heat from escaping around their necks.
Speaker 1: NAR's and his crew donned form fitting flannel and woolen
Speaker 1: clothing that was a huge pain to strip off when
Speaker 1: it got wet and froze, which happened often. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a hood in sight. Hudson's Bay Company surveyor John Ray,
Speaker 1: who had spent years exploring the Canadian Arctic, tried again
Speaker 1: and again to share innuitat wisdom with the explorers Before
Speaker 1: their departure. He told them that sheltering in snow instead
Speaker 1: of intense would better insulate them from the cold and
Speaker 1: also keep them from having to lug tense and heavy
Speaker 1: betting around. They didn't listen. Ray even shared his Innuit
Speaker 1: inspired design for a lighter, more streamlined sledge that was
Speaker 1: less likely to sink or get stuck in deep snow.
Speaker 1: There's expedition still did for the heavy, clumsy sledges used
Speaker 1: on past Navy trips. One person did act on at
Speaker 1: least one of Ray's recommendations and brought snowshoes, even though
Speaker 1: other so called experts had assured everyone that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be necessary. When the other crew members spotted the snow
Speaker 1: shoes on the ship, they burst into laughter. An a
Speaker 1: side note, back in the eighteen fifties, Ray had learned
Speaker 1: from the Inuit the fate of the doomed Franklin crew.
Speaker 1: It seemed they had even resorted to cannibalism. Well true
Speaker 1: that offended Victorian sensibilities so much that Ray became a pariah.
Speaker 1: That may have played into nares reluctance to heat his advice.
Speaker 1: On May seventy five, the Alert and the Discovery set
Speaker 1: sail from Portsmouth Harbor with great fanfare, and the public
Speaker 1: prepared to follow what they expected to be the greatest
Speaker 1: adventure story ever told Beneath its confident surface. However, the
Speaker 1: expedition was a disaster in the making, as the Canadian
Speaker 1: historian Pierre Berton writes in his book The Arctic Graill.
Speaker 1: Badly and hastily organized, with a smugness and an arrogance that,
Speaker 1: in hindsight seem almost criminal. This band of amateurs set
Speaker 1: off blithely, as so many had before it, without any
Speaker 1: real idea of what they were facing. It wouldn't take
Speaker 1: long for them to find out. The two ships sailed
Speaker 1: up Kennedy Channel, with Canada's Ellesmere Island to the west
Speaker 1: and Greenland to the east. They followed the path blazed
Speaker 1: by American explorer Charles Francis Hall in eighteen seventy one
Speaker 1: and hope to put the question of the open Polar
Speaker 1: Sea to rest once and for all. As we've discussed
Speaker 1: in previous episodes, this was a theory that a warm
Speaker 1: ocean circled by a ring of ice surrounded the North Pole.
Speaker 1: If a ship could break through the ice, they'd find
Speaker 1: a navigable sea to take them to the pole. Nares
Speaker 1: was smart enough to doubt this theory, and once the
Speaker 1: ships were through the Kennedy Channel they saw massive ice
Speaker 1: flow was over thirty ft tall, and a maze of
Speaker 1: craggy ice that seemed to reach the horizon. The commander
Speaker 1: realized immediately that no ship could sail to the pole.
Speaker 1: Stevenson stationed the discovery in Lady Franklin Bay and started
Speaker 1: preparing to spend the winter there. Nares, farther north than
Speaker 1: Robeson Channel, needed to find somewhere safe to pass the
Speaker 1: winter and fast before the ice froze around them. They
Speaker 1: sailed northwest and ended up anchoring in an inlet near
Speaker 1: the northern edge of Ellesmere Island, about five miles from
Speaker 1: the pole. As the puffin flies just beyond their insulated refuge,
Speaker 1: thirty thousand ton ice chunks formed a fifty foot Wallnar's
Speaker 1: first mate, Albert Hastings Markham, later described the vista as
Speaker 1: a solid, impenetrable mass that no amount of imagination or
Speaker 1: theoretical belief could ever twist into an open polar sea.
Speaker 1: They spent the long winter reading and playing parlor games
Speaker 1: they construct at an observatory for skygazing, and even staged
Speaker 1: plays in the Royal Arctic Theater in English polar traditions,
Speaker 1: started by William Edward Perry in eighteen nas recalled owing
Speaker 1: to the large size of the lower deck, we are
Speaker 1: enabled to erect the stage there with a temperature of
Speaker 1: fifty degrees, an advantage appreciated by both actors and audience.
Speaker 1: A representation held on the upper deck with a temperature
Speaker 1: of about twenty degrees below zero, leads everyone to long
Speaker 1: for the finale. At an early hour. In spring eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, two dogs led teams from the alert tried
Speaker 1: and failed to reunite with the discovery. NAIs felt like
Speaker 1: the dogs couldn't handle all the ice hammocks. In reality,
Speaker 1: the untrained men and bulky sledges were probably more at
Speaker 1: fault than the animals. How hard is it to drive
Speaker 1: a dog's lad? Anyway? Here's Russell Potter, an expert on
Speaker 1: Arctic history at Rhode Island College and the author of
Speaker 1: Finding Franklin, The Untold story of a one heard in
Speaker 1: sixty five year Search. I worked some years ago up
Speaker 1: in the Arctic with a guy he was actually the
Speaker 1: safety officer on the Nova show we did about the
Speaker 1: Franklin expedition, and he's a dog driver and a guide.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, what do you do to train
Speaker 1: dogs to pull? And he said, you don't. You just
Speaker 1: took them up in the pull. But having them pull
Speaker 1: in an organized way, you know, the traditional innud way
Speaker 1: as leads that are made out of sauce and sealskin,
Speaker 1: making sure the leads don't get tangled, figuring out who
Speaker 1: the lead dog is going to be, keeping your dogs
Speaker 1: in order while you travel. That takes a fair amount
Speaker 1: of practice. You can't just learn it like you riding
Speaker 1: a bicycle or something. You would have to spend some months,
Speaker 1: if not longer, sort of apprenticing to people who know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and eventually you get the hang of it.
Speaker 1: But most explorers are in the Arctic to get someplace
Speaker 1: or discover something, not to learn the art of dogs letting.
Speaker 1: So few did, and their preference for manpower over dog
Speaker 1: power was baked into British polar culture. I think there
Speaker 1: is an aspect to it that is particularly British, the
Speaker 1: idea that somehow if you were to use any labor
Speaker 1: other than human labor, you would be cheating right that,
Speaker 1: And that's certainly going native as some people would have
Speaker 1: regarded it at the time, will be regarded as a
Speaker 1: as a failing of some kind. So they did on
Speaker 1: some of the Franklin searches, and Franklin himself brought some sleds,
Speaker 1: but the idea of pulling them was to have men
Speaker 1: pulled them instead of dogs, which was of course a
Speaker 1: much worse way of traveling. On April three, Albert Markham
Speaker 1: and another officer named Pelham Aldridge led to more teams
Speaker 1: without dogs to explore the region. They promptly fell victim
Speaker 1: to just about everything John Ray had tried to help
Speaker 1: them avoid. Without snowshoes, they slogged through waste high snow,
Speaker 1: which soaked their clothes and gear. They're sleeping bags froze
Speaker 1: into solid slabs. Their supplies were saturated with water and ice,
Speaker 1: adding weight to their all atty heavy loads. Miserable, yes,
Speaker 1: but those issues were nothing compared to scurvy. Scurvy is
Speaker 1: caused by a lack of vitamin C, which humans can't
Speaker 1: produce on their own. As long as you occasionally eat
Speaker 1: fresh fruits and vegetables, you're probably consuming enough vitamin C
Speaker 1: that you never have to worry about developing it. Positions
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century didn't yet understand that scurvy is
Speaker 1: caused by a vitamin C deficiency, since vitamin C was
Speaker 1: only discovered in the twentieth century, but they did know
Speaker 1: that eating fresh fruits and veggies seemed to cure it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: for polar explorers, fresh produce was almost impossible to come
Speaker 1: by on long journeys, so the Admiralty issued lemon or
Speaker 1: lime juice rations to all sailors. The nearest expedition did
Speaker 1: have lime juice on board, but the sledging parties didn't
Speaker 1: bring any with them since it would freeze and break
Speaker 1: its glass containers. Instead, each man had only about twelve
Speaker 1: ounces of salted meat per day to see him through
Speaker 1: all that grueling aabor, and nothing to prevent scurvy. Just
Speaker 1: as naval officials had reassured nars as men that the
Speaker 1: snug clothing, heavy sledges, and lack of snow shoes would
Speaker 1: all be fine, so too did they wave away worries
Speaker 1: about the potential for scurvy. When several members of the
Speaker 1: sledging team started to feel under the weather, Marcom and
Speaker 1: Aldrich chalked it up to fatigue. But fatigue is an
Speaker 1: early symptom of scurvy. Others are joint pain, bruising, and irritability,
Speaker 1: which could all be explained by their general situation. Severe
Speaker 1: symptoms are a little more telling, spongy, blackened gums, teeth
Speaker 1: that loosen or fall out, and healed wounds that start
Speaker 1: to bleed again. Markham headed north and Aldridge continued westward.
Speaker 1: As their men became more debilitated, each officer faced a
Speaker 1: grave emergency. If they didn't turn around and get some
Speaker 1: lime juice into their men, they would die. On May twelve,
Speaker 1: Markham's stuck the British flag into the ice at eighty
Speaker 1: three degrees twenty minutes north, still four hundred and sixties
Speaker 1: statute miles from the pole, and high tailed it back
Speaker 1: to the alert. Aldridge traveled another two hundred statute miles
Speaker 1: west before turning back. Most of the men survived thanks
Speaker 1: to the heroic efforts of Lieutenant A. A. C. Par
Speaker 1: and some quick thinking on Nares's part. On June seven,
Speaker 1: Par left Markham's party and traveled alone for forty miles
Speaker 1: in twenty three hours to get help. Nara's deployed men
Speaker 1: and dogsleds to rescue them and soon send a party
Speaker 1: to Altridge's crew, assuming they were in a similar bind.
Speaker 1: They were. Four men were lying on the sledges and
Speaker 1: the others were dragging them through the snow. The rescuers
Speaker 1: delivered everyone back to the alert, where scurvy was ripping
Speaker 1: through the remaining men. Nara's realized it was time to
Speaker 1: pack it in unless you lose the whole crew. He
Speaker 1: used gunpowder to break up the ice around the ship
Speaker 1: and set sail towards the disc every In mid September,
Speaker 1: the Discovery was also battling scurvy and two men had
Speaker 1: died on a sledging trip. Fortunately, the Inuit hunter, interpreter
Speaker 1: and dog driver Hans Hendrick, a veteran of several British
Speaker 1: and American polar expeditions, was a part of the Discovery's crew.
Speaker 1: He had rescued the others by hunting seals and doling
Speaker 1: out raw meat, which contains some vitamin C. This was
Speaker 1: another helpful hint that white explorers could have picked up
Speaker 1: from Innuit who staved off scurvy despite having few greens
Speaker 1: in their diet. Their traditional foods included raw meat, and
Speaker 1: they sometimes ate predigested plant matter from the stomachs of
Speaker 1: caribou they killed. The crews of the Alert and Discovery
Speaker 1: were too depleted to do much beyond staying alive long
Speaker 1: enough to get home, and Nares knew it. Without reaching
Speaker 1: their goal, the two ships charted a course towards England.
Speaker 1: They arrived there on November two, eighty six to a
Speaker 1: mixed reception. Banquets were held, medals were awarded, and Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria even sent a congratulatory message, but the media lambasted
Speaker 1: the expedition for falling short of its single goal and
Speaker 1: embarrassing the nation on a global stage. The Admiralty agreed
Speaker 1: and actually launched an investigation to find out why scurvy
Speaker 1: was such an issue. They eventually came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that in future expeditions there should be less rum and
Speaker 1: more lime juice. Objectively, the expedition wasn't a complete disaster.
Speaker 1: It had surveyed land and recorded new scientific data, established
Speaker 1: that Ellesmere Island was part of Canada and thus part
Speaker 1: of the British Commonwealth, and set a new record for
Speaker 1: northern progress. If the government and the press had both
Speaker 1: set different expectations from the beginning, it could have been
Speaker 1: considered victory. Alas there's his failure to achieve his one
Speaker 1: note goal of reaching the North Pole made the whole
Speaker 1: effort seem like a failure overall. The Royal Navy relinquished
Speaker 1: its hope articulated by Edward Sabin, that British adventurers would
Speaker 1: stand atop the world. In fact, Britain did a complete
Speaker 1: one eighty and focused its attention on conquering the South Bowl.
Speaker 1: That left a door open for other nations to succeed
Speaker 1: in the North. We'll be right back. While Britain was
Speaker 1: busy dealing with the fallout from Nares's expedition. A teenaged
Speaker 1: fritsch Off Nonson was honing his skiing skills in Norway.
Speaker 1: Nonson was born outside Oslo, then called Christiania, in sixty
Speaker 1: one to a successful lawyer father and a mother who
Speaker 1: raised capable, outdoorsy kids. By the time Nonson enrolled in
Speaker 1: the University of oz Low in one, he was sort
Speaker 1: of an ubermanch physically and mentally. He could skate, swim,
Speaker 1: sketch and ski better than most, and he showed a
Speaker 1: special aptitude for learning science. While studying zoology in college,
Speaker 1: he spent months on a ceiling ship in Greenland, embarked
Speaker 1: on long ski trips. Has served as the Bergen Museum's
Speaker 1: zoological curator. Here's a portrait of nonsense, in Capalotti's words,
Speaker 1: very cultured, educated, well read, multiple languages, all of that
Speaker 1: on the one hand, and on the other hand, this
Speaker 1: almost primitive human, which again is the other half of
Speaker 1: the Norwegian character, living outdoors, playing outdoors, surviving out of
Speaker 1: doors in all seasons at all ages. This is somebody
Speaker 1: who strapped on his first pair of skis when he
Speaker 1: was two, and later in life would sort of laugh
Speaker 1: at people who were trying to learn how to ski.
Speaker 1: I think he won the Norwegian Combined Norwegian skiing cross
Speaker 1: country skiing skating competition, like a dozen years in a
Speaker 1: row or something, just a phenomenal What today would be
Speaker 1: he would be one of these people. You would absolutely
Speaker 1: hate his guts, and a lot of people did hate
Speaker 1: his guts. In his day. He was almost impossible to
Speaker 1: work with because he was so smart, he was so athletic,
Speaker 1: he was so good looking. But he, being Norwegian, was
Speaker 1: had had a very dark moods where he loathed himself
Speaker 1: and didn't think he was nearly accomplished as much as
Speaker 1: he should be. I thought he was scattering his talents
Speaker 1: too far and wide, not doing what the great men
Speaker 1: of history did, which is finding a single furrow and
Speaker 1: plowing it over and over again until they reached their goal.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, it seems like Nonsen was destined for greatness
Speaker 1: at the time. However, some of his ideas were considered
Speaker 1: off the wall. After finishing his PhD, Nonsen hatched a
Speaker 1: plan to traverse the entire Greenland ice cap, which no
Speaker 1: white person had ever done before. If the trip itself
Speaker 1: see Daunting nonsense. Strategy was even more so. A ship
Speaker 1: deposited him in his five companions off the uninhabited east
Speaker 1: coast of Greenland and then departed, leaving them no choice
Speaker 1: but to make it to the populated west coast or
Speaker 1: die trying. In fact, that was nanson slogan, death or
Speaker 1: the West Coast. In August, Nonsen and the others put
Speaker 1: on their snowshoes and started their uphill climb, dragging more
Speaker 1: than two pounds of supplies on their sledges. Overnight temperatures
Speaker 1: plunged to minus forty degrees fahrenheit or even colder. Nansen's
Speaker 1: men realized that their pemmican, their main source of nourishment,
Speaker 1: had accidentally been made without fat, an essential ingredient for energy.
Speaker 1: They were ravenous throughout their trip. About three weeks later
Speaker 1: they reached the peak of the ice cap, at eight
Speaker 1: thousand nine and twenty four ft above sea level. They
Speaker 1: switched to skis and headed downhill. Hungry and exhausted, they
Speaker 1: even had to build a boat from stunted Arctic willow
Speaker 1: trees to carry them across a fiord. By October, all
Speaker 1: six men had landed in gotthaab a Danish settlement on
Speaker 1: the west coast. It's now Nook, the capital of Greenland.
Speaker 1: They had done it, but now they had to spend
Speaker 1: the winter in Greenland, since it was too late in
Speaker 1: the season to hitch a ride back to Norway. Nonson
Speaker 1: practiced hunting and kayaking and tried to learn as much
Speaker 1: as he could from native people in Greenland. When he
Speaker 1: returned to Norway the following May, he was well equipped
Speaker 1: for his next great adventure. The idea for the expedition
Speaker 1: started with the U. S. S. Jeannette, a ship carrying
Speaker 1: an American expedition to the North Pole via the Bearing Strait.
Speaker 1: In June, ice floes had crushed and sunk the Jeannette
Speaker 1: in the East Siberian Sea. Yet three years later, wreckage
Speaker 1: thought to be from that very ship washed up in
Speaker 1: southwest Greenland. Here's Capalati when he read about this wreckage
Speaker 1: washing ashore, coming down in the ice and heard that
Speaker 1: it was from the Jenette. He also read that there
Speaker 1: was a Norwegian professor, a guy named Henrik Mon, speculating
Speaker 1: that it had gotten from the north of Siberia where
Speaker 1: the Jeanette was wrecked, all the way to the west
Speaker 1: coast of Greenland very strange because there was a current
Speaker 1: carrying it that way. And so Nonson looked at these
Speaker 1: disastrous expeditions, overwrought over personnel and all the rest of it,
Speaker 1: and looked at the Jeanette, of course, and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to do a Jenette expedition. I just don't
Speaker 1: want my ship crushed like the Janette, because if there
Speaker 1: is a current that goes from Siberia over to Greenland,
Speaker 1: if I can figure out a way to design and
Speaker 1: build a ship that will go with the ice instead
Speaker 1: of being crushed by the ice, then all I have
Speaker 1: to do is do exactly what the Janette did. Go
Speaker 1: to the north coast of Siberia, stick the bow of
Speaker 1: my ship in the ice and let it get frozen in,
Speaker 1: and let the ice just carry me across the North Pole.
Speaker 1: In February, Nonson presented this far out notion to the
Speaker 1: Christian Geographical Society. I believe. He said that if we
Speaker 1: pay attention to the actually existent forces of nature and
Speaker 1: seek to work with them and not against them, we
Speaker 1: shall thus find the safest and easiest method of reaching
Speaker 1: the poll Ships always ran the risk of being crushed
Speaker 1: by the shifting ice flows. Nonson had an answer for
Speaker 1: this too. He designed a small, strong ship with a
Speaker 1: rounded hull so it would be pushed above the ice
Speaker 1: instead of below it. Plenty of experts still consider this
Speaker 1: plan sheer madness and nonsense own words, but there was
Speaker 1: also enough hopeful curiosity to finance it. With funds from
Speaker 1: the Norwegian Parliament and a mix of private sponsors, Nonson
Speaker 1: commissioned a Norwegian shipbuilder named Colin Archer to construct a
Speaker 1: highly unconventional wooden schooner. Nonsense wife Eva named it the
Speaker 1: from Norwegian for a forward. It was designed to do
Speaker 1: exactly what the Genette could not do. It was designed
Speaker 1: like no other ship, so it was designed with this
Speaker 1: kind of rounded stern, rounded bow, rounded sides, two ft
Speaker 1: thick hulls of the strongest wood on the planet, and
Speaker 1: at the bow that increased the fore ft and on
Speaker 1: top of that fore feet of a very hardwood, was
Speaker 1: some iron and an iron stem. It had a rudder
Speaker 1: and a propeller mechanism at the stern for propulsion that
Speaker 1: could be lifted out of the water so the ice
Speaker 1: couldn't damage the rudder and the propeller. Nansen, I think
Speaker 1: referred to it as as it was going to be
Speaker 1: like an eel that would slip out of your hands.
Speaker 1: It was, and some other people have referred to it
Speaker 1: as like what happens when you pinch a watermelon seed
Speaker 1: between your your fingers, and that's what he wanted the
Speaker 1: ship to do in the ice. That when the ice
Speaker 1: came to crush it, it would squeeze it, but it
Speaker 1: would never get a grip on it because the sides
Speaker 1: were all rounded and it would just ride up on
Speaker 1: the ice. The Froms design also had some features to
Speaker 1: keep the crew in comfort, especially during the long polar night.
Speaker 1: It had what was likely the first electric lighting system
Speaker 1: on an Arctic voyage, powered by a windmill. When it
Speaker 1: worked and the lights came on, it was by all
Speaker 1: accounts a spectacular site because here you are in the
Speaker 1: middle of polar darkness on a frozen sea. You're absolutely
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the back end of nowhere.
Speaker 1: There's nobody coming for you if anything goes wrong, and
Speaker 1: you know the natural depression that sets in with twenty
Speaker 1: four hours of darkness, and here you have this creaking
Speaker 1: windmill starting to turn in these lights coming on. It
Speaker 1: must have been a spectacular thing to see and you
Speaker 1: had the northern lights, you had you know, the stars
Speaker 1: and moon and so forth. Even with the light show,
Speaker 1: Nonsense crew would need almost superhuman patients during their years
Speaker 1: in the polar desert. He thought. Norwegians were uniquely suited
Speaker 1: for the task. According to Berton, Nonsense thought only Norwegians
Speaker 1: could sit face to face on a cake of ice
Speaker 1: for three years without hating each other. Auto's fair Drop
Speaker 1: had proved himself a worthy companion during the Greenland expedition,
Speaker 1: and Nonsen chose him to captain the From with eleven
Speaker 1: other meddlesome Norwegians. They set sail from Christiania on June
Speaker 1: and headed east along the Siberian coast. They stopped in
Speaker 1: August to pick up thirty four sled dogs, and by
Speaker 1: September twenty five, the From was successfully lodged an ice
Speaker 1: around where the Jeannette had perished near the New Siberian
Speaker 1: Islands for more than a year. The From slowly progressed northwest,
Speaker 1: and the crew passed the time making scientific observations of
Speaker 1: air and water temperatures, marine life, ice thickness, and electricity
Speaker 1: in the air. Our object, he said, is to investigate
Speaker 1: the great unknown region that surrounds the pole, and these
Speaker 1: investigations will be equally important from a scientific point of view,
Speaker 1: whether the expedition passes over the polar point itself or
Speaker 1: at some distance from it. He considered reaching the North
Speaker 1: Pole intrinsically of small moment. In their free time, the
Speaker 1: men played games, performed songs on the organ and accordion,
Speaker 1: and feasted on fresh bread, chocolate, and Cormette cheeses. Nonsen said,
Speaker 1: we looked like fatted pigs. One or two even began
Speaker 1: to cultivate a double chin with potatoes and vegetables in abundance.
Speaker 1: No man showed signs of scurvy, and the overall health
Speaker 1: of the crew was so good that the ship's doctor
Speaker 1: started to get bored. According to Nonsen, he looked long
Speaker 1: and vainly for patients, and at last had to give
Speaker 1: it up and, in despair take to doctoring the dogs.
Speaker 1: The From proved slight and sturdy enough to perform as
Speaker 1: Nonson had intended, but it wasn't without issues. Here's Cappalatti.
Speaker 1: They weren't going nearly as fast as they thought they
Speaker 1: needed to, and secondarily, Nonson designed From to be a
Speaker 1: shallow water vessel. Apparently it was just an emotion sickness machine,
Speaker 1: and they were stuck. They had no ability to get
Speaker 1: messages out of the world. They really weren't going anywhere
Speaker 1: fast enough. He thought that this drift might go on
Speaker 1: for five years and and still maybe not even get
Speaker 1: to the poll. And that's when within a few months
Speaker 1: really he took Otto Svedra, the captain of the Pharmacide,
Speaker 1: and said, you know, we're gonna have to use our
Speaker 1: dogs and make a dash for the pole. And so
Speaker 1: after a year in the ice, they said, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do that. Let's take a break here,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Nonsen was a scientist, but he
Speaker 1: was still an adventurer at heart. On March fourteen, he
Speaker 1: and Jill Mari Johansson left the from with three sledges,
Speaker 1: two kayaks, three months of provisions, and twenty eight dogs.
Speaker 1: The ship continued drifting slowly towards Pittsburg and on the
Speaker 1: Norwegian archipelago Sqalbard, and the two intrepid travelers trekked north alone.
Speaker 1: Here's Cappellati. They were going great guns for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. They had the supplies. Johanson was an expert
Speaker 1: dog driver, and Nunson had taught himself to be an
Speaker 1: adequate dog driver, and they were on their way. There
Speaker 1: is no question he would have reached the North Pole
Speaker 1: because the first hundred miles or so the ice was
Speaker 1: perfectly smooth. When they left it from they were still
Speaker 1: about four les from the pole. But then in about
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty miles they just ran into absolute chaos, hummocks,
Speaker 1: bad ice and all the rest of it. And they
Speaker 1: and they were basically stopped in their tracks. Their speed
Speaker 1: went from about ten miles a day down to about
Speaker 1: nothing to four or five six miles a day, and
Speaker 1: and of course their supplies are dwindling, and by April
Speaker 1: seventh or eight, Knutson realizes that they don't turn around,
Speaker 1: they're going to run out of food. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: the landscape that made for slow progress. Like William Edward
Speaker 1: Perry had discovered back in Nonson realized that the ice
Speaker 1: flows were floating south. This was a useful revelation in
Speaker 1: his study of pushyanic currents, but a disappointment for their
Speaker 1: North Pole quest. Noson and Johnson were essentially trying to
Speaker 1: walk up a down escalator on April eighth, Nonson wrote
Speaker 1: in his journal, there is not much sense in keeping
Speaker 1: on longer. We're sacrificing valuable time and doing little. That
Speaker 1: same day, they reached eighty six degrees thirteen points six
Speaker 1: minutes north, besting Markham's record by two hundred miles, and
Speaker 1: then decided to turn around. Since the FROM had long
Speaker 1: since drifted away, their only choice was to head for
Speaker 1: the nearest land, that was four hundred miles southwest, the
Speaker 1: islands of Francios off Land, they set off on what
Speaker 1: ended up being the most difficult portion of the expedition.
Speaker 1: The FROM had shielded its passengers from the ceaseless movement
Speaker 1: of the ice floats. Now Nonson and Johansen experienced the
Speaker 1: worst of it. They paddled through deep lanes of water
Speaker 1: when the floes separated, and scrambled over icy hummocks when
Speaker 1: they collided. As their food stocks dwindled, they killed and
Speaker 1: ate the dogs on June Nonsense Road. A quarter of
Speaker 1: a year have we been wandering in this desert of ice,
Speaker 1: and here we are still. When we shall see the
Speaker 1: end of it, I can no longer form any idea.
Speaker 1: In late August, they finally came upon a small unoccupied
Speaker 1: island just north of Frontios of Land, and resigned themselves
Speaker 1: to settling in for the winter, since it would be
Speaker 1: too dangerous to continue traveling in the cold and darkness. Here,
Speaker 1: they constructed a shelter they called the whole. They cleared
Speaker 1: away some fairly significant stones and kind of scraped along
Speaker 1: the ground and carved out of place. It's about twelve
Speaker 1: ft long by about three or four ft wide, and
Speaker 1: then with the stones on the side, over the stones
Speaker 1: longitudinally they laid an enormous piece of Siberian driftwood. And
Speaker 1: this log is as thick as a telephone pole and
Speaker 1: almost as big. So dragging this thing up to the
Speaker 1: shelf where they had they constructed as kind of literally
Speaker 1: like a little slit trench in the ground. And then
Speaker 1: they dragged up this log, which for two men to
Speaker 1: have done that at the end of what was a
Speaker 1: very challenging expedition attempt on the pole was a feat
Speaker 1: of herculean strength. And over that they draped some walrus hides,
Speaker 1: and in that way they made kind of a lean
Speaker 1: to into which the two of them shared a sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: For the next just about the next six months, they
Speaker 1: took walks for exercise. They slept as much as possible
Speaker 1: simply to pass the time. Nonson wrote little beyond basic
Speaker 1: meteorological data. As he later said, the very emptiness of
Speaker 1: the journal really gives the best representation of our life
Speaker 1: during the nine months we lived there. They hunted in
Speaker 1: in a lot of food in the form of polar
Speaker 1: bears and walrus. There was an attack by a polar bear,
Speaker 1: and famously, even as one was being mauled by a
Speaker 1: polar bear, they were speaking to each other in formal Norwegian.
Speaker 1: They didn't used the familiar du form of you was
Speaker 1: always Dr Nonson, Lieutenant Johnson. They never referred to each
Speaker 1: other by their first names, and in that way they
Speaker 1: survived the winter and in fact emerge in the spring
Speaker 1: and Nonson's words, fat as seals. On Maine six, the
Speaker 1: companions deemed it safe enough to set off again. Despite
Speaker 1: heavy storms. They made it to Fronc josef Land's southern
Speaker 1: islands within a month. That's where they were on June seventeenth,
Speaker 1: when they were found by the English explorer Frederick Jackson,
Speaker 1: who was on his own attempt at the North Pole.
Speaker 1: Nonson accompanied Jackson, backed was Hut and some of the
Speaker 1: others went to fetch Johnson. Soon they were clean, well fed,
Speaker 1: and catching up with the Englishmen as if they had
Speaker 1: known them for years. As Nonson later wrote, we could
Speaker 1: not have fallen into better hands, and it is impossible
Speaker 1: to describe the unequaled hospitality and kindness we met with
Speaker 1: on all hands, and the comfort we feel. Nonsense and
Speaker 1: Johnson hitched a ride back to Vardo, Norway, aboard Jackson's ship,
Speaker 1: the s s windward at last, on August thirteenth, the
Speaker 1: two explorers, who had been given up for dead, stepped
Speaker 1: onto Norwegian soil. Meanwhile, back at the From, the rest
Speaker 1: of the crew was in good health. The ship happened
Speaker 1: to break free from the ice near Spitzbergen on the
Speaker 1: very same day that Nonson and Johnson alighted in Vardo.
Speaker 1: Just a week later, the from docked near Tromso, Norway.
Speaker 1: Though Nonsen was never in it for fame or glory,
Speaker 1: he earned quite a bit of both. Upon his return.
Speaker 1: His small ship literally didn't crack under pressure. He found
Speaker 1: evidence to support his theories about oceanic currents. He reached
Speaker 1: farther north than anyone had before, and he did it
Speaker 1: all without sacrificing a single human life. In short, his
Speaker 1: mad plan had worked, and the world was in awe.
Speaker 1: Norway had very high expectations of its new national hero.
Speaker 1: Nationalism was already on the rise, and Nonson was the
Speaker 1: perfect rallying point. He joined the movement for Norwegian independence
Speaker 1: from Sweden, which was secured in nineteen o five. He
Speaker 1: then served as the nation's ambassador to Great Britain until
Speaker 1: eight and became a professor of oceanography at the Royal
Speaker 1: Frederick's University now the University of Oslo. And that was
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg. During World War One,
Speaker 1: Nonson negotiated humanitarian agreements as Norway's delegate to the League
Speaker 1: of Nations in Washington, d C. After the war, he
Speaker 1: created an international I D called the Nonson Passport that
Speaker 1: stateless refugees could use to immigrate and re establish themselves.
Speaker 1: He also oversaw the process of helping about half a
Speaker 1: million prisoners of war get back home. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, the Red Cross enlisted Nonsen to manage relief
Speaker 1: efforts for twenty two million Russians suffering in that country's
Speaker 1: devastating amen. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in ninety
Speaker 1: two for his ceaseless humanitarian actions. Eight years later, he
Speaker 1: died at age sixty eight at his estate in Oslo,
Speaker 1: which is now the Fritjof Nonsen Institute for Environmental Policy,
Speaker 1: Law and Research. Nonsense extraordinary achievements might make George Nares
Speaker 1: look like an underachiever, but that's not exactly accurate. Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria knighted him, he was promoted to Vice Admiral, and
Speaker 1: he received honors from the Geological Society of London and
Speaker 1: the Geographical Society of Paris. Though he didn't return to
Speaker 1: the Arctic, he surveyed the Strait of Magellan and spent
Speaker 1: his later life as the appointed conservator of the River
Speaker 1: Mersey near Liverpool. He died in nineteen fifteen and was
Speaker 1: buried in Surrey, England. NAR's earlier exploration and the Challenger
Speaker 1: also laid the foundation for the science of oceanography. The
Speaker 1: data collected on temperature, currents, depths and more filled fifty
Speaker 1: published volumes, and modern oceanographers still use them today. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's likely that this research influenced nonsense theories on polar
Speaker 1: currents and helped inspire his own journey north. However, with
Speaker 1: the end of Nares's disastrous voyage, British Arctic exploration also ended.
Speaker 1: Most of the northern regions had been fully explored and charted.
Speaker 1: The real challenge now lay to the south. Nares's defeat
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for the next great phase of British exploration,
Speaker 1: with Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and their Norwegian nemesis
Speaker 1: Roald Amondson all vying to be the first at the
Speaker 1: South Pole. Neares failed at his one goal so spectacularly
Speaker 1: that he ended an entire era of polar exploration, while
Speaker 1: Nonsense succeeded to such a stunning degree that he launched
Speaker 1: a whole new one. Nonsense innovations in ship design, clothing,
Speaker 1: and transportation totally transformed the race to the North Pole.
Speaker 1: M Now on, adventurers would plan small expeditions, travel light,
Speaker 1: usually with dog sleds, harness the power of nature, and
Speaker 1: take cues from indigenous ways to achieve their goals. After nonsense,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know how to drive dogs, and you
Speaker 1: didn't know how to cross country ski, then you were
Speaker 1: really wasting everybody's time and exploration, which is why you
Speaker 1: had to be doing physical recordings, geomagnetism, atmospherics and so forth.
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to understand because the aurora, all
Speaker 1: of these kind of things, if you weren't doing something
Speaker 1: like that, you weren't going to get financial backing of
Speaker 1: the newly created serious scientific societies. So all of that
Speaker 1: is really a legacy of Nonsense being this kind of
Speaker 1: towering figure that straddled both science and exploration and had
Speaker 1: enormous clout with scientific societies and governments and corporations. Nonsen
Speaker 1: was even savvy to the possibilities of corporate sponsorship and
Speaker 1: product endorsement. People talk about Americans being brand conscious and
Speaker 1: you know, haling their souls to advertise this, that and
Speaker 1: the other. But Nonsense was one of the pioneers of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was nothing he wouldn't endorse if it
Speaker 1: would provide a few bucks for his exploration. So all
Speaker 1: of those things were, you know, the way exploration was
Speaker 1: going to be done in the first half of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Nonsen was a born innovator, never settling for
Speaker 1: the conventional way of doing things, and driven by curiosity, courage,
Speaker 1: and conscience. As we shall see, Nonsense stature as a
Speaker 1: polar hero spurred American explorer Robert E. Pearry to aim higher.
Speaker 1: He would use some of the polar traveling techniques that
Speaker 1: Nonsen invented and rely on his senior assistant, Matthew Henson
Speaker 1: to attempt the one thing Nonson failed to do, reach
Speaker 1: the North Pole. The Quest for the North Pole is
Speaker 1: hosted by Me cat Long. This episode was researched by
Speaker 1: Me and written by Ellen Kutowski, with fact checking by
Speaker 1: Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and to learn
Speaker 1: more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Mental floss. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
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