WEBVTT - Go North, Young Man 0:00:02.120 --> 0:00:04.040 The Quest for the North Pole is a production of 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:15.160 I Heart Radio and mental Floss. It's June and high 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:19.120 above the Arctic Circle. British naval officer William Edward Perry 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.040 and more than twenty men are trudging over the ice 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.279 from Svalbard to the North Pole. They're hoping to be 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.280 the first men to reach ninety degrees north, but it's 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:33.680 not looking good. No Arctic explorer is more experienced than Perry. 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.320 He's already led three voyages to the Arctic and sailed 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.360 farther through the Northwest Passage than anyone. He's prepared to 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.720 face any threat, from extreme cold, to open water to 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.760 polar bear attacks. But now Perry is beginning to doubt 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.680 his chances. His crew was hauling their equipment and food 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.320 on heavy sledges through soft snow. They have to take 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.280 time consuming detours when their way is blocked by giant 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.080 piles of The slushy terrain is soaking the men up 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.000 to their waists. They'd be fainting with cold if they 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:10.160 could actually feel their legs. They struggle to keep pace 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:12.680 with their goal of thirteen and a half miles per day, 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.640 otherwise they'll run out of food on their return journey, 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.480 but something is against them. In six hours they managed 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.360 just one and a quarter miles, and after dinner they 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:25.480 go only two and a half more, according to their 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.720 navigational reading. In four days they march a grand total 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:35.080 of eight miles. Perry's men are exhausted, their food is dwindling, 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.400 and their exertions are not getting them any closer to 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:42.560 the pole. Only a handful of people had ever been 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.600 as far north as Perry and his crew. Whalers in 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:47.639 the area and made sure to leave before the autumn 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.360 ice closed in, so no one really knew what to 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:54.040 expect day to day and season to season. One thing 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.400 they did know was that the ice, the weather, and 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:01.240 the temperature were often unpredictable. The incurve for explorers who 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.600 wanted to go north would be steep, but that definitely 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:10.360 didn't prevent people from trying. In this episode, we'll dive 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.160 into the first real attempts to conquer the North Pole 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.600 by land or by sea, and we'll analyze what went 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:30.639 so extremely wrong. From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio, 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.560 this is the Quest for the North Pole. I'm your host, 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.560 Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss, and this is 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:49.519 episode two, Go North young man. A decade before Perry's expedition, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.200 a wailing captain named William Scoresby Jr. Who happens to 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.760 be my four times great uncle, noticed a sudden change 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.760 in the Arctic ice. The vast ice feels that he 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.360 had observed over the past fourteen years as a whaler, 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.919 and Spalbard had disappeared. He had never seen such a 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:09.840 dramatic change in the polar region. He wrote about the 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:14.000 ICE's disappearance to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:18.560 Britain's leading scientific organization. Banks have been the naturalist on 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.760 Captain Cook's voyage in seventeen sixty eight and elected President 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:25.680 of the Royal Society in seventeen seventy eight. He ruled 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.200 like a benevolent dictator and had directed the British government's 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:34.960 scientific priorities for nearly forty two years. Scoresby told him 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.280 that thousands of square miles of ocean between Spalbard and 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.680 the east coast of Greenland was perfectly void of ice, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:45.520 which is usually covered by it. He figured that something 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.040 had forced all of the ice south, where it melted 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.920 in warmer waters. He also suggested that now would be 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:54.560 the perfect time for the government to launch an expedition 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.480 to find the Northwest Passage. As a quick side note, 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:02.280 some scientists today think this observation was a consequence of 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.960 the huge volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia a 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.480 few years earlier, but in the nineteenth century they didn't 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.840 know that. Back to the Passage. As we learned in 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.920 our first episode, the Northwest Passage was a long sought 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.320 waterway from Europe to Asia over the top of North America. 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.880 Explorers like Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson had searched for 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.719 it back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.200 but little progress had been made since, mainly because of 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.479 all the ice in their way, but also because a 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.760 lot of people died. They had old charts and some 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:42.240 information from earlier expeditions. That's Russell Potter, a historian of 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.960 polar exploration at Rhode Island College, an author of most 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.720 recently Finding Franklin, the Untold Story of a one and 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.440 sixty five year search. We're going back here to Martin 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.400 Frobisher in the late fifteen hundreds. But there's been a 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:57.960 kind of a low in activity in terms of anything 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:02.160 sponsored by the government that area. If you were an 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.120 explorer in the early nineteenth century and wanted the government 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.919 to sponsor your voyage, you had to impress Banks, the 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:13.280 gatekeeper first. The Royal Society didn't actually fund exploration, but 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.880 Banks had to give your proposal the green light before 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.680 the government would even look at it. Scoresby was in luck. 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.400 Banks could not resist the idea that the Northwest Passage 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.480 might finally be discovered, and the idea made its way 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.800 to Sir John Barrow, the second Secretary to the Admiralty, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.200 that's the government agency that ran the Royal Navy. If 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.440 Banks approved an expedition, he could usually convince Barrow and 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.600 the Admiralty to organize and pay for it. Unlike today, 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.960 there was no National Geographic Society or Explorers Club to 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:49.000 sponsor expeditions. Aside from a few wealthy benefactors with Arctic fever, 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.360 the Admiralty was the only organization that launched voyages purely 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:58.520 for discovery. Barrow, like Banks, was obsessed with exploration because 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.880 it spread Britain's empire ever farther across the globe. Barah 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:05.520 realized that a program of polar exploration could be a 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.680 boon for the nation. Having one Napoleonic wars, there were 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:11.480 certainly a whole lot of ships and a whole lot 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:16.400 of men available to do something else with The Royal 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.200 Navy was downsizing. Half a million soldiers and seamen were 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:22.720 let go, and dozens of naval ships were taken out 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:27.200 of service, but career naval officers couldn't simply be dismissed. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.400 According to historian Elaine Murphy, by the time the navy 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.440 had been trimmed to twenty three thousand men, one in 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.880 five was an officer, and nine out of ten of 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.000 them had nothing to do. And I think that's why 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.320 a teen eighteen turns out to be a kind of 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.200 of a pivotal point. You have the capacity, it seems 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:47.599 that it's something you could do that would advance UH 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.920 knowledge as well as national interests. And the reports from 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.680 the whalers, particularly Willa and Scores me of course, where 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.160 that the ice was more open than it had been 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.360 in some time in that area, and so from his evations, 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:04.160 seemed like this might be the best opportunity to revisit 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:11.120 these long unvisited land. Barrow was also an enthusiastic believer 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.520 in the theory of an open Polar sea, which we 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.120 talked about in our first episode. This theory proposed, for 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.600 various reasons, that there was a huge ice free Arctic 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:26.000 sea surrounding the North Pole. Scoresby, however, totally disagreed with 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.720 the open Polar c theory. Over a dozen years, he 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.720 had seen for himself that sea ice blanketed the Polar 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:36.960 region with the exception of the year eighteen seventeen, and 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.760 even if a Northwest Passage could be found in the Arctic, 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.440 he believed the unpredictable ice and weather conditions from season 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:48.520 to season would make it commercially unworkable. Nevertheless, he fervently 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.080 hoped that his letter would lead Barrow to appoint him 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.160 as a commander of a voyage to the Arctic and 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.400 maybe even to find the Northwest passage. His motive wasn't 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.440 glory or fame. He wanted to imp prove geographical knowledge 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:03.880 and he also hoped to find new whaling grounds to 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.680 boost the British economy. He had years of experience in 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.040 the ice, he was an excellent navigator, and he originated 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.440 the whole idea of jump starting the search. Clearly he 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:18.040 had the credentials, but there was one problem. He was 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:22.080 not a Royal Navy officer, and Barrow refused to consider 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.920 anyone but a Royal Navy officer for the job. Because 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.040 so many were out of work Following the end of 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:32.520 the Napoleonic Wars, Barrow went ahead with planning an expedition, 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:37.600 an objective he always claimed peculiarly British without scores by. 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.920 The expedition would explore two possible routes, one across the 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.800 top of Canada and the other across the North Pole. 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.439 For the Canadian approach, two naval ships, the HMS Isabella 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.240 and the HMS Alexander, would proceed across the North Atlantic 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:55.679 and search for an opening to the west over Canada 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:59.320 towards the Bearing Strait. Some of this territory had been 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.560 charted by Robisher and Baffin more than two years before, 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:07.840 and much was still unknown. Barrow appointed a tough and 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:12.000 fearless Scottish commander, John Ross as captain of the Isabella, 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.679 and William Edward Perry, then a twenty seven year old lieutenant, 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.560 as his second in command of the Alexander. The North 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.000 Pole approach involved two more ships, the HMS Dorothea and 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.640 the HMS Trent. This pair would head due north from 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.040 Spitzbergen to the North Pole, following the track laid by 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.640 Constantine Phipps nearly fifty years earlier on the first true 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.520 expedition to the North Pole. All of these expeditions generally 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.199 had two ships, with the idea that if one were 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.400 damaged or traps in the ice, you get on the 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.679 other ship and that would be escaped vehicle. I suppose, uh, 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.640 And so that's pretty much what they did. The flagship 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:51.880 door THEA was commanded by Royal Navy Lieutenant David Buchan, 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.360 a Scottish officer who had spent most of his naval 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.240 career around Newfoundland. Not much is known about Buchan because 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.680 he commanded only one Arctic voyage, this one, and was 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.400 lost at sea on a voyage from India to England 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.240 in eight He also never published a book or memoir 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.040 about the voyage because he felt it didn't accomplish enough 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.840 to interest anyone. The Trent was commanded by an up 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.400 and coming Lieutenant John Franklin, and we know much more 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.120 about him. Franklin was a thirty two year old rising 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:24.920 star in the Royal Navy. He had seen action in 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:29.200 the Battle of Trafalgar and had circumnavigated Australia. The North 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.840 Pole voyage would be his first time commanding a ship. 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:39.320 Were people conscious of the dangers and the conditions involved. Well, yeah, 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.800 although you know, partly because they hadn't been up there 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.040 in such a long time, they had a number of 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.800 rather peculiar ideas about what to expect. They didn't really 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.320 understand the extent of permanent polar c ice at that time. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:56.760 They didn't understand what what affected the persistence of icebergs 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.640 or other hazards along the way. They didn't have any 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.000 specially prepared ships, although I think the general idea was 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:04.839 that if they were very strongly built, that would be 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.679 a good thing. And of course some people continue to 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.559 believe that if you could get through the initial ice 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.480 barrier as they called it, there would be warmer water 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.280 farther along the way, closer to the Pole, which of 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.640 course wasn't true, but no one had been up there 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:23.400 to test that hypothesis. You might say. Barrow instructed Captain 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.280 Dukin to sail along the western coast of Spitzberg and 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.400 as far as possible in open sea, then force his 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.280 way through the pack ice without stopping. The Admiralty had 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.800 told Bucan incorrectly that the sea north of Pittsburg and 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.720 was reportedly free of ice as far north as Parallel, 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.960 just four hundred statute miles from the North Pole. Well, 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.360 of course, one great way to discover the North is 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.120 just to head directly north. Uh And in fact they 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.640 were in some ways Henry Hudson had tied this a 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.040 long time ago, and they were in some ways following 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.520 in his footsteps. You might say, I think that the 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.400 fallback position was Spittsburgh Get in part because they could 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:05.160 expect possible assistance, or if their ships were found to 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.760 be unfit to continue, they could find some passage home. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.720 But no one really knew how long it would take 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.880 or how difficult it would be. None of the officers 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.520 in charge had ever been to the Arctic before, though 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:23.280 they did take experienced whaling masters as ice navigators, and 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:27.560 no expedition had spent the winter locked in ice, darkness 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.559 and extreme sub zero temperatures since William Barns was forced 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:39.080 to in. But the Admiralty had a typically rosy outlook. 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.720 If you can reach the poll, he was to head 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.120 for bearing straight and complete the passage, or if that 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:48.640 was impossible. He should sail for home via Baffin Bay. 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.319 If they were lucky, they'd meet up with the Isabella 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:55.440 and Alexander there or north of Alaska. It sounded great 0:12:55.480 --> 0:13:00.520 on paper. Let's take a break here, we'll be right back. 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.640 The four ships on the Admiralties Arctic Voyage left the 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:25.360 River Thames in April eight eighteen. John Ross and the Isabella, 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.120 William Edward Parry and the Alexander, David Buchan and the 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.520 Dorothea and John Franklin in the Trent all sailed north 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:36.840 to the Shetland Islands and then parted ways. The Isabella 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:39.560 and Alexander turned west, and the Dorothea and the Trent 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:45.520 set their compasses on Phipps's route. The ladder ships ran 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.800 into an extensive barrier of sea ice at the northwestern 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.160 corner of Spitzbergen and struggled to force their way through. 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.760 Chunks of ice came loose from the floes and congealed 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.800 around them. At one point they were trapped for three weeks, 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.320 frozen in place and unable to break up the eyes 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.880 around them to sail free. They even tried placing anchor 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.360 lines in the ice and reeling in the lines to 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:12.880 move the ship forward. After days of exhausting work, they 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:18.120 realized a southerly current was taking them backward anyway. Bucan 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.920 and Franklin hadn't made it any farther than Phipps had 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:25.520 almost fifty years earlier, and they were in trouble. Ocean 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.520 currents and the winds were piling hundreds of tons of 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.920 ice against the sides of the Dorothea and Trent, squeezing 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:37.040 their hulls almost to the breaking point. Frederick William Beechey, 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.720 a lieutenant on the Trent, said the ship was so 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.600 twisted that the doors of all the cabins flew open, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.360 and the panels of some started in the frames. With 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:48.720 her false stern posts moved three inches, and her timbers 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.320 cracked to a most serious extent. Toward the end of summer, 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:57.440 a gigantic storm nearly wrecked the ships. Unable to sail 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:01.080 away from the encroaching coast, Bucans heared the Dorothea into 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.840 the pack ice, while tremendous waves forced the Trent broadside 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:08.240 against the edge of the ice field. The vessels staggered 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:11.080 under the shock, and for a moment seemed to recoil 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:15.400 Beachy wrote, another wave curled under its hull and hurled 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:19.560 it onto the ice. It was so bad that, according 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:22.400 to Sir John Franklin, who was the second in command there, 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.240 the bell on his ship was ringing as it almost 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.640 turned horizontal in this thrashing water and ice. Those ships 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:35.320 were rather significantly damaged. When the storm finally passed, they 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.040 limped into Harbor and Spitzberg, and where they made repairs. 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.600 Buchan and Franklin were forced to return to England, having 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.920 gotten no farther than previous explorers, wrote the naval officer 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:50.640 and historian Albert Hastings Markham. The expedition examined about the 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.320 same extent of the pack edge as did Phipps in 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.480 seventeen seventy three, and found the ice equally as impenetrable 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.960 as he did, but England was in the grip of 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.440 Arctic fever. Their escape from the storm made Buchan and 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:08.440 Franklin instant heroes. There's quite a popular painting of this 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:11.880 that was done in London the year after, showing the 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.240 arrival of the ships at Pittsburgh, and then showing all 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.400 of the wildlife and all of the activity up there. 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:23.120 The glorious, although unsuccessful, endeavor was painted on this giant 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.600 cannabis and displayed in Lester Square. Franklin even posed for 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.960 his appearance in it, and then avoided less To Square 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.760 because he was afraid someone would recognize him from the panorama, 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.800 so it became kind of famous, even though like some 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:39.640 others of Franklin's later exploits, it wasn't really a success 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:44.120 as such. Meanwhile, Ross and Parry in the Isabella and 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.680 Alexander had sailed up the western coast of Greenland searching 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.880 for an opening in the Baffin Bay pack ice. They 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.600 reached a large bay between the seventy five and seventy 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.120 six parallels, which Ross named Melville Bay. The crews also 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:00.360 encountered a group of a New Wheat that had never 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.399 had contact with Europeans the expeditions. In New Wheat interpreter, 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:08.119 a green Lander named John Sacus, was able to communicate 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:10.480 with them, and the two groups spent several days learning 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.679 about each other's lifestyles and customs. Ross noticed that the 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.160 in New Wheat had knives with metal tips and asked 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.080 where they came from, because metal is scarce in the Arctic. 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.439 The New Wheat said they chipped small pieces from a 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:27.520 black mountain some distance away. Ross concluded that they were 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.840 talking about an iron bearing meteorite. Ross later wrote it 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.119 was in several large masses, of which one in particular, 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.560 which was harder than the rest, was a part of 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.960 the mountain. The others were in large pieces above ground. 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:43.399 They cut it off with a hard stone and then 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.480 beat it flat into pieces of the size of a sixpence. 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.200 Ross didn't have time to visit the site, but will 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:55.600 definitely hear more about these meteorites in later episodes. The 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.840 Isabella and Alexander battled their way across the ice pack 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.120 from Baffin Bay to the eastern coast of Canada. They 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.840 proceeded south along the shoreline, over territory that William Baffin 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.800 had explored two hundred years earlier. Eventually they came to 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.080 Lancaster Sound, which Baffin had seen so full of ice 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:16.399 that he believed the channel would always be impassable, But 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:20.639 now it was open water. Ross and Perry sailed ahead 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.680 thirty miles in fog, stopped their progress. When the fog 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.640 lifted for a few minutes, Ross clearly saw a chain 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:32.080 of mountains at the foot of the channel. He had 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.480 two officers take their bearings and enter them into the 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.880 ship's log. He named the apparent land mass Croaker's Mountains, 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:43.520 after John Barrow's boss, the first Secretary of the Admiralty. Then, 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.360 with their path seemingly blocked and autumn approaching, Ross ordered 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.200 their convoy to turn around. When they got home, Ross 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.600 was in for a rude surprise. Harry and a scientist 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.440 on the voyage noted that they didn't observe the mountains, 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.760 undercutting Ross's authority. The Arrow was incensed that Ross had 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:06.320 failed to fully explore Lancaster Sound. He rediscovered Baton Spay. 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.960 He got farther north than anyone had gotten before. But 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:12.000 I think his problem was that he didn't have enough 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:16.280 risk and enough danger. John Barrow of the Admiralty famously 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.720 mocked it as a pleasure cruise because there wasn't enough danger. 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.000 There wasn't enough hazard. He didn't risk losing his life, 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.320 and so I think even though that was successful, it 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.000 didn't necessarily play well with the public. But it did 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:32.320 have one good consequence. So as he was skirting the 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.520 edge of Batman Day, he came to the entrance to 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.119 Lancaster Sound, which actually does turn out to be the 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:43.119 key entrance to any northwest passage, that might be. The 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.280 controversy over that, when it came back to the Admiralty, 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.720 ended up spurring a second expedition under Parry, because Perry 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:54.320 doubted Ross's beliefs that these mountains existed, and indeed they didn't. 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:58.880 They had been a fata morgana, a mirage resulting from 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:02.560 the Sun's rays p saying through atmospheric layers of different temperatures. 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.679 I always wonder what would happen if Ross had just 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:12.080 continued sailing. The whole nineteenth century would have been different, 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:14.520 That's right, we would just skipped the whole thing. It 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.800 would be just cruise on through and come out the 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.359 other side and return to universal praise. But I do 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.879 think there is that funny thing. It's a feature of 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.680 all of these Arctic expeditions that the undertaking and hazard 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:32.080 and the suffering of difficulties, loss of life or whatever 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.119 is actually, in a weird way of kind of a plus. 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.920 If you really risk something as you go up there 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:41.800 that plays well back at home in Britain at least, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.080 And if you simply sail around and don't risk anything 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.120 or discover anything, new than that. Even though you might 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:53.800 achieve some scientific goal or another, that's not going to 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:59.280 play well back home. Right, So these tales of danger 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:03.159 and survive, eival and courage, we're very romantic where the 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.119 capital are. And so did it spark a lot of 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:10.280 interest in the media. Did the public interest encourage the 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.360 Admiralty to send out more expeditions? Well, yes, I think so, 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:15.439 and I think I think it is also important that 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.280 this happened at a time of increasing literacy, of wider 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:23.200 circulation of newspapers and magazines, the sort of the beginnings 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:25.960 of a kind of a mass culture out there, and 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:30.119 that culture was interested in partly just because it's sold newspapers, 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:32.320 I suppose, but but it was interested that kind of 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.919 dramatic story. So in addition to the press accounts, you 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:40.240 get paintings, you get woodcuts, you get artists, renditions. Everyone 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.640 is exceedingly curious to learn more about these things. And 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.840 everyone comes back, of course from their expedition and publishes 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:51.000 a large folio volume with beautifully and grave pictures showing 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:54.520 the strange and wondrous beauties and hazards of this land. 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:56.560 So it is a kind of it's it's kind of 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.600 the first exploration effort for Britain. It has a kind 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.479 of a pr component where all of the books are 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.160 published by the same publisher. They all come out after 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.399 the expedition. People line up to get them. An inexpensive 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:13.240 smaller version is soon produced, and that actually does fuel 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:18.000 public interests. You know, the Admiralty was doing this voluntarily. 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.440 There wasn't some external imperative, and they weren't really competing 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.639 initially with any other country, but they were competing for 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:27.399 public attention with other things, so they really had to 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.359 just had to be their their start performance for the 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.400 people back home. It's amazing to think of exploration as 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:39.560 a performance, but I guess that does make sense. It's true. 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.560 So the admirals he sent many more expeditions towards the 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.520 Canadian archipelago to search ever westward. It did not attack 0:22:48.560 --> 0:23:12.119 the North Pool again until We'll be right back. Between 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:16.560 eighteen eighteen and eighteen seven, Britain's Arctic campaign ramped up. 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:20.560 Perry revisited the search for the Northwest Passage on three 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:24.600 more expeditions to different areas of Canada. At one time 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:27.480 he was able to sail farther west through Lancaster Sound 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:30.639 than anyone before or since, and earned a five thousand 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:35.640 pound prize from the British government. John Franklin also went 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:39.000 to the Canadian Arctic and charted vast stretches of territory 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:44.119 over two land expeditions. One trip went so disastrously wrong 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:46.960 that Franklin and his team of British sailors and Canadian 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:51.040 voyageurs almost starved to death. This is how Franklin became 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:53.760 known as the man who ate his boots. He actually 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:56.760 ate his leather boots when there was literally nothing else 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.480 on the menu. The expedition was eventually rest keewed by 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:04.520 the indigenous yellow Knife people. Their years in the Arctic 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:09.240 wilderness burnished Perry's and Franklin's reputations as fearless romantic heroes. 0:24:10.560 --> 0:24:13.240 They were the most respected members of the informal club 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:17.120 of Arctic Men at the Admiralty. That's why when Franklin 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.919 and Perry started thinking about another trip to the North Pole, 0:24:20.440 --> 0:24:24.359 Barrow was all in. By eighty six, it was clear 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:26.879 that ice would block any ship that tried to sail 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:30.159 to the North Pole. Franklin suggested going by ship on 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:32.879 the same route as he'd done in eighteen eighteen and 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:36.919 then walking the rest of the way over the sea ice. Barrow, 0:24:36.960 --> 0:24:40.040 who preferred Perry over Franklin for the job of Commander, 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:42.720 made sure that Perry got a copy of Franklin's plan. 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:47.480 Perry quickly made a formal proposal to the Admiralty, which 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:51.840 was personally backed by Barrow and the Royal Society, though 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:54.600 the powers that be would never admit it. Much of 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:57.719 Perry's proposal was based on a plan suggested by William 0:24:57.720 --> 0:25:02.120