Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and mental Floss. It's June and high
Speaker 1: above the Arctic Circle. British naval officer William Edward Perry
Speaker 1: and more than twenty men are trudging over the ice
Speaker 1: from Svalbard to the North Pole. They're hoping to be
Speaker 1: the first men to reach ninety degrees north, but it's
Speaker 1: not looking good. No Arctic explorer is more experienced than Perry.
Speaker 1: He's already led three voyages to the Arctic and sailed
Speaker 1: farther through the Northwest Passage than anyone. He's prepared to
Speaker 1: face any threat, from extreme cold, to open water to
Speaker 1: polar bear attacks. But now Perry is beginning to doubt
Speaker 1: his chances. His crew was hauling their equipment and food
Speaker 1: on heavy sledges through soft snow. They have to take
Speaker 1: time consuming detours when their way is blocked by giant
Speaker 1: piles of The slushy terrain is soaking the men up
Speaker 1: to their waists. They'd be fainting with cold if they
Speaker 1: could actually feel their legs. They struggle to keep pace
Speaker 1: with their goal of thirteen and a half miles per day,
Speaker 1: otherwise they'll run out of food on their return journey,
Speaker 1: but something is against them. In six hours they managed
Speaker 1: just one and a quarter miles, and after dinner they
Speaker 1: go only two and a half more, according to their
Speaker 1: navigational reading. In four days they march a grand total
Speaker 1: of eight miles. Perry's men are exhausted, their food is dwindling,
Speaker 1: and their exertions are not getting them any closer to
Speaker 1: the pole. Only a handful of people had ever been
Speaker 1: as far north as Perry and his crew. Whalers in
Speaker 1: the area and made sure to leave before the autumn
Speaker 1: ice closed in, so no one really knew what to
Speaker 1: expect day to day and season to season. One thing
Speaker 1: they did know was that the ice, the weather, and
Speaker 1: the temperature were often unpredictable. The incurve for explorers who
Speaker 1: wanted to go north would be steep, but that definitely
Speaker 1: didn't prevent people from trying. In this episode, we'll dive
Speaker 1: into the first real attempts to conquer the North Pole
Speaker 1: by land or by sea, and we'll analyze what went
Speaker 1: so extremely wrong. From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: this is the Quest for the North Pole. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss, and this is
Speaker 1: episode two, Go North young man. A decade before Perry's expedition,
Speaker 1: a wailing captain named William Scoresby Jr. Who happens to
Speaker 1: be my four times great uncle, noticed a sudden change
Speaker 1: in the Arctic ice. The vast ice feels that he
Speaker 1: had observed over the past fourteen years as a whaler,
Speaker 1: and Spalbard had disappeared. He had never seen such a
Speaker 1: dramatic change in the polar region. He wrote about the
Speaker 1: ICE's disappearance to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society,
Speaker 1: Britain's leading scientific organization. Banks have been the naturalist on
Speaker 1: Captain Cook's voyage in seventeen sixty eight and elected President
Speaker 1: of the Royal Society in seventeen seventy eight. He ruled
Speaker 1: like a benevolent dictator and had directed the British government's
Speaker 1: scientific priorities for nearly forty two years. Scoresby told him
Speaker 1: that thousands of square miles of ocean between Spalbard and
Speaker 1: the east coast of Greenland was perfectly void of ice,
Speaker 1: which is usually covered by it. He figured that something
Speaker 1: had forced all of the ice south, where it melted
Speaker 1: in warmer waters. He also suggested that now would be
Speaker 1: the perfect time for the government to launch an expedition
Speaker 1: to find the Northwest Passage. As a quick side note,
Speaker 1: some scientists today think this observation was a consequence of
Speaker 1: the huge volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia a
Speaker 1: few years earlier, but in the nineteenth century they didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Back to the Passage. As we learned in
Speaker 1: our first episode, the Northwest Passage was a long sought
Speaker 1: waterway from Europe to Asia over the top of North America.
Speaker 1: Explorers like Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson had searched for
Speaker 1: it back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: but little progress had been made since, mainly because of
Speaker 1: all the ice in their way, but also because a
Speaker 1: lot of people died. They had old charts and some
Speaker 1: information from earlier expeditions. That's Russell Potter, a historian of
Speaker 1: polar exploration at Rhode Island College, an author of most
Speaker 1: recently Finding Franklin, the Untold Story of a one and
Speaker 1: sixty five year search. We're going back here to Martin
Speaker 1: Frobisher in the late fifteen hundreds. But there's been a
Speaker 1: kind of a low in activity in terms of anything
Speaker 1: sponsored by the government that area. If you were an
Speaker 1: explorer in the early nineteenth century and wanted the government
Speaker 1: to sponsor your voyage, you had to impress Banks, the
Speaker 1: gatekeeper first. The Royal Society didn't actually fund exploration, but
Speaker 1: Banks had to give your proposal the green light before
Speaker 1: the government would even look at it. Scoresby was in luck.
Speaker 1: Banks could not resist the idea that the Northwest Passage
Speaker 1: might finally be discovered, and the idea made its way
Speaker 1: to Sir John Barrow, the second Secretary to the Admiralty,
Speaker 1: that's the government agency that ran the Royal Navy. If
Speaker 1: Banks approved an expedition, he could usually convince Barrow and
Speaker 1: the Admiralty to organize and pay for it. Unlike today,
Speaker 1: there was no National Geographic Society or Explorers Club to
Speaker 1: sponsor expeditions. Aside from a few wealthy benefactors with Arctic fever,
Speaker 1: the Admiralty was the only organization that launched voyages purely
Speaker 1: for discovery. Barrow, like Banks, was obsessed with exploration because
Speaker 1: it spread Britain's empire ever farther across the globe. Barah
Speaker 1: realized that a program of polar exploration could be a
Speaker 1: boon for the nation. Having one Napoleonic wars, there were
Speaker 1: certainly a whole lot of ships and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of men available to do something else with The Royal
Speaker 1: Navy was downsizing. Half a million soldiers and seamen were
Speaker 1: let go, and dozens of naval ships were taken out
Speaker 1: of service, but career naval officers couldn't simply be dismissed.
Speaker 1: According to historian Elaine Murphy, by the time the navy
Speaker 1: had been trimmed to twenty three thousand men, one in
Speaker 1: five was an officer, and nine out of ten of
Speaker 1: them had nothing to do. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: a teen eighteen turns out to be a kind of
Speaker 1: of a pivotal point. You have the capacity, it seems
Speaker 1: that it's something you could do that would advance UH
Speaker 1: knowledge as well as national interests. And the reports from
Speaker 1: the whalers, particularly Willa and Scores me of course, where
Speaker 1: that the ice was more open than it had been
Speaker 1: in some time in that area, and so from his evations,
Speaker 1: seemed like this might be the best opportunity to revisit
Speaker 1: these long unvisited land. Barrow was also an enthusiastic believer
Speaker 1: in the theory of an open Polar sea, which we
Speaker 1: talked about in our first episode. This theory proposed, for
Speaker 1: various reasons, that there was a huge ice free Arctic
Speaker 1: sea surrounding the North Pole. Scoresby, however, totally disagreed with
Speaker 1: the open Polar c theory. Over a dozen years, he
Speaker 1: had seen for himself that sea ice blanketed the Polar
Speaker 1: region with the exception of the year eighteen seventeen, and
Speaker 1: even if a Northwest Passage could be found in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: he believed the unpredictable ice and weather conditions from season
Speaker 1: to season would make it commercially unworkable. Nevertheless, he fervently
Speaker 1: hoped that his letter would lead Barrow to appoint him
Speaker 1: as a commander of a voyage to the Arctic and
Speaker 1: maybe even to find the Northwest passage. His motive wasn't
Speaker 1: glory or fame. He wanted to imp prove geographical knowledge
Speaker 1: and he also hoped to find new whaling grounds to
Speaker 1: boost the British economy. He had years of experience in
Speaker 1: the ice, he was an excellent navigator, and he originated
Speaker 1: the whole idea of jump starting the search. Clearly he
Speaker 1: had the credentials, but there was one problem. He was
Speaker 1: not a Royal Navy officer, and Barrow refused to consider
Speaker 1: anyone but a Royal Navy officer for the job. Because
Speaker 1: so many were out of work Following the end of
Speaker 1: the Napoleonic Wars, Barrow went ahead with planning an expedition,
Speaker 1: an objective he always claimed peculiarly British without scores by.
Speaker 1: The expedition would explore two possible routes, one across the
Speaker 1: top of Canada and the other across the North Pole.
Speaker 1: For the Canadian approach, two naval ships, the HMS Isabella
Speaker 1: and the HMS Alexander, would proceed across the North Atlantic
Speaker 1: and search for an opening to the west over Canada
Speaker 1: towards the Bearing Strait. Some of this territory had been
Speaker 1: charted by Robisher and Baffin more than two years before,
Speaker 1: and much was still unknown. Barrow appointed a tough and
Speaker 1: fearless Scottish commander, John Ross as captain of the Isabella,
Speaker 1: and William Edward Perry, then a twenty seven year old lieutenant,
Speaker 1: as his second in command of the Alexander. The North
Speaker 1: Pole approach involved two more ships, the HMS Dorothea and
Speaker 1: the HMS Trent. This pair would head due north from
Speaker 1: Spitzbergen to the North Pole, following the track laid by
Speaker 1: Constantine Phipps nearly fifty years earlier on the first true
Speaker 1: expedition to the North Pole. All of these expeditions generally
Speaker 1: had two ships, with the idea that if one were
Speaker 1: damaged or traps in the ice, you get on the
Speaker 1: other ship and that would be escaped vehicle. I suppose, uh,
Speaker 1: And so that's pretty much what they did. The flagship
Speaker 1: door THEA was commanded by Royal Navy Lieutenant David Buchan,
Speaker 1: a Scottish officer who had spent most of his naval
Speaker 1: career around Newfoundland. Not much is known about Buchan because
Speaker 1: he commanded only one Arctic voyage, this one, and was
Speaker 1: lost at sea on a voyage from India to England
Speaker 1: in eight He also never published a book or memoir
Speaker 1: about the voyage because he felt it didn't accomplish enough
Speaker 1: to interest anyone. The Trent was commanded by an up
Speaker 1: and coming Lieutenant John Franklin, and we know much more
Speaker 1: about him. Franklin was a thirty two year old rising
Speaker 1: star in the Royal Navy. He had seen action in
Speaker 1: the Battle of Trafalgar and had circumnavigated Australia. The North
Speaker 1: Pole voyage would be his first time commanding a ship.
Speaker 1: Were people conscious of the dangers and the conditions involved. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: although you know, partly because they hadn't been up there
Speaker 1: in such a long time, they had a number of
Speaker 1: rather peculiar ideas about what to expect. They didn't really
Speaker 1: understand the extent of permanent polar c ice at that time.
Speaker 1: They didn't understand what what affected the persistence of icebergs
Speaker 1: or other hazards along the way. They didn't have any
Speaker 1: specially prepared ships, although I think the general idea was
Speaker 1: that if they were very strongly built, that would be
Speaker 1: a good thing. And of course some people continue to
Speaker 1: believe that if you could get through the initial ice
Speaker 1: barrier as they called it, there would be warmer water
Speaker 1: farther along the way, closer to the Pole, which of
Speaker 1: course wasn't true, but no one had been up there
Speaker 1: to test that hypothesis. You might say. Barrow instructed Captain
Speaker 1: Dukin to sail along the western coast of Spitzberg and
Speaker 1: as far as possible in open sea, then force his
Speaker 1: way through the pack ice without stopping. The Admiralty had
Speaker 1: told Bucan incorrectly that the sea north of Pittsburg and
Speaker 1: was reportedly free of ice as far north as Parallel,
Speaker 1: just four hundred statute miles from the North Pole. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, one great way to discover the North is
Speaker 1: just to head directly north. Uh And in fact they
Speaker 1: were in some ways Henry Hudson had tied this a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and they were in some ways following
Speaker 1: in his footsteps. You might say, I think that the
Speaker 1: fallback position was Spittsburgh Get in part because they could
Speaker 1: expect possible assistance, or if their ships were found to
Speaker 1: be unfit to continue, they could find some passage home.
Speaker 1: But no one really knew how long it would take
Speaker 1: or how difficult it would be. None of the officers
Speaker 1: in charge had ever been to the Arctic before, though
Speaker 1: they did take experienced whaling masters as ice navigators, and
Speaker 1: no expedition had spent the winter locked in ice, darkness
Speaker 1: and extreme sub zero temperatures since William Barns was forced
Speaker 1: to in. But the Admiralty had a typically rosy outlook.
Speaker 1: If you can reach the poll, he was to head
Speaker 1: for bearing straight and complete the passage, or if that
Speaker 1: was impossible. He should sail for home via Baffin Bay.
Speaker 1: If they were lucky, they'd meet up with the Isabella
Speaker 1: and Alexander there or north of Alaska. It sounded great
Speaker 1: on paper. Let's take a break here, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: The four ships on the Admiralties Arctic Voyage left the
Speaker 1: River Thames in April eight eighteen. John Ross and the Isabella,
Speaker 1: William Edward Parry and the Alexander, David Buchan and the
Speaker 1: Dorothea and John Franklin in the Trent all sailed north
Speaker 1: to the Shetland Islands and then parted ways. The Isabella
Speaker 1: and Alexander turned west, and the Dorothea and the Trent
Speaker 1: set their compasses on Phipps's route. The ladder ships ran
Speaker 1: into an extensive barrier of sea ice at the northwestern
Speaker 1: corner of Spitzbergen and struggled to force their way through.
Speaker 1: Chunks of ice came loose from the floes and congealed
Speaker 1: around them. At one point they were trapped for three weeks,
Speaker 1: frozen in place and unable to break up the eyes
Speaker 1: around them to sail free. They even tried placing anchor
Speaker 1: lines in the ice and reeling in the lines to
Speaker 1: move the ship forward. After days of exhausting work, they
Speaker 1: realized a southerly current was taking them backward anyway. Bucan
Speaker 1: and Franklin hadn't made it any farther than Phipps had
Speaker 1: almost fifty years earlier, and they were in trouble. Ocean
Speaker 1: currents and the winds were piling hundreds of tons of
Speaker 1: ice against the sides of the Dorothea and Trent, squeezing
Speaker 1: their hulls almost to the breaking point. Frederick William Beechey,
Speaker 1: a lieutenant on the Trent, said the ship was so
Speaker 1: twisted that the doors of all the cabins flew open,
Speaker 1: and the panels of some started in the frames. With
Speaker 1: her false stern posts moved three inches, and her timbers
Speaker 1: cracked to a most serious extent. Toward the end of summer,
Speaker 1: a gigantic storm nearly wrecked the ships. Unable to sail
Speaker 1: away from the encroaching coast, Bucans heared the Dorothea into
Speaker 1: the pack ice, while tremendous waves forced the Trent broadside
Speaker 1: against the edge of the ice field. The vessels staggered
Speaker 1: under the shock, and for a moment seemed to recoil
Speaker 1: Beachy wrote, another wave curled under its hull and hurled
Speaker 1: it onto the ice. It was so bad that, according
Speaker 1: to Sir John Franklin, who was the second in command there,
Speaker 1: the bell on his ship was ringing as it almost
Speaker 1: turned horizontal in this thrashing water and ice. Those ships
Speaker 1: were rather significantly damaged. When the storm finally passed, they
Speaker 1: limped into Harbor and Spitzberg, and where they made repairs.
Speaker 1: Buchan and Franklin were forced to return to England, having
Speaker 1: gotten no farther than previous explorers, wrote the naval officer
Speaker 1: and historian Albert Hastings Markham. The expedition examined about the
Speaker 1: same extent of the pack edge as did Phipps in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy three, and found the ice equally as impenetrable
Speaker 1: as he did, but England was in the grip of
Speaker 1: Arctic fever. Their escape from the storm made Buchan and
Speaker 1: Franklin instant heroes. There's quite a popular painting of this
Speaker 1: that was done in London the year after, showing the
Speaker 1: arrival of the ships at Pittsburgh, and then showing all
Speaker 1: of the wildlife and all of the activity up there.
Speaker 1: The glorious, although unsuccessful, endeavor was painted on this giant
Speaker 1: cannabis and displayed in Lester Square. Franklin even posed for
Speaker 1: his appearance in it, and then avoided less To Square
Speaker 1: because he was afraid someone would recognize him from the panorama,
Speaker 1: so it became kind of famous, even though like some
Speaker 1: others of Franklin's later exploits, it wasn't really a success
Speaker 1: as such. Meanwhile, Ross and Parry in the Isabella and
Speaker 1: Alexander had sailed up the western coast of Greenland searching
Speaker 1: for an opening in the Baffin Bay pack ice. They
Speaker 1: reached a large bay between the seventy five and seventy
Speaker 1: six parallels, which Ross named Melville Bay. The crews also
Speaker 1: encountered a group of a New Wheat that had never
Speaker 1: had contact with Europeans the expeditions. In New Wheat interpreter,
Speaker 1: a green Lander named John Sacus, was able to communicate
Speaker 1: with them, and the two groups spent several days learning
Speaker 1: about each other's lifestyles and customs. Ross noticed that the
Speaker 1: in New Wheat had knives with metal tips and asked
Speaker 1: where they came from, because metal is scarce in the Arctic.
Speaker 1: The New Wheat said they chipped small pieces from a
Speaker 1: black mountain some distance away. Ross concluded that they were
Speaker 1: talking about an iron bearing meteorite. Ross later wrote it
Speaker 1: was in several large masses, of which one in particular,
Speaker 1: which was harder than the rest, was a part of
Speaker 1: the mountain. The others were in large pieces above ground.
Speaker 1: They cut it off with a hard stone and then
Speaker 1: beat it flat into pieces of the size of a sixpence.
Speaker 1: Ross didn't have time to visit the site, but will
Speaker 1: definitely hear more about these meteorites in later episodes. The
Speaker 1: Isabella and Alexander battled their way across the ice pack
Speaker 1: from Baffin Bay to the eastern coast of Canada. They
Speaker 1: proceeded south along the shoreline, over territory that William Baffin
Speaker 1: had explored two hundred years earlier. Eventually they came to
Speaker 1: Lancaster Sound, which Baffin had seen so full of ice
Speaker 1: that he believed the channel would always be impassable, But
Speaker 1: now it was open water. Ross and Perry sailed ahead
Speaker 1: thirty miles in fog, stopped their progress. When the fog
Speaker 1: lifted for a few minutes, Ross clearly saw a chain
Speaker 1: of mountains at the foot of the channel. He had
Speaker 1: two officers take their bearings and enter them into the
Speaker 1: ship's log. He named the apparent land mass Croaker's Mountains,
Speaker 1: after John Barrow's boss, the first Secretary of the Admiralty. Then,
Speaker 1: with their path seemingly blocked and autumn approaching, Ross ordered
Speaker 1: their convoy to turn around. When they got home, Ross
Speaker 1: was in for a rude surprise. Harry and a scientist
Speaker 1: on the voyage noted that they didn't observe the mountains,
Speaker 1: undercutting Ross's authority. The Arrow was incensed that Ross had
Speaker 1: failed to fully explore Lancaster Sound. He rediscovered Baton Spay.
Speaker 1: He got farther north than anyone had gotten before. But
Speaker 1: I think his problem was that he didn't have enough
Speaker 1: risk and enough danger. John Barrow of the Admiralty famously
Speaker 1: mocked it as a pleasure cruise because there wasn't enough danger.
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough hazard. He didn't risk losing his life,
Speaker 1: and so I think even though that was successful, it
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily play well with the public. But it did
Speaker 1: have one good consequence. So as he was skirting the
Speaker 1: edge of Batman Day, he came to the entrance to
Speaker 1: Lancaster Sound, which actually does turn out to be the
Speaker 1: key entrance to any northwest passage, that might be. The
Speaker 1: controversy over that, when it came back to the Admiralty,
Speaker 1: ended up spurring a second expedition under Parry, because Perry
Speaker 1: doubted Ross's beliefs that these mountains existed, and indeed they didn't.
Speaker 1: They had been a fata morgana, a mirage resulting from
Speaker 1: the Sun's rays p saying through atmospheric layers of different temperatures.
Speaker 1: I always wonder what would happen if Ross had just
Speaker 1: continued sailing. The whole nineteenth century would have been different,
Speaker 1: That's right, we would just skipped the whole thing. It
Speaker 1: would be just cruise on through and come out the
Speaker 1: other side and return to universal praise. But I do
Speaker 1: think there is that funny thing. It's a feature of
Speaker 1: all of these Arctic expeditions that the undertaking and hazard
Speaker 1: and the suffering of difficulties, loss of life or whatever
Speaker 1: is actually, in a weird way of kind of a plus.
Speaker 1: If you really risk something as you go up there
Speaker 1: that plays well back at home in Britain at least,
Speaker 1: And if you simply sail around and don't risk anything
Speaker 1: or discover anything, new than that. Even though you might
Speaker 1: achieve some scientific goal or another, that's not going to
Speaker 1: play well back home. Right, So these tales of danger
Speaker 1: and survive, eival and courage, we're very romantic where the
Speaker 1: capital are. And so did it spark a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in the media. Did the public interest encourage the
Speaker 1: Admiralty to send out more expeditions? Well, yes, I think so,
Speaker 1: and I think I think it is also important that
Speaker 1: this happened at a time of increasing literacy, of wider
Speaker 1: circulation of newspapers and magazines, the sort of the beginnings
Speaker 1: of a kind of a mass culture out there, and
Speaker 1: that culture was interested in partly just because it's sold newspapers,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but but it was interested that kind of
Speaker 1: dramatic story. So in addition to the press accounts, you
Speaker 1: get paintings, you get woodcuts, you get artists, renditions. Everyone
Speaker 1: is exceedingly curious to learn more about these things. And
Speaker 1: everyone comes back, of course from their expedition and publishes
Speaker 1: a large folio volume with beautifully and grave pictures showing
Speaker 1: the strange and wondrous beauties and hazards of this land.
Speaker 1: So it is a kind of it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: the first exploration effort for Britain. It has a kind
Speaker 1: of a pr component where all of the books are
Speaker 1: published by the same publisher. They all come out after
Speaker 1: the expedition. People line up to get them. An inexpensive
Speaker 1: smaller version is soon produced, and that actually does fuel
Speaker 1: public interests. You know, the Admiralty was doing this voluntarily.
Speaker 1: There wasn't some external imperative, and they weren't really competing
Speaker 1: initially with any other country, but they were competing for
Speaker 1: public attention with other things, so they really had to
Speaker 1: just had to be their their start performance for the
Speaker 1: people back home. It's amazing to think of exploration as
Speaker 1: a performance, but I guess that does make sense. It's true.
Speaker 1: So the admirals he sent many more expeditions towards the
Speaker 1: Canadian archipelago to search ever westward. It did not attack
Speaker 1: the North Pool again until We'll be right back. Between
Speaker 1: eighteen eighteen and eighteen seven, Britain's Arctic campaign ramped up.
Speaker 1: Perry revisited the search for the Northwest Passage on three
Speaker 1: more expeditions to different areas of Canada. At one time
Speaker 1: he was able to sail farther west through Lancaster Sound
Speaker 1: than anyone before or since, and earned a five thousand
Speaker 1: pound prize from the British government. John Franklin also went
Speaker 1: to the Canadian Arctic and charted vast stretches of territory
Speaker 1: over two land expeditions. One trip went so disastrously wrong
Speaker 1: that Franklin and his team of British sailors and Canadian
Speaker 1: voyageurs almost starved to death. This is how Franklin became
Speaker 1: known as the man who ate his boots. He actually
Speaker 1: ate his leather boots when there was literally nothing else
Speaker 1: on the menu. The expedition was eventually rest keewed by
Speaker 1: the indigenous yellow Knife people. Their years in the Arctic
Speaker 1: wilderness burnished Perry's and Franklin's reputations as fearless romantic heroes.
Speaker 1: They were the most respected members of the informal club
Speaker 1: of Arctic Men at the Admiralty. That's why when Franklin
Speaker 1: and Perry started thinking about another trip to the North Pole,
Speaker 1: Barrow was all in. By eighty six, it was clear
Speaker 1: that ice would block any ship that tried to sail
Speaker 1: to the North Pole. Franklin suggested going by ship on
Speaker 1: the same route as he'd done in eighteen eighteen and
Speaker 1: then walking the rest of the way over the sea ice. Barrow,
Speaker 1: who preferred Perry over Franklin for the job of Commander,
Speaker 1: made sure that Perry got a copy of Franklin's plan.
Speaker 1: Perry quickly made a formal proposal to the Admiralty, which
Speaker 1: was personally backed by Barrow and the Royal Society, though
Speaker 1: the powers that be would never admit it. Much of
Speaker 1: Perry's proposal was based on a plan suggested by William
Speaker 1: Scoresby back in eighteen fifteen. In a scientific paper presented
Speaker 1: in Edinburgh, Scoresby said a journey over ice from Spitzberg
Speaker 1: into the North Pole could be possible. The key was
Speaker 1: bringing only a minimum of personnel and supplies, transporting the
Speaker 1: gear on light sledges pulled by reindeer dogs, and hiring
Speaker 1: native people to drive them. Scoresby recommended lightweight sledges that
Speaker 1: could double as boats for crossing open water. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: Scoresby said an expedition to the North Pole should not
Speaker 1: start any later than late April or early May, when
Speaker 1: the ice was relatively flat and still frozen solid. Any
Speaker 1: later than that in the higher summer temperatures would melt
Speaker 1: ice and make travel extremely difficult. However, while Perry adopted
Speaker 1: Scoresby's route from Spitzberg into the Pole over sea ice,
Speaker 1: he ignored his advice for how to travel from the
Speaker 1: lightweight sledges to the optimum season for departure, and that
Speaker 1: was a shame. Scoresby had sixty thousand miles of experience
Speaker 1: traveling through the ice and had been farther north than
Speaker 1: any European explorer. In eighteen o six, as a first
Speaker 1: mate on his father's whaling ship, Scoresby sailed to eighty
Speaker 1: one degrees thirty minutes north, within five hundred nautical miles
Speaker 1: of the North Pole. The record still stood when Perry
Speaker 1: began planning his expedition. Perry brought the exact opposite of
Speaker 1: what scores We suggested. He had two boats that weighed
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred pounds each when they were empty. Fourteen crew
Speaker 1: members were to drag each boat on two heavy oak
Speaker 1: and iron sledges, fully loaded with food, equipment, and every
Speaker 1: conceivable spare part. Each boat weighed an incredible three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred seventy three and one quarter pounds. That meant
Speaker 1: each man, not dogs a reindeer, had to pull more
Speaker 1: than two hundred and fifty pounds over hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: of ice and snow, and in what might have been
Speaker 1: Perry's biggest mistake, he began way too late in a year.
Speaker 1: In the ship h M. S Hecla, Perry and the
Speaker 1: crew departed London in March and sailed due north for Spitzbergen.
Speaker 1: Bad weather and ice delayed the start of the overland
Speaker 1: journey until June one, almost two months later than Scoresby
Speaker 1: had recommended, and Perry discovered that summer temperatures had made
Speaker 1: his root rough and treacherous. Boats are good for Britain,
Speaker 1: but Britain and boats go together. Land maybe not so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was an interesting um kind of overland
Speaker 1: by sea type of hybrid. Yes, and I think you
Speaker 1: know it has happened a century or so later with
Speaker 1: scott and the South using ponies. The idea of having
Speaker 1: reindeered raw sleds and things. Are all these bizarre ideas
Speaker 1: of how to actually travel over the ice, none of
Speaker 1: which included, of course, traveling the Innuiquay, which would have
Speaker 1: worked perfectly fine if they had had dog teams and
Speaker 1: people who knew how to drive them. Perry discovered the
Speaker 1: heavy rain melted the surface of the ice and created
Speaker 1: knee deep pools. Oceanic currents broke up the ice fields
Speaker 1: and piled the floes on top of one another in
Speaker 1: huge mounds. When the sun shone, the rays bounced off
Speaker 1: the reflective ice and caused snowblindness among Perry's men. Dragging
Speaker 1: the heavy sledges over the slushy surface and hummocks was impossible,
Speaker 1: yet the ponding water was too shallow to launch the boats.
Speaker 1: With every step they took, the men felt shards of
Speaker 1: ice poking like needles through their sodden boots. Perry calculated
Speaker 1: that they would need to travel about thirteen miles a
Speaker 1: day to stay on schedule, an ambitious goal in ideal
Speaker 1: Arctic conditions, but totally impractical in the current situation. On
Speaker 1: one occasion, the crew spent two hours marching and dragging
Speaker 1: the sledges. Perry wrote a distance not exceeding one and
Speaker 1: fifty yards, about the length of a football field, including
Speaker 1: the end zones. Their slow pace was probably not helped
Speaker 1: by rations of just one and a quarter pounds of
Speaker 1: food per day. To understand how that made a big
Speaker 1: difference in the expedition's chance of success, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick detour into Arctic sledge. In cuisine, Perry's men were
Speaker 1: eating mainly pemmican and ship's biscuit, too portable and high
Speaker 1: calorie foods. Pemmican, from a Cree word meaning manufactured grease,
Speaker 1: is a combination of roughly equal portions of animal fat
Speaker 1: and dried pulverized meat. The ingredients were melted together and
Speaker 1: then fashioned into bricks, which stayed edible for years without
Speaker 1: needing refrigeration. Cree people in North America made pemmican with bison, moose,
Speaker 1: or deer meat and fat, along with berries for flavor
Speaker 1: and nutrients. Hudson Bay Company traders learned to take pemmican
Speaker 1: on their long River journeys, and the Royal Navy picked
Speaker 1: it up from the traders, though they substituted beef for
Speaker 1: the bison and moose. Perry's pemmican had been manufactured in London,
Speaker 1: according to a recipe by doctor John Ocock Holmes, a
Speaker 1: surgeon who had worked for the Hudson Bay Company in
Speaker 1: Canada for several years. Ship's biscuits, also called hardtack, are
Speaker 1: rock hard baked crackers made of flour and water. They
Speaker 1: last longer than bread or other kinds of carbohydrates on
Speaker 1: long sea voyages, but sailors had to dunk them in
Speaker 1: tea or soup before they could be eaten. Stories abound
Speaker 1: of sailors breaking their teeth on unsoftened biscuits. The biscuit
Speaker 1: on Perry's North Pole expedition came from Francis Lehman, a
Speaker 1: well known bakery that supplied the Admiralty. According to the
Speaker 1: Oxford Handbook of Expedition and Wilderness Medicine, a one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty five pound man hauling a sledge might need
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand calories per day to maintain body weight.
Speaker 1: The caloric content of pemmican is not easy to discern,
Speaker 1: but a two thousand four study found that one hundred
Speaker 1: grounds or about three and a half ounces, of pemmican
Speaker 1: made from a South Dakota indigenous recipe had two hundred
Speaker 1: and eleven calories. The naval historian Janet McDonald, in her
Speaker 1: book Feeding Nelson's Navy, wrote that one hundred grams of
Speaker 1: biscuit equaled four hundred and thirty six calories. Stay with
Speaker 1: me here. Remember that each of Perry's men was getting
Speaker 1: only a pound and a quarter of food each day.
Speaker 1: That's just twenty ounces. According to Perry's narrative, the daily
Speaker 1: rations included ten ounces of biscuit and nine of pemmican.
Speaker 1: When we do the math, ten ounces of biscuit is
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred and thirty six calories and nine
Speaker 1: ounces of pemmican is five hundred and thirty eight calories.
Speaker 1: So each of Perry's men was consuming just one thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and seventy four calories, plus what they got
Speaker 1: from an ounce of sweetened cocoa powder per day and
Speaker 1: some rum that is nowhere near the ten thousand calories
Speaker 1: they should have been getting. By the middle of July,
Speaker 1: Perry began to notice that they were not making any
Speaker 1: progress despite their constant labor. On July, their position was
Speaker 1: less than five miles north of where they were three
Speaker 1: days before. A brief respite on hard level ice netted
Speaker 1: them only four miles after traveling for ten on July.
Speaker 1: On July, Perry obtained a reading of their location by
Speaker 1: the sun. They were at eighty two degrees forty minutes north,
Speaker 1: about four hundred and forty nautical miles from the pole,
Speaker 1: now an awful realization broke over the group. Perry realized
Speaker 1: that they had actually lost ground. The ice field on
Speaker 1: which they stood was drifting south. In fact, they were
Speaker 1: three miles south of where they had been four days earlier,
Speaker 1: despite having struggled forward each day, and the trouble was
Speaker 1: their sort of contrived method didn't make enough progress. The
Speaker 1: ice drifted south faster than they could go north the
Speaker 1: way they had things set up. So I think it
Speaker 1: could be an early example of the way in which
Speaker 1: these sort of British sense of self assurance and ignoring
Speaker 1: the solutions offered by other cultures is evidence in the
Speaker 1: failure of that particular expedition. The southward drift put any
Speaker 1: hopes of reaching the North Pole out of the question.
Speaker 1: Now Perry and the crew had to survive their return journey.
Speaker 1: The highest point they had reached was eighty two degrees
Speaker 1: forty five minutes north on July, only one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two miles from where their ship Hecla lay at anchor.
Speaker 1: They had actually covered five hundred and eighty miles of
Speaker 1: ice in open water. Perry managed to venture seventy five
Speaker 1: nautical miles beyond Scoresby's six record and claimed a new
Speaker 1: farthest north. But as a historian Pierre Berton wrote in
Speaker 1: his book The Arctic Grail, had he taken Scoresby's advice,
Speaker 1: he would have certainly achieved more. Britain's first two North
Speaker 1: Pole voyages of the nineteenth century both ended without achieving
Speaker 1: their goals. You can and Ekland's voyage of non discovery
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen can be chalked up to the leader's
Speaker 1: ignorance of the Arctic conditions. Their only guidance had come
Speaker 1: from Phipps's account from fifty years before, and whalers like
Speaker 1: scoresby By, Though the Admiralties should have known better, its
Speaker 1: officers had spent almost a decade exploring and charting the
Speaker 1: polar regions. Just as importantly, they had observed a new
Speaker 1: eek clothing, food, and shelter that was perfectly adapted to
Speaker 1: Arctic conditions. Scoresby had recommended in eighteen fifteen that traveling
Speaker 1: lightly more or less in the way of northern people's
Speaker 1: was the only way to go, but the Admiralty would
Speaker 1: have never entertained that idea. When you're talking about these
Speaker 1: Brittish sixplorers. They believed in Britain. They had this enormously
Speaker 1: elevated idea of the courage and bravery and accomplishment of
Speaker 1: British people. That's Edward J. Larson Pulitzer Prize, an historian,
Speaker 1: an author of To the Edges of the Earth, the
Speaker 1: Race for the Three Polls, and the climax of the
Speaker 1: Age of Exploration. They could not conceive of any native
Speaker 1: people being better at doing anything than British people. There
Speaker 1: was the same way they were the British explorers and
Speaker 1: the British colonial leaders were in India, or that they
Speaker 1: were in Africa. So I think it was a combination
Speaker 1: of their ethnic racial biases against these native peoples, which
Speaker 1: the British lived was true throughout the British imperial Empire,
Speaker 1: and at the same time a tremendously expansive and a
Speaker 1: few of their own people and their own powers and
Speaker 1: what they could do, and so will you combine the two,
Speaker 1: They just would think they do a much better job
Speaker 1: of it, and the British could figure out better foods
Speaker 1: and better package shoots and package equipment. Perry's return journey
Speaker 1: to England in the fall of seven was much easier
Speaker 1: than the one toward the poll they were able to
Speaker 1: kill seals and reindeer to replenish their meager diets and
Speaker 1: regain their strength, but the Admiralty and the public were
Speaker 1: disappointed that he failed to reach his goal. Perry must
Speaker 1: have felt abashed, but he told the people in charge
Speaker 1: that he could not think of anything that he would
Speaker 1: have done differently. Now Scoresby got the last word. In
Speaker 1: a published rebuttal, he pointed out the obvious fact that
Speaker 1: Perry did the opposite of what Scoresby's experience in the
Speaker 1: Arctic had recommended. After the disappointment of being passed over
Speaker 1: for leading an expedition in eighteen eighteen, Scoresby felt vindicated,
Speaker 1: but still hopeful, writing whatever probability there at any time
Speaker 1: was of reaching the poll by a journey over the
Speaker 1: ice remains little, if at all, diminished by the late
Speaker 1: experiment of Captain and Perry. The Admiralty again paused its
Speaker 1: investigation of the North Pole and refocused on the peculiarly
Speaker 1: British enterprise of finding the Northwest Passage in Canada. In
Speaker 1: Barrow sent John Franklin, who was now a commander and
Speaker 1: a knight, to make one more stabbed the passage through
Speaker 1: Lancaster Sound. No expense was spared to make the Franklin
Speaker 1: Expedition successful. Two strong ships were stuffed with the latest
Speaker 1: technology and comforts, including three years worth of food, lavish libraries,
Speaker 1: and a pet monkey named Jacko. The most experienced and
Speaker 1: skilled Arctic Hans were on board to ensure that they
Speaker 1: would emerge triumphant in the Bearing Strait, but then they
Speaker 1: seemed to disappear. They did not emerge on schedule. The
Speaker 1: British government launched more than a dozen expeditions to search
Speaker 1: for the missing men. Along with them, American explorers and
Speaker 1: Hudson Bay Company traders combed the Arctic for a trace
Speaker 1: of Franklin for more than a gate. They searched literally
Speaker 1: everywhere except the one spot where evidence of their catastrophe
Speaker 1: was eventually found. In eighteen fifty nine. Searchers found a
Speaker 1: written note that explained that Franklin had died on June eleven.
Speaker 1: Several officers and men had also died, and the survivors
Speaker 1: had abandoned ship. To this day, no one is sure
Speaker 1: what turned the best prepared Arctic expedition in history into
Speaker 1: a disaster, but one mystery was solved. The dozens of
Speaker 1: expeditions didn't find Franklin, but actually did find the Northwest Passage.
Speaker 1: The puzzle pieces were filling in the primary goal of
Speaker 1: Arctic exploration shifted once again from the passage to the poll,
Speaker 1: and this time British explorers had competition. The Quest for
Speaker 1: the North Pole is hosted by Me cat Long. This
Speaker 1: episode was researched and written by Me, with fact checking
Speaker 1: by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show
Speaker 1: is edited by Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and
Speaker 1: to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot
Speaker 1: com slash podcast. The Quest for the North Pole is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.