Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20140820 : vimarsana.

You very much for coming out on the somewhat damp august evening. Just a few quick administrative notes. Now would be the time to turn off your cell phones or anything else that might be put during the presentation. When they get to the q a a little later in the program there is a microphone over there. We would appreciate it if you would make your way to it if you would like to ask a question, especially because we have the cameras here going this evening. Finally at the end, please help our staff by folding up the chairs that you are seated and then placing them against something solid. We are delighted to have with us this evening a very talented writer of a narrative history. Hampton sides has several bestselling works to his name. Among them ghost soldiers, about the during world war ii raid on a hellish prison camp in the philippines to rescue more than 500 p. O. W. S. That book sold and has sold more than 1 billion copies since its release in 2002. Another of hamptons books, blood and thunder about the life and times of frontiersman kit carson made some best book lists in 2006 when it came out. Four years ago he tackled the murder of Martin Luther king jr. On the International Manhunt for James Earl Ray and now with the release of in the kingdom of ice hampton recounts as the subtitle of the book says, the grand and terrible polar voyage of the uss jeanette, which started in 1879. Hamptons background is actually in magazine journalism and he has also done some radio and newspapers. He is an editoratlarge for outside magazine and is written for a number of other periodicals. Indeed he considers himself a journalist who happens to write books about history, meaning he goes after an and historical subject, morris a journalist might, blindfolded themes that resonate with Current Events and details that will be certain to to draw a reader sent. The story he tells about the harrowing expedition of the uss jeannette has all the elements of a gripping epic tale. There is the quest, in this case to explore what was then one of the last uncharted regions of the world, the north pole and there is the leader, a young but commanding naval officer named George Washington delong who had become famous for her rescue mission off the coast of greenland. There is the bankroller, the rich and flamboyant owner of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett who by the way also was a guy who had sent stanley to Africa Africa to find living stones some years earlier and there is much, much more. Based on information that hampton has painstakingly pieced together from a range of sources including official navy documents, delongs journals, private correspondence and memoirs. Reviews of the book have sounded well, the opposite of frozen, downright sizzling quote sides works storytelling magic declared the boston globe a firstrate polar history and adventure narratives of the New York Times. Quote a splendid book in every way proclaimed the wall street journal. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming hampton sides. [applause] hi. Its so great to be back in washington d. C. , one of my hometown someone of the places where he learned to write. I spent a lot of time in washingtonian magazine, Washington City paper and a lot of other places around town learning how to write these stories but i also wanted to leave and have a sense of adventure. I wanted to do Something Different and ended up in santa fe new mexico where outside magazine was based and where i really cut my teeth on adventure stories, adventure narratives. So, im going to talk tonight a little bit about the environment that produced the voyage of the uss jeannette and the thinking that went into it, the theories about what was up there at the north pole. One of the great puzzles of the 1800s was what is at the attic of the world . What does it look like . How can we reach it . Whys it so difficult to reach it and so im going to show some slides and give you a sense of the environment of the mid18 1800s and then also im going to give you a little sense of sort of how i spend my Summer Vacation during my travels in siberia. So, first of all, how many of you, barring those who have already read or are reading my book, how many people in the audience have heard of the voyage of the uss jeannette . You guys are cheating i think some of you because you have probably read it, right . This is a very informed audience because usually it will be in a room yesterday i was in dallas, 200 people in the room and i think two people raised their hands. Its it. Scary expedition. People have not heard of it even though in its own day it was a sensation. These men were sort of the astronauts of their time. They were the subject of bestselling books and poems and paintings and monuments. Everyone knew about the men of the uss jeannette. So i kind of want to change it. Thats sort of why im here, is to bring this rather forgotten story to the forefront where i think it belongs. It is one of the grated manager stories of all time. It is one of the most harrowing stories of survival. Its sort of the american shackleton. Shackleton north as i call it in when i first heard about it i couldnt believe it wasnt better now and. Is this mic on by the way . Can everyone hear me . Its okay . All right. One place where it is wellknown is the Naval Academy in annapolis, where there is a jeannette expedition monument on the banks of the river there and George Washington delong is viewed as one of the great exploration heroes of the navy and people there to celebrate it as well as a jeannette memorial thats in Woodlawn Cemetery in the bronx, one of these unbelievable gilded age cemeteries that has one of the monuments there to remember the jeannette. The idea of the jeannette seems on its surface to be kind of crazy which was to sail to the north pole. Why would you want to sail to the north and how could you do it . Why would that not be considered completely insane and quixotic . That but it has its roots in a lot of mythology, a lot of history and a lot of science and pseudoscience that were swirling around in the 1800s. Going back to some of the early maps like this 1590s map which showed this thing called an open polar sea with these for symmetrical sort of Rivers Feeding into it and once you get something on a map, especially a beautiful map, its very hard to dislodge it from the public imagination. And so it becomes like trying to prove the existence of god with various elaborate arguments. Like we havent seen god patina we know he exists and we know this open polar seas exists up here at the theories on why it exists. Proving something we havent even seen or witnessed. Now the greeks talk about something called hyperborilla. The vikings talked about something they called ultimate tool. There were all sorts of ideas deeply embedded in mythology of different cultures about a warm jolly happy place, sometimes with weird Sea Creatures and marine life and Tropical Weather that existed just beyond the mountains, just beyond the ice. If you can just somehow reach it. So there was that kind of weight of ages that contributed to this notion of the open polar sea. Okay so there were also some decidedly wackier ideas going on in the 1800s especially there was this one gentleman named John Cleve Simms i believe who went the world, but around the country selling out crowds with lectures, talking about something he called holes at the polls. He believed that there were massive holes that lead into the deep cavities of the earth and there were people down there and it was just a matter of time before we would find them. It sounds completely like lunatic fringe stuff but he sold out giant crowds and convinced congress to dispatch one expedition in the 1840s towards the south pole to try to find these polls at the polls. This idea lives on today. This is kind of an image of what it was supposed to look like. This was from harpers magazine. One hole at the top of the world and one at the bottom of the world. You get the general idea. It still lives on today though and if you google polls at the polls you will find it interesting subculture that i had no knowledge of before. Apparently there are lots of people down there. There is a lot of energy and a lot of weird species and the Obama Administration has done everything he can to prevent us from knowing about it. [laughter] its interesting. The idea certainly has some kind of shelf life. I dont know why. This guy jules vern certainly popularized the notion of an open polar sea with his book journey to the center of the earth although he brought it underground. The subterranean cavities which had something which he called the central sea. Again just to sort of show the way this idea was popular in 18 the 1800s and how it sort of circulated all Different Levels of society. So other people are supposed to be up there as well. This is true. We know this to be a fact that santa was at the top of the world. I thought this was an ancient idea. It turns out that it was a fairly recent contemporary idea from the 1860s thomas nast cartoon from harpers which showed santa and his helpers out there. Again this idea that what is up there . We desperately wanted to know. It was this nagging gnawing obsession to know what is in the attic of the world . This is the environment that the expedition was launched in. Now there were other scientists and pseudoscientists and experts and went farther in terms of theorizing what was out there and how we might reach it. Foremost among those was the sky, dr. August peterman from germany. He was the foremost mapmaker in the world at that time. He had this huge operation which produced these stateoftheart maps that were beautiful hand uptodate maps, sort of the google maps of his time. He also like so many characters in my book had excellent facial hair. [laughter] atlas of physical geography was one of his many publications, beautiful stuff, very influential of its time in a sort of gave him a platform to talk about these wacky theories about the arctic which was one of his obsessions. There he is. Not the kind of guy you would want to hang out with and have a beer with but a very intense and very intelligent man, tragic character who is very important to my book, like in the first third or so. I went to germany to understand his world and this mapmaking university created there. This is his grave in germany. His house where he was raised. This begins to show some of his theories about what was up there. He was intrigued by the gulf stream. We are beginning to learn just how powerful it was in terms of bringing stuff from the tropics north and going powerfully and quite fast towards the north, past norway and no one knew exactly where it went so the fleeting theory was that at time of under the ice and eventually made its way to the north pole. Those explaining the open polar sea that we all believed in. On the pacific side there was another sea while that was known to exist that swept north towards the bavarian straight. No one knew for sure where it went that the theory was again that the tunnel under the eyes cap and these two great currents of the world met at the north pole. This wonderful sort of symmetrical grandiose elaborate thermoregulation system that the planet supposedly had. Only some romantic have crazy german intellectual would come up with this theory and convinced a lot of people that it was true. So here is another rendering of it. The key word here is supposed to. So somebody who is captivated by the ideas of dr. August peterman was this guy also excellent facial hair. This is James Gordon Bennett junior publisher of the New York Herald which was then the largest newspaper in the world. He was the third richest man in manhattan, he inherited his newspaper from his dad and he was the sort of spoiled brat playboy. He was a yachtsman who won the first transatlantic yacht race. He also was a dualist and he was, what else was he into . Speed walking. He was a champion speed walker. He also got into all kinds of sports spectacles and eventually was ostracized for his bad behavior in paris where he lived most of his career and ran his paper the New York Herald from paris via the transatlantic cable. He eventually created something called the paris herald which then became the International Heraldtribune which still exists in a limited form. So James Gordon Bennett junior was fascinated by the north pole and wanted to bankroll an expedition there. He loved the ideas of august peterman. This is his newspaper, the New York Herald. This is the New York Herald offices in new york. One of the many eccentricities that peterman had was that he was deeply into owls. Live owls, browns owls, owls on his cufflinks. Just decorating his house. Something about the owl really tickled his fancy. Some people have suggested that he was the model for bruce wayne and because it of his extremely mysterious a Live International playboy bachelor who has this fetish for night creatures. That is him a little bit later in life in the pages of vanity fair. You cant invent, you just cannot invent that character. If you are writing a novel people would say this is too farfetched. This is insane. This is one of his many yachts. This is that liz estrada which he kept mostly in the mediterranean. It had all kinds of things on board like turkish baths but also down below he kept his dairy cows said he could have fresh cream at this breakfast every morning. This is a famous painting of one of his other yachts. I went to paris and i had to do some research on James Gordon Bennett. This is one of his apartments. This is his villa in the south of france not to far from mona monaco. Boulevard Gordon Bennett. This is the view from his villa. So lifeless and too hard for h him. My wife took most of these pictures. This is again the owl. You see the owl everywhere in his world and its just kind of intriguing. Then it was really interested in competitive sports and he was the guy who brought competitive tennis to the United States from england. He created this thing in newport called the Newport Casino where they had the first long tennis tournament ever held in the u. S. Whew there is a tennis match going on in newport so i cut back and forth between these different worlds. He also later in life got involved with automobile racing. And balloon racing. There is still to this day something called the Gordon Bennett cup which is the foremost prize in International Balloon racing, so the guy has been around and has cast a long shadow throughout the adventure world. Perhaps hes most famous though as was alluded to in the introduction for his sending stanley, Henry Morgan Stanley to africa to find livingstone who is not exactly lost. He didnt really need to be lost but bennett understood that this would be a great newspaper series. If he could send him off and along the way he would probably discover all kinds of things and get into all kinds of trouble and it would be a great series of dispatches. Precisely the way it worked out his dispatches were a sensation from the New York Herald and then i was looking for an encore to this great sensation. This is where he began to work on this idea of an expedition to the north pole that he would pay for completely all by himself but that would test the theories of dr. August peterman. This is the guy who got the job. This is Lieutenant Commander George Washington delong of the u. S. Navy, graduate of the Naval Academy, someone who had been to greenland and had fallen in love with the arctic and decided he wanted to be the guy the first to reach the north pole. He also is captivated and both petermans ideas and a lot of the other scientific ideas that were swirling around at the time. So bennett purchased this shift from the british and renamed it the jeanette and George Washington delong and his wife sailed the ship from france all the way around the horns of San Francisco in 1878. And began to work on the ship stuffing it with all the latest inventions including addisons lights which were still being worked on. They werent quite ready for time primetime but they were brought on board as for bugs in the bells telephone and telegraph equipment and an org organ, a stateoftheart library. They knew they were going into the great unknown and they knew it would be a least two or three years if not more. They didnt really want to suffer. This was the gilded age. People wanted to live well, as well as they possibly could. The ship was incredibly well provisioned and equipped. As we later learn he was just protecting it and as the ship was leaving just a few months later he did get the hang of these lights. Unfortunately the lights on the jeanette did not exactly work. So they left in the summer of 1879 from San Francisco. 20,000 people were gathered there to watch them, to send them off on their voyage. All the papers cover this and everybody knew about the jeanette. It was a National Endeavor although was paid for by this eccentric millionaire, was staffed by the u. S. Navy officers and it was flying under navy rules. It was a naval ship, the uss jeannette. Kind of an interesting unorthodox arrangement. It would be kind of like ted turner joining forces with nasa to send a probe to mars or Martin Luther<\/a> king jr. On the International Manhunt<\/a> for James Earl Ray<\/a> and now with the release of in the kingdom of ice hampton recounts as the subtitle of the book says, the grand and terrible polar voyage of the uss jeanette, which started in 1879. Hamptons background is actually in magazine journalism and he has also done some radio and newspapers. He is an editoratlarge for outside magazine and is written for a number of other periodicals. Indeed he considers himself a journalist who happens to write books about history, meaning he goes after an and historical subject, morris a journalist might, blindfolded themes that resonate with Current Events<\/a> and details that will be certain to to draw a reader sent. The story he tells about the harrowing expedition of the uss jeannette has all the elements of a gripping epic tale. There is the quest, in this case to explore what was then one of the last uncharted regions of the world, the north pole and there is the leader, a young but commanding naval officer named George Washington<\/a> delong who had become famous for her rescue mission off the coast of greenland. There is the bankroller, the rich and flamboyant owner of the New York Herald<\/a>, James Gordon Bennett<\/a> who by the way also was a guy who had sent stanley to Africa Africa<\/a> to find living stones some years earlier and there is much, much more. Based on information that hampton has painstakingly pieced together from a range of sources including official navy documents, delongs journals, private correspondence and memoirs. Reviews of the book have sounded well, the opposite of frozen, downright sizzling quote sides works storytelling magic declared the boston globe a firstrate polar history and adventure narratives of the New York Times<\/a>. Quote a splendid book in every way proclaimed the wall street journal. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming hampton sides. [applause] hi. Its so great to be back in washington d. C. , one of my hometown someone of the places where he learned to write. I spent a lot of time in washingtonian magazine, Washington City<\/a> paper and a lot of other places around town learning how to write these stories but i also wanted to leave and have a sense of adventure. I wanted to do Something Different<\/a> and ended up in santa fe new mexico where outside magazine was based and where i really cut my teeth on adventure stories, adventure narratives. So, im going to talk tonight a little bit about the environment that produced the voyage of the uss jeannette and the thinking that went into it, the theories about what was up there at the north pole. One of the great puzzles of the 1800s was what is at the attic of the world . What does it look like . How can we reach it . Whys it so difficult to reach it and so im going to show some slides and give you a sense of the environment of the mid18 1800s and then also im going to give you a little sense of sort of how i spend my Summer Vacation<\/a> during my travels in siberia. So, first of all, how many of you, barring those who have already read or are reading my book, how many people in the audience have heard of the voyage of the uss jeannette . You guys are cheating i think some of you because you have probably read it, right . This is a very informed audience because usually it will be in a room yesterday i was in dallas, 200 people in the room and i think two people raised their hands. Its it. Scary expedition. People have not heard of it even though in its own day it was a sensation. These men were sort of the astronauts of their time. They were the subject of bestselling books and poems and paintings and monuments. Everyone knew about the men of the uss jeannette. So i kind of want to change it. Thats sort of why im here, is to bring this rather forgotten story to the forefront where i think it belongs. It is one of the grated manager stories of all time. It is one of the most harrowing stories of survival. Its sort of the american shackleton. Shackleton north as i call it in when i first heard about it i couldnt believe it wasnt better now and. Is this mic on by the way . Can everyone hear me . Its okay . All right. One place where it is wellknown is the Naval Academy<\/a> in annapolis, where there is a jeannette expedition monument on the banks of the river there and George Washington<\/a> delong is viewed as one of the great exploration heroes of the navy and people there to celebrate it as well as a jeannette memorial thats in Woodlawn Cemetery<\/a> in the bronx, one of these unbelievable gilded age cemeteries that has one of the monuments there to remember the jeannette. The idea of the jeannette seems on its surface to be kind of crazy which was to sail to the north pole. Why would you want to sail to the north and how could you do it . Why would that not be considered completely insane and quixotic . That but it has its roots in a lot of mythology, a lot of history and a lot of science and pseudoscience that were swirling around in the 1800s. Going back to some of the early maps like this 1590s map which showed this thing called an open polar sea with these for symmetrical sort of Rivers Feeding<\/a> into it and once you get something on a map, especially a beautiful map, its very hard to dislodge it from the public imagination. And so it becomes like trying to prove the existence of god with various elaborate arguments. Like we havent seen god patina we know he exists and we know this open polar seas exists up here at the theories on why it exists. Proving something we havent even seen or witnessed. Now the greeks talk about something called hyperborilla. The vikings talked about something they called ultimate tool. There were all sorts of ideas deeply embedded in mythology of different cultures about a warm jolly happy place, sometimes with weird Sea Creatures<\/a> and marine life and Tropical Weather<\/a> that existed just beyond the mountains, just beyond the ice. If you can just somehow reach it. So there was that kind of weight of ages that contributed to this notion of the open polar sea. Okay so there were also some decidedly wackier ideas going on in the 1800s especially there was this one gentleman named John Cleve Simms<\/a> i believe who went the world, but around the country selling out crowds with lectures, talking about something he called holes at the polls. He believed that there were massive holes that lead into the deep cavities of the earth and there were people down there and it was just a matter of time before we would find them. It sounds completely like lunatic fringe stuff but he sold out giant crowds and convinced congress to dispatch one expedition in the 1840s towards the south pole to try to find these polls at the polls. This idea lives on today. This is kind of an image of what it was supposed to look like. This was from harpers magazine. One hole at the top of the world and one at the bottom of the world. You get the general idea. It still lives on today though and if you google polls at the polls you will find it interesting subculture that i had no knowledge of before. Apparently there are lots of people down there. There is a lot of energy and a lot of weird species and the Obama Administration<\/a> has done everything he can to prevent us from knowing about it. [laughter] its interesting. The idea certainly has some kind of shelf life. I dont know why. This guy jules vern certainly popularized the notion of an open polar sea with his book journey to the center of the earth although he brought it underground. The subterranean cavities which had something which he called the central sea. Again just to sort of show the way this idea was popular in 18 the 1800s and how it sort of circulated all Different Levels<\/a> of society. So other people are supposed to be up there as well. This is true. We know this to be a fact that santa was at the top of the world. I thought this was an ancient idea. It turns out that it was a fairly recent contemporary idea from the 1860s thomas nast cartoon from harpers which showed santa and his helpers out there. Again this idea that what is up there . We desperately wanted to know. It was this nagging gnawing obsession to know what is in the attic of the world . This is the environment that the expedition was launched in. Now there were other scientists and pseudoscientists and experts and went farther in terms of theorizing what was out there and how we might reach it. Foremost among those was the sky, dr. August peterman from germany. He was the foremost mapmaker in the world at that time. He had this huge operation which produced these stateoftheart maps that were beautiful hand uptodate maps, sort of the google maps of his time. He also like so many characters in my book had excellent facial hair. [laughter] atlas of physical geography was one of his many publications, beautiful stuff, very influential of its time in a sort of gave him a platform to talk about these wacky theories about the arctic which was one of his obsessions. There he is. Not the kind of guy you would want to hang out with and have a beer with but a very intense and very intelligent man, tragic character who is very important to my book, like in the first third or so. I went to germany to understand his world and this mapmaking university created there. This is his grave in germany. His house where he was raised. This begins to show some of his theories about what was up there. He was intrigued by the gulf stream. We are beginning to learn just how powerful it was in terms of bringing stuff from the tropics north and going powerfully and quite fast towards the north, past norway and no one knew exactly where it went so the fleeting theory was that at time of under the ice and eventually made its way to the north pole. Those explaining the open polar sea that we all believed in. On the pacific side there was another sea while that was known to exist that swept north towards the bavarian straight. No one knew for sure where it went that the theory was again that the tunnel under the eyes cap and these two great currents of the world met at the north pole. This wonderful sort of symmetrical grandiose elaborate thermoregulation system that the planet supposedly had. Only some romantic have crazy german intellectual would come up with this theory and convinced a lot of people that it was true. So here is another rendering of it. The key word here is supposed to. So somebody who is captivated by the ideas of dr. August peterman was this guy also excellent facial hair. This is James Gordon Bennett<\/a> junior publisher of the New York Herald<\/a> which was then the largest newspaper in the world. He was the third richest man in manhattan, he inherited his newspaper from his dad and he was the sort of spoiled brat playboy. He was a yachtsman who won the first transatlantic yacht race. He also was a dualist and he was, what else was he into . Speed walking. He was a champion speed walker. He also got into all kinds of sports spectacles and eventually was ostracized for his bad behavior in paris where he lived most of his career and ran his paper the New York Herald<\/a> from paris via the transatlantic cable. He eventually created something called the paris herald which then became the International Heraldtribune<\/a> which still exists in a limited form. So James Gordon Bennett<\/a> junior was fascinated by the north pole and wanted to bankroll an expedition there. He loved the ideas of august peterman. This is his newspaper, the New York Herald<\/a>. This is the New York Herald<\/a> offices in new york. One of the many eccentricities that peterman had was that he was deeply into owls. Live owls, browns owls, owls on his cufflinks. Just decorating his house. Something about the owl really tickled his fancy. Some people have suggested that he was the model for bruce wayne and because it of his extremely mysterious a Live International<\/a> playboy bachelor who has this fetish for night creatures. That is him a little bit later in life in the pages of vanity fair. You cant invent, you just cannot invent that character. If you are writing a novel people would say this is too farfetched. This is insane. This is one of his many yachts. This is that liz estrada which he kept mostly in the mediterranean. It had all kinds of things on board like turkish baths but also down below he kept his dairy cows said he could have fresh cream at this breakfast every morning. This is a famous painting of one of his other yachts. I went to paris and i had to do some research on James Gordon Bennett<\/a>. This is one of his apartments. This is his villa in the south of france not to far from mona monaco. Boulevard Gordon Bennett<\/a>. This is the view from his villa. So lifeless and too hard for h him. My wife took most of these pictures. This is again the owl. You see the owl everywhere in his world and its just kind of intriguing. Then it was really interested in competitive sports and he was the guy who brought competitive tennis to the United States<\/a> from england. He created this thing in newport called the Newport Casino<\/a> where they had the first long tennis tournament ever held in the u. S. Whew there is a tennis match going on in newport so i cut back and forth between these different worlds. He also later in life got involved with automobile racing. And balloon racing. There is still to this day something called the Gordon Bennett<\/a> cup which is the foremost prize in International Balloon<\/a> racing, so the guy has been around and has cast a long shadow throughout the adventure world. Perhaps hes most famous though as was alluded to in the introduction for his sending stanley, Henry Morgan Stanley<\/a> to africa to find livingstone who is not exactly lost. He didnt really need to be lost but bennett understood that this would be a great newspaper series. If he could send him off and along the way he would probably discover all kinds of things and get into all kinds of trouble and it would be a great series of dispatches. Precisely the way it worked out his dispatches were a sensation from the New York Herald<\/a> and then i was looking for an encore to this great sensation. This is where he began to work on this idea of an expedition to the north pole that he would pay for completely all by himself but that would test the theories of dr. August peterman. This is the guy who got the job. This is Lieutenant Commander<\/a> George Washington<\/a> delong of the u. S. Navy, graduate of the Naval Academy<\/a>, someone who had been to greenland and had fallen in love with the arctic and decided he wanted to be the guy the first to reach the north pole. He also is captivated and both petermans ideas and a lot of the other scientific ideas that were swirling around at the time. So bennett purchased this shift from the british and renamed it the jeanette and George Washington<\/a> delong and his wife sailed the ship from france all the way around the horns of San Francisco<\/a> in 1878. And began to work on the ship stuffing it with all the latest inventions including addisons lights which were still being worked on. They werent quite ready for time primetime but they were brought on board as for bugs in the bells telephone and telegraph equipment and an org organ, a stateoftheart library. They knew they were going into the great unknown and they knew it would be a least two or three years if not more. They didnt really want to suffer. This was the gilded age. People wanted to live well, as well as they possibly could. The ship was incredibly well provisioned and equipped. As we later learn he was just protecting it and as the ship was leaving just a few months later he did get the hang of these lights. Unfortunately the lights on the jeanette did not exactly work. So they left in the summer of 1879 from San Francisco<\/a>. 20,000 people were gathered there to watch them, to send them off on their voyage. All the papers cover this and everybody knew about the jeanette. It was a National Endeavor<\/a> although was paid for by this eccentric millionaire, was staffed by the u. S. Navy officers and it was flying under navy rules. It was a naval ship, the uss jeannette. Kind of an interesting unorthodox arrangement. It would be kind of like ted turner joining forces with nasa to send a probe to mars or Something Like<\/a> that. Something they really wouldnt work today but thats the gilded age for you. So they are heading north through the Bering Strait<\/a> trying to find this warm water current, go past alaska which we had fairly recently purchased from the russians. Everyone was curious what was in the northwest. We are heading for this place called rangel island which was a place that also figured prominently in the theories of august peterman. People didnt know what it was. They thought it was actually put a polar continent that one all the way over the polling connected somehow with greenland. So this shows the general route. They move north working along the coast of siberia and then they promptly in september gets stuck in the ice. They dont find this thermal mezrich gateway that they are looking for. They dont find this warm water current. What they find is the ice and they are stuck for two years in the ice. Drifting in the eyes backwards and forwards, left and right, moving their way slowly but surely north towards the north pole heading in the right direction. Luckily the ship had been massively reinforced in San Francisco<\/a> almost rebuilt. They just thought it would be a matter of weeks or months, not yourself here they are on the iceberg almost two years, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. They go back. So they didnt exactly suffer during these two years. They had plenty of food t. They had all these entertainments. They have this great library. But they slowly were going mad from boredom, from an action and overfamiliarity and from some of the behaviors of some of the men on board like this guy, collins, an amazing guy. He was one of the Herald Correspondent<\/a> who was a meteorologist and one of the scientists on board but he also, being from ireland with someone who loved wordplay and had a particular witness for puns. Puns are fun for a day or two. [laughter] two years . They wanted to lock them up. They wanted to kill this guy eventually and all the journalist talk about this. That is collins for you. Theres also been in power who is the navigator, amazing guy. Turns out though that he has syphilis and the way it manifests itself is through this condition called syphilitic which causes him to undergo the knife. He undergoes two dozen operations without anesthesia and he has to wear these goggl goggles. He cant stand any kind of light so he is essentially locked in his room for two years. We have a blind navigator which is not a good thing. We also have this guy, melville a distant relation of Herman Melville<\/a> who is the engineer on board the ship and an amazingly resourceful guy who very quickly becomes probably along with he he wrote the story. Theres nothing he cant do. Okay, so this kind of shows that drift of the jeanette. It doesnt go on a nice straight line. Constantly moving forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards. Theres one near where they almost made a complete circle and ended up back where they started. This is generally what the drift looked like. As they move towards the northwest. Okay, so i like when im doing these narrative histories, id like to go to the places im writing about pretty think its important to feel that to describe the countryside and the weather and so forth. So i got myself a really bad haircut and i went to russia. I went to russia but i thought i could go west gs San Francisco<\/a> and alaska and it would be easy but no it turned out i had to get all these permits. 12 different permits i had to get because i was going to restricted areas and some areas that are military zones essentially. Some of these places have never been opened since before the cold war so they would ask me questions like well you know, we used to send people to that part of siberia. You want to go there . [laughter] so i got my permit in a couple of weeks and was working with the translator and took a series of planes, Something Like<\/a> eight or nine, i forget what it is, timezones east towards this site toward the Pacific Coast<\/a> of siberia to this place called which is about bizarre place in and of itself where i found this russian icebreaker which was heading north towards a place called rangel island. On board there were some scientists, a lot of dedicated murders which is an interesting subculture in itself. A french documentary crew and we were heading north through the Bering Strait<\/a> and here i am looking at alaska wondering why i couldnt have flown the easy way and waving a sarah palin the whole way. As they head north toward rangel island. This is the easternmost point of the eurasian continent a place called cape bashan avenue. Its a constant place. There is no one there working my way up to this place which is a village where they had just killed a quail and were having a festival and invited us into their village. I stayed a few hours. But, there were the soldiers there who said you are very welcome to be here but please leave. So after two hours we moved north and we started to encounter a lot of eyes to our surprise. We have been hearing a lot about how theres no ice in the arctic these days and thats certainly true, but for whatever combination of reasons in the summer of 2012 there was a record amount of ice in this part of the chukchi sea where we happen to be. Were creating as we ran through the stuff. That would be, i think, 70. It is hard to get perspective on this angle. We reached our destination about a hundred miles long. It has been called the high north and Huge Population<\/a> of snow geese, owls, reindeer and also polar bear. It is the largest denning ground for polar bears. This is part of russia, yes. But there is a complicated issue that i will get into in a second. We left the ship and made land fall with these raft and made way by the cliffs with hundreds of thousands of bird and my birder friend were excited when this happened. Dive bombed by the birds. A lot of bat feces. Coming on shore to the island. There were four people who lived on the island and they were so glad to see us. They were so glad to see human beings and to entertain us. We came aboard and the reason i cause coming to wrangle island is i was doing a story for National Graphic<\/a> magazine about the island and working with a russian photographer and the next couple pictures you see are his that ran in the magazine. In the spring of 2013. He has been going for decades to wrangle. It is an amazing place. A refuge in the arctic has the arctic is changing in so many ways. This is where the animals have been going including the polar bear. Polar bear dont usually get in large numbers like this but because the ice isnt thick or reliable over the years they are coming here and throng in the huge numbers 3050 which isnt what they like to do. They are normally one and two hunting on the ice. This is a walrus kill picture. Birds are trying to get in on the action, too. Arctic fox. This is a pretty famous picture that ran in the magazine with the snow goose egg. They are constantly trying to collect the eggs for their pups and for the winter and constantly fighting with the adult geese. Sometimes the fox wins and just as often the geese win. It is a battle royal. Also, great facial hair. Just a few structures on the island. This is the cabin and i was glad it had these bear guards over every window because the polar bear are everywhere. He took this picture of me on wrangle island and one of the other things it is famous for is that it is believed to be the last place on earth where woolly mammoths lift. This is an elephant tusk. 10,000yearold mammoth tusk sitting in the river stream everywhere. All about the islands is all of this ivory. Tried to fit it in my overnight bag but that is wrangle island. This wonderful gem up there they they tried to land up on but the ice took him around and over it. Another vessel in the summer of 1881 to look for the jeannette did make land fall and these were believed to be the first people to ever land on wrangle island. It was an American Ship<\/a> and they raised the American Flag<\/a> over the island. This is why i said it is complicated. They claimed it for the United States<\/a>. It was supposed to be american soil. If he had pressed our claim a little more diligently it would be part of alaska today. One of the guys on board look for the jeannette was this guy. This is john moyer who was a reporter for different San Francisco<\/a> papers. He wrote about his adventures in the arctic looking for jeannette. It was an interesting time in the arctic and the life of this amazing man. He becomes one of the main characters in the last third of the book. Okay. So where was the jeannette . They were looking for him but couldnt find him because they were a thousand miles to the northwest by this point. Still locked in the ice and making their way toward the north pole. But the ice was squeezing the light out of it. The seems of the hole were oozing with pine tar. It was clear that the ship was not going to be able to survive. So delong began a thorough and organized effort to move all of the essential belongings on the ice and get ready for the retreat they are going to have to make as the ship began to sink. One of the reasons we are looking at engravings and paintings and all of the expedition photos taken during the voyage went down with the ship. It is probably one of the reasons you have not heard of the jeannette it because there are amazing images that give it this sort of signature. That is not really what it was like. But it is kind of a heroic wellknown french painter. We know where the jeannette went down exactly. This is an image sent to me from a guy at noah. It is in russian waters. It isnt too deep. It would be a fantasy of mine to find a ted bennett to photograph the jeannette and bring up stuff from its hole. But that is another story. The jeannette men were left out on the ice. 33 men and 40 dogs and they were heading south toward the nearest land mass which was the Central Coast<\/a> of siberia. A thousand miles away over the ice knowing that winter was coming on and they had a little bit of time to save themselves. Thus begins the different chapter of the story which is this great survival stories. One of the great harrowing adventure stories of all time. How he held the men together. This thing would have unravelled but they made their way south over the ice pack and 91 days struggling and with their three small boats and hunting all of the way. They held it together for 90 days until they finally reached open water. Back at home in new york emma is wondering where her husband is. And i have this picture of her because i had this amazing experience in the research for the book. Early on i was doing cold calling of people named delong in connecticut and i ended up calling Catherine Delong<\/a> and distant relative of george and emma. And she said i am so glad you called me. I have this trunk of letters in the attic and i dont know what to do with it. Would you please come and help . Would i ever. Flew to connecticut, took possession of this on loan with the idea i would give it to the Naval Academy<\/a>. They were the personal letters from emma with family photographs, love letters, scraps and letters to the navy and from people in the navy. But central to the whole thing is what she did in the summer of 1981. And they were letters to nowhere and were letters to her husband and were sent via norway, greenland, and the bearing straight in the hopes they would reach her husband somehow. They are beautiful letters. They are heartwrenching and lets admit people wrote better back then to begin with. But also there is just a quality as the story goes from bad to worse because the men are struggling over the ice for their own survival and she is writing these lovely and sometimes seductive letters to her husband that she doesnt know if she will ever reach him. This shows the general idea from the point of their sinking. You will notice the line goes north for a while when they are trying to go south. But the reason it goes north is they are struggling over the ice as hard as they can but they find out the ice is drifting north faster than they are able to move south so they are going backwards for the first few weeks of the trek over the slush, rubble, pressure ridges and hummocks. But they are coming southwest toward the coast of siberia. They discover a couple islands along the way. One they land on and explore. No human had been on this island. It is called Bennett Island<\/a> today named after the publisher. This is a picture of bennett from the air. This is supposedly part of u. S. Territory. We claimed it for the United States<\/a> but it is part of russia now. Working to the northeast you see this island is still known as the delong islands. They are working through the larger islands to the open water and they finally do reach. They put the rickety boats in the water and they have to almost rebuild them because they have been destroyed from the trek over the ice. Everything is going well until the next day they encounter a i veal. The story becomes the different fate of these three boats making their way toward siberia not knowing if the other parties are alive or dead. This shows the way they make their way towards this amazing place called the lane delta. It is the delta of one of the Worlds Largest<\/a> river. It empties into the arctic ocean and melts at the delta and creates a barrier to its own currant and the water is going crazy trying to find a way to the sea and exaggerates the normal pattern you would get. You have hundreds of islands and back channels and oxbo lakes. And this is the train that deland and his men reached and they are trying to save themselves and find each other in the labyrinth. It makes for a difficult few months as they wander over the landscape. I wanted to go to the Atlanta Delta<\/a> as well. It is remote. A place not Many Americans<\/a> have been. I dlooked into the way to go an all roads led to this what used to be a military barrack and a place were long range bombers were taken off. It was erupted for the destruction of the United States<\/a>. It is abandoned. There is no infrastructure. It is kind of a waste land and an interesting place. You meet people like this walking around. Not sure what they are doing. But i am there looking for a way to get to the delta and get to a place i heard about that is still known as American Mountain<\/a>. A place where there is some kind of, i heard, monument to the men of jeannette. I wanted to go there and pay my respects. How do i get there . This is a picture of main street. All of these buildings are empty. So i met these two guys who run a River Boat Company<\/a> there in the town and they were able to get me aboard a working vessel that goes up and down the channel removing various snarls and measuring the river and keeping the main channels open for the river boat traffic. For a small price of 2,000, vodka, and cigarettes i could come on board and work on their vessel and we would go over there. I wrote about this f fofor outside magazine in their july issue. This was the last village before jumping off into the middle of nowhere. It is one of the Worlds Largest<\/a> restricted preserves. No one is living there. It is just like this. It is hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle<\/a> and nothing living or growing there. It is perma frost. And there are two seasons in this part of the world. There is winter and then there is mosquito. We were there during mosquito august. Just eaten alive by mosquitos. Mosquitos the size of hummingbirds. But we did finally reach this place American Mountain<\/a> or at least we thought we did. Once we got close the ship ran a ground and we got into a boat and then a dinghy and then a raft and we had to wade and swim to get to the base of this place. And it was built here, this monument because of the flooding that happened in the delta. They wanted a high place and there are view high places in this part of the world. This is where they built the n monume monument. This is taken at 3 a. M. The sun doesnt set this time of the year. He is spoking cigarettes that i gave him. This is a guide and russian soldier and there it is. Sure enough. The jeannette monument. And a cross there left pretty much the way it was in the 1880s. I dont know how Many Americans<\/a> have been there, if any, since the 1880s. But at the base there is a box and inside the box there were messages that were written in russian, japanese and german from various scientist. The only people going there are studying perma frost, and the tundra and arctic weather. We stayed a few hours, had a picnic and made our way back. It is amazing to me there is this incredible part of the world that is desolate and nearly impossible to reach and there is this place called america mountain and the villagers and distant villagers knew about and people in russia knew about the jeannette voyage. Many more there than in this country. James gordon did get the story after a while. He sent a journalist to russia to get the story. It was sent by telegraph and took forever to transmit the stories but it was a bigger story in his pages than stanley livingston. The men of the jeannette came home as heroes. Those who survived i will not say what happened exactly. Some lived and some died. Those who lived were welcomed as heroes in new york. This books became bestselling books and his log book that he logged across the ice cap, tundra and buried in the sand were found by navvy rescuers and dug up and they ended up in the National Archives<\/a> here in washington. They are being digitalized and analyzed by noah science and a group called old weather that studies what old weather patterns looked like from ship saships in order to compare the ice cap in those days to today. These were images from his journals and log books that were lugged this way. When i looked at the stuff in the National Archives<\/a>, i was thinking the journey these huge volumes and heavy volumes that didnt have to come all of this way. They could have chucked them at any point but they didnt because he knew this was the only proof the expedition happened. He brought them every step of the way and they made it to National Archives<\/a>. Some of the other men of the jeannette went on to be quite known. This was mevil who became the chief engineering of the United States<\/a> navy. There were parades and funeral processi processions in new york. Everyone turned out for the men of the jeannette. And you know, this hugely wellknown story of its time, which i have had a ball the past three years trying to breathe new life into it. That is the back ground on the story of the jeannette and how and why i wrote it. I would love to hear from you and get questions about this narrative history, what i do, and also specifically about the jeannette. Any questions . [applause] because we are being filmed here, we need you to come up a mike or get close to one. How are you, sir . I was thinking of the early slide that you showed of the currants going through the gulf stream basically. As i recall from much more recent map i believe the gulf stream dives north of europe and goes back at a greater depth and goes south again. Peter and i are pretty sure he didnt know that. Does that sound right . He didnt know that. It was generally known it went north but after that did it fray in a multiple currants or go down or circulate back wasnt wellknown. Obviously his theory was wrong. Not entirely wrong but wrong. He was forceful and seductive and enticing. Part of it was those beautiful maps he had that could show those things. It was difficult to show people it wasnt true. With the arctic theories men have to die or suffer to prove or disprove these elaborate theories. That is the way it works in this arctic game. Hi, i know this gentlemen. I am mark and i am an archive worker and i had the honor to work on the collaboration with the National Association<\/a> and why you are reading the book if you want to know more about it all of the log book images are available on our website. Archives. Gov and click on research your records and online category and click on uss jeannette and you have the resources. It is wonderfuli. Soon after they got stuck, they took over of the entry day in and day out and the hand writing is beautiful. And with noah, for the noah project, you mentioned hampton day in and day out for two years the crew needed something to do so they diligently took the weather data, air temperature and the barametic pressure and we are able to translate it through oldweather. Org. I would encourage you to look at it and you can transscribe up there. And there are scores of others up. Sorry to give a plug i want to make a plug to you, mark. I could not have done this book without in terms of pulling and knowing the records. He is the guy at National Archives<\/a> that knows this stuff backwards and forwards. Did you have a question . Related to the first question. At the time, if i am not mistaken there was a great industry of whaling going on north of arctic and whalers are getting caught in the ice up there. And even despite their experience, these other theories still kept a strong hold. They were never regarded . In San Francisco<\/a>, he met with a group of the whalers and captains who said dont do it. Never asked . You are going straight to help they said. Because they experienced it first hand. They didnt know about the currants. They were agnostic on that point. But they knew the power of the ice. The ice is moving, constantly warring with other shards of ice and the ships. It is going to get you eventually n eventually no matter how much you reinforce the ship. Thank you for your question. I not you were going to say i left the boxes in disarray or didnt check them out correctly. So i have a similar question to that. I think late in the civil war, in 1864 maybe, there was a record that went north and spent a i am not sure on which side of greenland but way the heck up. This is where delong really got his baptism in the arctic and he was on an expedition looking for the polarious. It came out okay and then triumpant return to new york. That was another expedition. There has been three or four. This is a lot of data. These people get stuck up in the ice. This is why they stopped going and said it must not we greenland and lets try the baring straight. They were looking for this open sea that didnt exist was the irony. But in the next 50 years, during the summertime, maybe they were crazy or a victim of bad timing. I think on one of these trips, the eskimo helped keep people alive. This was in 1898 or later voyage that became a movie. It is actually accurate. This is a fictional movie based on facts that stars timothy buttons and two other famous hollywood stars i cannot remember. It didnt make a big splash but was a terrific move. I wonder if people in siberia or greenland if you came along them playing a role in this story . Absolutely. There were two inuit hunters who came on board and were hired to be hunters and dog drivers. They proved to be essential inthe wellbeing of the ship. They to the were never in want of seal or polar bear. And delong was good about paying attention to this knowledge of the world. They lived up there and knew a lot. Unlike the lot of expedition. Do we have a knowledge of what happened to the other survivors and how they progressed . We know exactly what happened to them you have to read the book. You can do one of two things. You can read the book or read the New York Times<\/a> review that was a plot summary and it is like every thing who lives and dies. I am veryef","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia804507.us.archive.org\/16\/items\/CSPAN2_20140820_230000_Book_Discussion\/CSPAN2_20140820_230000_Book_Discussion.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20140820_230000_Book_Discussion_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240621T12:35:10+00:00"}