Dan Snow's History Hit - Britain's Deadliest Arctic Expedition

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

In 1913, a celebrity explorer led an ambitious expedition into the frozen Arctic - and straight into disaster. From the ensuing catastrophe emerged three incredible stories: a captain's desperate 700-mile trek across treacherous sea ice; an Inuit mother's gruelling efforts to survive on the most remote island on Earth; and the 5-year journey of their charismatic, deceitful leader, who ventured into the frozen wastes with a bag full of Union Jacks in the pursuit of glory.Giles Milton, author of 'Empire at the Edge of the World', takes Dan through this extraordinary saga of endurance, mutiny and murder at the edge of the world.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Tim Arstall.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail] Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. Imagine for a something. how you would retrieve a dead seal from the Arctic Ocean. It's probably not something you've asked yourself before, but it is worth it. You'll see why. You might find yourself in this situation.

You could perhaps use a rope or a gaff, a piece of stick with a hook at the end. It might be useful to have a boat. Or if you're Captain Robert Bartlett, you could simply hurl yourself face first across a sheet of wafer thin sea ice, clamp your front teeth around the sea. feels flipper and hope that your companion is then strong enough to haul you back across the ice with your dinner safely in your mouth. So believe it or not, that is the strategy that Bartlett and his Inuit guide, Kartakhtovic, went with. And astonishingly, that was by no means the strangest or hardest part of their journey.

We're back in spring of 1914, and these two men are attempting to cross 700 miles of treachery. Fetcherous, frozen ocean and rugged coastline. They're travelling from Rangel Island towards a friendly port in Siberia. Behind them, they had left an expedition in catastrophe. Ahead lay frozen waste, a bit of open water, blizzards, temperatures approaching 60 below zero. Now, you have heard me on this podcast before talk about the greatest high-latitude journeys of all time, the greatest Arctic and Antarctic journeys of all time. Fortunately, I do apologize. I have another one for you. I don't know where this fits in the league table, but my God, it's up there.

This is a journey that starts with an epic struggle against Arctic sea ice, crevasses, shifting flows, stretches of slush-filled water that forces men to crawl on their bellies. Their dogs, understandably, regard to the whole enterprise as a really terrible idea, and at one point the dogs broke free in attempts to return to Rangel Island, forcing Bartlett to spend hours pursuing them with a tin of food, pretending it was dinner time. And then there were the seals. Kartakovik would shoot them for food, but then their slippery corpses would disappear beneath broken ice. So Bartlett devised this ingenious retrieval system.

He would slide across the ice, he would seize the seals with his mouth, and then Karthakovic would hold onto his feet to stop him plunging into the freezing water. The seal meat, once they did recover it, froze almost. instantly, the men had to thaw it in their underwear and they ate it raw. This was an astonishing feat of endurance and ingenuity. And it is just one of the extraordinary episodes in the story of Wilhelmier Stephenson's Canadian Arctic expedition. It's an expedition that set out in 1913 in search of new lands and knowledge in the name of expanding the British Empire. It instead became a desperate saga of survival, isolation and rescue.

Today we're going to dig into that story with the help of one of the best in the business. Giles Milton, author of Empire at the Edge of the World, Endurance and Madness in the High Arctic. It is a remarkable tale of endurance, mutiny, feuds, geopolitics, ambition, treachery, in the furthest flung corners of the world, there's even, we think, a murder. This is a story that I'd never heard of and I'm incredibly embarrassed to admit it. But once heard, you'll never forget it. Let's get into it.

Charles, great to have you back on the podcast. Great to be invited on. Thank you for having me. It's been eight. I'm very, very glad you got this new book out. It's a fascinating one. Tell me, who on earth is Vilhaalmir? So he is Viljalmer Stefan Sir.

So this is one of the great celebrity explorers of the early 20th century, which no one will have heard of. And the reason why they went to have heard of him is the reason why I wrote my book. He was actually born William Stevenson, but he was so totally obsessed with the Vikings that he changed his name to this Vilh Yalma Steffenson, which frankly no one could say or pronounce. And so he became from that point on known simply as Stephenson. Isn't that interesting? So the Vikings have long exercised a very powerful grip on the,

well, the world, but the British imagination. Absolutely. So he was British, he was Canadian and he was American. He had these three nationalities. And he was obsessed with the Vikings. And what happened in 1911, and this was really the starting point for the whole story of his career, this our career in the Arctic, is that there have for many, many years, have been rumours of a lost tribe that lived up in the high Arctic. And this, the high Arctic was unexplored at this point, a million square miles of deep frozen wilderness. But these stories persisted. it, that there was a lost tribe who'd been living up in the Arctic for generations cut off from the rest of humankind. And so Stephenson goes off to try and find them. In 1911, he comes back two years later with the most astonishing story, which becomes headline news around the world because he has found the lost tribe in the middle of nowhere and they don't have dark hair and dark eyes like the Inuit. They have blonde hair and they have blue eyes. And Stephenson tells the world's press that he's found the survivors of the Viking colony in Greenland,

which had gone missing in about 1400. This causes a sensation around the world and makes him suddenly, overnight, he becomes the most celebrated explorer of the early 20th century. And what makes it very resonant today, and we should bear among the strategic context, which is high latitude exploration is a thing in this period. So it's the blank space on the map is you might put it have been sort of filled in elsewhere. So is the Antarctic and the Arctic the sort of exciting frontier for fans of exploration, adventure and resource extraction and imperialism in this period? Yeah, I think the Arctic was the last area of the map where no one knew what was there. And there have been rumours, you know, that there was a continent up in the high Arctic just

waiting to be discovered. And this was sort of the Holy Grail of exploration. And this is one of the things that attracted Stephenson. But it wasn't just a question of oil, gas, rare metals and all that sort of stuff that he was in search of. Stephenson was great friends with the Wright brothers. And the Wright brothers, just a few years before, had invented the aeroplane. And Stephenson saw this invention and he said, this is going to change the future of the world. And in those days, of course, this is a very early days of aviation, you know, planes had to refuel every couple of hundred miles, you know. And he said, well, if you're going to fly from, say, London to Japan, you're going to fly over the Arctic. And that means you're going to have to

refuel your plane every couple of hundred miles, which means we need to have all of these islands in the Arctic, scattered over the Arctic Ocean, under our control, because they're going to be a vital geopolitical and strategic importance in the future. And he said, we'll build little bases on these islands, and they're going to be a thing called airports, you know, and we're going to stop there, and we're going to refuel our planes there. So there was a very serious reason behind, you know, this was not just planting the Union Jack in some distant frozen shore. This was a strategic and geopolitical sort of challenge that he'd set himself to bring the entire Arctic under the British Empire. The corridors of power in Ottawa are very interested in this.

What really gets something excited, the blondies lost in the Arctic waste or the fact that the Canadians want to keep pushing north, they want to claim territory, keep pushing the bounds of that British Empire? Stephenson got back from this Viking Eskimo, as they became known expedition. And he was such a celebrity. As I said, this was splashed across the world's newspapers, that he was almost immediately was put in charge of what was going to be the greatest Arctic expedition ever to set sail up into the polar north. And this was the Canadian Arctic expedition, which was to last five years from 1913 to 1918.

And its goal was really to explore this huge area of Frozen. wilderness and any land that was found, they were going to plant the flag in it and claim it for the British Empire, which would immediately bring the Arctic under the protection of the Royal Navy. So this was an important goal. But the goal slightly shifted, and this is really the story behind my book, that under international law, you couldn't just stick the Union Jack in some frozen beach and say, right, this is ours now. Under international law, you had to send colonists there. So you had to prove this was a viable place to live. And so the Canadian Arctic expedition under Stephenson would change tack as the years go on.

And Stephenson would decide, OK, we've got to colonise these places. And this, of course, is where it began to go badly wrong. Because you're going to send young, you know, bright young things up onto islands where the temperature falls as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius in the winter. Not pleasant places to live. And just for context as well, Roald Amundsen, who was first, the South Pole for his forgotten achievement. He was first to fly over the North Pole, wasn't he?

But that was in the 1920s. That's a long way off in the future. This is unexplored. No one knows what's up there. This is pristine, unexplored, deep frozen wilderness. No one has any idea what's there. They believe there's going to be a continent up at the kind of covering the top of the world, but they simply don't know.

So this is a real pioneering expedition. And Stephenson, what makes him so unusual? You know, we're used to seeing photos of these explorers setting off in their tweets, jackets and worstedts and and you know copelessly ill-equipped. Stephenson had spent a lot of time learning the skills from the local indigenous Inuit. He knew how to keep himself alive in freezing temperatures. He knew how to kill a seal, which is an extremely difficult thing to do. But if you can kill a seal, you've got food to keep yourself alive.

You've got fuel for lighting and heating. And then, you know, you can use the skin to make clothing. So being able to kill a seal was absolutely crucial to everything. So Stephenson, before setting off on this adventure, he was really extremely well equipped to set off into the unknown. The problem is, of course, he's taking with him some of the world's greatest scientists to go on this expedition. They have absolutely zero knowledge of survival in extreme temperatures.

And so this is where it's going to go horribly wrong. So he sounds like an interesting character, because on the one hand, he has made up this, we should just finish this in case people don't realize that he's made up this fact about a tribe of Viking descendants. That's just pure nonsense. And yet there are elements of his character and outlook that are quite interesting. He's not just a sort of total fantasist. He's such a peculiar figure, Stephenson. And one of the things that drew me to the story, really, was that he was brilliant at manipulating the press and using the press for his own advantage. You know, he was the first explorer to set off with his own press man, his own photographer to record

in fact, cinematographer to record everything on moving film, what he was doing. The press really builds him up into this incredible celebrity figure, and he's going to use that, exploit it mercilessly to get everything he wants. So the Canadian Arctic expedition, this expedition, is basically bankrolled by the Canadian state who give him unlimited amounts of money to set off into the unknown. It's unheard of. No one's ever had this before. But he's so, he's so gregarious, he's so charming. He's so brilliant at twisting politicians around, you know, around his little finger. He gets everything he wants when he goes off on this expedition.

Is he also good at referring to the fact that there will be a scramble for the Arctic as there was a scramble for Africa, scramble for other Russians, a sort of feature here? Does he talk about other people taking advantage of these high-latitude exploration? Very much so. He describes the Arctic Ocean as the 20th century Mediterranean. He has this vision of cities springing up on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. He has a vision of the riches that are going to pour into the coffers of any nation that controls it. And yes, there is a big wrangle over who is going to control this. And of course, the Soviet Union, or rather it's Russia when he sets off on his expedition, by the end of his exploration, it's going to be the Soviet Union, you know. And they, are very keen on claiming all these islands to the north of Siberia. My whole book, and really the focus of Stephenson's endeavours, is going to focus on Wrangell Island. And Wrangell Island is this deep frozen speck of rock to the north of Siberia. So it really is the remotest island in the world. And Stephenson is determined to claim it for the British Empire, build an airport, a base there. He's also a great fan of the submarine, only recently invented. He's a He said this also is going to change the course of history.

He said, there will come a day, he says, in 1912, when submarines will sail under the Arctic ice pack, which of course they did in the 1950s. And so he's visionary in some ways. And as people will see when they read the book, he's also a complete charlatan. He's a fantastic Jekyll and Hyde figure. It's so interesting. So off they go, they're heading to the Arctic. How's it go, Charles?

It doesn't go particularly well, as you might have expected. the Kahlok is the flagship. This is the great ship that's going to explore all these territories. Unfortunately, within a few weeks of setting off into the Arctic Ocean, it gets trapped in the ice, deep frozen. Now, when a ship gets trapped in the ice, you know, I always saw, well, it's just stationary in the ice, but this is not the case because the Arctic ice pack,

this vast sheet of incredibly thick ice, is constantly on the move. And it moves in a giant sweep, if you like, around the North Pole. So if you're trapped in the ice, you're not, yeah, you're not stuck in one position. You are gradually being drifting with the ice into the most desolate part of the planet where there is nothing. No, there's no food, there's no life. There's nothing there. And so you are completely dependent on what is on board your ship. The problem is it's going to take you two or three years to go round the pole. So you're in

deep trouble now. So the men on the car look and Stephenson with them realizes they've got a serious problem. Not only are they stuck on this ship, but also the ice pack is constantly grinding and moving and twisting and turning and you face a very real danger that your ship is actually going to be crushed. So Stephenson, what he decides to do, when they're trapped in the ice, they can still just about sight land. He says we need to get some fresh food and meat urgently. We need to collect a huge supply of which, of course, will remain deep frozen, you know. So he heads off with a few people, a few of his team, off to the land to hunt caribou, and then disaster strikes.

There's a sudden few days of warmth. The Arctic Ocean melts. The ship drifts off into no way, you know, into the who knows where, into the horizon. And Stephenson is left on land. And so Stephenson and his few core team are on the land. His ship is now being drifting up into the, God knows where, with all the other men on board. the world's most leading scientists, and this is going to be a big problem, because Stephenson is not going to be reunited with his ship. They are now on their own, drifting into the

high Arctic, the ocean is going to freeze again, and yeah, they're in big trouble. Lots of similarities, as you'd expect, with the Shackleton expedition, which is about to depart and run into its own trouble, very similar troubles down in the Antarctic. Is the world clamouring for news from this expedition? Are people following it closely? Yes, this expedition becomes sort of headline news. Everyone loves a good Arctic or Antarctic story. You know, it's men, always always men actually, pitting their wits against the environment, incredibly hostile conditions. You know, it's so cold. It's like minus 50, minus 60. These guys are on the ship. There's food supplies. It's dwindling. They're going hungry. They're absolutely freezing cold. And then, of course, darkness comes.

The sun sets in November and it's not going to rise again until February. So they're in pitch darkness with very little food and terrified about what's going to happen next. And the Caribou herds don't turn up. They don't deliver. No, Stephenson gets stuck on land. He can't get back to the ship. So the ship has lost its commander and several of its key people. And it is now in the hands of the captain, Captain Robert Bartlett, who's got to be one of the great sort of Arctic adventurers of all time, I think. and Captain Bartlett assumes responsibility for the 23, 24 people on board this ship, not just men because they've taken on board a couple of Inuit,

including a family of Inuit who brought their children along, which seems absolutely extraordinary when I read this, this family you have two young daughters, one is eight, one is three years old, who they bring on this expedition, which seems completely bizarre when you think about this nowadays. But they're on this ship, they're in the darkness, They've got very little food left, and then what happens?

Well, there's a tremendous Arctic storm, a blizzard. The ice pack squeezes against the ship and cracks it into. And the next thing they know, the ship is filling with water, and they are going to have to desperately gather as many of their belongings as they can, put it onto the sea ice, and watch as their ship slowly sinks beneath the ice and is swallowed by the Arctic Ocean. They are on their own, in the middle of nowhere,

on the frozen sea wondering what to do next and how to keep themselves alive. It's very interesting. What was morale like in the crew? Because I think this is one of the underrated successes of Shackerton is actually, once they're frozen the ice down in the Weddell Sea a year or two later, he keeps morale pretty high. They're doing musicals. They're all chipping in, they're cleaning. They seem to be getting all quite well. But there's many other examples of ships that are stuck in the ice through the winter when they all go completely bonkers. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to spin you a very optimistic story about this. but they are scared.

They're very nervous about what's going to happen next. They don't trust Captain Bartlett. Captain Bartley is a tough old sea dog. And the men on board, many of them, apart from the crew, are the world's leading scientists. And this is an age of social hierarchy. They look on Captain Bartlett as a rather inferior being. And yet Captain Bartlett is the only person who has the ability

to keep these people alive, you know. And so there are incredible tensions, which are really fuelled by living in darkness, which causes Benin to get deeply depressed. One of the men on board is this Norwegian adventurer who came on board with depression anyway. He spirals downwards into a sort of pit of despair. One of them is a drug addict.

Amazingly, he's come on board the ship with his supply of strickenin. He's a strickenin addict, which causes him to have these moments of bursts of exuberance followed by hours and hours of deep depression. So there's all sorts of troubles on board that ship. The ship goes down. They're camping out on the ice.

They call their camp shipwreck camp. They've salvaged what they can from the ship. But in the distance, there's a glimmer of hope because in the glancing light of the moon, they cite a mountain. And they realize that there is land. There's an island on the horizon. And this represents their only hope of survival is to make it to this island, where they're hoping to find caribou and other animals they can kill.

But the problem is that island is 80 miles away, and to get there, they're going to have to cross 80 miles of frozen sea. You listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about rivalries in the high Arctic more coming up. It's a risk. It's a gamble. Well, it's a gamble, because also when I set out on this book, I just thought, oh, Arctic sea ice, you've got a nice flat sheet of ice. You can just walk across it.

There are mountain ranges. Not yet exactly. Pressure ridges. They are up to 100 feet high. Vertical walls. They're like ramparts that surround Wrangel Island. They're maybe 50 feet thick. So to get to the island,

they're going to have to cut their way, hack their way through with ice picks and axes. They're going to hack their way through these pressure ridges to get to an island, which is, as I say, pretty much the remotest island on the planet. And they have no idea what's there. No one's ever, you know, stayed any. time on this island. Will there be food? They don't know. They just know they've got to get off the ice

because at some point the ice is going to break up and melt and then they're going to be in deep and serious trouble. And so they go for it, do they? So they go for it led by Captain Bartlett. There is a mutiny, a mini mutiny. Four of the scientists decide to try and head back to Alaska. That's not going to end well for them. Captain Bartlett leads them across the ice. They get frostbite, they get snow blindness. They are suffering from intense cold. It's, as I say, going down to minus 60 as they're crossing the ice. The ice splits at one point. They fall into the water. It's really, really, really extreme endurance that they're going through. But most of them will make it to Rangel Island and they arrive on the

island and they're thinking, great, we've made it, we're going to shoot Caribou, we're going to find driftwood and it all's going to be more or less okay. They get to Rangel Island. There is not a single animal on the island. There is absolutely nothing there except for snow and ice. And so they realize, yes, they've reached the safety of land, but it's not that safe at all

because there's nothing on this place. My goodness me. Okay, that's pretty grim. And meanwhile, what's our hero up to? So, Stephenson thinks, well, okay, I've lost my ship and I've lost all my men. That's a bit of a blow.

But I still want to become the most famous explorer in history. And so I'm going to gather another group of little group of men, and I'm going to set off on foot. I don't need a ship to cross the Arctic Ocean. It's frozen. So he gets some husky dogs. He gathers a few hardened explorers who live up in these wild areas in the extreme north of Canada, mainly whalers, often tough North American whalers of Scandinavian descent. And so he gathers them up and he sets off into the frozen north.

He literally heads off on foot going directly. due north in the hope of finding land. He has a backpack full of Union Jack flags, which he is indeed going to plant on any land he finds. We have photos of him shoving a flag into the shingle of these lands. And in fact, what he does over the course of the next few years is he will discover all the remaining undiscovered bits of land in the Arctic. And this really completes the explanation of the planet, because this is the last bit marked Terra Incognita on maps. Well, it's Incognita no longer because Stephenson will return to North America in 1918, having explored every bit of the Arctic Ocean.

Just wandering about, or dog sledding around? Wandering, yeah. But this is going to, this is taking, this does take four years, you know. I can see why. He's got dog sleds. He's also backed up. A ship is sent to help him in the summer months. So some of these islands are navigable when the ice melts,

but generally, actually, travel is easier in the winter when everything is deep-roaching. You've got your husky sled. Your life is dependent on your dogs. Steffenson said, I would never eat one of my dogs even in extremists, because these are the only thing that are going to keep me alive. And so he discovers all these various islands in the absolute middle of nowhere. These deep frozen, high up in the frozen north, He also discovers that there is no continent because he takes measurements of the ocean floor

and realizes that the Arctic shelf, you know, where it comes to an end, it goes into plunges into incredibly deep water, which basically answers the question of whether there is a continent in the polar north or not, there isn't. And so, yeah, he returns having matte the last unmat part of the planet. He oddly doesn't get any credit for going to the North Pole though first. Does it, did he not? No, no, no, he doesn't actually. In fact, you know, he's not interested in in going to the North Pole. I mean, that was Peary, of course, had been up to the North Pole. I mean, there were all sorts of people who claimed to go to the North Pole.

They were all disputed, you know, and no one can actually prove that they'd been there. It's very difficult. But no, Stephenson wasn't interested in that. He was interested in discovering new land. That's what gave him a real buzz, you know. And to come home, having discovered the last five major islands up in the Arctic North, it secured his celebrity status as this great explorer. So he's operating largely, would you say, in what we'd now call the Canadian Far North, or is he going over towards the coast of Siberia?

He's operating in, you're right, the Canadian Far North. It's islands. People do look at Maps, Banks Island, Victoria Islands, at these sort of places. Yeah, there's not a lot in these places, you know. And does he think the rest of his men are dead? So he has absolutely no idea what's happened to them. So, yeah, we've left them on Rangel Island, starving with no food and absolutely freezing. incidentally, when I was writing the book, what was great, what made it so fascinating was that most of them kept diaries of really meticulous diaries of what happened to them. And none more so than one of the Scottish scientists, a young chap called William Weemak-Bakkinley, who not only recorded what was happening to them, but records all the tensions and the fallout between these men who are, you know, they're desperately hungry. they will fight each other to try and keep themselves alive. And Robert Bartlett, the captain, the sea dog, you know,

he realizes that he has to get help because they are not going to stay alive on this island. There's simply no food. And so he sets off on what has to be one of the greatest voyages ever. He crosses with one of the Inuit, he takes with him. He crosses the Arctic Ocean to Siberia. He reaches Siberia, an incredibly treacherous journey across a sea ice that's breaking up all the time. He reaches Siberia. And he's on foot. He's on foot this time. He's on foot. He has a few husky dogs. But he's on foot. He reaches Siberia. He then has to cross miles of

Siberian coastline to reach a settlement from which he hopes to be able to get a whaling vessel, perhaps, to take him across to Alaska and raise the alarm. And it really is a remarkable journey. Robert Hart is one of the great heroes of the book, really. And he, is successful. He eventually gets to Alaska, raises the alarm. A ship is sent in the summer months. This ship eventually arrives at Rangel Island and picks off the desperate survivors of the Carlic expedition who are emaciated. They're starving. Quite a lot of them have died. Several of them have had to have fingers and toes amputated because they've got frostbite. This is done without any anaesthetic, without any tools, medical equipment.

They have to use little tin cans, they pin people down and then use tin cans to hack off their frozen fingers. This is pretty unpleasant stuff. But there's also murder takes place on the island. There's madness plenty. But the survivors eventually are rescued by Captain Bartlett and taken back to civilization. So he sets off in what sort of date does he set off? Let me get a sense of the time. So this is 1913.

This is 1913. He sets off in the winter months because you can only cross the frozen ocean in the winter. So it's extraordinarily cold, you know, minus 50 when he sets off. No, it's a remarkable journey. And he arrives in time for the summer and they rescue them in that year. That's right. And then it goes into 1914 when he raises the alarm. And it's the summer of 1914 when he manages to get a rescue ship to sail through the, what is still ice-choked seas, but just about navigable, and they make it through to Rangel Island and find these pitiful survivors clinging to life on the frozen shores of Rangel Island.

On the eve of the First World War as well, absolutely really fascinating. Extraordinary, yeah. In fact, they read about, Captain Bartlett reads about the outbreak of war when he's sailing off to rescue the survivors from Rangel Island. So yeah, this is all taking place at a time of incredible sort of turmoil in the world. with everything up for grabs, you know. And the Inuit family, do they survive? The Inuit family amazingly survive. Little Mugpe, age three.

Not only does she survive, but she goes on to live till about 95, I think she eventually dies. And left an account of time on the island. At one point when they're camping out on the ice, they build an igloo, the ice splits in two. Mugpe falls into a crevasse and is plucked from the frozen water. I mean, absolutely amazing. The other thing that survives this great adventure is the expedition cat, you know, which was taken from the port of Victoria when they originally set sail from Canada. And thank goodness that cat had nine lives because it was going to need every single one of those nine lives.

It was eventually brought back to North America, had babies. And there are, to this day, there are descendants of this cat that had survived this extraordinary expedition. A lot luckier than Mrs. Chippey on the Shackleton expedition, afraid did not to make it. So we have, thank goodness, those people are back safe and sound. But Stephenson is not, he is just out there and he's on a mission, he's got his backpack full of union flags. When does he come back to civilisation? Well, it's very interesting the date he chooses to come back. And those who do not like him are hostile towards him. And he has plenty of enemies, as to be said, they say, oh, isn't it convenient that he waits until the Great War is

finished, the armistice is signed to come back so he can get all the heroes, you know, attention when he comes back. This is exactly what happens, comes back to North America and is fated as an incredible hero. Here is the world's greatest explorer. He's explored the last untrodden area of the planet. And on the back of this, now his decision is, okay, I've planted my flags in all these places. Now we are going to settle these islands with colonists. And the first one we're going to settle is the most strategically important of all is Rangel Island, the very same island that those survivors from the car look have eeked out an existence on, you know, for many, many months, an island where there is nothing, there is no wild, wild animals, there's nothing

there. But strategically very, very important. And so, Stephenson begins to a for colonists to go and sail to the place and live there. Can we believe a word he says about, by the way, in terms of his diary? I mean, are his crew corroborated his discoveries and, I suppose? Well, this will become one of the sort of great reveals in my book in a way, because Stephenson, half of him is a complete fantasist, but half of him is actually brilliant. This is what makes him such an interesting figure, because he is extraordinary. He does go off to these places, and he genuinely discovered.

these islands. We know that for absolute certainty. But at the same time, he's desperate for fame. And so he will spin stories, he will twist people's accounts, he will do down his fellow explorers. So he's accompanied on this great expedition by one of his closest friends, Rudolf Anderson. And when he comes back, he does everything he can to diminish Anderson's discoveries. and Anderson has charted the land. He's made extraordinary archaeological discoveries as well. And, you know, Stephenson does everything he can to put Anderson down. And this will lead to a great clash between the two.

So this is going to be a huge fallout, which comes at the end of my book, where really Stephenson's claims and everything he's claimed is put into question. And so the press, which has built up Stephenson's the world's greatest explorer, we'll now really begin to investigate actually, you know, what's true in all of this and what is false. And it's a fascinating de Numaunt, really, to his story. In terms of the discoveries, are we saying mostly true? I mean, obviously not the fair-haired tribe. But I mean, are we, what's you as a historian who's now sifted the evidence?

How do you come down on what he achieved in those years? No, his discoveries definitely are true. and he mapped the coastlines, and they were proved to be correct. Even, I have to say, the story of the Viking Eskimos, no one knew if it was true or not this lost tribe. And in fact, I think it wasn't until 2007 when scientists went up to find this tribe and there were indeed a group of people living in the high Arctic who had been pretty much cut off from civilization.

But it wasn't until DNA testing came in that they were able to test these people and they discovered that they had absolutely no Viking ancestry whatsoever. So I think, yes, Stephenson had spun this tale and allowed the press then run with it. You know what the press is like. They take a story and they spin it. And, you know, this story from him discovering some people with blondeish hair and bluish eyes, suddenly it becomes, oh, they've got Norse words in their vocabulary. And, oh, they have tools, just like the Viking tools.

This story just spins out of control, basically. And the Telegraph, actually the Daily Telegraph in Britain was one that really spun the Viking element of the story and says, oh yeah, they're descendants of Leif Erickson. It was just such a great story. But Stephenson always allowed stories to spin out of control. And as I say, he always traveled with his press man, who would also chuck in some juicy details to help the to feed the press, if you like. I see. Interesting. Okay. Now, how does the colonization effort go? So Stephenson appeals for colonists, young men preferably, to sail off to Rangel Island and settle there and thereby cement Britain's claim to this island. He gets four young men sign up for the task, no more than that. But he says, well, that's going to be enough. This will be the foundations of the colony and lots of people are going to follow in their wake, myself included. He says he promises that in the following summer he will arrive with a ship full of supplies and many more.

colonists. So these four young men set off, but on the way, they try to persuade some Inuit to go with them because they realize the Inuit have skills that they don't have hunting, seals, walruses and that sort of stuff. It is unfortunate indeed that only one Inuit signs up, and that is a woman named Ada Blackjack, a young mother with a very sickly baby. The only reason she signs up for this expedition is that her young child, A young son Bennett is extremely ill with tuberculosis. He desperately needs hospital treatment. She's got no money.

And the only way she will be able to afford for his hospital treatment is to sign up for this expedition as a seamstress. So she's going to be sewing the all-important winter clothes that are very, very difficult to make. So only really the native Inuit can do this. The problem with Ada Blackjack is that she has been born and raised in a town. She has absolutely no knowledge of survival. She's never fished.

She's never hunted. She knows nothing about, you know, living in the wilderness. So she sets off in the company of four young, full-blooded, you know, lusty young men. And off she goes to Rangel Island. And off they go. And the world is then left wondering what's happened to these people. Months go past. No news.

The next summer comes round when Stephenson, remember, is going to sail to the island with supply. and extra colonists, Stephenson doesn't sail to the island with supplies and extra colonists. And after two years have gone by and there's been no news, the press is in a frenzy.

They really want to know. This is a great story. You know, four young men and one single woman on an island, what's happened? How have they treated her? You know, are they still alive even? No one knows. And so eventually a rescue mission is launched

and Harold Noyce is in charge. of this rescue mission and he sets sail to go to Rangel Island to find out what has happened. And what does he find on that? And what did he find? Jagged shore. He gets to the island. It's in the summer, but there's still lumps of ice in the sea, icebergs everywhere. The island is still covered in snow. He lands where they were meant to have their camp, nothing there. There's no hint that they'd been there. He sails around the coast. He finds the remnants of an encampment, but no one there. And then suddenly there's a shout from the lookout who's climbed up the mast.

He says, I can see someone, I can see someone. And they put off, they go to land, they get their boat, row to the shore. And there they come across Ada Blackjack. Ada Blackjack has survived. And she is about to tell the most extraordinary story of survival. You know, she is the female Robinson Crusoe. It's in Down Snow's history. We're talking about the Arctic and exploring it and the misery.

More coming up. Just on the note, though, it does make me think about believing the reassurances of a charismatic, duplicitous man who assures you that you should go and settle this hostile place. I'll definitely come and rescue you. I know. It would make me think twice about signing up to the old Mars mission, I must say. I know. And what's so sort of tragic when I was in the archives is reading the desperate pleading letters from the parents of these poor young lands, you know, saying, you know, what are you going to do? when you're sailing, well, are they going to be okay? And he writes these incredibly flippant letters back saying they're safer than they would be, you know, in downham Manhattan or whatever, or they're safer than Robinson Crusoe on his island. And they sort of believe him. But as time goes on and they get more and more desperate, they're really deeply, deeply concerned about their, you know,

their poor sons on this island. And so they really support Harold Noyes, who leads this rescue mission. Stephenson doesn't lift a finger, really, to do anything to help these guys. Harold Noyce, the only reason he set sail, well, partly, obviously, he wants to rescue the people, but he's also aware this is a global news story. And he does an incredible number of deals with newspaper syndicates. This is going to be a story that's syndicated right around the world. He has a deal with 50 newspapers in the US. He has a deal with newspapers in South America, obviously in Europe.

He has a deal with newspapers in London as well. So he's going to make a lot of money out of this, you know. And he's expecting to have a tale, an incredible tale of survival. You know, this is what the world wants to hear, that these five colonists will have survived their ordeal, and he'll pluck them off and bring them back to civilization. Unfortunately, that is not the story, because the story is that the four young men have died

in pretty horrific circumstances. And Ada Blackjack is the only one left alive. Now remember, I said earlier, Ada Blackjack, who's been brought up in a town, she has no skills at survival, she's never hunted, she's never fished or anything. And as the three of the young men leave the island in a desperate attempt to get a rescue mission,

a bit like Captain Bartlett had done a few years earlier, unfortunately they are never seen again. So that leaves Ada Blackjack. Jack on the island with Lorne Knight, one of the colonists. Lorne Knight has scurvy and he's dying of scurvy. And so he's stuck in his tent unable to move. And so everything now is dependent on Ada Blackjack being able to shoot seal, being able to fish to hunt birds or whatever she can find.

There's very little food on the island. But her story is an absolute kind of miracle of survival. She teaches herself these skills in absolute desperation. Unfortunately, she can't keep Lorne Knight alive. He dies, and so she's left alone on the remotest island in the world with no food, no supplies, and not knowing if a ship is going to come and rescue her. Imagine how terrifying that is, and she kept a diary written in her highly idiosyncratic English of her charting her life on the island. And what is so terrible about her story is how she was treated by the men, and particularly Lorne Knight. He is absolutely horrible to her in the months

before he finally dies. So she comes back with this remarkable story, which is then global news. And Harold Noyce, who's led this rescue mission, will make his fortune. But in doing so, he will raise the wrath of Stephenson. And you are going to have a massive showdown in the world's press between Harold Noyce, who blames, effectively accuses Stephenson of manslaughter, of willingly sending these colonists to an island where he knew there was no food, and he knew the temperatures were, you know, absolutely bitterly freezing cold. And Stephenson, who writes, has already written one book called The Friendly Arctic, saying the Arctic is ready to be colonized, and he will now write another book called the

adventure of Rangel Island. It sounds like a sort of famous five books. you know, a jolly adventure. But the fact is that four of the colonists are dead, you know. And so you have this great showdown. And the question is, who's going to win? Will Stephenson destroy Harold Noyce or will Harold Noyce destroy Stephenson? And the answer, surely, is Deffinson can't survive that, can he? Well, it's a fabulous battle in the press between them, you know, throwing accusations at each other. it gets so desperate that Harold Noyce actually has a complete nervous breakdown at one point. And then he is forced by Stephenson to sign a legal document saying that he invented all these stories of hardship.

And in fact, the young lads had plenty of food, etc., etc. But then what's rather amazing, all the people come out of the Woodrow from the previous expedition, Robert Bartlett, Captain Robert Bartlett, William Weemack McKinley, who's been on that expedition. Others too, Rudolph Anderson, formerly Stephenson's best friend, and most importantly, Rudolph Anderson's wife, Mabel Anderson, who's been the chronicler of the entire expedition of what's been taking place. So they all come out of the woodwork to undermine and challenge Stephenson's story. And it really is, you know, it's quite an amazing battle fought in public in the world's press between this one group on the one hand saying, Stephenson,

is an utterly despicable individual, and Stephenson himself saying, no, I'm the world's greatest explorer. So Stephenson, you write, dies in the 60s. It seems so recent. And presumably he goes to his grave, absolutely lashing out,

convinced he's right, firing all cylinders. And you know, you know, the old sort of Churchill thing, the winner should write their own account of how they won. He was not necessarily the winner, but he certainly writes the account

of how he won, and churns out book after book and article after article about how brilliant he is, he gets effectively hounded out of Canada once the press turns against him and really a few accusers of manslaughter of killing these individuals. He's hounded out and he goes and settles in North America and the United States, where he's treated rather better actually. And he ends up in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, where he found this sort of huge Arctic archive.

much of which is there to prove that he is brilliant. And presumably in the anti-communist mood of the 50s, he can keep saying, you know, I understood that we had to grab these strategic islands. Of course, it came at a cost, but it was an essential geostrategic play. That would have been looked upon favourably, I guess. And this is the weird thing about Stephenson

because he was right in many things, you know, despite managing to kill quite so many young men, because quite a few died on the Arctic expedition as well. But Rangel Island, if you take a look at a map, you'll see it sits above the northern shoreline of Siberia. This stands at the gateway to the fast melting northern sea route, what we used to call the northeast passage. This is about to become, with the Arctic melting so rapidly now, is going to become the principal shipping lane between Asia and Europe. This cuts shipping times by many, many months, therefore cuts the amount of fuel that needs to be used, and therefore make shipping goods are much, much cheaper between Asia and Europe.

And so, Stephenson, you know, way before anyone else, he understood the importance of geopolitical and strategic importance of Rangel Island, this island standing at the gateway to the northern sea route. This has not been lost on Vladimir Putin, who has now built a military base on the island. It's an early warning. It's got radar systems all over it. It's bristling with weaponry because he realizes that this, you know, is indeed an incredibly important island for Russia to retain. Because I should mention, in fact,

in 1924, the Soviet Union sent a battleship to Wrangel Island. They sent troops there. They seized it and took control of it and have been in control of it ever since. So what a fascinating person to write about. He was both correct and fabulously extraordinarily wrong, all at the same time. Which makes him such an interesting figure. He really is Jekyll and Hyde, you know, and he had some people to their dying days, thought he was absolute genius, absolutely fantastic. Others thought he was the most despicable being they'd ever come across. And so it makes it a fascinating person to write about because it's not black and white, you know, it's black and it's white. And that makes him very, very interesting. He was a charlatan on one, on the one hand, and he was also

a visionary on the other. Well, I'm afraid that feels rather familiar in our modern world. He's not alone in that. Let's finish off, poor old Ada Blackjack. You said that she did return safely. Did her son survive his illness? She returned safely. Her son did survive. It's the happy ending, really, with Ada Blackjack.

And she went on to live a full and healthy life and died, I think a narrator she was when she died. But she was haunted for the rest of her life by the ordeal she'd been through on Rangel Island. It remained with all of those who spent time on Rangel Island, who'd actually survived. The other one I've mentioned, William Weemak McKinley, he said every single hour of his life, he had visions haunting him of his time on Rangel Island. Weemak, who it should be said after the Arctic expedition, went on to fight in the trenches,

in Flanders. He experienced the absolute horrors of the Great War. And he said none of those horrors were anything like the terrible. appalling ordeal that we went through on Rangel Island. He said where there was none of the comradeship and the camaraderie that we had at least to pull us through trench warfare in the First World War, we had none of that in Rangel Island. It was every man out for himself in this desperate battle to survive. Oh, sounds terrible. What a wonderful story. Thank you so much to bring it to us. And another example of your cleverness in resurrecting these tales that we've forgotten to remember,

Is the book called? It is called Empire at the Edge of the World. And yes, a story of endurance, hardship, madness, and everything else that you could throw into it. It really is quite a story. Every single facet of what makes us humans on display at the same time. Fascinating, is it? Charles Milton, thank you so much to come back on the podcast.

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