The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 395: When Things Go South Up North

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Buddy Levy, Brody Henderson, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: Buddy’s latest, “The Empire of Ice and Stone,”; calling people how they'd like to be called; how an arrow nock exits out of your nostril; capitalizing and "the truth about"; trying to find uncontacted people to hang out with; headlines of blonde eskimos; becoming a Canadian; getting separated big time; the importance of a rounded hull; eating polar bears raw; Chopin's funeral march; stalking a bear that turned out to be a ground squirrel; just how deceptive the arctic can be; saving your dogs from a polar bear; no human presence; swollen hands; the race against time; jigging for cod with a sewing needle; just how deceptive the arctic can be; saving your dogs from a polar bear; no human presence; swollen hands; the race against time; Stefansson's book, "The Friendly Arctic"; Ada Blackjack; a future book about the blimp that’s never been seen since; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody, it's the return of the author, Buddy Levy. He's the author. He was previously, way back at episode 197. God, was it that long ago? I was just thinking the same thing. I feel like you were just sitting here a couple minutes ago.

The episode, Eating Folks in the Arctic. That was a good title. That was a great one. Tell about the books you came in. You came in and we talked about crockett you bet yeah and i wrote a book called american legend about the life of david crockett and uh then labyrinth of ice was a book that i wrote about the greeley expedition what ended up with some cannibalism involved and Sure, man. You know, grim experiences. Oh, it's just like,

I don't know how you can write this stuff. You know, it's funny. I got asked by one of my professors a while ago. He's like, do you ever write books in which no one dies? And I'm like, no, I haven't yet. Oh, just everybody's like their feet falling off and they take their mittens off

and their hands stuck in their mitten. It's just everybody's like their feet falling off and they take their mittens off and their hands stuck in their mitten. It's just like, oh man, I could believe you went and now your new book's out, Empire of Stone and Ice. And it's like a bunch more people freezing to death and dying. Yeah. I like it. I like to see people at up against it, you know, when they are, um, in the elements having to use their

wits to survive, you know, and a lot of times, you know, the expeditions start out with lofty goals and they're, they're, um, you know, they're trying for new lands or to reach the North pole or something. But I always go into them knowing this. Um, the only reason I'm thinking as soon as I start the book, I'm like, the only reason someone wrote the book is I can tell this must all go to shit. There's not going to be a big book about how it went great.

Well, I will say that people always say, like, you know, is this like endurance, you know? Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, I go, yeah, it's really like endurance except in endurance everyone lives in my books most people die um which isn't not necessarily true like maybe half you know so there's a little bit of a happy ending component yeah if you're willing to get there it's like a half glass full half glass crew half half he's a crew half full or crew half empty guy also i'm always like i don't want to give spoilers you know even though um when you look at the cover the spoiler what's that's not

gonna go what's the subtitle disastrous and heroic voyage of the carlick yeah glass half full glass half empty the disastrous it's an image of a ship that doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon. Disastrous and heroic. Right. Yeah. So, you know, it's, um, I really do like stories that have, um, you know, protagonists and antagonists and also where once things have gone really poorly, then there has to be some kind of industriousness and people who figure out whether it's navigation or whether it's like, you know, woods craft and how to, how to MacGyver their way out of these really dire situations. I just love, um, oh, and also, I guess I'm sort of drawn to the cold, you know, this is a second book I've written about the Arctic and I have a third one under contract that's about the, uh, the one in the North pole in dirigibles.

We'll get to that later. In a what? Well, it's right. It's semi-rigid dirigibles, AKA blimp. Oh, I got you. Yeah. So they tried to. I don't know if someone tried that.

Yeah. 1905, they tried to fly blimps to the North pole. Did they all eat each other? It didn't end well. Let's put it that way. Yeah, crashing a blimp a couple hundred miles from the North Pole is not, you know, it's not usually on the flight plan. But, yeah, I mean, I just, there's something about, you know, the far North for one thing. Um, I grew up with a dad who was a Nordic skier and ski racer, and he used to take us out in Southern Idaho and, you know,

I would go duck hunting on silver Creek and it would be like 20, 30 below sometimes when I was a little kid, you know? And so, um, and I guess just being in cold places has always kind of, um, intrigued me the idea of like, especially historical, um, stories where, you know, they did not necessarily have the kind of gear that we have now. Sure. In some cases though, the, the Inuit Arctic clothing is probably better than what we have. But yeah, I just am really drawn to expeditions gone awry. And then how are they going to get out of this? Yeah. One of the things I want to get into with you when we get going on it is I've always been a big fan of Stephenson.

Okay. And I always knew that he had like a little bit of a fall from grace oh yeah but i didn't fully understand the fall from grace and i don't know like you paint him out to be a real um he's the villain of the book but it doesn't like what he does it's villainous doesn't undo why i why i'm interested in him really so? I'm interested because his observations and the things that he recorded about the Eskimo hunters that he spent time with. I mean, he had observations and things about life ways and cultural practices that I haven't encountered anywhere else. I mean, he might have been a total, like what's in it for me. I'm out of here.

Uh, yeah. And I'll let you guys kind of die. Um, he might be that kind of guy, but it doesn't undo some of the insane stuff he did. Yeah, that's true. And I mean, I'm glad you brought it up because, um, Willimer Stephenson's just funny. He has, he was born William and then he changed his name back to the Icelandic sounding spelling. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

That's another score against the guy. Yeah. By the way. Oh, it's Bill Jalmer. So how would you have said it? Willimer. Willimer. He was born William?

He was born William, nicknamed Willie. That would annoy the shit out of me if that happened today. He didn't want to sound American. He wanted to sound more authentic. Right. To his chosen region. For being an explorer or a would-be Arctic legend, having a name like Amundsen or Nonsen or Frithjof,

which is, but yeah, it was funny because he was born William. He changed his name back to the, the Icelandic spelling. And, but his, he was, his people called him Steph, you know, it was easier than pronouncing Willimer, you know. Well, I didn't know that either. But the guy. I used to hang out with a guy, Matt, I used to peel logs for log homes and another log peeler. He's like, he would always tell everybody his name's bear paw. And I'm like, I don't think that it probably is.

No, but yeah, you're right. I mean, the guy is what he's really complex. Um, and you know, because the, this book empire of ice is stone can deals mostly with the period that just has to do with the Canadian Arctic expedition. Um, you know, his actions in and around this particular expedition are the ones that I primarily deal with, treat, but you are absolutely strange behavior, man.

Yeah. I mean, he would, you were absolutely right that if taken in totality, the bulk of this guy's work, you know, um, he is, was very influential in, in understanding how one, uh, how it was possible in really small teams to live in the Inuit or Inupiat way. Um, the problem I think he ends up having is that he's trying to do an expedition that is of a much bigger scale involving, you know, multiple ships, 15 scientists. And so it sort of went against his core principle, which is like, if you, if you were in a small team on skis or snowshoes, you know, with sledges self-contained, you're going, eating just what you encounter and living

essentially off the land, you're going to be able to do better than if you're trying to take, you know, whole bunches of people who may or may not have a lot of experience, uh, in ships, you know, in very uncertain waters. And then that's when things go wrong, you know? Um, and so, yeah, I think, um, he, he's a really complicated figure and I struggled a lot with, you know, how much to villainize him, I have to say. Um, so in the, in the scope of just what happens in this book, you know, some of his actions I think were, um, you know, you can't really square it with like the, what he should have done. Sure. It was self-seeking. No, we'll cover it. Yeah. I got a quiz question for you though. Okay. Oh,

what was Stephenson's favorite wild game meat? I'm going to go with Ugruk or bearded seal. Wolf. Really? Like the more than anything else. Wolf. I didn't encounter that. One of my favorite Stephenson meals, he talks about it in my life with the Eskimo, is they find a whale, a beached whale, and its tongue is dried out, but it still looks good.

They cut its tongue out. He talks about how they had to boil it and change the water multiple times to get all the salt out of it. And they later learn from the Eskimo that that whale's been laying there five years. So it's fermented and tempered. Oh man. We should get, uh, we got to cover a couple of things real quick, but we should get our terminology right. Let me tell you a story.

I was on Nunavik Island. Okay. With the Chupac Eskimo. And I said to a Chupac Eskimo, I said, Hey, uh, I noticed you guys say Chupac Eskimo. And I said to a Chupac Eskimo, I said, hey, I noticed you guys say Chupac Eskimo. What do you like a white guy like me to call you? And he goes,

well, if I'm not an Eskimo, what am I? I said, I'm just checking, man, because there's a lot of confusion about the whole Inuit Eskimo thing. And he's like, I've never heard anybody call me a Chupik Inuit. He hadn't. No. What did he call himself?

Chupik Eskimo. Chupik Eskimo. So there's this kind of thing. I think that there's a lot of confusion around the terms. And now it's just one of those situations where maybe I'm like, okay, maybe he'll say it, but it's not cool for me to say it. But he's like, if you're not going to call me that, I don't know what you're going to call me. It's like that. We had the Native American guest, and we asked him, is Indian cool?

And he's like, yeah, but for some, it's not. So maybe it's like that. So what are we going to do? I noticed that in the beginning of your book, you're like, I'm using Eskimo because all the journals, that was like, that was at the time, like when people are talking. And that's what, so that's the term I'm going to stick with in my book, though. Right. These are like people of different tribes and many of them now go by Inuit, right? Yeah, that's a really good point. And, you know, so I actually have that disclaimer in the book on one of the first pages of the book. But so the, you know, the term for most of the people that were on this expedition would be Inuit or, you know, Inupiat.

And so it depends a bit on where they're from, you know, and, and so I think it's important to distinguish, but it got a little bit clunky, um, to, that's why I wanted to just use the word Eskimo because they were using. Yeah. All your sources were using it. Yeah. Though, you know, it is important to be sensitive to what people actually like to be called. That's why I'm outlining for you that I just asked a person rather than guess.

Right, right. It was an unexpected reply on his part. Yeah. Yeah. I think, and so, you know, for the most part, the, the people that we're dealing with that went on the expedition who came with the family, who came with Stephenson and he picked up near Barrow. They were in Urbiat. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, um, they, and there were, there were four mainly, and then this other, or five who originally went on the expedition. Right. Yep. four mainly and then this other or five who originally went on the expedition right you know what uh they there's a point we got it okay this is the last thing we're gonna do okay and then we're gonna start from the beginning okay this is the last thing we're gonna do though uh once you cross the Bering Strait okay so in places it's what 57 miles and all of a sudden you're in Siberia. Um, was that a completely different sort of like tribal, like, like once you cross the straight,

would you, would you find more people who were Inupiat or is it a different, totally different tribal history and different groups of. Yeah, that's a really interesting question and a good one. So yeah, you know, if you're going up there looking at the map to the left, you know, Russian Siberia, um, like Chuchki people and Chuchki the left, you know, Russian Siberia, like Chuchki people.

Oh, Chuchki. And then, you know, to the right, Alaska and Canada, you know, Inuit, Inupiat. And so, like, it's really interesting because there were some of the native members of the expedition were like freaking out when they realized they were going to be landing on the Siberian shores. They're like, you know, my people have told me you land there, like you don't come back. They will kill us. And, you know, they just had, some of it was just lore that they had heard. But, and they end up being treated very well, um, by the indigenous people of, of the Siberian side. Yeah.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's an interesting question. Yeah. In, uh, in Barry Lopez's Arctic dreams, he's out hunting, he's out hunting with Eskimo hunters and they're off Alaska and they're hunting walrus. And he says for a while, he goes, we're, we're,

they were technically in Russia. Right. Yeah. And so there's like a little bit of fluidity about, you know, to them, I doubt they were talking about that being one continent and this being another continent. Right. I mean, you can be on a floating Berg and all of a sudden, which, which the people in this book end up on, you know, like a mile square chunk of ice floating. And, you know, at some point you like are crossing into other territory, you know, above Russia now.

And all of a sudden it's like, oh, these people are different. Wow. We're on a new continent. Yeah. Trying to not die. All right. So let me back up one sec.

Cause I gotta, I gotta talk about a funny story. The guy wrote in, as they do. So this guy writes in this letter. It has nothing to do with Arctic exploration. He's got a brother named Murray. It's a good name for a story. It's a good way to start a story. His brother Murray.

He's just like, yeah, I don't know, man. Starts to paint a picture. His brother Murray is driving through the night on an archery deer hunt when his truck ran out of gas. His truck and his gas can were old. Okay. The truck's fill spout had the flap on it and his gas can spout was made for regular gas, so the spout diameter prevented him from filling the tank directly from the can. You can picture this, right?

I keep, I'm going to point out to listeners, in my truck, I keep a little funnel that's well adapted to my, a little male, yeah, like a little funnel well adapted to my truck's intake. He took an arrow out of his quiver to prop open the flap and was going to spill gas from the can into the opening.

Totally. Makes sense. With the can into the opening. Totally makes sense. With the arrow holding the flap open, he reached for the can from the bed of his truck and promptly pushed the arrow's knock into his eye. He pulled the arrow out, filled the tank, felt okay, proceeded on his trip. The next morning, his eye was swollen shut, so he headed for the hospital.

He was examined by the doctor who took x-rays and determined that no permanent damage was done. Over the next year, Murray had recurring sinus infections, which he never had before. He'd take the prescribed antibiotics, get better, only to have the infections return. Now here's what this story takes. You can probably see where this is going.

But I almost want to call our resident doctor, Adam Allen. Yeah, we haven't talked to him. We haven't had reason to talk to him. Like, okay. One day, I'll go on with Murray here. One day while at work, Murray had something caught in his throat, began to cough. He coughed up a pocket of mucus that had something hard encased. When he wiped the object clean, he found the knock of the arrow, which had come loose, got into his eye socket, worked its way through his sinus cavity, and then

out the back of his throat in a year's time. I got a lot of questions. The plastic didn't show up on the x-ray. Like, I wear contacts, so I just don't know how. But you hear about those dudes that get shot by nail guns don't know it sure yeah it's and that doctor that broke that file off up in my mouth my my other question is how did he not notice the knock was missing from the arrow i could totally see how you wouldn't just toss it in the bed of the truck or you'd think that it like you'd think that it whatever in all the flaws. I don't know.

I wonder if he kept it for a certain year. You ought to write a book about that. It's a mystery. Yeah. That'd be a good book for you, man. But yeah, no plastic showed up on the X-ray. I don't know, man. I'd give it a 50-50.

Phil's not buying it. I'm not buying it. You're not buying it, Phil? We got to talk to Alan about it. Phil's saying this guy's'm not buying it You're not buying it Phil We gotta talk to Alan Phil's calling this guy Phil's saying this guy's Bald faced liar I think this guy

Might come down And beat Phil's ass He's risking that For sure We gotta talk to Alan You call me a liar Phil Phil's gonna know When he hears that

From across the parking lot Oh I know When he hears that From across the parking lot He's gonna know That it's theater days Are through That's right

Oh I know It's a better outcome Than if The other end went in With the broadhead Yeah You know that You's theater days are through that's right oh i know it's a better outcome than if uh the other end went in with the broad yeah you know that you can cough that up here's here's a correction that came in and this guy has no listen i'm gonna read the correction during episode 398 with cole wetzel steve makes an error when discussing the capitalization of wildlife species common names. I'm quoting here. Steve is correct when he states that black bear would not be capitalized when using a sentence.

Okay. And also that proper nouns such as English would be capitalized when used like an English sparrow. I was talking about how I need to do a seminar for my colleagues because I will oftentimes have to go through something incorrect where someone capitalizes black bear. However, he is incorrect that sparrow would not be capitalized when utilizing a species official name such as English sparrow. Still quoting,

the American Ornithological Society states on their website, such as English sparrow. Still quoting, the American Ornithological Society states on their website, English names of birds are capitalized in keeping with standard ornithological practice. As such, unquote, as such, the official common names of all bird species, such as whooping crane or red cockaded woodpecker, would be capitalized when written. If using more generic descriptors such as woodpeckers or eagles when describing groups

of birds, the lowercase version should be employed. He goes on to say, I know Steve prides himself on being correct as evidenced by every time he argues about a missed trivia question, so I just wanted to provide a helping hand. I have one word for this person oh yeah first off the american my retort is oh yeah first off uh the american ornithological society doesn't get to decide what's proper english right he could have like listen it makes no sense to me that he agrees with you that black bear would not be capitalized, either word, but English sparrow,

both would be capitalized. Or red cockaded woodpecker would be capitalized, which is just like black bear. Yeah. How about, what do you say, lady? Like, don't get your grammar from wherever you got it. Also, there's a phenomenon, and I love this guy. Thanks for listening.

Thanks. Listen, I'm not hacking on him. It's great that he phenomenon, and I love this guy. Thanks for listening. I'm not hacking on him. It's great that he wrote in. Not hacking on him. I'd rather he wrote in than didn't, but you're just wrong, buddy. The other thing I'll point out is I know some people that

when they're telling me stuff, I'm always like, how could they have gotten that information? And I think that some people precede all their internet searches with the truth about. Exactly. We've known a couple of people like that.

Like, if you were to search, like in the picture that you're like, oh, I'm going to do a little research on Hillary Clinton. Okay. And you type in Hillary Clinton. Okay. And you could read that stuff. Or you type in the truth about Hillary Clinton and read that stuff. It's like, cause you sort of like, there's two, you know, versions out there.

So I think maybe he wrote in the truth about capitalizing Bernie. Here's another half correction. Then we're back with you, buddy. So hang tight there. No worries. But as a writer, you're probably interested in that. Very much so.

You have anything to add? Kind of fluid. Uh, yeah. I mean, I think language changes over time and you, you know, it, the rules, um, are not static, but you know, there are certain things where you would want to use a Latin word for something, you know? Um, but yeah, you can get in the weeds on this stuff. Oh yeah. You ever read Lewis and Clark journals journals how they just randomly capitalize like for whatever reason something different like in the same paragraph it'll be spelled two days just like decide to

capitalize beyond all of a sudden in the middle of the site uh okay here's a guy this is this is one heffelfinger is not here but this is one for heffelfinger here's a guy. This is one. Heffelfinger is not here, but this is one for Heffelfinger. Here's a wrinkle that crossed my mind in the ongoing. I added the word ongoing. I misquoted him. He's saying, here's a wrinkle that crossed my mind in the white-tailed, white-tailed deer debate. I'm adding that's an ongoing debate with our buddy Heffelfinger. He asks, has anyone brought up how big horn sheep,

big horn sheep is the accepted name. It looks to me like it's grammatically the same as white tail deer, but no one insists that you call them either big horned sheep or just big horns. One would have ainger thinks about that? Bighorns is pretty common, I feel like. Yeah. But I get what he's saying about the comparison to white-tailed and bighorn. I bet

if you went back in time, you would find that they probably once upon a time, Halflefinger will have some smart-ass know-it-all thing to say about this. But I bet if you went back in time, it was like big. You'd see an example of it.

Big hyphen horned. It was before it was officially named. They would just describe these animals as that deer is white-tailed. That sheep is big horned. But now, and then it just becomes, like Buddy was saying, becomes something entirely on its own

after a while. So you'd have to look at what, yeah, state becomes something entirely on its own after a while so you'd have to look at what um yeah it'd take about three seconds to go look like what is its official name i think its official name is bighorn sheep yep but this guy's not wrong like the last guy no remember when you were a kid did you watch happy days oh yeah reruns you never went fonzie i had to apologize but he uh yeah he couldn't do it couldn't pronounce say the word he'd be like i was all right buddy how do we begin um let me set the scene one of the things i like most about this

book is it you're gonna take off after this is that um when i give a at times i'll give a list of like 10 10 my 10 favorite books 10 greatest books for outdoor enthusiasts my life with the eskimo is always on there okay it's amazing yeah like arctic dream it's like coming into the country by john mcphee. Greatest book for outdoorsmen. Coming Into the Country for John McPhee. My Life with the Eskimo by Stephenson. Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Journals of Lewis and Clark.

No, never put that on there. No, no. Too many capitals. I can explain why. I don't want to get into it. But it's always on there. I love it that this book begins and stephenson is like literally finishing his manuscript of my life with the eskimo right yeah it's amazing because uh and by the way i think that contributes to

some of the problems that end up occurring. But we can get into that. Yeah, so give us the year and why, like where it's going on in America. Right. So, you know, this story, Empire of Ice and Stone, begins around 1913 is the expedition, 1913 to 1918 ultimately. But Stephenson has just come back

from being in the Arctic for like four years, right? And he had been on, in 1905, he did an expedition in Iceland, and then he was on the north coast of Alaska in the Mackenzie River area. And he was really interested in the ethnology and studying the native peoples there. And also, you know, my life with the Eskimo pretty much suggests that his theory was that a small group of people, of white people, with, you know, native assistance and adopting native life ways could survive for an indefinite amount of time in the Arctic North and even on the ice, right?

And moving between land masses and out on the polar sea. Yeah, just hunting. Yeah, hunting and eating seals primarily, walrus, and, you know, back on land, caribou and Arctic fox and stuff. And he wasn't like, what's cool about him too is he wasn't sort of chasing the North Pole. He was just trying to find uncontacted peoples and hang out with them. Right. He, he was a different, uh, you know, a different kind of explorer, more of a, you know, a, a scientist explorer rather than trying to

be the first at something though. Um, we can get into this a little bit later. Um, you know, he, he was eyeballing the idea that this place, Crockerland, that Perry had said, Robert Perry had said he'd seen from the east coast or the west coast of Greenland, that there was a landmass above Alaska that was undiscovered. So that was kind of in the back pocket, right? Was this happening at kind of the tail end of Arctic exploration that like started in, say, the mid-1800s with search for the Northwest Passage? Right. And so, but also at the very tail end of, I mean, Peary in 1909 had claimed, Cook in 08 and Peary in 1909 had claimed the North Pole. So that was sort of other, even though it was

contested, that was sort of off the, you know, off the bucket list for people. They're like, that one, the North Pole's, you know, been bagged. Now that ultimately becomes contested pretty seriously. The North Pole's played out. Yeah, we don't need to go there. But there, you know, so Wilhelmer Stephenson was a Stefansson was a very serious, um, scientist, right? And so he was wanted to, um, prove in a way that you could live that, that small groups of people, um, could live off the ice and land, um, for an indefinite period of time. Now make all your clothes, everything you need to eat. Yeah. And, and, you know, if you're smart, bring along, uh, Inuit people, a seamstress and hunters, um,

because their skills in these things was unparalleled. Right. Um, so, you know, in 1909, Sevenson had been, he'd just come back from like four years in the Arctic and he, he kind of, he did something really interesting. So there was this notion, and he perpetuated it,

that of the blonde Eskimo. So he came back in 1912 and claims that he's contacted, while he was out there for four years, that he's contacted these descendants of Leif Erikson, who are blonde-haired, blue-eyed Eskimos or Inuit peoples. And, you know. Because there was a mystery of what happened to Leif Erikson like up in Greenland, right? Right.

And so the idea was that like descendants of Leif Erikson had made their way to the west and over to the islands, north of Alaska and the Yukon. Like Coronation Gulf, Victoria Island. And that they were living, that these were descendants of Leif Erikson. Now this made headlines, right? New York Times, National News. And Stephenson, um, kind of went with it. Like he just rolled with it. He didn't, he said he'd encountered these people

and that he wanted to go back and study them more. And so part of this, but is that not true? Well, it's, it's not true. He was trying to milk the idea that they were descendants of Leif Erickson. What, what is more probable and Amundsen talks about this later is that, you know, that more, much more recent European explorers intermingled with the native people there. But Stevenson was kind of rolling with this myth that these were descendants of Leif Erikson and they were called Blonde Eskimos. Like they hadn't died out. They had just integrated into.

Yeah. Into Inuit culture. And so he used that as a marketing tool, right? So he gets back after four years in the Arctic and he put this trip together, the Canadian Arctic expedition, which is my book is about. He, he whips this thing together in a matter of months, you know, sometimes expeditions of this magnitude with multiple ships and 25 scientists, you know, they take years to put together, right? So Stephenson rolls up to Seattle in 1912,

perpetuating this blonde Eskimo story. The headlines eat it up. He flies over or sails over to Europe and goes to like an international polar conference and starts talking up like this new expedition. He's going to go try to find these blonde Eskimos and write about them. And also that there was a theory that Peary had seen this place called Crockerland, which was a landmass above Alaska, but it was undiscovered, right? So those two things were kind of the impetus for

getting this expedition put together. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So Stephenson goes over to Europe, makes a couple of presentations. All the while he's talking to

the Canadian government. He's trying to get financing from the American Museum of Natural History, the Canadian government. And within like three or four months, he cobbles together this, um, expedition that's going to have the most scientists. Uh, I mean, this is arguable. Some will argue it, but the most scientists that have ever been on a polar single polar voyage, um, three ships, um, one of the greatest ice navigators in history, this guy, Robert Bartlett from Newfoundland. Who's a bad-ass. Su total bad-ass. Yeah. And then, you know, he's cobbling this thing together. The thing that I found really amusing is that while w so they, they take off,

they, they, he gets all these scientists together. He gets the money together from, um, the Canadian government. Uh, he agrees to become, uh, you know, he, he was in a, he was an Icelandic American because he was, he was born in Man uh, you know, he, he was in a, he was an Icelandic American because he was, he was born in Manitoba. Then they moved to North Dakota when he was like three after a couple of family members died in a flood. And then the family moved to NODAC.

And then, so the Canadian government is like, well, we'll pay if you become a Canadian citizen. So he was just totally flexible. He's like, I'll do whatever you want, man. Sign the papers. It becomes a Canadian. No page you did. So he's an totally flexible. He's like, I'll do whatever you want, man. Sign the papers. It becomes a Canadian. No patriotism. So he's an Icelandic American Canadian, you know?

And, uh, so he, he cobbles this thing together. They take the carlick, the ship that's like unsuited really for the task at hand. Like a whaling, a whaling boat. Yeah. I mean, it was a, you know, and it was a carlick is the Aleutian word for fish. And they, it was used in Seattle in the,

in the salmon industry. And it was a whaling vessel. It was like. How long was that boat? The boat's about 129 feet. Okay. And so. Ship, I guess.

Ship, yeah. But I mean, what, what, what's so bizarre about this is, and I love it in a way about Stephenson. He's so badass. He's like, you, Bartlett, he ends up enlisting this guy, Bob Bartlett, who had been, the backstory on Bartlett is that he had been on two attempts to the North Pole with Peary as the captain of the SS Roosevelt, like Peary's ironclad, super badass ice breaking expedition vessel. Right. And so Bartlett had gone almost to the North pole. He got sent back because, uh, Perry took, uh, Matthew Henson instead for the final 150 miles, but he was already a known, um, explorer and had won like the Hubbard medal. He was a big deal, but Stephenson ends up like, okay,

I'm going to use this guy. Um, and I'll meet you in the car, look, um, up in, in gnome. So, but Stephenson takes like a cruise pleasure ship, the SS Victoria, and he's on the ship heading toward where they're all going to meet in gnome. Uh, and he's, he's like writing the manuscript. He's got a secretary with him. He's finishing the book, like my life with the Eskimo thinking about how I'm going to turn this into a bestseller while this new expedition, uh, is supposed to be taking off in like a month. So he arrives on a, you know, on a separate ship, um, and then rolls up to Nome and is like, okay, well let's go now. Submits his manuscript. And then they take the manuscript and he's like, right up to deadline. Was he, was he a popular writer?

Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was becoming, um, like an Arctic expert. Right. But so this thing he had spent four years, um, he was just dropping this manuscript that was going to be like my life with the Eskimo, how, you know, here's how it's done. And then, but that was going to be published

like probably when he came back or handled by other people so that he would come back to, uh, you know, a bestseller. And he's got the followup ready to go. He's got the sequel. Um, that's what I've been doing. Labyrinth of ice, empire of ice, and then realm of ice and, and, uh, but what I found so interesting about him is that like, so he was, he was multi-dimensional, you know, he already had lived, um, in small, you know, with small

groups, um, in like the McKenzie river Delta for years and living pretty much off the ice and, and land and sea ice. And so he had, um, he was very good at that. I think what he was less skillful at is organizing an expedition of the magnitude of the Canadian Arctic expedition. Yeah. These guys, you know, it goes to shit so unbelievably fast.

It's amazing. It's like, I mean, literally like they leave and then, and then it went to shit. They leave and they, they get all there's, you know,

like they leave, um, Esquimalt. They end up going to Nome and then Bartlett, the captain of who's from Newfoundland. He's like this ship, you know, it's not really suited. This guy has been the former captain of the Roosevelt, like super badass vessel. Right. And he's in this, this, uh, small ship with, I think the, um, he called the engine, he said, it has the power of a coffee pot. Just not built for breaking through ice. I mean, and by the way, these were not, um,

they weren't technically icebreakers anyway, but they had to be nimble and they had to be sheathed in hardwood so that you're going to encounter ice, right? The problem is that when they took off, when Bartlett finally stops and says, okay, we need to do some work. We got to retrofit this ship. What time of year did they? Well, so they're taking off in July and in that region, the window is pretty short anyway for navigable waters. And they were trying to make it from Nome after they got through the Bering Strait and everything. They're trying to make it from Nome over to Herschel Island, which is above the Canadian Yukon to east.

So, you know, a few hundred miles, 400 miles or something. And the goal was to get there and then they were going to unload all the ships and like retrofit everything and then get, get it together from there. And there's a sort of ongoing joke among the members of the ship. They're like, because what happens is they leave so fast, um, because the weather window is closing that they don't have all, they've got three ships, the Carlook, which is the flagship of the expedition, the Alaska and the Mary Sacks. And they're all going to be used in different ways, but they have all the wrong equipment

on the wrong and the wrong members on the wrong ships. So Stephenson is like, we'll sort that out at Herschel Island. And they end up like, it becomes a joke among the men. Bartlett says it a few times. They're like, we can't find the, you know, we can't find certain, um, scientific tools in there. Like you got a geologist on the car, look, and he needs other equipment that's on the Mary Sacks, which by the way, after they all leave, they're separated within a day. The Armada is completely separated and they never see the Alaska or the Mary

Sacks again. The people of the Colin, the Carlic don't, you know? Yeah. It's like, it's like, I want, I want to make sure people understand this. Be like, let's say you have a big group of friends. You're all going to go on some kind of monster hunting trip, road trip, hunting trip. And you're all planning on being in different areas

hunting different shit but you're in such an eagerness to get out of there and get some miles behind you that you just load everything randomly into trucks and in in other and you're not even in the truck you're supposed to be in for where you're ultimately going and then you pull out of the parking lot and never see each other again. How was the hunt? Well, yeah. So it's really funny you point out like how quickly this thing becomes a debacle, right? So they're, Stephenson's on the Carlic and Captain Bartlett is on the Carlic and a number of the scientists, right? But then some of them are on the Alaskan, the Mesaacs, and they get separated like the

day out. Right. So then the ship, the Carlec gets in, it was a really, really heavy, um, winter ice and snow much earlier. So in, by August, early August, they're experiencing snow squalls, really zero degree temperatures. And, you know, they're, they're starting to encounter big ice pack already. And they're, they're just like five, 10 miles off the coast of Alaska at this point. Uh, and you know, the guy like, so there's a bunch of the wrong equipment and a bunch of the wrong people are on those ships. And then within days, um, they get encased in, well, so Bartlett

makes what's a kind of a controversial decision, right? So you could either in those days, they get encased in, well, so Bartlett makes what's kind of a controversial decision, right? So you could either, in those days, there were different theories. You could either hug the shoreline, stay close to shore in case things got iced up, and then you can make it to land. Like you ditch the boat and make it to land. Yeah. Yeah.

Or maybe the boat, you find an enclosed protected bay, and then you winter there until the next season. But the other approach was to go out farther offshore where often there were bigger open leads and open leads of water. And so Bartlett, after consulting with Stephenson, and this becomes kind of controversial because they don't really agree on who said what. Bartlett decides to take the Boulder choice, which is to go offshore and then head east through, you know, weaving through open leads between the ice and make it to Harold Island. Yeah. I just want to clarify a thing here, and you can chime in on this. The way you can imagine the polar ice is um it's fracturing all

the time and coming back together again and wind storms will blow big chunks away so you you can pick your way through it and then it'll get calm and everything will weld together right and then it might break apart in a different fashion so they're literally like getting stuck in the ice then they drift for a day then all of a sudden it opens up and they can make some more headway. Yeah. And then they dodge a chunk of ice and they get frozen into some more ice. And then they realize they're still moving because the ice, then they're stuck in ice that's moving. Right.

At high speeds. It's kind of like going through, you know, an ice jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are being moved around by wind and current. Right. And so there's kind of a, there's a way to weave your way through the labyrinth. Um, and you know, you have to make headway when these things open in part, and there's a, like a few miles of open water, but the stuff is all happening earlier than usual. And so, um, they never, the irony of this is that like the first thing they're trying to do, we're going to take these three ships, leave, go over Point Barrow and then head East to this place called Herschel Island and meet there. They never even do that.

So like, cause the car, now what ends up happening is that the, the two other ships, the Alaska and the Mary Sacks, they make it through. But the story that I follow concerns itself more with what happens to the members of the Carlock, which is the flagship. And Stephenson and the captain Bartlett are both on it. So, and a bunch of scientists and then an Inuit family and a couple of hunters. So Barlet makes the bold move. He's going to go offshore and try to make his way north and then up and around and meet it at, um, Herschel Island. Within days, they are what's called a beset or encased in like a mile square of ice, right?

So it, it sort of knits all around them and they're, they're like in a floating iceberg, though it's not like high Berg. It's a, it's like a flat flow. Right. And it's hauling ass. And it's, well then, so, and, and then things really go whack. So they, they, they hang out on the ship, like

waiting around for a while to figure out like what's going to happen. And two really important things happen early on. One is that while they're still within striking distance of the Northern Alaskan coastline, Stephenson in second week of September decides, hey, I'm going to go caribou hunting. He basically tells the captain Bartlett, I'm going to go caribou hunting. I'll be gone for about 10 days to two weeks should no disaster occur. And Bartlett's like, what?

You're going caribou hunting? No, he peaced out. So there's a whole thing that's going on here, which is that, and I told you, I'm not really, I hate spoilers, but it's like- Oh, you just got to lay it out. You got to lay it out. You got to trust people are going to read the book. Yeah.

And so they're frozen in. They've been floating in kind of a circuitous weaving way. They're not going any one direction for very long. For a couple, for like a month. Stephenson's all antsy because he's like, okay, my expedition, the two other ships are somewhere. I got to get out of here. You know, like I should probably go to land. And so he says, I'm going caribou hunting because under the pretense that they need fresh meat,

because if they are going to be stuck for a really long time on the ship, they're going to, they're going to, they've got like a couple of years worth of food. How much is he really going to haul back anyway? No, that's what I was going to ask. Were they set up for like kind of a normal Arctic expedition where they were prepared to be there for years? They were prepared to be there for maybe two years. And they have the years where the, because they have like two brands of

Pemmican, they have like presumably former information to base stuff off of like the terror and the arabis like oh yeah disappearing and like you think they would they kind of be like man shit could go bad out right so usually you would bring more food than you you know you for a year and then you got to figure like, if things go really poorly, we got to have even more. But so Stevenson says, I'm going caribou hunting. I'm taking these two Inuit hunters named Jimmy and Jerry. And also the, a couple of the scientists who were supposed to be on the other ships, they're supposed to be doing like ethnological study over in above Northern Canada. And so he's like, I need to take those two guys

so that they can go where they're supposed to go. And then he brings this photographer along, um, this guy named Wilkins, which is kind of cool because then you've got this photographic image of Stephenson leaving the car look like he can't, you know, he's got the dog sled team and he's like charging off and the ship's frozen, bailing on his expedition. And there's like photographic evidence of him doing it, you know, but he says, I'm going

hunting and I'll be back. And it, you should probably light big coal fires around the ship in case so I can see it. So immediately, like it's just a bad timing, right? Immediately, the freaking whopper of a storm comes in. Stephenson gets about like six to eight miles and he gets to this little island right above, it's called, I think, I'll find it later.

But he was walking across the pack ice. So he's walking across the pack ice with dog sled team. He took the best dogs too. Took the best hunters and the best dogs. Best hunters, best dogs. And so he's like, gets to this island. And as they're camped there, a massive storm comes in. And by the time the sky's clear, he looks out and the carlick is freaking gone.

And now it's beelining like 25 to 30 miles a day on the Arctic drift. Just blowing in the wind. Blowing in the wind toward Siberia, right? And so he's like, where's your ship? So at that point, you know, Stephenson makes, he has to wait on this island for like a week for the, for the, because now the storm also breaks up the ice all around the little island he's on. So that he there's, he's like, there's water, uh, water he can't get across. Um, so he waits it out. He's kind of cool.

They build like this 15 foot driftwood observation tower where he's up there like looking dude where's my ship kind of situation and then he just goes to land with these um two inuit hunters and the photographer and uh another scientist it seems just kind of write the whole thing off and bails so he well in fairness he's got it he's got this sort of dance to do because he wants to continue doing the scientific work. And he knows that two of the ships are somewhere. If he can find them, he can maybe re-outfit and retrofit and keep doing the science off the coast of Alaska and the Yukon. But as far as the Carlet goes, he pretty much just puts it out of his mind. And then at that point, you know, the ship is moving pretty fast toward the northwest. And it's spookily following.

There's a drift that is known at that point. A ship that was captained by DeLong and the book that Hampton Sides wrote called In the Kingdom of Ice talks about that journey where that ship got encased in the ice very near Wrangel Island where these guys get marooned. And it goes for like, I don't know, over a year and, and Nansen, the, uh, Norwegian legend had intentionally encased his ship, the Fram in ice to follow this same drift pattern to prove that that was the way the prevailing drift went. And Nansen was clever enough. I can never figure out why these people didn't learn from Fritz, uh, Fritz off Nansen. because he, he designed a boat called the Fram and he designed the hull to be rounded so that when inevitably the ice flows encased around your ship, it lifted the boat up onto the flow. And then you've just got like a hotel, you know? And so instead of pulverizing. Instead of like crushing the ship. So, I mean, it never, never really understood why they didn't start building

all of these ships that were going to be used in this way with rounded hulls. It's like, um, but they didn't. So anyway, now the story ends up being about like, it toggles back and forth between what, uh, I stay with Stephenson for a while to, uh, follow his actions and inactions. And then the story goes to what happens to the members of the Karlik because their saga is really only just beginning. Was Steffensen's plan to go overland to the rendezvous point or was that even, no?

Yeah, well, so he did. In fact, like he- He stopped by to visit his girlfriend. Oh, well, you're right. So there's a, it turns out he had a secret wife and child like in Nupia. And I theorize that that was partly what his thing was, is that he was like, I can either, I'm probably going to be on this ship for a year, maybe two. I don't, I'm like within 10 miles of land. I'm freaking out of here.

I mean, you know, he makes a bunch of excuses about like the caribou hunt, but he, there was some suggestion that the caribou were sort of out of that area by then. Like, and he, they don't, they don't get a caribou ever. Like it's like, okay. So then he ends up reuniting with this, um, wife named Fanny that we'll call her his indigenous spouse. Uh, and they had a young son named Alex and he had left them a few years before. And, and then, so he's going to reunite with her and then try to cobble together the remnants of this expedition for which he has, you know, convinced the Canadian government to give him many hundreds of thousands

of dollars. So, you know, he, he had some, uh, rationale to like make this thing work. The thing is he, I just find that his inaction around trying to like do anything about the car look, um, ends up being why I view him as a little bit villainous but not i mean he's he becomes i mean he does great science but anyway so then the story becomes about like what the hell happens to this ship floating in a square mile of ice across the arctic ocean you know yeah yeah we can leave steph stevenson behind but leading up to it, what was interesting is he's doing media. And he says kind of like cryptic shit that the people on the crew, like he's a little fatalistic about all the things that could go wrong. And people on the crew keep reading, are reading like interviews from him.

Right. And like this guy's out of his mind. Well, yeah. He's like quite comfortable with the fact that, you know, he's like, we may never return. that the goals of the expedition and the scientific information is much more important than either the ship or the lives of its members. And they're like, wait, what?

I'm one of those people. I signed up for this. What? That's the boat I'm on. Wait, I'm going to die? Wait, is that what you're saying? And so, yeah, they're not happy and they have like, you know,

they have big meetings. This is before they ever even leave. And, you know, some of them are saying like, I'm not going if that's the case, right? Like if that's his attitude. Well, also he makes them sign over, which was not uncommon at the time. Like they're all going to keep journals and diaries and stuff. Thank goodness. Or I wouldn't have these books, you know?

But Stephenson's like, oh, by the way, while he was in Europe organizing this trip, he's like made all these sweet publishing deals and media deals with, you know, papers in England, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail in Toronto. And he's like secured book rights and everything. And so he's like, oh, yeah, you guys got to hand over all your journals and stuff. So he's not going to get paid. They're all getting paid. So his rationale is, look, you're getting paid. I'm not getting paid as a member of this expedition, even though I'm the expedition leader, but I'm going to get paid on the backend on publishing rights. So he's organized this whole, um, empire of, uh, of, of publishing. And, you know, they're reading about this in the

paper also going, well, so wait, what about, uh, like, what about us? And he's like, you know, you signed, you signed the contracts. What can I tell you? Get on the ship, man. Let's pick it back up with the garlic. Right.

So this is where the story, I think it's really freaking good. I look at it in terms of like third of three stages of, of, uh, what happens. Right. So this is where the story, I think gets really freaking good. I look at it in terms of like 33 stages of, of, uh, what happens. Right. So after Stefan said goes on his caribou hunt, you've got, I don't know, man, the numbers are elusive to me, but like 17, no 20, some members

are still on the ship. Um, you've got like 30 sled dogs, right? You got a couple of these skin Umiacs that are pretty cool. They got a house cat. They got a house cat in Ejiro Rock, who's just awesome, tough cat. Um, and they're floating really fast on this

encased in ice toward Siberia, essentially toward the North of Siberia. Now they float for months, right? Now this is not uncommon, like, you know, um, and the ship is set up, right? So they've got, they're still trying to do some science, right? They're, they got this dredging, um, mechanism and they build an igloo out off the ship. And they, this one scientist, uh, Murray is like hauling up all sorts of, um, creatures and sea life that has never been seen before. They were doing legitimate science, but that ends up sort of falling apart because.

And they got like that, like sextants and whatever the hell they use. They know where they're at. They're taking soundings of depth. Yeah, they have a general idea of where they are. But now, okay, it's starting to get to be September, October, November, December. Right. So then in the weather, you know, now the light's gone. Uh, so now you've got basically Arctic night has fallen on them. They can't, you know, they can't really take readings anymore. It's pretty much dark. And so they're floating along, they celebrate like

Christmas on the ship. They're out there. What I love too is that, you know, they're, they're doing some really interesting things. They got this, um, character who's on the ship named Bjarn Mammon. He's only 22 and he's a Norwegian, um, guy who, who's really into skiing. He was a ski champion. So he's like teaching all the, he's teaching Captain Bartlett and all the other scientists how to ski, right? He, they build jumps and stuff kind of unwise because Bartlett like all the other scientists how to ski, right? They build jumps and stuff.

Kind of unwise because Bartlett like bites it at one point and almost breaks his hip. You know, he's like, probably don't need the captain, you know, doing Nordic ski jumping here. Right? It's like, what the hell? And, but you know, they're living, they've got enough food.

They, you know, they're, the living quarters are fine. They shoot some polar bears. They shoot a couple of polar bears in route. They, you know, the living quarters are fine. They shoot some polar bears? They shoot a couple of polar bears en route. They'd go duck hunting. One of the scenes I really love is that they had these Peterborough canoes that were on the ship that they were going to be using. They were going to sort those out at Harold Island and they were going to use them on the Mackenzie River Delta. But so they take these out in some of the, they start noticing a lot of ducks out there,

right? So the couple of the Inuit members who they had hired on at Barrow, Point Barrow, are doing a lot of seal hunting and Bartlett and one of the couple of the scientists are like, well, there's a bunch of ducks out there. And they did have some shotguns. So they end up taking these Peterborough canoes out in the open leads. And it's pretty cool. Like they set behind these ice hummocks as a blind, and then they go flush up a bunch of ducks. And, you know, these guys were not practicing, you know, game sportsmanship.

They're like water sluicing ducks, you know, they won't need them for food. So they get a bunch of ducks and they're shooting, they shoot a few polar bears. Um, I was surprised too that they're eating those bears raw. Yeah. Sometimes they, yeah. I mean, avoid the liver though. Yeah.

Um, but yeah. Yeah. Get it. Explain that about. Well, so. They can kill you. Yeah. The bears eat a high, uh, portion of, of seals.

Right. eat a high portion of seals, right? And so they end up having large quantities of vitamin A in their livers, it turns out. And if you eat a bunch of this, it'll kill you. It's kind of cool because the Inuit members of the expedition seem to know this, right? Like there are stories that were like of the, um, what the heck's the name of that, um, expedition, but of the, uh, uh, the Dutch expedition that went in like 1587, but they, these guys, um, Barrett's William Barrett's, like they didn't know. Right. So they're, they're eating, they're eating bear livers and, um, getting super sick and dying. Um, so yeah, they, they, you know livers and, um, getting super sick and dying.

Um, so yeah, they, they, you know, at this point there Bartlett has decided like, okay, our goal now they, they know generally from the, the, the logs of DeLong, the trip that like had to go 10 months more in case of nice, it blew by Wrangell island and never was in striking distance of it. So they missed it. Barlin knows that the Wrangell Island is really the only hope if they're going to make it to land once they start moving 30 to 60 miles a day in the, in the drift and current. And as it happens, they, they, they reach a certain point where they're probably within 125, 150 miles of it, and they're able to see it, okay, at a certain point. But the problem is now larger flows are starting to encroach around the flow that they're on, and they're going to get pinched. They know they're going to get probably crushed, right?

So Bartlett has the good sense to begin offloading a whole bunch of gear, food, sleds. They build kennels for the dogs, you know, very organized. Like he's getting ready to take a walk. He's getting ready. If this thing, if the ship gets crushed, we're going to have to live on the ice for a while, right? And so it takes a little while, right? So there's some false alarms that these fang-like, you know, teeth of ice to crush into the side, but then they're pumping. They're able to pump it out for a while. They actually are able at one point to unload a bunch of the stuff

and the carlet rises up so it's not as imperiled. And that sort of picture on the cover is when it was a little bit up higher and they got ice blocks and stuff shoring it up. Eventually, that's all, you know, the ice is way too powerful and the ship gets crushed. And by that time though, Bartlett has had the great forethought to have, you know, a year's worth of food and gear and they built some igloo

shelters and they, with a lot of the crates and stuff, they have one, it's called the box house. So they have. Manufactured sleds. Yeah. They manufactured some, uh, Perry style sleds while still on the car look and they've got dogs. So Bartlett's thinking is okay.

If I can, if the ship gets crushed, when the ship gets crushed, we're going to have to live on the ice until March when the light gets good enough to travel again. Right. And so invariably the ship does get crushed.

Um, it's a great scene though. I love the scene where Bartlett's got a flair for the dramatic, right? So he's in the galley. Everyone's off at the box house and the ice house. They've taken everything off there. They've got their beds, you know, sleeping situations set up.

And Bartlett's like stays in the galley and he's got like a phonograph and he's playing record after record and then theatrically kind of throwing them into the fire, you know? And he saves Chopin's funeral march for the last one. And, you know, I would love to see this in a film, like great. Cause he's like, puts it on, you know, and it's got this, like, dirge thing. Death is coming. And then he goes out onto the rail. If you saw this scene in a movie, you would think this is over the top.

Calm down, dude. What are you doing, man? And he stands on the rail. And then, you know, right as funeral march is playing, the notes are drifting off into the Arctic wind. I milk this pretty hard, by the way. And then, you know, right as funeral march is playing, the notes are drifting off into the Arctic wind. I milk this pretty hard, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, he steps off and the car, I mean, it's kind of bizarre, like, to think you're sitting there, the ship you've been on for a few months, there it is. And, like, when it goes down, you know, it's like they've raised the flag to full mass.

And then it's like, it goes down, the flag goes down, everybody's watching. And then the steam spout is like, you just see. And then all of a sudden, your ship's gone and you're on the ice going, okay, now what? Right? Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps,points and tracking that's right you were always talking about uh we're always talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the great white north can can be part of it be part of the excitement you can even

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you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet on X maps.com slash meet. Welcome to the, to the on X club y'all. The story becomes about, to me, I think that one of the coolest elements is that Bartlett's driven. He understands kind of the situation, which is I've got to get these people to land. Now, Stephenson later argues, and I think incorrectly

that they should have probably bolted like he did way earlier, um, across the ice, but Stephenson was already, um, a very skilled, very skilled ice traveler. He had lived with the Inuit and he knew how to do it in small teams. You've got like 15, 17 people, only a few of them had any experience on ice. Bartlett and this guy named John Hadley that they had picked up in Barrow also. And other than that, you know, these are not experienced Arctic travelers, except the Inuit that they were with, that they had brought, who basically save all their lives. But so Bartlett knows, okay, at some point, I'm going to have to get all these people to Wrangell Island if we get close enough to it. And then I'm going to probably have to go myself with maybe one of the two Inuits,

Kuriluk and Katuk Tovik, and take them across the long straight south to Siberia and then go somehow get word to the larger world that there were marooned on Wrangell Island or they're marooned on Wrangell Island because he reasons that not going on Moss with 20 some people is not going to work. Yeah. And only one, as far as they know, only one

white guy has ever been there. Yeah. One group of white, like Muir, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, John Muir, the naturalist, you know, had like written the only real first descriptions of the place, right?

Yeah. And it's interesting that they know too that Wrangell Island has driftwood. Right. And another island doesn't have driftwood. Yeah. Harold Island doesn't have driftwood and it's small and uninhabitable, but it's really close. It's like within 30 miles of Wrangell Island.

And then Wrangell Island is, I mean, it has populations of polar bear. It has populations of walrus. It ends up having a lot of wildlife. But. Let me hit you with another quick stuff and some something from my life with the Eskimo. When he's up in the high Arctic, he's on, he's with hunters who have never seen a tree, but they have driftwood.

Their explanation of what driftwood is, they think it's a plant that grows under the water. Seems reasonable. Yeah. I mean. He's They think it's a plant that grows under the water. Seems reasonable. Yeah. I mean. He's like, it's shit. He speculates that it's trees washing out McKenzie Delta, going into the Arctic Ocean, landing on these islands, and then you're just like, I don't know where that shit came from.

Right. It's a seaweed. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, you have no way of, you've never seen a tree. Yeah, it just, and by the way, there are no trees on Wrangell Island. So the driftwood, you know, has come from other places, right? And, you know, luckily they know that from these logs that they had. And so that, you know, Bartlett understands that basically if I can get them all to Wrangell Island, I got to go then for help. Right. And

then that's a whole other ordeal. So the book essentially toggles between, I mean, first of all, getting to Wrangell Island from after they take all the stuff off the ship, that place is called, they name it shipwreck camp. You know, it's like, makes sense. And so they're like, they've got a complicated problem, which is that they've got a year's worth of food. Yeah, but you can't move it. You can't move it. Like, you can move some of it and fuel, right? So there's an odyssey of getting from shipwreck camp to Wrangell Island.

And then the other odyssey of Bartlett trying to go get help. Well, real quick, hit those dudes that tried, the other guys that peaced out. Right. So, um, is really while they're drifting along, Stephenson's left and, you know, during the dark night, things are starting to get, you know, as they do on a ship, like some people are getting freaking cabin fever and some people are like, you know, uh, we're in close proximity, there's arguments and the scientists, uh, three of them, uh, one is named, uh, Murray. One is named McKay. Um, and this other Frenchman named Henri Beauchamp and those three guys, um, the two guys, um,

Forbes, uh, McKay and Murray had been with Shackleton on a 1909 expedition. So in those expeditions, they didn't use dogs. They like man hauled, right? So harnesses on you and you're pulling lighter loads, right? And so for a number of reasons that aren't fully explained, like why they're so adamant, these three guys decide we want to leave the car. Look, just go it alone. We want to go it alone. And Bartlett is in a tough spot because, you know, in, if, if this were a military situation, he would be able to say like,

you, you can't leave the ship. I'm in command of you and the ship. But because they were scientists hired by Stephenson, it was sort of a gray area. And Bartlett decides that he's going to support them in their decision. I mean, there were some murmurings of mutiny and stuff at a certain point, and actually the three guys asked this other Norwegian guy if he will go with them. And he's really become close to Bartlett and he's devoted to him. And he's like, um, if he will go with them and he's really become close to Bartlett and he's devoted to him. And he's like, basically, if you ask me again, we're going to have a problem, you know, like I'm not going with you and, um, you quit, quit asking me about it. But so they end up, um, striking off on their own and before Bartlett and the rest of them

head for Wrangell Island. Now, what's kind of cool is that they have built a series of, in knowing that they have to transport all this gear and food in the direction of Wrangell Island, they built a bunch of like a relay system of igloos, maybe 10 miles apart. It's kind of cool, really smart. Because, you know, if you keep going back and forth and bringing some stuff, setting up caches, coming back to Shipwreck Camp, and then going forward again and moving to, and building another igloo, you're also creating a kind of trail, you know. There's a lot of wind blown activity and so, and, and so it doesn't stay completely there, but they, they mark these igloos

with, uh, flattened pemmican tins so that they can hopefully see them. Um, but these three guys decide to go it alone and, um, they don't take dogs, even though Bartlett offers them dogs. Cause they had, were used to the man hauling technique that they used with. Bartlett makes a sign of things saying. Yeah. A waiver. Yeah. It makes a sign of things saying we've decided to take off. Yeah. And this is not my fault. Are they going to do the same thing the rest

of the crew is going to do? Or are they just. They got a different plan. They got a different plan. And they said, well, we think we're going to use some of the igloos on our way, but their plan is to, is to head South either. They were kind of clueless because they

didn't, at this point, they didn't exactly know, you know, to the spot where they are. They have a general notion that they're like, you know, 100 miles west of Wrangell Island. But I mean, it's a pretty big space out there. So they end up going on their own. There's a really, really grim scene in which Bartlett continues to send out his own small teams that are going to try to make it over in, in like relays to Wrangell Island. And they come across these guys after like a week or 10 days on one of their forays. And I mean, it's a really grim scene, you know, like two guys are sitting there. One guy's hand is out of its glove.

And this is Murray, you know, and he has cut himself with a pemmican tin and he's got like infected hand, right? It's all swollen up and they're barely moving. They're all, you can tell their faces are all frostbitten. They don't really know what direction they're going. And the other guys from Bartlett's teams are, you know, they're on dog sleds and they're, they're like, you guys need help. Right. And they say, well, we, we decided to do it alone. A mile behind them is this French guy, Henri Beauchat, who, um, is just in a dire situation. They re and they, there's all this strewn gear, like they've been lightening their load.

So it's like, you know, a yard sale on ice. You said they'd only been out there like a week at that point? Yeah, a week to 10 days. And, uh, and, and they're, you know, but they're frozen, like they haven't been, um, taking good care of themselves. What you need to do is each night get to an igloo or build an igloo, set up a primus stove, eat food, stay warm, stay dry if you can, and hope that, of course, that the ice doesn't crack underneath your igloo, which it often did.

And then so they come across this strewn gear and everything, pemmican, and they come across this Henri Beauchamp guy. And he's just, his feet are halfway out of his muck locks. His gloves or mittens are off. You know, his hands are like black and necrotic and pustules. And he's like, they're like, we need to take you back to shipwreck camp. Get on the sled. And he says, you know, let me die. I'm like, I'm done.

And you know, then they just like cluck the dogs on and head out. It's kind of. And those dudes never seen again. It's just like never seen again. You know, in fairness, Bartlett sort of makes token efforts to look for them a couple of times, but, um, four other guys get stranded on, um, the, on Harold Island, which they, they came to accidentally, you know, they were trying to reach Wrangel Island and they ended up on

Harold Island, Harold Island, which is that really small inhospitable, no driftwood, no food place. And they, those guys, um guys are screwed, you know? Yeah. When did someone find their bodies? It's like 1926, I'm thinking. Someone just lands on the island, takes a walk, and there's.

Yeah. They were U.S. expedition, and I believe they had the notion of finding out if they were still there. They were aware of them. They were aware of them. And, you know, so it's like, but what's, what's, Bjarn Maman, the Norwegian member of the team, um, he gets, uh, disoriented and he ends up like within two miles of Harold Island. And at this point, everyone's in, Maman is in pretty bad condition. You know, he's like dislocated his knee and they're, they don't have that much food left. He realizes he's at the wrong Island.

So he decides, uh, after consultation with the other members of that little advanced team, that he's going to go back to shipwreck camp and these guys can stay there within like two miles of this Island. But, um, there's, there's an open leads of water between it and the island at the moment. So he has to make a hard decision, right? He's kind of, um, the leader of this little team. And he says, I'm going back to shipwreck camp. You guys make it here. And then they write letters to Bartlett saying, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're gonna stay here as long as I can, as long as we can come try to get us. If we don't hear from you,

we'll eventually make it over to Wrangell Island ourselves. How are they all kind of getting split up into different groups? I mean, it's really, what's interesting about that is like, you know, if you think about the polar sea, a lot of times you imagine it being flat, you know, and what is so remarkable about this landscape seascape is how ruptured and undulating and, uh, you know, difficult. If you're not walking in a straight line. Like a hundred foot, a hundred foot pressure ridges. Yeah.

You're having to go around. So, and also, you know, the light, that's a really great question though. You know, there are, there are also, um, there are also experiencing a lot of Arctic mirages, right? There are these, like, celestial conditions make it so that something out there will appear to be a landmass, and it's like, you know, water sky that has come up over open water. And, you know, it sort of looks like a landmass and it's like a, an optical illusion. So that's part of it. Um, the conditions of trying to navigate are really hard because, um, the ice is continually breaking up. And so you can't go in a straight line. You have to follow leads till they narrow and then cross there. Um, and so they

end up getting quite disoriented in a number of instances, but once they have this sort of. Did I hit you with another Stephenson tidbit? Yeah. That's the man. Your guy. Stephenson talked about one time stalking a

grizzly bear that wound up being a ground squirrel. When talking about, he talked about how deceptive the Arctic light is. Yeah. And there's another guy that was like, I can't remember which way it was. Like, they think they're looking at an island and it has two glaciers. It's a walrus's head sticking out of the water. That's how deceiving things are.

Just distances. And mirage. Yeah. And then, and then when the light comes, all the snow blindness. Snow blindness and everything's blowing. So yeah, it's, and also you're not, um, the conditions are such that they're not able to take

really accurate readings. Right. And then, and then not to mention the ice that you're on is moving, you know, sometimes great distances. Like, so, so that all contributes to, um, the difficulty, uh, and, and, you know, I'm glad you brought up the pressure ridges because one of the most badass things they do in this book is that once they decide, okay, we're making a break for a Wrangell Island, um,

they encounter when the shore ice, when, when, when this floating sea ice gets within proximity of maybe 30 miles of Wrangell Island, it starts bumping up against these extended spits, right? And so the ice that's hitting, it's kind of like a wave, a frozen wave. So the ice is hitting the shoreline far out offshore. And buckling out. And buckling and then growing, growing. And like some of them are up to a hundred feet high and there's some really cool pictures in

the book of like them standing on these things and you realize, oh my God. So they have to now get sleds and everything over these things. And Bartlett, when he encounters them, uh, a couple of the other guys had gone like maybe one or two miles each direction and the thing extends for 10 or 20 miles, this long ridge of ice. And he's like, well, we're going to have to cut our way through it.

That's it. Right. So then they take, it takes them like four days to hack a trail and, and with the dogs and ice axes and shovels, hike a, hack a trail through this series of ridges. And they do some clever things like they tie a rope between two sleds and then they'll get one of the sleds up. The top of these ridges are really, uh,

terrifying and precipitous. Like if you fall down, you could well be dead or battered at the bottom. So they take these sleds and they get one to the top and then they, using men and dogs, they push it over and then it pulls the other sled behind it. The weight of that sled pulls the other sled up and then they disentangle that one or

untie them and then do it again. It takes them, you know, weeks, weeks to get from shipwreck camp to Wrangell Island. And at that point, you know, all ideas of them all making it across the long straight to Siberia are out the window because they're in quite bad shape. He makes an interesting call here, and this is where I'm at in the book. So from here on out, you're on your own, but he makes an interesting call at Wrangell Island where he wants everyone to break up into really small groups and spread out all over the place. Yeah.

Well, the theory. It seems so weird to me. Well, his rationale is Bob Bartlett decides very quickly when he lands on Wrangell Island. So first of all, they find driftwood. So, and they've got some, um, they have brought with them some tents, right? From the ship. They brought these bell tents.

They're kind of like yurts, right? Big ones though. Big, big yurts. Um, and some other canvas, um, tents. But at first they, it's more conducive to, it's March when they land. March, March 12th, 1914. And at first they decide like, we'll build igloos, right? Because they're efficient.

So Bartlett determines, okay, there's driftwood. There is some game. They have been encountering seals, but the seals are quite offshore. And then some Arctic foxes and some bears that they have encountered in, usually the bear situation was like, they're not hunting bears. The bears are kind of hunting them. Kill them right in camp, man. You know, the bears have been following them. Or the bears will be duking it out with the dogs.

Right. And the bears like, and there's some gnarliest. And they'll kill the bear while he's duking it out with the dog packs. There's some really close encounters though. Oh, yeah. bear while he's duking it out with the dog pack. There's some really close encounters though, like where one guy Hadley has to snag his rifle like while the bear is trying to get to the dogs and he's on the other side of the sled, you know, and he's like grabbing his rifle within feet of a

freaking 10 foot polar bear. You know, when they, when they gourmet butcher a polar bear, they like the back legs, the back straps and the heart. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's no, there's no human the heart. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not the liver. There's no human presence on Wrangell Island.

No. And by the way, to this day. And does it get visited at all from? You know, that's the last known place that had woolly mammoths? Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that cool? 4,000 years ago.

Also, there's like a very. Most people say four. Somewhere in that area. Right. Like a dwarf woolly mammoth. But so that's a really good question. At that time, 1914, there's no residents on Wrangel Island. And even to this day, there's like a couple of, so it's Russian.

Yeah, the Ruskies own that one. The Ruskies own it, but they have like one full-time resident, one or two full-time residents. And then I was really bummed, man. I had almost went to Wrangell Island twice. First time my trip got scuttled. So there's a couple of, um, expedition companies that take you, um, in, in like a 50 person, um, you know, ship, and then you get off on Zodiacs and you can go camp for a few days on Wrangell Island with these nature naturalists and rangers.

It'd be really cool. Had it set up. Pandemic scuttled that. And then I was going to go the next summer and Putin invaded Ukraine. And then like, they weren't going to call that off. Russia. Yeah, we can't go to Russia. So that was kind of a bummer.

But so then Bartlett, you're right. He made the call that like these people. So in getting across the pressure ridges and getting over from Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel Island, um, some of the members are in pretty bad condition. Now I will say the Inuit members, Kuriluk, his wife, uh, Kirik, who's nicknamed Auntie and the two kids, Helen and Mugpee are like nothing. It's like nothing has happened to them. They're in absolutely great shape. Yeah, I love that they got little kids, and the little kids are always playing.

The little kids are playing, and they got the cat. Everybody else is like dying, and the kids are like running around. They're like, I don't see the problem. Eat seal blubber and have really nice Arctic clothing. But you could blame Stephenson in part for this because he brought Auntie along, Kira, to sew Arctic clothing. And then, but he bought a bunch of the skins pretty late in the game.

So like she's sewing and teaching the members to sew while they're still floating along. And they didn't like, they weren't fully kitted out, all the members. Anyway, Barleyhead makes the call that like these people are too tired, frostbitten, uh, and to make, and inexperienced to make it across. It's about a hundred miles from the Southern coastline of Wrangell Island to Russian, uh, Northeastern Siberia. What is the disease they're getting?

So that's, yeah, it's interesting that they're, they start coming down within days after Bartlett leaving with catatonic, they start coming down within days after Bartlett leaving with catectobic. They start coming down with this swelling sickness. So their limbs are getting really, their limbs are, some of their hands and feet are swelling to like twice their normal size. And there's two theories. One is that the pemmican that they had was somehow flawed and the ratio of fat to protein was wrong. I mean, not, not good enough so that they begin to get, um, what's called

nephritis or it's like a inflammation of the kidneys, um, and imbalance, you know, they've got like a diet, a dietetic imbalance, but it's freaking everybody out because it's not scurvy. Um, cause they're getting some meat, you know, here and there with the Arctic foxes, the seals and the polar bears. Um, but then, you know, they start to, so that's the other thing. Stephenson doesn't know that like, he's like, well, they should have all gone with Bartlett. Bartlett just leaves with one Inuit guy, Katuk Tovik. The problem is, you know, it'd be like taking all your buddies and they're, they're in terrible

shape and they can't go like, you know, they're, they're no longer fit for this track across the ice, that's going to be dangerous itself. To go fetch a boat. Yeah. I mean, in a very roundabout way, go fetch a boat. Yeah.

When would they have been like considered missing or well how long would it have been so steffensen makes land in like october uh or late september early october of 1913 and eventually he does he sends word to the canadian that, uh, oh, I've lost my ship. Yeah, but no, he has no idea where it is. I have, I have no idea where my ship is, but it'll probably be fine because they have these UMIACs, which are skin boats.

And, you know, Stephenson's thinking more like what he would do. And, but he would only do this alone or with a really small team. With him and two Inuit hunters. Yeah. He's not going to do it with like a bunch of inexperienced people. So he reports to the Canadian government that like the flagship car look is gone.

It will, it will either be crushed. Most likely it will be crushed or it's going to like bypass, uh, Wrangel Island and and end up somewhere else. There's this... I forgot about that. When he's talking about the... In some number of years, when you're all dead, it'll spit you out in Greenland. Yeah, and he says... I love his line.

He says... You'll go around the Arctic and it'll spit you out, but it takes a few years. Yeah, it says either them or their wreckage. And you're like, oh, great. So they were going west, but watched to the east. They're coming back. Are the other two ships, meanwhile, just like they've gotten where they were supposed to go

and they're just hanging out waiting? Right. So when Stephenson arrives back on mainland, uh, Alaska, he, he's cruising along the coast and he runs into some of the people that actually that he had known from the previous expedition he was on. And they have, you know, they're hearing, uh, stories of like there's reports. Okay. Uh, yeah, the Alaska and the Mary Sacks have been seen and they're actually wintering over in this bay before Harold Island, but they're safe. So he learns that those two ships are safe.

So at that point, Stephenson decides, okay, I'm going to re-outfit what's called the New Northern Party. And that other one, that's the old Northern Party and they're screwed. It's like Rumsfeld's old Europe, right? It's like, well, they're still your people. But anyway, he's like, I got this. I'm going to, I'm going to do what I said I was going to do. He's also really clever because he knows from where he is, how long it takes

mail to get to the Canadian government. It has to go by like dog sled. And it's, he knows that it's going to leave like by December 1st or something. And then it's going to take a couple months to get to the Canadian government. So by the time he knows that by the time they get the report that the car looks gone and I'm re-outfitting, he will already have done it.

Like he'll already be out on the ice doing his thing and they can't really say, don't do that. Right. Right. And he, he does some pretty, um, devious things. Like he's got a, he's got an open checkbook. Right. So he arrives at one of these, um, trading posts and it turns out the guy is basically leaving cause he's been there too long and he can't stand the winners anymore. And he's like selling everything. Seven'senson like buys it all. And he goes to another guy and he's like, finds the guy has a really cool schooner. So he's like, hey, can I buy that schooner? And he writes him a check for like 13 grand, right?

On top of the two ships that he's already bought. Yeah, the numbers are astronomical, what he ends up spending, right? But so Stephenson quickly re um, regroups and he, he has like, he has it out with, um, the, the expedition leader of the Southern party, this guy, Dr. Anderson. Um, and you know, Dr. Anderson sees that Stephenson, first of all, he's like, where's your ship? Why, you know, and why aren't you going to do anything to go find them? And Stephenson's like, I can't do anything. Nobody can go there until summer, right? That part of the world, you've got

like a six week maybe window where there's going to be open water and some of these places are accessible, but at this point, they don't even know where the car like is. So Steffensen is right to say like, there's nothing I can do about it personally right now, except to say we should be organizing rescue missions for next summer. Right. do, you know, ethnological and, um, scientific study and just sort of bid bids goodbye to the car. Look, and by the time he ultimately gets back, oh, by the way, he re he abandons his wife and child again, after being with that for a little

while. Um, it's a touching scene of good farewell. Um, anyway, so Stephenson's doing that. And then, and then the, the book takes off onto where it really picks up. I think, uh, momentum is after Bartlett leaves with this cataclysmic guy. Yes.

Let me, let me have an ordeal. Yeah. Let's, let's just, yeah. So they get to Wrangell Island. He leaves everybody. Most people are 15 people. Leaves him to Wrangell Island. He leaves everybody. Most people are... 15 people. Leaves them in Wrangell Island.

Gives them instructions. Written instructions. Do this, that, and the other thing. I'm going to split. Watch for me in such and such harbor. Roger Harbor. July, August. Watch for me to come back with a boat.

Right. Right. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right.

We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our

favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. And I should answer your previous question. So they got to wrangle island bartlett's rationale was if we set up they're they're on the northern the northeastern tip of wrangle

island it's only like 90 miles wide and you know 50 or 60 miles um top to bottom um so bartlett's rationale is that they're if we spread out and have some people at Icy Spit, which is where they land, there's another place called Cape Waring. It's about midway. And then there's Rogers Harbor, which is the southern western point of the island. He figures that if we distribute people in different teams, they can have better luck hunting in smaller groups and taking care of themselves rather than having to have, you know, cook for 15 people every day. So smaller groups and also it will, um, it will distribute the hunting, um, landscape a little more spread out. That's his rationale.

Yeah. Now then, so right. He ends up like on a race. The book becomes like a race against time because Bartlett needs to get across the long straight to Siberia and then somehow get all the way over to the east and find a ship to cross the Bering straight and get back to Alaska where he can send a telegram to tell them they're on Wrangell Island. Right.

So their lives, like at every moment are kind of dependent on whether bartlett makes it and so i cut back and forth that's the thing i wanted to ask you about is it it's like if bartlett and his inuit hunter like you know you got all these people dying and stuff happened like if they had just gone off 10 miles and fell into a lead and died yeah it's reasonable. Soon. No one on, no one on Wrangell Island is going to survive.

I think maybe the, the Inuits would have, but because there's an anecdote I'll get to. They could have been, they could have been there anyway. Right. Right. I mean,

you know, it's not ideal because of how remote it is, but yeah. So Bartlett, yeah, you know, there's, it becomes, it's sort of this race against time where Bartlett is. But, um, yeah, so Bartlett, yeah, you know, there's, it becomes, it's sort of this race against time where

Bartlett is trying to get to mainland Siberia and then to get word to the world that there's a bunch of stranded people from the car look on Wrangell Island and you cut back and forth to what's happening with them on Wrangell Island and things begin to, so they, you know,

they don't have a finite amount of, um, or they do have a finite amount of food, um, that they've been able to bring. And they make a couple, um, gnarly treks back to shipwreck camp to, to get more, uh, some really, some really dangerous, um, treks where the leads break open. They get to guys, guys get, oh, I don't want to ruin it for you. Guys get separated from, uh, each other and from there and the dog has to like lead them back, you know? So things are starting to deteriorate on

Wrangell Island in that their physical condition is poor and they're not, they're hunting constantly, but they're not able to procure enough food. They can just barely stay ahead, you know? Yeah, the woman and the kids, like I'd read an essay you wrote about this. Oh, yeah. Where the woman and the children wound up being some of the primary procurers of game.

Yeah, so it's really cool. Kuriluk is the husband and father of the two children. And so he's a really good hunter. I mean, he's, you know, he's getting seals. Seals start to go offshore, so it gets harder to get seals. And as things become more dire and they're running out of food, Auntie is really industrious. Like she figures out how, first of all, Curlick, you know,

fashions some bows and arrows because they're going to run out of ammunition too. So he starts to figure like if we can, if we could shoot Arctic foxes and birds with arrows, that'll save us ammo because we're going to need the bullets for walrus, bears, seals, bigger things. And so, but Auntie is really, really clever. So she figures out how to jig for cod. She takes a sewing needle and bends it and then hooks it up to some sinew twine. And then they stand over this little title crack and like snagging these like 12 inch.

Yeah, little tom cod. Tom cod. They're like, yeah, can they get a bunch of those? She's, the kids do some really clever stuff. One're like yanking. They get a bunch of those. The kids do some really clever stuff. One of the girls, Helen, the 11-year-old, figures out how to put a piece of seal blubber onto a feather quill where you pull it out, right? And then she has that attached to a piece of string

and chucks the blubber over there and that kind of hides and seagull come up and eat the blubber, the quill gets stuck in their throat and then she drags it over and rings its neck, you know? Um, that's like one seagull at a time, but the biggest hunting, um, I mean, kind of the, uh, most, uh, hunting that they do that's effective. Um, also, Curlick, he creates snare traps for arctic foxes. And he builds two things. One, he builds a kayak, which is really cool. I mean, there's an image of him working

with the Scotsman and William McKinley that they had a camera, you know, like they have a picture of him building the kayak. It's crazy that they're like snap of pictures now and then. I know. Like, and so it takes a couple of weeks and he, it's really funny because he's

hedging, like they're, they're starting to run out of food and they're like, they hear walrus in the bay and they're like, if we can get a walrus or two, we're, we're set like, you know, now it's getting to be August. They're thinking if winter hits again, we're screwed. We's getting to be August. They're thinking if winter hits again, we're screwed.

We're going to die here. Um, so he, he builds a kayak and auntie is awesome. Like has, has gotten all these skins from the bearded seal, the Ugric. And, um, you know, he, he uses an ads and, you know, uh, he uses a hatchet as an ads and he has like, you know, a skinning knife and some snow knives and they, he's able to fashion, you know, find driftwood planks and stuff and fashions out the, the frame. And then they bring it inside the, one of the wall tents and, uh, auntie like completely

fabricates the skin outside of this kayak. But Curlick has been like hedging. Cause he doesn't want, he's the only one who knows how to run a kayak and he builds a really nice two handled paddle, you know, but he does, he has no interest in being solo in the water with a 2,500 pound walrus. Right.

So he's here like telling them, man, I don't really want to do it. They're finally like, you got to go get the walrus. We can't do it, you know. He ends up getting a walrus and, you know, but it's a small one and it doesn't last that long. So by the time it's starting to get near late August, you know, they're into some rough rations. They're eating scurvy grass. You know, it's like coccularia. It's a little Arctic grass that actually

names scurvy grass because the mariner's fort scurvy. And then Auntie is starting to make the stuff that one of the members names salad oil. So she takes like chunks of blubber and puts them in a skin poke or a little bag and puts the chunks of blubber in there and leaves them out to ferment.

And then when that stuff gets all congealed and fermented, they open up the bag and dip other chunks of seal meat and blubber into it. Like, you know, and, and the, and the, uh, Inuit people are like, we're good. And, uh, but like the other guys are like, I don't, you know, we really need something bigger. Um, so anyway, they start to plan, like they

realized that the window for a ship getting there, but, um, Bartlett had told them that in mid July, someone needs to be at Rogers Harbor on the southern point. And that's where, if a ship's going to come, that's where it'll meet you. But, you know, things are getting really sparse in terms of food. They know that the window is closing. And so they start planning to go inland, follow this stream, go inland, build a cabin and sort of make their stand for winter on Wrangell Island, which is a really, um, daunting prospect, you know? And at that point, you know, without giving away too much, um, Bartlett has, uh, conspired to send a rescue armada of ships.

And then, so these people are dying on Wrangel Island essentially, or are going to die. And unless Bartlett gets these ships to them in a really tight window. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's probably not known, but what, why don't the, when things get real bad, why don't they into it just like, what's preventing them from just taking off?

You know, that's a really good question. They have the skill set to take, like they can make boats, they know what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a kind of ethical standard, like they were hired, you know, they were hired to do a job. Um, cause it's like pulling the weight for all those people. You think at a point you'd be like, I don't know if you,

I don't know if you guys would do this for me. Right. Okay. Yeah. So the other thing I forgot to tell you though, is that like, so, so,

so Curluck, um, you know, they, they stay and they're, you know, they probably do realize like, I'm,

we're doing most of this, but though Hadley is a pretty good hunter, McKinley is a good hunter. This guy, Ernest Chafe, he's young. He's, he was the mess room boy on the Shikarlic. He's like 19 and he brought with him his shooting medals from competitions that he'd won. He's sort of badass. And so he ends up being pretty good. things that at wearing Cape Waring, um, there's all these cliffs and they're filled with thousands of crow, they named them crowbills, but they're ox or mures. Um, so they're on these cliffy,

you know, they're like little kind of penguin-y looking birds, but they, you know, great diving duck, um, diving mure. And, and so they're up there and they realize, okay, there's a lot of meat there. We can get it if we can get it. So they use driftwood and rope and they build this ladder that McKinley, who's this little, they call him a wee Mac. He only weighs like a buck 30. He's a little dude, but he's spry. And so he's going to climb up these ladders and get, you know, they don't have shotguns. It's another thing they blew, but they have rifles.

So they get up to where these crowbills, ox, are nesting, and they're in the thousands. So, and they're getting the eggs, and they're shooting as many as they possibly can, right? One time McKinley, like, falls off the ladder and goes battering down onto the snow and ice, and he's, luckily, nothing breaks, but he's all bruised. And then they build this other thing, like a bosun's chair.

The plan is they're going to lower him, hike around, and then lower him down. McKinley's like, I don't know about this gig. But so they're able to subsist. And they also, Curluck figures out that they have it buried under snow. They had this net from the Curluck. And so they notice that ducks are starting to, um, you know, pool up in some of the larger leads.

So they go out there, sneak up on the edge of a lead and they take in unison, like three guys will throw this net and scoop up a bunch of birds. But, you know, the birds are not big enough where that's going to, um, you know, that's like a couple of days it gets you through. So that all that's happening while Bartlett is on his odyssey.

No, at this point, we're the only three people who died, like the three that took off. Those are the only people that had died up to this point. Well, those three, we know. The other guys that went to the wrong island. Harold Island. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were probably dead by then.

No, so there's some other carnage. Yeah, I don't want to give anything away, but I'm just trying to. I mean, it's really sad. You don't want to give anything away. It's really sad, man, because so in the split up, Icy Spit, Waring Point in the middle, and then the other place, Rogers Harbor. So some, Bjorn Mammon, the Norwegian guy, Templeman, the cook, uh, and this other guy, George Malek, who is one of the scientists there, they end up at Rogers Harbor and the hunting is not, not good there. They get some Arctic foxes, but they, they're, and they're also in really bad

shape. So, um, that scene at Rogers Harbor becomes, um, really dire, almost like the Greeley expedition. And that's going on while everyone's on Lang Island. Yeah, and so a couple times, it's really sad. Like, McKinley goes down there, and, you know, he realizes one of the guys from, that's been at Mid-Island, he gets down to them to check on how they're doing. And it's, like, not well, you know. They're, like, hallucinating,, they're malnourished. And so McKinley tries to make this, you know, noble Herculean trek back to get different pemmican

for mama and who can't eat this stuff anymore and find some more and bring him, bring them food. And there's some really touching scenes where like McKinley has brought him like a can of condensed milk, you know, and he's like giving it to him like he's a little baby, you know? And you're just like, oh my God, is this guy going to make it or not, you know?

Got to read the book to find out. Good old Arctic Explorer stuff. That was one of the things I kept wondering is was there, during this period period were there any of these trips where everything just went like name for me one that just went great that's a really good question like when you signed up like when they so at this point they've been at it for a while like you're in the teens 19 teens yeah 13 people been up there dying for a long time like you're in the teens, 19 teens. Yeah, 13. People have been up there dying for a long time. Like 50%.

How are you getting anyone to fund them? I've heard how it goes up there. I'm not joining that. What are they looking at as the sort of like way it could go? Right. Well, so that's a really great question. I mean, ironically, and I don't really want to say this because, you know, I'm, I'm kind of anti-Steffensen on this whole thing. But so, yeah, they're like, well, he did it.

Yeah. I was going to ask him about Steffensen in a sec, but go on. So he was able to, I mean, he had, he, he went with this guy, Rudolph Anderson, who ends up being on this Southern Party. And Stephenson had brought back artifacts for the American Museum of Natural History. So the things that Stephenson was bringing back and the findings that they were making about like, you know, underscoring all of this is like a desire to find potentially new land and claim it for Canada. So that, you know, I think people's ability to fundraise and to be really convincing and persuasive. I mean, Perry was very good at it. You know, some of the expeditions had worked.

I mean, Perry, even though it's contested now, had in 1909 made it to the North Pole. So you've got like— He didn't lose a bunch of guys. No, no. And, you know, he did it better, though. I mean, he brought a steel-hulled icebreaker, the SS Roosevelt, right? So he, you know—

So people could look at that and you could be like, you know, he did it. He did it. But also, there's a bit of a difference. I think in all of the, in many of the expeditions leading up to this, like firsts were what they were about or discovery of new lands being the first to the North Pole, the first to farthest north, the first to go through the Northwest Passage. This was one of the early, like purely, it's going to be scientific in nature. And so it was worth it for the Canadian government and also the Canadian government had sort of designs on, um, if we can expand our holdings, our landmass, that's good, you know, in terms of, um, dominion over the North. Right. But so I think Stephenson's ability to persuade the Canadian

government that this thing was going to be an unprecedented scientific, um, success. And in many ways it was because the work that he ends up doing, which I don't, I cover it briefly in the book because my interest was more about the Carlock and that story. But I mean, so Stephenson ends up continuing on. I mean, he conveniently like, so world war one breaks out like right as, um, Bartlett and everybody, uh, you know, right, right. As the Wrangel Island fiasco is going on and Stephenson conveniently, uh, like goes onto the ice in like 1914 and conveniently sort of resurfaces to the world right as World War I ends. It's like, oh, good timing.

What happened while I was gone? Oh, yeah. Give me a paper. The Great War? Wait, what? Right. And so a number of the other members have to go serve and stuff. So how did – I never looked this up.

How does Stephenson end up, like how long does he live? Well, he lives forever, right? Yeah, I mean, 62. What kills him? He dies of, I don't think it's anything like cataclysmic, like cancer or anything. No one eats them or anything. No, but the funny thing is, and I have to add this because it has to do with your question about whether, you know, Kerluck and his family could probably have survived or walked 100 miles. So this is bizarre.

Stephenson, you got to hand it to him. So he resurfaces okay and now he is his books are selling he's writes he's written My Life with the Eskimo and he also writes

The Friendly Arctic which is a great title for a book in which most people die a vacation guide that's him kind of

laying out how you go about it right he's like what you do is you take off as soon as things look bad things go to shit you go the other how you go about it. Right. He's like. What you do is you take off as soon as things look bad. Things go to shit, you go the other way.

You go live with the Inuit who will keep you alive. And by the way, Amundsen, you know, the famous Norwegian polar explorer, he contests the friendly Arctic big time. He's like, this is actually irresponsible because you're making it sound like any Yehu can just go with a rifle and live off the ice. And it's like most of the people that drive that are going to die. But Stephenson, in fairness to him, he developed a great deal of skill in living in this way. But so he does the most. Yeah, man, there's no, there's like no, whatever you're saying about his like allegiances and his, his cavalier attitude about human life, you cannot deny. I mean, the guy could do insane shit. Oh yeah.

Yeah. And he, he knew how to pick his company. Yep. That's smart. But he could go and just go. What he couldn't do was, you know, put together an expedition of this magnitude, right? But you give him

and a couple hunters and they would do some crazy shit. Yeah, so I was going to kind of follow up on that. Like, there's so many variables and there's no way of knowing, obviously, but in your opinion, does this trip go a different way if Stephenson doesn't leave from the get-go? Or at least when he sees the ship has floated away, turns around and tries

to find it again? Maybe. Yeah, because I think Stephenson might well have been able to get more of them to land. He still would have he still would have been, uh, challenged by the fact that most of the scientists and the crew members did not have, um, Arctic ice skill, you know? So the thing I was going to say though, that, um, that he does, that's really a head scratcher, um, is that, so 1921, you know, like some years after this expedition, um, he decides he's going to organize another expedition to Wrangell Island. Right. Um, and one of the survivors, this guy, his name is Fred Maurer, uh, decides that he wants to go back to Wrangell Island because he had so much fun there the first time. And Stephenson convinces him to do it. So he gets like four, part of the rationale, and Stephenson wasn't really wrong about this,

was that he's already envisioning, I mean, Stephenson thought about some things. Like he predicted polar flight to across the Arctic. He predicted submarine travel in that region. I was going to ask, was this expedition kind of the end of an era? Absolutely. They call it the end of the dog sled adventure, you know, because things, you know, things began to change in terms of technology. But so Stephenson organizes this other trip.

Now the Canadian government wants no part of it, even though he was going to originally try to, to claim Wrangell Island for Canada. So he's become a Canadian citizen by this time. And he's like, well, we can plant the flag. It was kind of contested. So he, I mean, nobody will pay. So he self-finances this thing from like his book proceeds.

And he sends Fred Maurer, one of the guys from the Carlook, these two other members and a woman, also a seamstress. Her name is Ada Blackjack. You might want to read this book. It's freaking cool. Read Empire of Isis Zone first. I'll finish it. Yeah. So they go to wrangell island

if things go south they're you know as they do and they realize they're not gonna they're not gonna make it and so i think when things go south in the north might be a good name for it yeah exactly yeah so anyway mauer the guy from the car look, and this other guy decide to, they know, well, Bartlett did it with Katuktovik. We're going to strike across the long straight to go. They're running out of food and it's just not going to work either. This is 1921. They leave Ada Blackjack with the one other member. These two guys strike for Siberia and die out on the ice. And Ada Blackjack nurses this guy who has scurvy

for a while until he dies in her arms. She lives on Wrangell Island by herself for a year, like figuring out how. Ada Blackjack. Ada Blackjack. I'll marry her, man. Yeah. I mean, she is tough.

She's industrious. She knows how to use a bow and arrow. Did she eventually get picked up or, yeah. I mean, she is tough. She's industrious. She knows how to use a bow and arrow. Did she eventually get picked up? Yeah. She gets recovered. I want to marry her so bad. She's a good name. She's already got a great name.

I'll take her name. Yeah. Stevie Blackjack. Oh, wow. You can lead an expedition with that name. We didn't give too much away, did we? No. Okay, good.

You know, what's the book about Ada Blackjack? It's called, uh, Ada Blackjack. Oh, that sounds like a good name. Yeah.

Uh, and it was written by a woman named Jennifer Niven, who, who wrote the last book about this, um, but like 20, 22 years ago. Um,

and, uh, this, this woman is, is a really great writer and has transitioned into like young adult, um, writing now. She doesn't write about the art. So Canada never got their hands on.

Not, not yet. No, they didn't. Um, and the Russians do. Um, and you know, it's cool because today, I don't even know if you guys know this, but today Wrangell Island is a spectacular nature preserve. You can't go there without like being, you know, you have to have specific paperwork. Make sure you're not bringing invasive stuff in. Yeah.

And it's the largest Pacific walrus breeding ground and the largest polar bear denning ground in the world to this day. And it's just, uh, spectacular. If you look at, um, like just look at images online of it, it's so rugged, man, the top of it's like 3,500 feet. Um, and you know, it's cool. Cause there's, you know, there's beautiful rivers running out to the sea and, um, polar bears hanging out. Now, the weird thing is that musk oxen, uh, people, they go, well, why didn't they just eat all the musk oxen that are there? Because if you look at Wrangell Island,

there's musk oxen there now. They weren't there then. They weren't there. Yeah. You know? So it's like, well, they wish they'd had those musk oxen. Wow.

Well, man, you got a good New York Times review. Hey, I appreciate the shout out there. Yeah, this morning, New York Times review. Hey, I appreciate the shout out there. Yeah. This morning, New York Times said some nice things about this book and I'm pleased. We're going to, you know, pump it up next week. December 6th is the drop date. You're not doing any more podcasts, are you? I should do that.

No competitive ones. No, no. Nothing that's good. No, nothing. There's no podcasts that are, that are like this really, that are. It's all bullshit podcasts. Yeah. I like them. NPR BS or something.

Well, it's all structured and formal. Yeah, yeah. You already working on the third book in the trilogy? Yeah. Thanks for asking that, man. I, so, uh, I, I do need to get off the ice eventually because it's sort of mind numbing, you know?

Um, but I did pitch a book and I'm, I have, I'm under contract to write a third book in this trilogy and it's called Realm of Ice and Sky. And it, it's about the first, uh, what are called airships or blimps. Um, I, they're actually semi-rigid dirigibles, but try saying that a whole bunch of times, you know,

semi-rigid dirigibles that were going to try to fly to the North Pole in 1905. This American dude. God, that just seems like such a bad idea, man. I know. Well, in 1905, this American dude named Walter Wellman. So this is before Peary has made it to the

North Pole or Cook or whoever did. He's like trying to fly from Svalbard, you know, Spitsbergen, north of Norway, in a blimp to get to the North Pole, right? Now, it doesn't go well for Wellman. He lives, but he ends up being kind of pioneer for in, in 1926. And then later, um, Amundsen ultimately goes with this guy named Umberto Nobile. Um, he's a Italian airship designer. They make it to the North pole and from Svalbard and then, but pass over it and continue on to Nome and right.

So it's a transcontinental flight. Transarctic. Transarctic ice continent flight of the pole. No shit. So two years later, Amundsen takes a lot of credit for it. And this, this Italian guy, Nobile is like, man, I need to do that again. Like and get and make it more about me. So he, he, this was a really bad idea.

So he takes, he, this was a really bad idea. So he takes, he has mostly an Italian crew at this point, Amundsen and him are scrapping. And so Nobile takes, I mean, these things are huge, like a 400 foot blimp, you know, with like the cabin underneath. It looks like the Led Zeppelin, right? Yeah, yeah. Like exactly the Led Zeppelin.

Yeah. And so they take it, they make it to over the North Pole. And instead of continuing on, so the plan was to like land, it's hard to land a blimp because you need these like poles that you tie to, right? Tether to them. They're going to try to like lower dudes down and do a North Pole study, right? Out of like rappelling out of the damn airship. Sure.

Yeah. And so that, that'll work. So anyway, this is the bizarre thing that happens is that they make it to the North pole. It's really fucking windy and it's not going well for their ability to,

um, you know, uh, nobody wants to go back, right back to Spitsbergen and not do the same thing that he did already, which is with armaments and a continual you know, Nobile wants to go back, right? Back to Spitsbergen and not do the same thing that he did already, which is with Amundsen and continue on. So they turn it around.

They can't land or land people. They throw the Italian flag out and they're like, okay, they know they're at the North Pole. They've got good readings. On the way back, by the way, Nobile at this point has like been awake for 76 hours. He's all sleep deprived and he makes some mistakes. They crash the blimp like 150 miles back toward Norway, Spitsburg, Svalbard.

They crash the blimp in this catastrophic accident, the cabin that has like most of the people in it, bunch of them, nine of them go spilling out onto the ice, right? Like they're thrown onto the ice. Their legs are shattered. They're broken. And then they look up and the six of the other members, uh, are still in the cabin and, and the blimp is sailing off into the sky and they're like, fly away, never to be seen again. And now you've got these guys on the ice and it creates the

largest rescue operation in polar history. Right. And then in which, by the way, the famed explorer, Roald Amundsen, goes to go save Nobile, flies off in a Fokker shit, you know, seaplane and never is seen again. Wow. It's fucking awesome. What, is the blimp really, has it been seen? Never been seen. And I mean.

That'd be quite a find. Yes. How is that, I mean, how is that possible? Maybe it's still flying around up there. It's a big place. Yeah. And things get engulfed by the leads in the ice, you know? Yeah, just swallowed.

Ugh. I'd kind of rather be in a boat for a year, I think. Yeah, it does. So that one, I got to really get to write that one. Yeah, write that one. Start writing that one. Once you write that one, come back. All right, you want to hear more about Nobile?

Bring Ada Blackjack with you. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I really appreciate you guys having me. So hit people once more with the name of the book. All right, this is Empire of Ice and Stone, the disastrous and heroic voyage of the Karluk by Buddy Levy. Available anywhere books are sold.

You bet. In audio too. Oh, did you do the read? No. Ah, sons of bitches. They didn't let you do the read? Did you tell me why? That's another story.

Did you tell me why you didn't do it? Have you heard these pipes, man? Listen, man, I wouldn't let, I know. No, they said. I'm doing another. I got it. I got, so I got another book that's hitting the 10 year mark. So I'm getting the audio rights back.

I'm going to do my own read. It was just the first time you will? Nope. Oh, no. You did. So I had a book. Okay. American.

So when I sold American Buffalo, my publisher at Random House, they sold the audio to an outside place the outside place did had bought the audio for 10 years they hired some soap opera guy to read it i'm gonna hunt him down and kill him then at 10 years it ran out random house got it back at that point they were doing more audio yeah then i went in and did the read. Now the book I published after American Buffalo, my book Meat Eater. Right. Is the 10 year thing is reverting and I'm going to go in the studio and read that son of a bitch.

Yeah. Well, you know, I would like to, if I write something more, more personal, a memoir, I will probably read it. I'm very happy so far with a Macmillan Audio has a really good guy. Yeah. As an actor professional, I listened to like six voices and I'm like, that guy's pretty goodan Audio. They did a good job. Yeah, it's an actor professional.

I listened to like six voices, and I'm like, that guy's pretty good. You shopped around? You went through a voice catalog? I did. You know, voice, what do they call it? When you go up for the job? Audition? Yeah, a voice audition.

I've told the story 100 times, man, probably 50 times on this show. But when I got my first book that a guy that a soap opera person read I turned it on and he couldn't get two words out of his mouth and I had to race over turn it off and never was it it was just like that's not what it sounds like was it was he an actual soap opera actor that's just read a line he line. He's probably a great family man, loves his wife, loves his children. That being said, you're going to hunt him down and kill him. I'm not. I'm going to take it back.

Not hunting anyone down. But loves his country, loves his wife, loves his children. I have no doubt. But it was like he had no business saying those words. That's too bad. I kind of want to hear it now. Yeah, I think I'm going loves his children. I have no doubt. But it was like, he had no business saying those words. That's too bad. I kind of want to hear it now. Yeah, I think I'll lend it to you.

I'll lend it to you. Tell me how it is. No, this guy's great. And by the way, sometimes, man, you're glad because some of the words are really hard to pronounce. Yeah, you don't need to figure it out. Yeah, you're just like, let that guy handle it.

I know how to spell them. I don't know how to say them. Spell villain or like 250 times. Yeah, I'll leave that up to you, buddy. Yeah, it's tough. Good luck. Thank you. All right, man.

Well, thanks a lot. Good luck on the book. And when you get the next one ready, come back. I appreciate it. I always love what you guys do, man. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that

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