Speaker 1: Eight thirty eight, Here fifty five KRCD Talk Station. Been
Speaker 1: a very happy Monday to you. I am pleased to
Speaker 1: welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show Buddy Levey,
Speaker 1: author of more than ten books, including A Labyrinth of Ice,
Speaker 1: The Triumphant and Tragic Greeley Polar Expedition, and Empire of
Speaker 1: Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the
Speaker 1: Karl Luke. His book have been published in eight languages,
Speaker 1: won numerous awards. You may have also seen him on
Speaker 1: the History Channel. He was on History's Greatest Mysteries hosted
Speaker 1: by Lawrence Fishburn, and also The Unexplained with William Shatner
Speaker 1: hosting Today, We've got a new book to talk about.
Speaker 1: Realm of Ice and Sky, triumph Tragedy, and History's Greatest
Speaker 1: Arctic Rescue. Welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show,
Speaker 1: Buddy Lovey. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 2: Today, Sir Ryan, great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Answer me this, This has been puzzling me for a
Speaker 1: lot of years, and make like, okay, you got more
Speaker 1: you need You get too much time in your hands.
Speaker 1: But I've seen a number of documentaries about polar travel
Speaker 1: North Pole, South Pole and the period in time when
Speaker 1: these these adventures were made, these daring trips into frozen wastelands.
Speaker 1: What in the hell prompted people to want to seek
Speaker 1: the polls and put their literally their lives in peril
Speaker 1: to do it. Did they have that bad home life
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Well it was multi pronged really.
Speaker 2: I mean, part of it was initially discovery, trying to
Speaker 2: find out what was there, because early expeditions, we still
Speaker 2: didn't know what was at the top and bottom of
Speaker 2: the world. Certainly, these were added to fame, fortune and
Speaker 2: immortality because if you if you were the ones who
Speaker 2: could discover make these discoveries, then there were lucrative book
Speaker 2: tours and lecture tours, and you would also often you know,
Speaker 2: become fetit in your own country. And so there was
Speaker 2: also a nationalistic pride to I mean, many countries were
Speaker 2: buying for the polls. So there was a lot of
Speaker 2: different reasons. But I mean, I agree, man, these were
Speaker 2: such daunting expeditions that it's hard to imagine now putting
Speaker 2: yourself in such.
Speaker 1: Peril, it really is. That's what's always puzzled me, is
Speaker 1: I said, these guys had to have hated their wives
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, this is just backcraft crazy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was widely reported. At least I think you've solved
Speaker 1: the mystery on this. Who got there first? Doctor Frederick
Speaker 1: Cook claimed to have made it to the North Pole
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, and then a year later, as
Speaker 1: I understand, Robert Perry made the claim that he had
Speaker 1: seen the North Pole first. But what did you uncover
Speaker 1: in Realm of Ice and Sky, the book you've just released.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's been arguments about this ongoing since
Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds when Cook and Perry first made
Speaker 2: the claims, but subsequently their records were found to be
Speaker 2: either altered or fabricated. And so when Roll Dominson the
Speaker 2: Norwegian went over the Pole in an airship in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty six with the Italian Umberto Noble, he made what
Speaker 2: is now considered and at least I find this to
Speaker 2: be true, the first confirmed reaching of the North Pole.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, like I said, there was fame
Speaker 2: and immortality were involved, and egos were involved, and so
Speaker 2: there were lots of there was fabrication, and so you know,
Speaker 2: it ended up being this kind of ongoing argument and
Speaker 2: counterclaims and it was national and international news for years
Speaker 2: and years.
Speaker 1: Well, these were these folks that you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book Roland Amindson and a Walter Wellman. They flew
Speaker 1: to the North Pole in a blimp, right airship.
Speaker 2: That's correct. And Wellman, interestingly was an American from Ohio
Speaker 2: who was the first to try and it was really
Speaker 2: I liken it to the first astronauts. I mean these
Speaker 2: guys were called aeronauts. And Wellman was trying this in
Speaker 2: craft that were untested. In fact, nineteen oh seven, nineteen
Speaker 2: oh eight, he went up there to Spallbar, this archipelago
Speaker 2: north of Norway, halfway between Norway and North Pole, and
Speaker 2: gets in one hundred and eighty five foot hydrogen filled
Speaker 2: dirigible or blimp we call him now, and with a
Speaker 2: you know, a pretty small motor on it and tries
Speaker 2: to fly a thousand miles to the North Pole. And
Speaker 2: what could possibly go wrong? You know?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And so yeah, these guys were you know, Wellman was
Speaker 2: really really brave and he and only a couple of
Speaker 2: other guys were getting into these craft which had, like
Speaker 2: I said, never before even been tested. I mean there
Speaker 2: were they had been tested in uh, in France and
Speaker 2: tested in other places, but not in the Arctic. So
Speaker 2: it was really a pioneering and courageous effort that you
Speaker 2: just have to marvel at the courage of these men.
Speaker 2: And you know some claimed at the time courage uh
Speaker 2: and suicidal tendency.
Speaker 1: Yes, really, it's the first thing that went through my mind.
Speaker 1: Untested aircraft and and and and going into frozen wastelins.
Speaker 1: And I presume at times the wind had to kick
Speaker 1: up pretty dramatically. So if you just got a little
Speaker 1: tiny motor and you're floating around and basically what is
Speaker 1: a balloon? I mean, how do you keep yourself on course?
Speaker 1: Would be a question I would have before I went
Speaker 1: up in the thing.
Speaker 2: Right, So you're you're hoping for the winds to be
Speaker 2: in your favor, and there were, you know, lots of
Speaker 2: study about what the winds were doing in that part
Speaker 2: of the world at these times. But you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Wellman and his crew were buffeted or around and blown
Speaker 2: in circles. And they had a number of devices that
Speaker 2: they had used Wellman device to try to keep them
Speaker 2: on course, including these long cables that had hooks on
Speaker 2: the ends and weights, and there were you know, being
Speaker 2: they were a five hundred feet long, they could help
Speaker 2: keep them tethered to the ice. But again this was
Speaker 2: all rather rudimentary, and for context, you know, the Wright
Speaker 2: brothers in nineteen oh three had only recently been testing
Speaker 2: the airplane. So one of the things I found really
Speaker 2: intriguing about this story was that while Wellman was trying this,
Speaker 2: the airplane and the airship were both buying for supremacy
Speaker 2: of the skies, and so no one really quite knew
Speaker 2: whether the airship dirigible blimp whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: was going to defeat the airplane, and so it was
Speaker 2: a really open question. That part is quite compelling.
Speaker 1: Well, in any of these various airship of dirigible blimp trips,
Speaker 1: did they land once they got to what would be
Speaker 1: known as the actual North Pole or do they just
Speaker 1: take photographs from above?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a really great question. Sometimes they land in unintentionally,
Speaker 2: which is called crashing. But when by the time all
Speaker 2: Amansen and Nobule get into the fray, it's about sixteen
Speaker 2: years after Wellman, and they are able to definitively photograph
Speaker 2: above the North Pole and photograph, I mean, they fly
Speaker 2: all the way from Spalbard north of Norway to across
Speaker 2: the polar see across the North Pole to Teller, Alaska
Speaker 2: and make a kind of dramatic crash landing there though
Speaker 2: they all survive, and so yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 2: The plan had been in a number of these expeditions
Speaker 2: to try this is a great question, to try to land,
Speaker 2: to try to lower people down, either from the hovering
Speaker 2: craft or kind of like landing on the Moon, or
Speaker 2: to land tether there and then get out and do
Speaker 2: some scientific study on the ice. But conditions up there
Speaker 2: were never really conducive to making intentional landings, and so
Speaker 2: you do have a lot of drama in this story
Speaker 2: about crash landings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it was I wanted to gravitate over to
Speaker 1: a specific illustration that what is described as the disaster
Speaker 1: of the Italia.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, So after Amusen and Nobela, this Italian airship
Speaker 2: designer make a somewhat successful flight in twenty six for
Speaker 2: National Pride. Nobila decides to do it with an almost
Speaker 2: exclusively Italian crew and he makes it to the North Pole,
Speaker 2: but on the way back it's incredibly like a kind
Speaker 2: of hurricane and wins and so they end up crashing
Speaker 2: on the ice and a number of people perish. It's
Speaker 2: very dramatic. The dirigible, you know, the control car sheers
Speaker 2: away from the bottom of this dirigible. Many men are
Speaker 2: left on the ice and the others float away above
Speaker 2: them and are gone into the mist. And then Nobulay
Speaker 2: and these nine other men are left on a floating
Speaker 2: ice flow for about six weeks with no one knowing
Speaker 2: exactly where they are. And it's really it's one of
Speaker 2: the most dramatic rescues in archic history, and it's just incredible.
Speaker 1: How in the hell were they found? I mean, I presume,
Speaker 1: maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, that they
Speaker 1: had no way of communicating. They didn't have like two
Speaker 1: way radios with the mainland or whatever, did they ah.
Speaker 2: But they did so one of the men had the
Speaker 2: good sense to so this is also at the time
Speaker 2: that Marconi's wireless radio has been developed, and so one
Speaker 2: of the men had the wherewithal to leap from the
Speaker 2: crashing dirigible with a short wave two way and they are,
Speaker 2: after a great deal of travail and innovation, are able
Speaker 2: to get communication with first of all, with some farmer
Speaker 2: in Russia, of all things. Here's their SOS communications and
Speaker 2: contacts the Italian government, which sets in motion this incredible
Speaker 2: rescue operation that involves it's a multi national rescue operation
Speaker 2: that involves Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, it's Italy,
Speaker 2: and all these different countries are vying to be the
Speaker 2: ones to find Nola and his men, including dramatically, Rolled Aminson,
Speaker 2: the greatest polar explorer of all time, who has retired
Speaker 2: at this time, comes out of retirement hopson an airplane
Speaker 2: to go sweep in and save his arch nemesis nobul
Speaker 2: a uh, and then he ends up. It's a great,
Speaker 2: really Hollywood ending. I mean, what ends up happening with
Speaker 2: Nobla or with Aminson? I won't give that away, don't
Speaker 2: give it. Flies He flies off, you know, with a
Speaker 2: number of men in this prototype airplane, and it's just
Speaker 2: wild what happens?
Speaker 1: Well, read all about it. I guess today, Buddy Lovey,
Speaker 1: author of Realm of Ice and Sky, Triumph Tragedy and
Speaker 1: History's Greatest Arctic Rescue, Before we part company, really qu
Speaker 1: it's been fascinating, buddy. How is it you got involved
Speaker 1: in Arctic exploration? What drew you to it as a topic.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question. I ended up going to Greenland.
Speaker 2: When I was doing a bunch of journalism in the
Speaker 2: early two thousand and I met a Norwegian woman who
Speaker 2: gave me a book called The First Crossing of Greenland
Speaker 2: by this man named free Joff Nonsen, who was a
Speaker 2: kind of protege of Amunsen's. And once I started reading, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, once I went to Greenland, I was
Speaker 2: so struck by the landscape, the people, that the uh
Speaker 2: you know, the topography, and it was just a very
Speaker 2: dangerous and foreboding place. And then I thought, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I got into the started reading about these Arctic explorers
Speaker 2: and I was just hooked. I couldn't stop. So there's
Speaker 2: my third book about the subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, well and obviously a very successful author, you are.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my listener's going to go to get one,
Speaker 1: to get a copy of rom of Ice and Sky,
Speaker 1: which we've made it easy for them to do, Buddy.
Speaker 1: It's on my blog page fifty five cares dot com
Speaker 1: a link to click on to buy a copy of
Speaker 1: the book and enjoy it. These people were absolutely crazy, buddy,
Speaker 1: that's all I can conclude. Absolutely crazy. But man, would
Speaker 1: a like agree you left man, Buddy, real fun. It
Speaker 1: was fun talking to you. Thanks for spending the time,
Speaker 1: listeners of meme for putting this all down on paper. Hey,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Brian really appreciate it, My pleasure. Indeed, have
Speaker 1: a great week. It's eight fifty one, fifty five KRC.
Speaker 1: The talk stations stick around me right back after these
Speaker 1: brief work fifty five KRC Steve Air with us