In the past few centuries, just a few areas left on Earth eluded polar explorers. These were the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Northeast, and Northwest Passages. Many of the world's greatest explorers would go on to make equally great attempts to explore and map these areas, but for a time, each of them remained unconquered.
This caused some to shift their attention to the massive frozen area around northern Greenland, and expeditions began to be planned. One of these expeditions would go on to endure some of the most prolonged and brutal conditions in recorded history. This is their story, and as such, viewer discretion is strongly advised.
[intro music] Up until the mid-1800s, countries were determined to find a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific from the north, known as the Northwest Passage. This proved to be more difficult than anticipated, and after multiple attempts to find one, the idea was sort of abandoned. But the venture gave explorers a new taste for Arctic exploration and the idea of reaching the North Pole.
Not only that—the general public fascination with the Arctic had reached all-time highs. And as if in response to this demand, expeditions were then sent into the unknown regions north of Greenland to explore the geographic top of the world. And the United States wasn't about to sit idly by while other countries attain this glory, so in 1881, Congress passed the Sundry Civil Bill.
This devoted 25,000 to forming an expedition that would gather data and record observations from the Arctic over a two-year period. By that summer, US Army Lieutenant and Civil War Officer Adolphus Greely was ordered to lead this ambitious and dangerous mission. Adolphus Greely was a native of Newbury, Massachusetts, and after enlisting in the Union Army, worked his way up to the rank of first sergeant and led his men in some of the war's most iconic clashes.
During his war service, Adolphus was shot in two different battles, but it would take much more than that to take him down for long. Because unlike many of his fellow officers, Adolphus wasn't the type of officer with a mind for battlefield strategy and tactics. On the contrary, he was a fighter through and through who commanded his men with discipline and courage.
So in terms of bravery and leadership, there were a few better to oversee the expedition, but from the standpoint of Arctic experience, Adolphus had none. However, as was often the case with these expeditions, the military didn't see this as anything that should keep them from leading. The Greely Expedition, as it became known, had several main goals set forth by the military.
The first was to make scientific discoveries, recordings, and readings over an extended period of time. The second was to establish a research station, and the third was to claim the record for the "Farthest North", which was the title the British had held for decades. On July 7th, 1881, the crew boarded the steamship the Proteus in St.
John's, Newfoundland, and set a northward course. The Proteus then made several stops along the way to its targeted destination of Lady Franklin Bay, located at the extreme northwest of Greenland. During stops in the other part of Greenland on the way, they picked up a doctor and two Inuit sled drivers, bringing the total number of expedition members to 25 before setting off for the final leg of their journey.
About a month after it first left St. John's, the Proteus arrived in Lady Franklin Bay, and the crew immediately began unloading 350 tons of food rations and supplies. Geographically, the expedition was by then 600 miles, or 965 kilometers from the nearest civilization.
And while there were plans in place for a resupply ship the following summer, the unpredictability and severity of the Arctic conditions hardly made that a guarantee. As a result, the expedition had to bring literally everything they'd need for two years just in case. Finally, after weeks of offloading, the Proteus sailed back to St.
John's, and the expedition team began constructing their research station. When it was finished, they dubbed it Fort Conger. With all of the setup work complete, the team could get to work studying their surroundings.
From their base, there really wasn't all that much to see; on one side of the fort was ice, and on the other side was the ocean. But once they began setting off on day-long excursions, the expedition found some of the most incredible scenery on Earth. Everything from frozen fjords, to lakes, mountains, bays, and islands.
They would go on to document everything they came across. The coastlines were also traced and mapped, and they even came across abandoned Inuit villages. And while some expedition members were documenting observations, others were taking measurements related to weather and climate.
For these first few months, the expedition proved fruitful, and Adolphus was feeling good about all the information and data they'd be able to share upon their return to the US. Several months later, the Arctic winter came in early October, and on the 15th, the sun set for the final time for the next 137 days. The darkness, however, did nothing to dampen the expedition team's spirits.
Like, for example, to celebrate Thanksgiving, the men put together a field day of sorts that included a variety of competitions with prizes like preserved peaches, tobacco, and rum. There was a snowshoe race, a hundred-yard dash across the ice, and even a rifle shooting contest. Unfortunately though, due to the worsening winter weather as December rolled around, the expedition members were stuck inside for much of the season, and this inactivity started to wear the crew down.
But, despite this, they muddled through these slow months, and when the sun returned to the Arctic in March of 1882, the team was eager to get back to exploration. Adolphus then organized two separate excursions, placing Dr Octave Pavy in charge of one team and Lt. James Lockwood at the helm of the other.
James' group was to head up the coast on the Greenland side of Lady Franklin Bay, and Dr Pavy's team would go north along the coast of Ellesmere Island. And while the excursions were planned in the name of science, Adolphus added a little bit of competition to them. He tasked both teams with setting a new record for Farthest North, and the first crew to do it would have bragging rights and immortality in the history books.
The excursion teams then left Fort Conger on March 19th and began the long journey northward, but after four weeks, Dr Pavy's team came across a dangerous ice pack and could go no further. They had also braved temperatures as low as -52 degrees Fahrenheit, or -47 Celsius, only to be turned back well short of Farthest North. James' group, however, kept going, and on May 13th, almost two months after their departure, reached 83 degrees, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting the new world record for the Farthest North.
The team had gone so far, in fact, that they came four miles closer to the North Pole than any explored before them. Finally, on July 1st, the rest of the expedition watched as James and his team returned to Fort Conger, victorious, and just in time for the resupply ship to show up, which was expected any day. In the days that followed, Adolphus gathered up the expedition's letters, notes, observations, and measurements, and readied them to be handed off to the resupply ship.
They would, in return, provide the team with more food and letters from home. About a week after James' crew arrived back in Fort Conger, a ship known as the Neptune, left St. John's.
Aboard this ship was about 8 tons of food, and while the expedition team was doing well with its rations from the previous year, the extra supplies would pad their inventory. When the Neptune left Newfoundland, however, it did so rather late in the summer, and winter in the Arctic can roll in at any time, so the resupply effort was at great risk of not being completed. And sure enough, as the Neptune approached Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere Island to the west and Greenland to the east, the ship encountered a large ice field that it just couldn't navigate through.
Fortunately, there was a contingency plan in place that Adolphus was aware of. If, for any reason, the resupply ship couldn't make it to Fort Conger, it would instead dock at Cape Sabine about 240 miles to the south and leave the supply load there. So when it was clear to the captain of the Neptune that reaching Fort Conger would be impossible, it steamed off to Cape Sabine, dropped off the supplies, and began its return trip to St.
John's. Back at Fort Conger, the wait for the resupply ship was wearing on the expedition team, and cracks started to form. On July 20th, the contract that Dr Pavy agreed to was up, and he informed Adolphus that he wasn't gonna renew it.
He did agree to remain with the team and assist with any medical issues and needs, but he no longer wanted to be a part of the exploration part of the mission. Upon hearing this though, Adolphus flew into a rage and began threatening Dr Pavy, demanding that he give Adolphus all his journals and records, but Dr Pavy refused the order. With that, Adolphus informed the doctor that he would face court martial back in the US when the expedition was over.
To Adolphus, Dr Pavy's refusal to continue the exploration was akin to desertion. And unfortunately, this was just the first of many problems the expedition would face. By August, the expedition team accepted that the resupply ship couldn't reach them at Fort Conger, and since it was now so late in the season, walking the 240 miles to Cape Sabine at the time to retrieve the drop off, was unrealistic.
Another Arctic winter then set in, and for the most part, conditions allowed the team to continue exploring and observing the region, but the length of time they had been living there had worn down morale. Every day felt the same, and the seemingly endless winter darkness was depressing. Those same fun competitions and holiday observations from the year before were absent in 1882, and were replaced instead by a longing for home.
At the same time though, all they had to do was get through the next few months of winter, and then the Arctic spring until they could be picked up. Finally, in June of 1883, the team tasked with picking up the Greely Expedition was formed and left St. John's, led by US Navy Lieutenant Ernest Garlington at the helm of the Proteus.
And incredibly, like Adolphus, Ernest had no experience in the Arctic. In less than a month's time, this would lead to disaster. On July 22nd, once again, late in the summer season for the region, the Proteus reached Smith Sound just south of Cape Sabine, when it encountered a large ice field just like the Neptune had.
And unfamiliar with the capabilities of the Proteus in ice, or lack thereof, Ernest pushed the ship through the ice floes. But because the ship wasn't designed to break large ice sheets, it eventually got stuck. When it did, the surrounding ice closed around the hull, completely crushing it and forcing Ernest and his crew to abandon the ship.
They then watched from the safety of lifeboats as the Proteus was chewed up by the ice and eventually swallowed up by the ocean. This began two separate ordeals. Ernest's crew was now stranded in lifeboats in the middle of the ice, and unbeknownst to the Greely Expedition, they were now stuck in the Arctic and would not be picked up in 1883 as planned.
For 40 days afterward, the crew of the Proteus managed to endure floating in subarctic waters until they were spotted and picked up by a whaling ship. All the men aboard were then returned safely to the United States. The members of the Greely Expedition, however, were far from safe.
In early August of 1883, Adolphus realized that something must have happened and they weren't going to be picked up, which put him in a tough spot. The food they brought two years earlier was about to run out, and he never sent any part of the team to Cape Sabine to retrieve what was dropped off by the Neptune. Once again, however, the expedition found fortune in a contingency plan.
Before Adolphus and his crew set out from St. John's in 1881, he was told by the military to head south if they weren't picked up by August 1883, and when possible, a rescue fleet would meet them at Cape Sabine. So with what few supplies they had remaining, Adolphus and the 24 other expedition members, jumped in their small boats and departed Fort Conger.
On August 25th, about two weeks after leaving the fort, they landed on Washington Irving Island, which was about the halfway point to Cape Sabine. On the shore, they were surprised to discover a cache of supplies, but unfortunately, upon further inspection, it was a load that had been dropped off there during a long-ago expedition by the English. And all of the food was rotten and moldy.
So, after a brief stay on the island, the expedition team continued to sail southward, and with each passing day, their food rations were portioned smaller and smaller. Whether they knew it or not, this was putting them closer to the very real threat of malnutrition and starvation. Even worse, on September 10th, the boats became trapped in an ice floe.
This left them with no choice but to abandon them and figure out how to make do, living on a literal ice sheet, in hopes that the current would carry them to Cape Sabine. Around that time, news of the sinking of the Proteus made it to the US, and the media went into a frenzy, with each news source speculating on a different fate for the expedition. In spite of all this, the Military and the US Navy insisted that their hands were tied until the Arctic winter passed, so they did nothing.
Upon learning about this inaction, Adolphus' wife, Henrietta, wrote to the Military and implored officials to begin planning another expedition to rescue her husband and the rest of the team. In response, however, the reply she received was curt and concise, informing her that there were no plans for any rescue expedition for the time being. Either way, after 51 days on the ice floe, some good luck finally found its way back to the expedition members.
The southern currents had transported them to a firm land just south of Cape Sabine to an area called the Eskimo Point. And although they missed their intended target, winding up so close to Cape Sabine was incredibly lucky. Just as they did when they arrived in Lady Franklin Bay, the team built a shelter in the area, and when it was completed, Adolphus chose two men to walk north to Cape Sabine and bring back supplies and the cache he expected the Neptune and Proteus to have dropped off.
Confusingly though, two days later, the crewmen returned with just two notes— one from the captains of each ship. The first was a letter written by Ernest, informing Adolphus of the sinking of the Proteus and all the supplies it had on board. Further bad news came the note from the Neptune which only dropped off a fraction of the food rations among the 8 tons of supplies it had on board.
That amount of food Adolphus calculated was only enough to last them a few weeks. Obviously though, it was still better than nothing, and it was their planned pickup point, so the expedition would head there once the weather improved. Two weeks later, on October 12th, 1883, Adolphus ordered the expedition team to pack up camp and asked them to brave the elements so they could relocate to Cape Sabine.
If he could figure out how to make a few weeks' worth of food last a few months, they'd be able to hunt seals when they became more plentiful in the springtime. But, until then, their options for food would be terrifyingly scarce. In fact, the expedition didn't even make it to the end of October before the further reduction in daily rations began to cause great suffering.
Some of them grew so hungry that they began to eat dog biscuits, and by the start of November, the food that needed to last until March was only gonna supply them for a few more days. In their desperation, they would need to travel in the increasingly bad weather. In a note written by Ernest which was left at Cape Sabine, he outlined the locations of three supply caches his crew had discovered that had also been left behind by previous English expeditions.
Greely Expedition members, George Rice and Joseph Ellison and several other men, then set out southward, hoping to locate the desperately needed supplies. Over the next few days, the small group walked 30 miles (48. 3 km) through the snow and painfully cold temperatures to reach one of the caches Ernest described.
Among these supplies were four boxes of dried meat that they gathered up and began transporting back north. On the way, however, Joseph's legs became severely frostbitten, and he reached a point where he could no longer walk. This forced the rest of the men to begin carrying him, and while they did that, George went ahead to gather more men to help in the effort.
Horrifyingly though, Joseph's legs and fingers were so badly frostbitten that it was certain he was gonna lose them, even if they managed to get rescued. But he would survive the rest of the journey back to Cape Sabine. As winter continued to pass, without any word of a second rescue expedition, Henrietta got fed up with waiting for the Military to do something, so she went to the media.
Reporters were all too eager to print Henrietta's complaints and allegations, and the subsequent stories that ran all over the world, forced the hand of the US government. In December, the secretary of war, and even the president, began preparations for a second attempt at rescuing the Greely Expedition, and by January, a plan was in place. All that was still needed was for Congress to approve unlimited funding for the rescue effort.
The press endorsed the plan, and opinion pieces ran across the country in support of the proposal, but as so often happens, things stalled. The House of Representatives quickly and unanimously approved the requested funding for the rescue, but the Senate was in no rush to take up the Greely Relief Bill as it was known. Three weeks of infighting in Congress then took place as the bill went nowhere, and the president even got involved and essentially begged the Senate to act with haste.
Finally, after posturing and politics were put aside, the Senate gave the funding for the green light. Tragically, however, while politicians bickered over the potential cost of the rescue, the Greely Expedition suffered its first loss. Sergeant William Cross died on January 18th, 1884 from scurvy and malnutrition.
From that day forward, Dr Pavy checked the mouths of each of the men every morning for signs of disease. Following this first passing, weeks went by on a daily food ration that wouldn't even fill up the palm of your hand, but the rest of the expedition team endured the winter and made it to March. Hunting still hadn't produced any food by then, so the men took two netting shrimp that were so small that it took about 1,500 of them to fill a cup.
Then, on the night of March 24th, the ordeal began a tailspin it wouldn't recover from. An alcohol lamp began producing toxic fumes inside their shelter, and some of the men fainted as a result. With the temperature hovering around -25 Fahrenheit, or -32 Celsius, the team had to escape the shelter with only what they had on them and wait for the fumes to clear, which resulted in a handful of men becoming frostbitten.
This mad rush to get out of the shelter created a lot of confusion and panic, and in the midst of it all, a private named Charles Henry used the opportunity to steal a piece of bacon from the food rations. This was only discovered when he began vomiting it back up, and from then on, a sharp eye was kept on him. Tragically, on April 5th, two more expedition members died of starvation, and with the Arctic spring nearly upon them, Adolphus was comfortable sending the men back out in search of the caches.
When George and Joseph set out with the small team the previous November for the same reason, they had begun to transport the four boxes of preserved meat back to Cape Sabine. Joseph's frostbite, however, forced them to abandon the boxes so they could carry him back to the camp. Now, months later, with three expedition members dead and the rest suffering from malnutrition, any effort to get those supplies and bring them back to camp, was both critical and dangerous.
And since George knew where the meat was left, he was ordered, along with the expedition's cook, to undertake the mission, but George was in bad shape. Adolphus sent him anyway though, and two days later, he died in pursuit of the cache, likely from starvation and exhaustion. The cook unfortunately also never located the box of meat, so he returned to camp empty-handed.
Later that day, another expedition member fell unconscious and died of starvation, too. For Second Lieutenant Frederick Kislingbury, the recent developments were about all he could take. Frederick was a personal friend of Adolphus prior to the formation of the expedition, so when Adolphus was named the commander, Frederick was one of the first colleagues he contacted to join up.
At the time though, Frederick's wife had just passed away, and he seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown well before the expedition even left St. John's. Both he and Adolphus however agreed that the expedition and getting away from home would be good for him.
After the team arrived in Lady Franklin Bay and established Fort Conger though, tensions formed between the friends to the point where Adolphus ordered Frederick to resign. Frederick obliged and gathered his belongings to take the return trip to Newfoundland on the Proteus, but by the time he was ready to board, the ship had departed. The loss of his wife, his broken friendship with Adolphus, the monotony of years doing little while living in the Arctic, and the rapidly fading hope of being rescued were all too much for him.
The final straw was the cook's failure to find the cache and bring it back to camp, and this caused Frederick to fall into derangement. Most of the time from then on, communication with him was impossible because he would only engage in what was described as "baby talk". As the situation was essentially descending into chaos, unbeknownst to the remaining men, a rescue party of several ships had just left New York on its way to the Arctic, for one last attempt at saving them.
As April 1884 came to a close though, things were only getting worse and worse at Cape Sabine. One of the Inuit dog sled drivers drowned when he fell through the ice while hunting a seal, and Charles was once again caught raiding what little rations remained. This time, he drank himself drunk on moonshine, earning another strike against him.
Then, two weeks into May, the last of their provisions were handed out, and by the start of June, six more expedition members died. Only two, though, would end up being buried by the others. The surviving members had simply grown too weak, so bodies, including that of Frederick who died on June 1st, began to stack up outside the shelter.
A few days later, Charles was once again caught stealing shrimp from the small supply the men were able to net, and Adolphus had had enough. He decreed that anyone caught stealing food from then on would be executed. Apparently, Charles viewed this as a hollow threat because the very next day, he was caught stealing food again.
So, making good on his word, Adolphus apprehended him, marched him away from the shelter before shooting Charles dead. That night, two more expedition members died, dropping their numbers to less than half of the initial team. Several weeks later, there were only seven survivors remaining.
Things were so bad that they had taken to eating moss, candle wax, and animal droppings just to have a few moments of relief from the pain of hunger. But, mercifully, relief was close. On July 22nd, while laying inside the shelter, waiting to die, the sound of canvas being cut broke the silence, and daylight spilled over the men inside, nearly blinding them.
Adolphus then barely raised up his head and squinted toward the opening. Through the hole in the canvas, looking back at him were members of the rescue team. At long last, the men of the Greely Expedition were going home, but this development was not the joyous moment you might expect.
Adolphus simply looked at the rescuers and said, "Here we are, dying like men. " before putting his head back down. One of the other men only groaned and begged to be allowed to pass in peace.
A doctor and the rescue crew then examined each of the survivors and found them emaciated to the point that they were only about 48 hours away from death. While some of the rescuers carried each of the survivors aboard the ships, others worked to load up the dead that were left outside the shelter and exhume those who had been buried. Finally, on June 23rd, a full year after they were originally supposed to return, the Greely Expedition left the Arctic.
During the journey back to Newfoundland, the doctor determined that Joseph needed emergency surgery to amputate his legs, which had gotten severe gangrene as a result of the frostbite he suffered in pursuit of the food cache with George. He had not only survived that ordeal, but he managed to stay alive long enough to be rescued, yet sadly, he passed away before the ships arrived in St. Johns.
The surgery was unfortunately too much for his body to take, and he weighed just 78 pounds (35. 4 kg) at the time of his death. Shortly after the ship pulled into St.
John's Harbour, news of the rescue team's success was telegraphed around the world. And on August 1st, the six remaining survivors arrived in New Hampshire to a hero's welcome. Their improbable survival story was a compelling one that the public seemingly couldn't get enough of, but the sentiment would quickly sour as rumors began to swirl about what really may have happened at Cape Sabine.
These rumors caused Frederick's body to be exhumed just days after his burial in Rochester. When he was collected at Cape Sabine, his body was wrapped in a sheet and never examined or observed again until his casket was disinterred. When doctors removed his sheet at the grave, though, it was as horrific as it was confusing.
He had only been dead for a little more than two months, yet half of his body was skeletonized despite having spent a month of time being preserved in the Arctic snow, which would have slowed decomposition. The remaining skin on his bones was blackened from frostbite, but his arms and legs looked as though the skin and muscle had been removed cleanly. And between the state of his limbs and several precise openings, it seemed to indicate that Frederick had been eaten, and not by animals.
The missing pieces had unmistakably been removed by a knife. This revelation shattered the image of the official story as told in the journals of the survivors themselves. Weirdly though, for centuries up to that point, it wasn't uncommon for shipwreck survivors to subsist on the remains of those who had passed away.
The survivors of the Greely Expedition, however, didn't and wouldn't admit to it despite six other bodies being examined and found to have wounds similar to Frederick's. Had it been admitted, the public likely would have accepted it as part of their survival, but Frederick's body all but confirmed that the expedition survivors were hiding something. Theories began to form in the aftermath that the surviving members of the expedition had formed a faction while stranded in Cape Sabine, splitting the group into two sides.
On one side was Adolphus and the others who made it back to America alive, and on the other was an outgroup that was left to starve. It was believed that the supply of food had been taken by force from the others, and that when rations ran out, the survivors turned to eating the men they had left to die. Frederick's autopsy further showed that he had nothing in his digestive system at the time of his death, with the exception of a bundle of indigestible seal skin in his small intestine.
Yet, when he died, the survivors reported that they were still able to net shrimp. Even still, Adolphus and the others firmly denied the allegations despite the evidence to the contrary, and the theory of there being two separate factions has never been confirmed. Whatever cloud this placed over the survivors and their story was temporary, and Adolphus was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor just before his death in 1935.
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