The Sailing Expedition Lost to the Arctic for Two Years | Hampton Sides, Bestselling Historian | Ep. 042

Is there land at the North Pole, or just ice? Is the water up there frozen solid, or open ocean? In 1879 nobody actually knew, and the best science of the day was hilariously wrong: punch through the ice rim, it said, and you'd find a warm, open sea at the top of the world. The USS Jeannette sailed north to prove it. Her crew deliberately let the Arctic pack freeze in around the ship, drifted for two years, and watched the ice crush her. This week on The Backcountry Manifesto, bestselling historian and Outside editor-at-large Hampton Sides is back for part two, this time on In the Kingdom of Ice. We talk about: The newspaper baron who bankrolled the whole expedition because Arctic disasters sold papers August Petermann, the armchair German mapmaker whose "open polar sea" theory sent them north, and who hanged himself before anyone could prove him wrong Emma De Long's "letters to nowhere," and the trunk Hampton found in a stranger's attic The canned tomatoes quietly poisoning the crew with lead The gale that scattered the boats and decided who lived If you're into polar survival, forgotten American history, or watching very confident experts get people killed, this episode is for you.   LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Hampton's Website In the Kingdom of Ice The Wide Wide Sea Orson Welles' radio dramatization The Fram Museum Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025 #podcast #polarexpedition #explorer #history #sailing