>> host: jimmy carter, a call to action his most recent book. >> guest: it's very serious. he takes this subject very much to heart. and we did it -- this book came about very quickly, and it's his passion about women's rights, and so we needed to be very straightforward, nothing that is embellished. it's a hard subject matter, so with the blue color is done to kind of soften the tone. >> host: ever been a time when a book is going to print and, for whatever reason, the cover has to be changed? >> guest: oh, yeah. i'm running a blank on that now but, yes, absolutely. that happens. but usually it's not quite so right at the point that its going to the printer, but -- it

could be, like i said, feedback from the retailers, or, or there's another cover out that has the exact same photograph, or very similar. we didn't realize. that we need to change. >> starting now on booktv, hampton sides recounsels a u.s. naval expedition to the north pole in 1879. the journey februariess by james gordon bennett and led by george washington delong, began in san francisco, july 8, 1879. the crew sailed for two years behalf breach of the ship's hull, which left them abandoned a thousand miles north of siberia and forced to trek back to civilization. this is an hour.

>> good evening. i'm bradley graham, the co-own over politics and prose, along with my wife, and on behalf of the entire staff, thank you very much for coming out on this somewhat damp august evening. just a few quick administrative notes. now would be a good time to turn off your cell phones or anything else that might beep during the presentation. when we get to the qs and as later in the program there is a microphone over there and we'd appreciate it if you would make your way to it if you'd like to ask a question. we have the cameras going this evening. finally, at the end, please help our staff by folding up the chairs that you're seated in, and placing them against something solid. we're delighted to have with us this evening, very talented writer, of narrative history, hampton sides has several

best-selling works to his name. among them, pie ghost soldiers" about the daring world war ii raid on a hellish prison camp in the philippines to rescue more than 500 p.o.w.s. that book has sold more than a million copies since its release in 2002. another of hampton's books, "blood and thunder" about the life and times of kit carson, made some best book lists in 2006, when it came out. four years ago he tackled the murder of martin luther king, jr. and the international manhunt for james earl ray, and now hampton recount as the subtitle of the book says, the grand and terrible polar voyage of the uss jeannette. which start fled -- started in 1879. hampton's background is actualfully magazine journalism and as has done some radio and

newspapers. he is an editor at large for outside magazine, and has written for a number of other periodicals. indeed he considers himself a journalist, who happens to write books about history. meaning he goes after a historical subject, more as a journalist might, mindful of themes that resonate with current events and details that will be certain to draw readers in. the story he tells about the harrowing expected kissing of the uss jeannette as all the elements of a gripping epicotyl. there's the quest to explore what was then one of the last uncharted regions of the world, the north pole. there's the leader, a young but commanding naval officer named george washington delong, who had already become famous for rescue mission off the coast of greenland. there's the bank roller, the rich and flamboyant owner of the

"new york herald." james gordon bennett, who was the guy who sent stanly to africa to find livingstone some years earlier. and there's much, much more. based on information that hampton was painstakingly able to piece together from a range of sources, including official navy documents, delong's journals, private correspondence, and memoirs. reviews of the book have sounded, well, the opposite of frozen. downright sizzling. quote, sides works story-telling magic, declared "the boston globe." first-rate polar history and adventure anywhere tithe said "the new york times." quote, splendid book in every day, proclaimed "the wall street journal." ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming hampton sides. [applause]

>> hi. so great to be back in washington, dc. one of my home towns. one of the places where i learned to wife. spend a lot of time at washingtonian magazine, washington city paper and a lot of other places around town, learning lou to write these stories and also wanted to leave and had a sense of adventure. i wanted to do something different, and ended up in santa the new mexico, where outside magazine is based and where i really cut my teeth on adventure stories, adventure narratives. so, i'm going to talk tonight a little bit about the environment that produced the voyage of the uss jeannette, and the thinking that went into it, the theories about what was up there at the mortgage pole. one of the great puzzles of the 1800 is what is at the attic of the world? how can we reach it? why is so it difficult to reach it? and so i'm going to show some

slides and sort of give you a sense of the environment of the mid-1800s, and then also game going to give you a sense of how i spent my summer vacation, during my travels in siberia. so, first of all, how many of you -- bashing those who have -- barring those who have already read or are reading my book, how many people have heard of the voyage of the uss jeannette? now, you guys are cheating, i think, because you have probably read it. this is good. a very informed audience. usually i will be in a room of -- yesterday i glass dallas -- i was in dallas. 200 people in the room and two people raised their hands. it's a very obscure ex- expedition, in it's day it was a sensation. they were the astronauts of their time. they were the subject of best-selling books and poems and

paintings and monuments. everyone knew about the men of the uss jeannette. so, i want to -- i kind of want to change that. that's why i'm here. to bring this story, this rather forgotten story, to the for forfront. one of most hair -- harrow iing in, and shackleton north. is this mic on? it's okay? all right. one place where it is well known is the naval academy in annapolis, where there is a jeannette expedition monument,

and george washington delong is viewed at one of the great exploration heroes of the navy, and people there certainly celebrate it, as well as jeannette memorial in wood lawn cemetery in the bronx, one of these unbelievable gilded age cemeteries that has one to the monuments there to the men of the jeannette. the idea of the jeannette seems on the surface to be kind of crazy, which was to sail to the north pole. like why would you want to sail to the north pole? why would that not be considered completely insane? and quixotic. but it has is roots in mythology, history, and a lot of science and pseudo science that swirling around in the 1800s. going back to early map, like this map that showed this thing called an open polar sea, with these for symmetric cal rivers

feeding into it, and once you get something on a map, especially a beautiful map, it's very hard to dislodge it from the public imagination. and so it becomes like trying to prove the existence of god with various arguments, elaborate arguments. like we haven't seen god but we know he exists. we know this open polar sea exists. so here's the theories on why it exists. proving something we haven't seen or witnessed. now, the greeks talked about something called hyper bora, the vikings talked about -- all sorts of ideas deeply imbedded in the mythology of different cultures about a warm, jolly, happy place, sometimes with weird sea creatures and marine life and tropical weather, that existed just beyond the mountains, just beyond the ice. if you could just somehow reach

it. so there was that kind of weight of ages that contributed to this notion of the open polar sea. so there were also some decidedly wackier ideas the 1800s, especially this one gentleman named john cleaves simms, i believe, who went around the world -- went around the country, anyway, selling out crowds with lectures, talking about something he called holes the poles. and he believed there were massive holes that led into the deep cavities of the earth and that there were people down there, and it's just a matter of time before we would find them. and he -- sounds completely like lunatic fringe stuff, but he sold out giant crowds and convinced congress to dispatch one expedition the 1840s towards the south pole to try to find these holes the poles.

this idea lives on today. this is kind of an image of what it was supposed to look like. this is from harpers magazine. one hole at the top of the world, one at the bottom of the world. get the general idea. it still lives on today, though, and if you google holes at the poles, you will find a very interesting subculture that i had -- had no knowledge of before. apparent through are a lot of people down there, a lot of energy, a lot of weird species, and the obama administration has done everything it can to prevent us from knowing about it. [laughter] >> it's interesting. so, the idea of certainly has some kind of shelf life. i don't know why. this guy popularized the notion of an open polar sea, with hi

book "journey to center of the earth." he brought it underground, subterranean cavity crazy had something called -- which he called the central sea. just to sort of show the way this idea was popular in the 1800s and how it sort of circulated all different levels of society. okay so, other people are supposed to be up there as well, and this is true. we know this to be a fact. that santa lives at the top of the world. i thought this was an ancient idea. saint nick up there, hundreds of years, maybe millenia, but it was a fairly recent contemporary idea from the 1860s, a thomas nash cartoon from harper's, which showed santa and his helpers at the north pole. so, again, this idea that, what is up there? we deeply, desperately wanted to know it was this nagging,

gnawing obsession to know what is at the attic of the world. so this is the environment the jeannette expedition was launched in. there other scientists and pseudo scientists and experts who went further in terms of theorizing what was up there and lou to reach it. foremost was this guy, -- dr. august peterman from germany. the foremost mapmaker in the world. had huge operation which produced this state-of-the-art maps that were beautiful, hand colored, up to date maps. the google maps of his time. he also, like so many of the characters in my book, had excellent facial hair. atlas, a physical geography, one of his many publications, beautiful stuff. very influential and gave him a platform to talk about all of his wacky theories about the

arctic, which is one of his obsessions. there he is. not the kind of guy you really want to hang out with and have a beer with, but a very intense, very intelligent and tragic character who is very important to my book, just like the first third or so. i went to germany to try to understand his world. and this mapmaking universe he created there. this is his grave in germany. his house where he was raised. this begins to show some of his theories about what was up there. he was intrigued by the gulf stream. we were beginning to learn how powerful it was in terms of bringing stuff from the tropics north, and going powerfully and quite fast towards the north, past norway, and no one exactly knew where it went so the leading theory was it tunneled under the ice and eventually

made its way to the north pole. thus explaining the open polar sea we all believed in. on the pacific side there was another current called the curo sea world in japanese that means the black current, known to exist, and it swept north towards towards the berg strait. no one knew where it went but the theory was that it tunneled under the ice cap and these two great currents after the world met at the north pole, in this wonderful symmetrical, grandiose, elaborate, thermoregulation system that the planet supposedly had. only some romantic, half crazy german intellectual would come up with this theory and convince a lot of people that it was true. so, here's another rendering of it. key word here is, supposed. so, somebody who is really

captivated by the ideas of dr. august peterman was this guy, also excellent facial hair. this is jamesgoers bennett, -- james gordon bennett, jr., the third richest man in manhattan. inherit his newspaper from his dad and was there is sort of spoiled brat, half mad playboy. a yachtsman, won the first transatlantic yacht race. also was a duelist and he was a -- what else -- oh, speed walking. he was a champion speed walker. he also got into all kind of sports and spectacles, venally was as are ostracized for his bad behavior to paris, where he lived most of his career and ran his paper, the "new york herald" from paris see vevay -- via the

transatlantic cable so jamesgoersmen, jr. was fascinate by the north bowl and wanted to bank roll an expedition there and he loved the idea of august peterman. this is his newspaper. the "new york herald." one of threaten many ex-sentriesties was that he was deeply into owls. live owls. bronze owls, owls on his cuff links, decorating his house. something about the owl really tickled his fancy. some people suggested he was the model for bruce wayne and batman, because this mysterious, aloof, international playboy, bachelor, who has this fettish for night creatures. that's him a little bit later in

life. in the pages of "haven't v-vanityity fair." you cannot invent a better character than james gordon bennett, jr. if you were writing a novel, people would say this is too farfetched, this is insane. this is one of his many yachts. this is the liz estrada which he kennedy in the met terrainan. all kind things onboard like turkish baths and two padded rooms rooms where he kept his dairy cows so he could have fresh cream with his breakfast every morning. this is a famous painting of life aboard one of his other yachts. i went to paris, had to do some research, and on james gordon bennett. this is one of his apartments. this is his villa at the -- in sew south of france, not far from monaco.

boulevardgoers bennett. this is a view from his villa. so life wasn't too hard for him. you see the owl in his world and it's intriguing. bennett was really interested in competitive sports, and he was the guy who brought competitive tennis to the united states from england, created this thing in newport called the newport casino, where they had the first lawn tennis tournament ever held in the u.s. while the men of the jeannette are blocked in the ice, suffering terribly in the summer of 1881, there's a tennis patch -- match going on in newport, so i cut back and forth between the different world. he also later in life got involved with automobile racing. and balloon racing.

there is still to this day something called the gordon bennett cup, the form most prize in international balloon raising. so, the guy has been around and has -- cast a long shadow throughout the adventuring world. perhaps he is most famous, though, as was alludessed to in the introduction, for his sending stanley, to africa to find livingston, who is not exactly lost. he didn't really need to be lost. but bennett understood this would be a great newspaper series, and that if he could send him off and along the way probably discover all kinds of things and get in trouble and it would be great series of dispatches. precisely the way it work out. his dispatches were a send vacation for the "new york herald." ben knit was looking for an ondoor this great sensation -- encore to this great sensation

and began to work on this idea of an expedition to the north pole that he would pay for completely, all by himself, but that would test the theory of dr. august peterman. so this is the guy who got the job. this is lieutenant commander george washington delong of the u.s. navy, graduate of the naval academy. someone who had been to greenland and had fallen in love with the arctic, and decided he wanted to be the guy to be the first one to reach the north pole. and he also was captivated in both peterman's ideas and a lot of the other scientific ideas swirling around at that time. so, bennett purchased this ship from the british, renamed it this jeannette, and george washington delong and his wife, emma, sailed the ship from france, around the horn to san francisco, in 1878. and began to work on the ship,

and stuffing it with all the latest inventions, including edison's lights, which were still being work on. weren't quite ready for primetime, but they were brought onboard, as were alexander graham bell's telephones, telegraph equipment, an organ, a state state-of-the-art library. they knew they were going into the great unknown, they knew it would be a voyage of at least two or three years, if not more. and they didn't really want to suffer. this was the gilded age. people wanted to live well. as well as they possibly could. so, this ship was provisioned a. and edison's lights, as we later learn -- he was just perfecting it, and as the ship was leaving just a few months later he did get the hang of the lights. unfortunately the lights on the jeannette did not exactly work. so, they left in the summer of 1879 from san francisco, 20,000

people were gathered there to watch them, send them off on their voyage. all the earned covered this. everybody knew about the jeannette. it was national endeavor, although paid for by this eccentric millionaire, it was staffed by u.s. navy officers and flight under navy rules and it was naval ship ex-uss jeannette. kind of an interesting, unorthodox arrange: kind our like ted turner joining forces with nasa to send a probe to mars or something like that. something that really wouldn't work today but that's the gilded age for you. so heading north through the berg strait, going past alaska, which we had fairly recently purchased from the russians. everyone was -- north of our new acquisitiony the knost. we're heading for wrangle island, which is a applies that

figured prominently in the theory of august peterman. they thought the rangal was part of the polar continent and connected with greenland. so there is shows the general route. the moved north, working along the coast of siberia, and then they promptly in september, get stuck in the ice. they don't -- they don't find this thermometric gateway they're looking for. they don't find this warm water current. what they find is ice. and they're stuck for two years in the ice. drifting. in the ice. backwards and forwards-left and right. moving their way slowly but surely north, towards the north pole, heading in the right direction. luckily the ship had been massive lie reinforced for the ice in san francisco, almost rebuilt. they flew would be ice. they

just thought it would be a matter of weeks or months, not years. so here they are in the ice for 22 months, almost two years, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. they go back -- so, they didn't exactly suffer during this two years. they had plenty of food to eat. they had all these entertainment. they had this great library. but the slowly were going mad from boredom, from inaction, from overfamiliarity and from some of the behavior moves men onboard, like there is guy, collins, an amazing guy. one of the herald correspondents, meteorologist, and one of the scientists onboard but also, being from ireland, was someone who loved word play and lad a particular weakness for puns. puns are fun for a day or two. two years? they wanted to lock him up.

they wanted to kill this guy. all the journals talk about this, and so that's collins for you. there's also dannen hour, the navigator, amazing guy. turns out he has syphilis, and the way its manifests is through a condition which requires them to go under the knife. he undergoes something like two dozen operations without anesthesia, and he had to wear these goggles, and he can't stand any kind of light. so he is essentially locked in his room for two years. so, we have a blind navigator. which is not a good thing. we also have this guy, mel veil -- melville, the engineer onboard the ship, and animationsly resourceful guy who very quickly becomes probably a along with delong, the hero of this story. there's nothing he cannot do. and he ends up writing this

best-selling book about his experiences in the arctic that i drew from a lot. when i was writing this book. okay. so, this kind of shows the drift of glenn. doesn't go d of the jeannette. couldn't are constantly moving forward and backward. one year they almost made a complete circle and ended up back where they started. this is generally what the drift looked like. as they moved towards the northwest. okay. so, i like what i'm doing these narrative histories i like to go to the places i'm writing about. i think it's important to be able to describe the countryside and the landscape and the weather and so forth. so i got myself a really bad haircut and i went to russia. didn't smile enough. i went to russia but i thought could i go west via san francisco and alaska and it be

easy. turned out i had to get twelve different permits because i was going to restricted areas and areas that are military zones essentially. some of these places had never been opened up really since before the colored war -- cold war, they would ask me questions like, we used to send people to that part of siberia. you want to go there? so i got my permit, took a couple of weeks and was working with a translator, then took a series of planes, something like eight or nine time zones east towards the arctic -- the pacific coast of the siberia. to this place called, anadyer, bizarre place in and of itself. where i found this russian ice breaker, which was heading north towards a place called wrangle island, and on board there were

scientists, and dedicated burgers, a french crew, documentary crew, and we were heading north, through the bering strait, and i'm wondering why i couldn't have flown the easy way and waving at sarah palin the whole way. as we head north towards rangel island. this is the eastern most point over the eurasian continent. beautiful, haunting place. no one there. working touch this place, a village, where they just killed a whale and were having a festival and invited us into their village...

there was a record amount of ice and is this part of the chukchi sea, where we happen to be. so we began to be very glad that we were on board an icebreaker because it just got thicker and thicker and thicker and we eventually found ourselves running into the size and coming

to a complete standstill sometimes, which was an interesting feeling. just kind of shaking and shuddering to ship as it ramped through the ice. i took all of these pictures were taken with my iphone so apologies for the quality that this was taken straight down from about the ship, just looking at the jigsaw patterns that we were creating as we ran through the stuff. [inaudible] something like 6 feet, 7 feet i think. it's hard to get a perspective on this from this angle. so, we eventually did reach our destination which was rangel

island which is this amazing place. it's about 100 miles long. it has been called the galapagos of the high north. it got a huge population of snow geese and the snowy owl and musk ox and reindeer and also the polar bear. it's the world's largest denning ground for polar bear. this is part of russia, yes. although that's a complicated question which i will get into in a second. we left the ship and made landfall with these zodiac rafts and wins by these cliffs where there were hundreds of thousands of birds. my birder friends were just extremely excited when this happened. dive bombed by these birds. it was really really interesting. we came onto the shore of rangel. there were only for people who on this island.

they are preserved rangers, russians who were so glad to see us. they were so glad to see human beings. and to entertain us so we came aboard and the reason i was really coming to rangel island and i should back up and explain. i was doing a story for "national geographic" magazine about the island and working with an amazing russian photographer named sergei korsakoff who is the next couple of pictures you will see our kids that ran in the magazine in the spring of 2013. he has been going for decades to rangel. it's an amazing place. it's a refuge in the arctic and as a arctic is changing in so many ways. this is where the animals have been going. including the polar bear. polar bear don't normally congregate in large numbers like this but because the ice has not been very reliable or very thick

in recent years they have been coming to rangel which is one of the few places they can go during the summer and a throng of these huge numbers. 30, 40, 50 which is not what they like to do. they are are normally ones and twos on the ice hunting seals. these are pictures that sergei took of a walrus kill. the birds are trying to get him in on the action too. arctic fox. this is a pretty famous picture that ran in the magazine with the snow goose egg. they are constantly trying to collect these eggs for their pups for the winter and they are constantly fighting with the adult geese. sometimes the foxes win and just as often the geese when. it's a battle royal.

also excellent facial hair. [laughter] just a few structures on the island. this is sergei's cabin and i was really glad it had these bear guards over every window because the polar bear are everywhere. sergei took this picture of me on rangel island. one of the other things that the island is famous for is that it's believed to be the last place on earth where woolly mammoths lived. this is an elephant tusks, at 10000-year-old mammoth task that was just sitting in a river stream. they are everywhere. all about the island, all this ivory. i had to fit it into my overnight bag but so that's rangel island, this amazing gem

this wonderful island affair that delong tried to land on but was unable to because the ice took him around it and over it. but another american vessel that was sent in the summer of 1881 to look for delong and the jeannette did make landfall and these are believed to be the first people to ever land on rangel island. an american ship called the corwin and they raised the american flag over the island. this is why so that's a little complicated. they claimed it for the united states and it was supposed to be american soil and if we have pressed their plane a little more diligently it certainly would be part of alaska today. one of the guys who was onboard the corwin looking for the jeannette was this guy. this is the great conservationist john muir who at that time early in his career was a newspaper reporter for different san francisco papers. he was onboard the ship and

wrote beautifully about his adventures in the arctic, looking for the jeannette. a great detective story really and it was an interesting time in the arctic and an interesting time in the life of this amazing man. he becomes one of the main characters in the last third of the book. where was the jeannette? they were looking for it but they couldn't find it because they were a thousand miles to the northwest by this point still locked in the eyes, still making their way slowly but surely towards the north pole. but the ice was throttling the ship. it was literally squeezing the life out of it. scenes of the whole were losing with pine tar and it was clear that the ship was going to not be able to survive soap delong began this thorough an organized effort to move all the essential belongings out onto the ice and to get ready for the inevitable retreat that they were going to

have to make as the ship began to sink. one of the reasons we are looking at engravings and paintings is all the expedition photos that were taken during the voyage all went down with the ship. it's probably one of the reasons you haven't heard of the jeannette. there aren't these amazing images that might give us some sort of signature. that is not really what it was like but it's kind of the heroic painting from a well-known french painter. we know exactly where the jeannette went down. this is an image that was sent to me from my guy, noah and it's in russian waters. it's not too deep. it's sort of the fantasy of mine to find another james gordon bennett, maybe ted turner or someone like that to go find the jeannette, photograph it and bring up some stuff from its hole but that's another story. so the jeannette man were left

out on the ice. 33 men and their 40 dogs and they were heading south towards the nearest landmass which is the central coast of siberia. a thousand miles away over the ice, knowing that winter was coming on and they had just a little bit of time to save themselves. thus begins a very different chapter of the story which is this great survival story, one of the harrowing adventure stories i think of all time. how delong held these men together, held this thing that could easily have unraveled that they made their way south over this ice pack 91 days struggling over the ice and hauling their three small whale boats and their provisions but hunting all the way because they didn't have enough food. they held it together for those 91 days until they finally reached open water.

emma delong meanwhile back at home in new york is beginning to wonder where her husband is and i had this picture of her mainly because i have this amazing experience in the research for the book which was early on i was doing some cold-calling of people named delong in connecticut because i heard there were some relatives there. i ended up calling this woman catherine delong, distant relative of george delong and george and emma delong. she said i'm so glad you called me because i got this trunk full of letters in the attic that i really don't know what to do with. i'm thinking i may have to throw them away. will you please calm and help? would i ever. flew to connecticut and immediately looked at the stuff and took possession of it on loan with the idea that i would

eventually give it to the naval academy. they were the personal papers of emma delong and the word love letters from their courtship days, lots of family photographs manuscripts and maps in all kinds of stuff and all of her letters to the navy and letters from people in the navy. but central to the whole thing was this thing that she did in the summer of 1881 which is she began to write what she called her letters to nowhere. they were letters to her husband and they were sent via whaling vessels north korea norway, via greenland in the bering strait in the hope that somehow some way they would reach her husband. and they are absolutely beautiful letters. they are heartwrenching. let's just admit that people will better back then to begin with but also there is just a quality as the story goes from bad to worse.

these men are struggling at this point over the ice and it's for their own survival. she is writing these lovely and sometimes kind of seductive letters to her husband that she doesn't know if they will ever reach him. so this shows the general idea from the point of their stinki stinking. the notice that the line goes north for a while when they are trying to go south. the reason that it goes north is they are struggling over the ice as hard as they possibly can and they find out that the ice is actually drifting north faster than they are able to so they are going backwards for the first two weeks of this track. over this lush and rubble and all these pressure ridges and comics that they are waking -- making their way generally to the southwest towards the coast of siberia. along the way they discover a couple of islands one of which they land on and explore. no one has ever been, no human

had been on this island before. it's called banned island to this day named after the publisher. this is a picture of bennett from the air. also supposedly part of u.s. territory. now it's part of russia. working our way east, you see to the northeast that archipelagoes still to this day known as the delong islands islands. there were making their way to larger islands toward the open water which they finally do reach. it takes forever, 90 something days and they put these rickety boats in the water. they almost have to rebuild the boats because they have been nearly destroyed from this track over the ice. everything is going well until the next day when they encounter a gigantic gale which separates the three boats from each other. so the story becomes really the story of this very different fates of these three boats as

they make their way not knowing if the other parties are alive or dead. this kind of shows the way they make their way towards this amazing place called the lena delta. it's the delta of one of the world's largest rivers and it is an extraordinary place because it empties into the arctic ocean and melts as the shows here, it melts first at its delta so it creates this barrier to its own current every fall. so the water goes crazy and frantic trying to find a way to the sea and dust exaggerating the normal delta pattern that we get. so what you have is literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of islands in back channels and legs. this is the terrain that delong has reached and made landfall in trying to not only save themselves but also to find

each other in this labyrinth. needless to say it makes for a very difficult few months as they are traipsing in wandering over this landscape. i wanted to go to the delta as well. it's a very rural place, a place that not very many americans have ever been to and so i decided to look into all the different ways to go. all roads lead to this place. it's a place on the arctic ocean. it used to be a military barracks, military installation where long-range intercontinental bombers were taking off. it was erected for the destruction of the united states pretty much. now it's largely abandoned. there's no infrastructure. its it's 400 miles above the arctic circle. it's kind of a wasteland. you may people like this just kind of walking around not sure what they are doing.

but i'm there looking for a way to get to the delta and specifically to a place that i heard about that still known as america mountain, a place where there is some kind of i had heard, monument to the men of the jeannette. i wanted to go there and pay my respects. how do i do this? this is a picture of main stre street. all these buildings are empty. so i met these two guys who run a riverboat company in dixie and they were able to get me aboard a working vessel that goes up and down the channels removing various snarls and measuring the river in trying to keep the main channels open for riverboat traffic. and for the small price of a few thousand dollars and a lot of vodka and a lot of cigarettes, they really wanted their cigarettes, they come on board

to work on the beslan woodworker way over to the lan. here's a picture of the ship. i did a story about this and wrote about this for outside magazine in the july issue if you want to check that out. we did work our way deeper into the delta. this is the last village i guess you would call it before we jumped off into the middle of nowhere. it's one of the world's largest restricted preserves. there is no one living there. it's just like this. hundreds of miles above the arctic circle and nothing really living there, growing their. it's permafrost and there are two seasons in this part of the world. there is winter and then there is mosquito. we were there during mosquito, august. they were just eaten alive by mosquitoes. mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. but we did finally reached this

place america mountain or at least we thought we did that then as we got close the ship ran aground so we got into a little boat and then we got into a dinghy and then a raft and finally we slam at one point to get to the base of this place. it was built here, this monument because of all the flooding i talked about that happens in the atlantic delta. there are very few high places in this part of the world so this is where they built the monument. we worked our way up there. this is a picture taken at about 3:00 a.m.. the sun doesn't set this time of year. he's smoking some of the cigarettes that i gave him and this is andre one of my guides, a russian soldier. and there it is, sure enough the jeannette monument. an obelisk there and they cross left pretty much the way it was in the 1880s. i don't know how many americans

have been there if any since the 1880s but at the base of that obelisk there is a little box. there were messages that had been written in russian and japanese and german from various sciences. the people to go to the delta are really people that study the permafrost and the tundra and arctic weather. so i left -- left a little something for delong and his men in a box and pay their respects and stayed a few hours and had a picnic and made her way back. it's just kind of amazing to me that there is this incredibly desolate part of the world nearly impossible part of the world to reach. there is this place called america delta. the villagers and the distant villagers knew about and people in russia to my surprise knew about the jeannette voyage. many more there than in this

country. james gordon bennett did get his story. it took a while but he sent his journalists to russia to go get the story and it was sent by telegraph. it took forever to actually transmit the stories but it ended up being a bigger story really in his pages than stanley livingston. the men of the jeannette came home as heroes. those who survived. some lived in some died. those who lived were heroes in new new york. there were parades. delong's journals became a best-selling book, the voyage of the jeannette. his law books which you loved across the icecap in the soap and goes across the end buried in the sand were later found by navy rescuers and dug up and

sent by reindeer team and force team where they took a train to moscow and st. petersburg and ended up in the national archives here in washington. they are now being digitized and analyzed by scientists and by a group called old weather which studies what old weather patterns look like from various expeditions in order to compare the icecap from those days to the way it looks today. so these are some images of delong's journals and logbooks that were loved to all this way. when i was looking at the stuff in the national archives i was just thinking -- you know, the journey that these huge volumes, very heavy volumes, volumes that didn't really have to come all this way. they could have chucked them at any point did they didn't because delong knew this was the only proof that the expedition happen. they were like relics they were so important to him so they have

brought them every step of the way and they made it to the national archives. some of the other men of the jeannette went on to become quite well-known. this was a picture of malveau the chief engineer of the united states navy and considered one of the great expiration heroes in the navy. there were parades and funeral processions in new york. everyone turned out. this hugely well-known story at this time which i just had a ball these past three years trying to resurrect and breathe new life into it hopefully for a new generation. that's the background on the story of the jeannette and how i wrote it and why i wrote it. i want to hear from you guys if i can. we have got about 10 minutes or so and i would love to hear some questions from you about this kind of narrative history and what i do and also specifically about the jeannette.

any questions? [applause] >> thank you. because we are being filmed here by c-span you need to come up to a mic or brochure you get close to a mic so we will start with you. >> i was just thinking of the early slide that you showed of occurrence going to the gulf stream basically and as i recall from a much more recent map the gulf stream dies somewhere in europe and goes back in much greater depth and go south again. of course i'm pretty sure he didn't know that. does that sound right? >> it was generally known that went north but after that did it

for a multiple currents or did it go down? it just wasn't known. it was an entirely wrong but it was wrong and he was extremely forceful in his argumentation and quite seductive and quite enticing. part it was those beautiful massetti have that could show this and it was difficult for people to believe it wasn't true. so unfortunately with these arctic -- men have to die or at least suffer horribly in order to prove or disprove the elaborate data so it's kind of the way it worked in this arctic game. hi. i know this gentleman. >> my name is smart to name is marc deland deland i'm an archivist at the national archives and i had the honor to work on the collaboration mr. sites mentioned with the oceanic and atmospheric administration. if you want to know more

information about our web site is hampton mentioned all of the logbook images that we have in our holdings are available on our web site so you can go to www.be it.archives.gov. click on research your records and then click on on line public catalog. type in uss jeanette and you have all the logbook entries for the voyage. it's a wonderful resource. i believe if i'm not mistaken soon after they got stuck in the eyes command the delong took over the control of all the entries day in and day out and his beautiful flawed handwriting is wonderful. the other thing with the noah project for two years the crew needed something to do so they diligently took the weather da data, the air temperature in the barometric pressure and it's that data in the logbooks that we were able to transcribe through another web site called

all weather.org. hugh too and help transcribe the logbooks that are going up on that page. it's not just the uss jeannette. we also have the uss corwin. all those logbooks are up and scores of others. >> i wanted to make a plug to you marc because i couldn't have done this but without you. in terms of knowing the records. he's the guy at the national archives in the nose is stuffed backwards and forwards. it's been a great collaboration on many levels. [applause] did you have a question? [laughter] >> relating to the first question, at the time there was if i'm not mistaken a great industry of whaling wailing going on north of arctic and wales were getting caught in the issa there and even despite their experience these other

theories still kept the stronghold. were they never asked about their experiences or they were never regarded? >> in s.f. delong met formally with a whole group of whaling captains who basically said don't do it. you are going straight to hell. they had experienced it first-hand. they didn't know about the current exactly. they were agnostic on that point about whether there was a current somewhere but they knew the power of the ice. the ice is moving and constantly warring with other shards of ice and ships and it's going to get you eventually no matter how much you reinforce your ship for the ice. thanks for your question. i thought you were going to say something about leaving the boxes in disarray. i didn't check them out correctly or something.

good, good, good. next question. >> have a similar question to that. the civil war in 1864 maybe there was an american icebreaker that went north and spend an entire year locked in the eyes. i'm not quite sure on which side of greenland but the way the heck up. >> probably the polaris. >> guess that's exactly where it was. >> that is where delong got his baptism in the arctic. he was on an expedition. they are either on a vessel or looking for it. he was on a vessel that was looking for the polaris. >> it came out okay and actually had a triumphant return to the new york harbor thing. >> that's actually another one. it was alicia kent kaine and his expedition. there have been three or four. >> this is a lot of data. these people get stuck in the eyes and there aren't a whole lot of warm seas there. >> this is why they quit going to greenland.

they said it has to be greenland celebs try the bering strait. the great irony is they are looking for this open polar sea that didn't exist but the climate oaks are telling us in the next 50 years there will be an open polaris at least during the summertime. maybe they weren't quixotic or crazy. they were just a victim of bad timing.