Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight thirty eight, Here fifty five KRCD Talk Station. Been
a very happy Monday to you. I am pleased to
welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show Buddy Levey,
author of more than ten books, including A Labyrinth of Ice,
The Triumphant and Tragic Greeley Polar Expedition, and Empire of
Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the
(00:21):
Karl Luke. His book have been published in eight languages,
won numerous awards. You may have also seen him on
the History Channel. He was on History's Greatest Mysteries hosted
by Lawrence Fishburn, and also The Unexplained with William Shatner
hosting Today, We've got a new book to talk about.
Realm of Ice and Sky, triumph Tragedy, and History's Greatest
Arctic Rescue. Welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show,
(00:41):
Buddy Lovey. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Today, Sir Ryan, great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Answer me this, This has been puzzling me for a
lot of years, and make like, okay, you got more
you need You get too much time in your hands.
But I've seen a number of documentaries about polar travel
North Pole, South Pole and the period in time when
these these adventures were made, these daring trips into frozen wastelands.
(01:06):
What in the hell prompted people to want to seek
the polls and put their literally their lives in peril
to do it. Did they have that bad home life
or something.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's a great question. Well it was multi pronged really.
I mean, part of it was initially discovery, trying to
find out what was there, because early expeditions, we still
didn't know what was at the top and bottom of
the world. Certainly, these were added to fame, fortune and
(01:40):
immortality because if you if you were the ones who
could discover make these discoveries, then there were lucrative book
tours and lecture tours, and you would also often you know,
become fetit in your own country. And so there was
also a nationalistic pride to I mean, many countries were
(02:01):
buying for the polls. So there was a lot of
different reasons. But I mean, I agree, man, these were
such daunting expeditions that it's hard to imagine now putting
yourself in such.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Peril, it really is. That's what's always puzzled me, is
I said, these guys had to have hated their wives
or something. I mean, this is just backcraft crazy. Anyway,
it was widely reported. At least I think you've solved
the mystery on this. Who got there first? Doctor Frederick
Cook claimed to have made it to the North Pole
in nineteen o eight, and then a year later, as
I understand, Robert Perry made the claim that he had
(02:35):
seen the North Pole first. But what did you uncover
in Realm of Ice and Sky, the book you've just released.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, you know, there's been arguments about this ongoing since
the early nineteen hundreds when Cook and Perry first made
the claims, but subsequently their records were found to be
either altered or fabricated. And so when Roll Dominson the
(03:04):
Norwegian went over the Pole in an airship in nineteen
twenty six with the Italian Umberto Noble, he made what
is now considered and at least I find this to
be true, the first confirmed reaching of the North Pole.
And so, you know, like I said, there was fame
(03:26):
and immortality were involved, and egos were involved, and so
there were lots of there was fabrication, and so you know,
it ended up being this kind of ongoing argument and
counterclaims and it was national and international news for years
and years.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, these were these folks that you talk about in
the book Roland Amindson and a Walter Wellman. They flew
to the North Pole in a blimp, right airship.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
That's correct. And Wellman, interestingly was an American from Ohio
who was the first to try and it was really
I liken it to the first astronauts. I mean these
guys were called aeronauts. And Wellman was trying this in
craft that were untested. In fact, nineteen oh seven, nineteen
(04:22):
oh eight, he went up there to Spallbar, this archipelago
north of Norway, halfway between Norway and North Pole, and
gets in one hundred and eighty five foot hydrogen filled
dirigible or blimp we call him now, and with a
you know, a pretty small motor on it and tries
to fly a thousand miles to the North Pole. And
(04:46):
what could possibly go wrong? You know?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And so yeah, these guys were you know, Wellman was
really really brave and he and only a couple of
other guys were getting into these craft which had, like
I said, never before even been tested. I mean there
were they had been tested in uh, in France and
tested in other places, but not in the Arctic. So
(05:10):
it was really a pioneering and courageous effort that you
just have to marvel at the courage of these men.
And you know some claimed at the time courage uh
and suicidal tendency.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes, really, it's the first thing that went through my mind.
Untested aircraft and and and and going into frozen wastelins.
And I presume at times the wind had to kick
up pretty dramatically. So if you just got a little
tiny motor and you're floating around and basically what is
a balloon? I mean, how do you keep yourself on course?
Would be a question I would have before I went
up in the thing.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Right, So you're you're hoping for the winds to be
in your favor, and there were, you know, lots of
study about what the winds were doing in that part
of the world at these times. But you're absolutely right.
Wellman and his crew were buffeted or around and blown
in circles. And they had a number of devices that
they had used Wellman device to try to keep them
(06:10):
on course, including these long cables that had hooks on
the ends and weights, and there were you know, being
they were a five hundred feet long, they could help
keep them tethered to the ice. But again this was
all rather rudimentary, and for context, you know, the Wright
brothers in nineteen oh three had only recently been testing
(06:35):
the airplane. So one of the things I found really
intriguing about this story was that while Wellman was trying this,
the airplane and the airship were both buying for supremacy
of the skies, and so no one really quite knew
whether the airship dirigible blimp whatever you want to call it,
was going to defeat the airplane, and so it was
(06:58):
a really open question. That part is quite compelling.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, in any of these various airship of dirigible blimp trips,
did they land once they got to what would be
known as the actual North Pole or do they just
take photographs from above?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, that's a really great question. Sometimes they land in unintentionally,
which is called crashing. But when by the time all
Amansen and Nobule get into the fray, it's about sixteen
years after Wellman, and they are able to definitively photograph
(07:37):
above the North Pole and photograph, I mean, they fly
all the way from Spalbard north of Norway to across
the polar see across the North Pole to Teller, Alaska
and make a kind of dramatic crash landing there though
they all survive, and so yeah, it's a good question.
The plan had been in a number of these expeditions
(08:01):
to try this is a great question, to try to land,
to try to lower people down, either from the hovering
craft or kind of like landing on the Moon, or
to land tether there and then get out and do
some scientific study on the ice. But conditions up there
were never really conducive to making intentional landings, and so
(08:26):
you do have a lot of drama in this story
about crash landings.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, well it was I wanted to gravitate over to
a specific illustration that what is described as the disaster
of the Italia.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right. Yeah, So after Amusen and Nobela, this Italian airship
designer make a somewhat successful flight in twenty six for
National Pride. Nobila decides to do it with an almost
exclusively Italian crew and he makes it to the North Pole,
but on the way back it's incredibly like a kind
(09:02):
of hurricane and wins and so they end up crashing
on the ice and a number of people perish. It's
very dramatic. The dirigible, you know, the control car sheers
away from the bottom of this dirigible. Many men are
left on the ice and the others float away above
(09:26):
them and are gone into the mist. And then Nobulay
and these nine other men are left on a floating
ice flow for about six weeks with no one knowing
exactly where they are. And it's really it's one of
the most dramatic rescues in archic history, and it's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
How in the hell were they found? I mean, I presume,
maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, that they
had no way of communicating. They didn't have like two
way radios with the mainland or whatever, did they ah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
But they did so one of the men had the
good sense to so this is also at the time
that Marconi's wireless radio has been developed, and so one
of the men had the wherewithal to leap from the
crashing dirigible with a short wave two way and they are,
(10:23):
after a great deal of travail and innovation, are able
to get communication with first of all, with some farmer
in Russia, of all things. Here's their SOS communications and
contacts the Italian government, which sets in motion this incredible
(10:44):
rescue operation that involves it's a multi national rescue operation
that involves Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, it's Italy,
and all these different countries are vying to be the
ones to find Nola and his men, including dramatically, Rolled Aminson,
the greatest polar explorer of all time, who has retired
(11:07):
at this time, comes out of retirement hopson an airplane
to go sweep in and save his arch nemesis nobul
a uh, and then he ends up. It's a great,
really Hollywood ending. I mean, what ends up happening with
Nobla or with Aminson? I won't give that away, don't
give it. Flies He flies off, you know, with a
(11:30):
number of men in this prototype airplane, and it's just
wild what happens?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, read all about it. I guess today, Buddy Lovey,
author of Realm of Ice and Sky, Triumph Tragedy and
History's Greatest Arctic Rescue, Before we part company, really qu
it's been fascinating, buddy. How is it you got involved
in Arctic exploration? What drew you to it as a topic.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Oh, that's a great question. I ended up going to Greenland.
When I was doing a bunch of journalism in the
early two thousand and I met a Norwegian woman who
gave me a book called The First Crossing of Greenland
by this man named free Joff Nonsen, who was a
kind of protege of Amunsen's. And once I started reading, well,
(12:14):
first of all, once I went to Greenland, I was
so struck by the landscape, the people, that the uh
you know, the topography, and it was just a very
dangerous and foreboding place. And then I thought, oh, man,
I got into the started reading about these Arctic explorers
and I was just hooked. I couldn't stop. So there's
(12:34):
my third book about the subject.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, exactly, well and obviously a very successful author, you are.
I'm sure my listener's going to go to get one,
to get a copy of rom of Ice and Sky,
which we've made it easy for them to do, Buddy.
It's on my blog page fifty five cares dot com
a link to click on to buy a copy of
the book and enjoy it. These people were absolutely crazy, buddy,
that's all I can conclude. Absolutely crazy. But man, would
a like agree you left man, Buddy, real fun. It
(12:58):
was fun talking to you. Thanks for spending the time,
listeners of meme for putting this all down on paper. Hey,
my pleasure. Brian really appreciate it, My pleasure. Indeed, have
a great week. It's eight fifty one, fifty five KRC.
The talk stations stick around me right back after these
brief work fifty five KRC Steve Air with us
Eight thirty eight, Here fifty five KRCD Talk Station. Been
a very happy Monday to you. I am pleased to
welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show Buddy Levey,
author of more than ten books, including A Labyrinth of Ice,
The Triumphant and Tragic Greeley Polar Expedition, and Empire of
Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the
(00:21):
Karl Luke. His book have been published in eight languages,
won numerous awards. You may have also seen him on
the History Channel. He was on History's Greatest Mysteries hosted
by Lawrence Fishburn, and also The Unexplained with William Shatner
hosting Today, We've got a new book to talk about.
Realm of Ice and Sky, triumph Tragedy, and History's Greatest
Arctic Rescue. Welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show,
(00:41):
Buddy Lovey. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Today, Sir Ryan, great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Answer me this, This has been puzzling me for a
lot of years, and make like, okay, you got more
you need You get too much time in your hands.
But I've seen a number of documentaries about polar travel
North Pole, South Pole and the period in time when
these these adventures were made, these daring trips into frozen wastelands.
(01:06):
What in the hell prompted people to want to seek
the polls and put their literally their lives in peril
to do it. Did they have that bad home life
or something.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's a great question. Well it was multi pronged really.
I mean, part of it was initially discovery, trying to
find out what was there, because early expeditions, we still
didn't know what was at the top and bottom of
the world. Certainly, these were added to fame, fortune and
(01:40):
immortality because if you if you were the ones who
could discover make these discoveries, then there were lucrative book
tours and lecture tours, and you would also often you know,
become fetit in your own country. And so there was
also a nationalistic pride to I mean, many countries were
(02:01):
buying for the polls. So there was a lot of
different reasons. But I mean, I agree, man, these were
such daunting expeditions that it's hard to imagine now putting
yourself in such.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Peril, it really is. That's what's always puzzled me, is
I said, these guys had to have hated their wives
or something. I mean, this is just backcraft crazy. Anyway,
it was widely reported. At least I think you've solved
the mystery on this. Who got there first? Doctor Frederick
Cook claimed to have made it to the North Pole
in nineteen o eight, and then a year later, as
I understand, Robert Perry made the claim that he had
(02:35):
seen the North Pole first. But what did you uncover
in Realm of Ice and Sky, the book you've just released.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, you know, there's been arguments about this ongoing since
the early nineteen hundreds when Cook and Perry first made
the claims, but subsequently their records were found to be
either altered or fabricated. And so when Roll Dominson the
(03:04):
Norwegian went over the Pole in an airship in nineteen
twenty six with the Italian Umberto Noble, he made what
is now considered and at least I find this to
be true, the first confirmed reaching of the North Pole.
And so, you know, like I said, there was fame
(03:26):
and immortality were involved, and egos were involved, and so
there were lots of there was fabrication, and so you know,
it ended up being this kind of ongoing argument and
counterclaims and it was national and international news for years
and years.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, these were these folks that you talk about in
the book Roland Amindson and a Walter Wellman. They flew
to the North Pole in a blimp, right airship.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
That's correct. And Wellman, interestingly was an American from Ohio
who was the first to try and it was really
I liken it to the first astronauts. I mean these
guys were called aeronauts. And Wellman was trying this in
craft that were untested. In fact, nineteen oh seven, nineteen
(04:22):
oh eight, he went up there to Spallbar, this archipelago
north of Norway, halfway between Norway and North Pole, and
gets in one hundred and eighty five foot hydrogen filled
dirigible or blimp we call him now, and with a
you know, a pretty small motor on it and tries
to fly a thousand miles to the North Pole. And
(04:46):
what could possibly go wrong? You know?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And so yeah, these guys were you know, Wellman was
really really brave and he and only a couple of
other guys were getting into these craft which had, like
I said, never before even been tested. I mean there
were they had been tested in uh, in France and
tested in other places, but not in the Arctic. So
(05:10):
it was really a pioneering and courageous effort that you
just have to marvel at the courage of these men.
And you know some claimed at the time courage uh
and suicidal tendency.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes, really, it's the first thing that went through my mind.
Untested aircraft and and and and going into frozen wastelins.
And I presume at times the wind had to kick
up pretty dramatically. So if you just got a little
tiny motor and you're floating around and basically what is
a balloon? I mean, how do you keep yourself on course?
Would be a question I would have before I went
up in the thing.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Right, So you're you're hoping for the winds to be
in your favor, and there were, you know, lots of
study about what the winds were doing in that part
of the world at these times. But you're absolutely right.
Wellman and his crew were buffeted or around and blown
in circles. And they had a number of devices that
they had used Wellman device to try to keep them
(06:10):
on course, including these long cables that had hooks on
the ends and weights, and there were you know, being
they were a five hundred feet long, they could help
keep them tethered to the ice. But again this was
all rather rudimentary, and for context, you know, the Wright
brothers in nineteen oh three had only recently been testing
(06:35):
the airplane. So one of the things I found really
intriguing about this story was that while Wellman was trying this,
the airplane and the airship were both buying for supremacy
of the skies, and so no one really quite knew
whether the airship dirigible blimp whatever you want to call it,
was going to defeat the airplane, and so it was
(06:58):
a really open question. That part is quite compelling.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, in any of these various airship of dirigible blimp trips,
did they land once they got to what would be
known as the actual North Pole or do they just
take photographs from above?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, that's a really great question. Sometimes they land in unintentionally,
which is called crashing. But when by the time all
Amansen and Nobule get into the fray, it's about sixteen
years after Wellman, and they are able to definitively photograph
(07:37):
above the North Pole and photograph, I mean, they fly
all the way from Spalbard north of Norway to across
the polar see across the North Pole to Teller, Alaska
and make a kind of dramatic crash landing there though
they all survive, and so yeah, it's a good question.
The plan had been in a number of these expeditions
(08:01):
to try this is a great question, to try to land,
to try to lower people down, either from the hovering
craft or kind of like landing on the Moon, or
to land tether there and then get out and do
some scientific study on the ice. But conditions up there
were never really conducive to making intentional landings, and so
(08:26):
you do have a lot of drama in this story
about crash landings.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, well it was I wanted to gravitate over to
a specific illustration that what is described as the disaster
of the Italia.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right. Yeah, So after Amusen and Nobela, this Italian airship
designer make a somewhat successful flight in twenty six for
National Pride. Nobila decides to do it with an almost
exclusively Italian crew and he makes it to the North Pole,
but on the way back it's incredibly like a kind
(09:02):
of hurricane and wins and so they end up crashing
on the ice and a number of people perish. It's
very dramatic. The dirigible, you know, the control car sheers
away from the bottom of this dirigible. Many men are
left on the ice and the others float away above
(09:26):
them and are gone into the mist. And then Nobulay
and these nine other men are left on a floating
ice flow for about six weeks with no one knowing
exactly where they are. And it's really it's one of
the most dramatic rescues in archic history, and it's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
How in the hell were they found? I mean, I presume,
maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, that they
had no way of communicating. They didn't have like two
way radios with the mainland or whatever, did they ah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
But they did so one of the men had the
good sense to so this is also at the time
that Marconi's wireless radio has been developed, and so one
of the men had the wherewithal to leap from the
crashing dirigible with a short wave two way and they are,
(10:23):
after a great deal of travail and innovation, are able
to get communication with first of all, with some farmer
in Russia, of all things. Here's their SOS communications and
contacts the Italian government, which sets in motion this incredible
(10:44):
rescue operation that involves it's a multi national rescue operation
that involves Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, it's Italy,
and all these different countries are vying to be the
ones to find Nola and his men, including dramatically, Rolled Aminson,
the greatest polar explorer of all time, who has retired
(11:07):
at this time, comes out of retirement hopson an airplane
to go sweep in and save his arch nemesis nobul
a uh, and then he ends up. It's a great,
really Hollywood ending. I mean, what ends up happening with
Nobla or with Aminson? I won't give that away, don't
give it. Flies He flies off, you know, with a
(11:30):
number of men in this prototype airplane, and it's just
wild what happens?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, read all about it. I guess today, Buddy Lovey,
author of Realm of Ice and Sky, Triumph Tragedy and
History's Greatest Arctic Rescue, Before we part company, really qu
it's been fascinating, buddy. How is it you got involved
in Arctic exploration? What drew you to it as a topic.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Oh, that's a great question. I ended up going to Greenland.
When I was doing a bunch of journalism in the
early two thousand and I met a Norwegian woman who
gave me a book called The First Crossing of Greenland
by this man named free Joff Nonsen, who was a
kind of protege of Amunsen's. And once I started reading, well,
(12:14):
first of all, once I went to Greenland, I was
so struck by the landscape, the people, that the uh
you know, the topography, and it was just a very
dangerous and foreboding place. And then I thought, oh, man,
I got into the started reading about these Arctic explorers
and I was just hooked. I couldn't stop. So there's
(12:34):
my third book about the subject.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, exactly, well and obviously a very successful author, you are.
I'm sure my listener's going to go to get one,
to get a copy of rom of Ice and Sky,
which we've made it easy for them to do, Buddy.
It's on my blog page fifty five cares dot com
a link to click on to buy a copy of
the book and enjoy it. These people were absolutely crazy, buddy,
that's all I can conclude. Absolutely crazy. But man, would
a like agree you left man, Buddy, real fun. It
(12:58):
was fun talking to you. Thanks for spending the time,
listeners of meme for putting this all down on paper. Hey,
my pleasure. Brian really appreciate it, My pleasure. Indeed, have
a great week. It's eight fifty one, fifty five KRC.
The talk stations stick around me right back after these
brief work fifty five KRC Steve Air with us
Brian Thomas News
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