June 2, 2025 • 45 mins
Down Periscope! Well it only took us 2 episodes to cram a ship tale into the second 100 episodes of this podcast, but Sean was not the person we expected to tell the story! Join us this week for an underwater tale of discovery and exploration as John and Aaron learn all about the daring voyage of the USS Nautilus.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In 1931,the world was a smaller place.
The unknown still plaguedmankind to explore.
And after onlya few years of powered flight,
the North Pole was viewed fromthe air in a modified airship
that never made landfall.
For one man, Hubert Wilkins,
this wasn't enough.
He had to make it to the polefor real.
Ship? Too Fragile.
(00:21):
Dogs? Too slow.
No. Wilkins neededsomething better.
He wanted to go under.
This week on Cheeky Tales,we dive down into the depths
of the Arctic to learn aboutthe expedition of the Nautilus.
(00:46):
Oh, behave.{Incredible Joke}
Hello, everyone.
Welcome back. Back.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
He got his Nautilus jokeout of the way.
Now, we.
Started that almost like we'vealready done Santa Claus, right?
We're doing Santa Claus again.
And nothingelse happens at the North.
Yeah. What else happensat the North Pole?
This guy Santa lives by.
Just doing more boats.
(01:06):
But is this a boat?
It's an underwater boat.
It's a sub boat.
Thought what about.
I mean we've covered the historyof submarines.
That we have.
Yeah I guess we just cover
some more of the historyof submarines. Yeah.
This is one submarine I didn'tinclude in my submarine episode.
That's a cool submarine.
This one I like thatwe're two episodes
into the secondhundred episodes.
(01:28):
I wish I could bring about one.Yeah. So, yeah.
And we did a little bit of WorldWar two.
And this one includesthat World War one.
But another one.
All right, we're back.
I'm back for another
episode I'm hosting this time,which is nice.
I suppose it's. Weird. It'snot New Year's Day.
No, it's not cuzI haven't hosted it for a while.
(01:49):
For New Year's Eve. Yeah.
Yeah, I doubt.
Yeah, it's been a whilesince I've hosted.
It's fun. Yeah. Glad to be back.
Got a real microphone this timeI'm hosting, which is good.
You going to sound good?
I probably won't be sound good.I'm not feeling real great.
Who's factchecking this episode?
We're off the chain.
Oh, crap. We're going off book.
I know, I'm scared. I'mmaking up facts.
(02:09):
All the facts are up hereabout. Me, boy.
All the facts are upwith me, boy. I'm scared.
I'm scared.
All right. So, yeah,this is a good episode.
We're covering the Nautilus.
This is. Fun.I like I like this story.
It's a really good story.
Based on what you've saidso far, I'm. I'm keen for it.
It's got Australians in it.
It's got a man big a Ernest.
Shackleton. The Shackleton. Oh,
(02:31):
Jackie.
Boys in here. Hey, Jackie boy.
For one down my throatfor Jackie.
Pulling out for man shackles.
Pull one out. Did you say.
No? No. Quite one.
We're not stopping that again.
Whereabouts on the cats.
Would you like me to pourthat wee tiny.
Brawny and big boy.
(02:53):
Oh, dear, I was thinkingI was watching YouTube
and there's a YouTube channelI watched.
There's no waythey've seen this.
But shout outto overly sarcastic productions.
And their historysummarized videos.
Big fan.
Think you'll like himif you haven't seen him before.
And he always enters a tagline,particularly
with his history oneswith let's do some history.
Maybe we need some sort of like
(03:13):
we're getting out of thethe ranting into the story.
We need like a tagline.
You want to you want to callyour shot on a tagline right.
Now? No, I'm.
Saying you're about to say we'llbe, the tagline of this show.
I kind of feel likewe've was always in the corner.
The pun was the tagline we got.
We got a bit, yeah,the pun started to run out.
On the on periscope.
Yeah. It's not a run out of airon the puns up there. Sky.
(03:35):
It's p this story.
Yeah.
Periscope is correct.
Down periscopewould be the option, right?
Yeah. Because it comes downfrom the roof. Don't worry.
I've already blown it.
Yeah. So I guess,let's let's get on with it.
Hubert Wilkins.
Kiwi. Sir.
Hubert Wilkins, technically,was born in Mount Brian East
in South Australiaon the 31st of October, 1888.
(03:57):
Say it he way to spooky. Spooky.
Huey or Bert?
What's his nickname?I just called him Hubert.
You can't.
I just point out quickly
how Australian Sean wentwhen he said South Australia.
I didn't pay attention.
Can you say it againpretty soon?
We haven't even gotten past
the first line of the script,and we're already stopping
to point out the wayI pronounce words.
(04:18):
Yeah, good, I said.
Hubert Wilkins was born in MountBrian East in South Australia.
Yeah, that's not what you said.
Hey, you said that unlike it's.
He's not pulling us up on Frenchor Italian or German words.
We're pulling him upon the Australian word.
Damn right I didn't.Say it wrong.
He just said it.
Okay, okay,so he goes for the safe option.
He goes forthe Australian English names.
(04:40):
So it's wellon the 31st of October 1888.
Very spooky.
One on Halloween.
The last of 13 children.
Three spooky.
In. A large family of pioneersand sheep.
Farmers.
That's unlucky.
How many childrenwas the 13, 13.
The last of 13 children.
As a teenager,
I moved to Adelaideto work in a traveling cinema,
which eventually took himall the way.
Yeah,he worked in a traveling cinema.
(05:02):
Does that. Work?
So they were.
To set up a screen somewhereoutside and off you go.
More or less.
They didn't have dedicatedlike cinema theaters.
They would travel aroundand like set up a system
to actually play moviesfor people
that they didn'thave a cinema nearby
so they could play likenewsreels and things like that.
Yeah. Because remember, cinemasweren't just movies.
They were theaters.
Theaters that then doubledas picture theaters.
So you'd rock out and pay
(05:23):
like one pence or whateverand see the news.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a common way for peopleto get updates on the wars.
I knew they did itlike before in the movie.
I'd have an update on the waror something like that.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So you workedin this traveling cinema.
And have a look at what'sgoing on on the eastern front.
Yeah, that'sthat's exactly what happened.
Yeah.
Anyway, the Germanskeep showing our troops.
(05:44):
But don't worry,our boys will pull through.
Anyway, here's Charlie Chaplin.
Pretty much. Pretty much.
So. Yeah,
he was workingin the traveling cinema
and learned a lotabout cinematography
as a whole,which was pretty cool.
And it eventually took himall the way to Sydney
as a cinematographer.
And then England.
Big jump.
Yeah, yeah.
The almostthe biggest jump in jump.
Yeah.
(06:04):
With his skillsin cinematography,
he became an early pioneer ofaerial photography, a skill set
which took him on several Arcticexpeditions to see the pole.
Well he was this, this.
Was in the
like sort of pre-World War one,like as his teenage years was.
Like 1908 or something.Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.
So after the advent of humanflight.
(06:24):
Yeah.
So Titanic's kept busygetting built. Oh, it's just
and in my last episode whenwe talked about Sydney Court
and he was also well knownfor being one of the pioneers
of aerial photography.He was. Another Australian.
He was more
he was more the pioneer of colorphotography.
That's what was colorphotography, correct?
He developed color film.
He got engaged in aerialphotography, but he developed.
(06:46):
Process in color film. Yes,that's what it was.
I do remember reading that now.
Yep. In 1917.
However, I was just doing. It,just killing it.
We used. To be a. Aussiesin the Sky.
Powerhouse.
Aussies in the Scots knots ofinvention, and then a bunch of.
The Kiwis.
Especially, Put the atom. Bomb.
In the aerial front too,
because there's that blokefrom Gympie who was like a
(07:07):
well known pioneerin Australian aviation.
And Isent around a photo of a piece
from his original gliderthat was on the Apollo 13. Yep.
That survived.
It's prettywell the explosion of Apollo 13.
I can't think of his name.
It'll come to you
about two hoursafter we finished recording,
so. Yeah.
So in 1979,Hubert returned to Australia
(07:29):
to fight in WorldWar One, enlisted
originallyinto the Flying Corps,
but then moved to beingan official war photographer.
This didn't affect his moxiethough,
as during the Battleof Passchendaele,
his efforts to rescue
wounded soldiersearned him a military cross.
To this day,he remains the only a stricken.
We've got to stop lookingat Apollo during our episodes.
It's very distracting.
(07:49):
For you.
Yeah.
When both of you
just, like, turn away from meand start looking at the cat.
He moved so he's looking at.
He's in. Sure.
Look at him.
He's adorable.
Fat bastard.
I'm talking about Hubert
Wilkins, the only official warphotographer
to ever receive a combat medal.And I'm very proud.
I knew you guys were Australian,but look at that cat.
(08:12):
You know,
nobody in the worldother than you would have known
if you didn't decideto absolutely chuck a tantrum.
Well,then I had to do it. Cut it.
I'll do it again, I refuse.
All right, we'll do it again.
We're just going to lookat the comic books I've talked.
Okay, Shaun,you have my undivided attention.
So I divided it to speak.
To my soul. Shaun.
(08:32):
So being an official warphotographer,
this didn't really affecthis moxie.
I really wanted to use the wordmoxie.
During the Battleof Passchendaele, his efforts
to rescue wounded soldiersearned him a military cross.
And to this day,he remains the only Australian
official photographerto receive a combat medal.
That is incredible,Shaun. It is.
I just imagine anythingtaking my attention
away from this story right now.
(08:54):
What's more incredibleis he got another one
to make, another one.
So later at the boy.
Twiceas many want to. Say later.
Sorry.We got something awesome too.
He gotto. We can't we can't say.
It's genuinely a good story.
Really good story.
It's a really good story.
(09:14):
But we wouldn't be doing thisif we.
Didn't have the picture of.
He turned and looked at the cat.
There's a watch on.
We're on camera.
But the editing is just you.
Tangent tangent.
Get back to the story.
I'm trying to.
Anyway, he's got his first.
(09:35):
Military photograph.
Here. The second one.
No, we haven't covered that yet.
But you said he'sjust told you that.
Okay. Yeah.
To try and keep you invested.
So again we invested whether I'm
looking at the cator Aaron's crotch, I'm invested.
So later
at the battle of the HindenburgLine, Hubert
took controlof a group of American soldiers
(09:55):
that had lost their officer
and then commanded themuntil the support had arrived.
For this, he was awardeda bar to his Military Cross,
which is what happensif you go again. Effectively.
So John Monash.Well done Hubert.
Sir John Monash, the fatherof modern combined arms warfare,
told an American journalist
that Hubert was Australia'sLawrence of Arabia.
I yeah.
(10:16):
So the general was
the journalist that asked himthat was the guy
that actually wrote the bookabout like Lawrence of Arabia.
And so he said, does Australiahave anybody of such caliber.
He goes all this one. Yeah.
So Hubert Wilkins his.
Yeah his, he said his,
his life is absolutely quiteextraordinary.
Why haven't we doneSir Lawrence of Arabia. No
(10:36):
I don't, I don'treally know that much about it.
Neither do I know the name.I don't know the story.
Keep it in the book.Keep it in the book.
After the war, Huberteven served as an ornithologist.
I person that watchesbirds aboard our man.
Big E Ernest Shackleton'slast ever expedition.
Just two episodes in a rowthat we've mentioned.
(10:58):
And I'm not going to say yes.
It's a great word, isn't it?
I just think it's an industry
I didn't expect to talk aboutin 100% of
what we recorded, too.
Yeah,
it's just funny the other way,I tell you, my sister
doing like, triviaand they're like, what is this?
I'm like, someone who studiesbirds. And my sister was like,
hey, did you know that?
I'm like.
I like that, I want you.
(11:19):
Oh, I got Cassie. He's me. Yeah.
So I'm him.
So Hubert Hubert was aboardErnest Shackleton's
last ever expeditionaboard the quest to Antarctica,
where he diedin 1922 aboard his vessel.
But, yeah, the quest. Yes.The quest.
It's not the name of the ship.That was the name of the ship.
Yep. Cheers. Shack. Jacko. How?
(11:39):
He was aboard the ship with him.
Shack is for shack. A.
There was quite a lotleft in that now.
There was a small pole.
In April 1928, a yearafter Charles Lindbergh
had flown across the Arcticin the airship, Hubert
and a pilot named Carl Ben Olsenflew across the Arctic Circle
(12:01):
from Alaska to Norway,and he stopped along the way
at Ellesmere Island,which is the furthest north
and biggest islandin the Canadian archipelago.
Sort of,I suppose you could call it,
like the largest islandis part of Canada
and also again, onsome some drift ice, which is
pretty cool. So.
This is what's got me stumped.
Yeah.
We got all nightI was yeah. Yep.
(12:22):
He's southern hemisphere.
Yes. He'sgone to the northern pole
to check it outand try and do stuff on it.
Yes. Your last episode,what was it, your last episode?
Chocolate. Shackleton. Scottishand northern hemisphere.
Gone to the southern hemisphere.
What is going on to discourageyou, the one closest to you.
Make it. Easy.
Yeah,
I think it's just all aboutlike what was available
(12:43):
at the time.Yeah, I get it at these points.
Other parts have been alreadyexplored.
On a time of the year.
But it just seems like these twoguys are crossing paths.
But also like it'sthe kind of exploration
because Antarcticais a continent.
Yeah.
So you're not like dealingwith shifting ice and stuff
all the time.
Whereas with the Arcticit is a constant flow.
(13:04):
Now, they weren't dealingwith shifting ice all the time.
They got stuck in the icefor two and a half years
and yeah,but all the thumbs. Yeah.
But the ice movedthe whole time.
But if if it goes correctly,they get onto land.
Yeah.
Whereas in the Arctic
you are literallyjust going into the ice
and then just hoping you floatpast the pole. Yeah.
Yeah. Pretty much.
And also all of this happened
well after what's consideredthe golden age
of Antarctic exploration,like in order to be once
(13:26):
Shackleton passed away,that was it. Basically.
Okay.
But you get my point.Right at two.
Like, yeah, I guess it. Yeah.You just do your own side. Yeah.
Stick to what you stay. Yeah.
I saw the fence anyway.
On this flight across the ArcticCircle, him and Carl Olsen
landed at Ellesmere Islandand also found some drift ice,
which is pretty cool
because they were the firstpeople to ever land a plane on.
(13:48):
Like a floating piece of ice,
for which he was knighted.
You may not. And he was justnice, plain sailing.
Yeah.
Oh, I mentioned. Thatsome of the.
StuffI mentioned, that kind of voice
is always kind of like,flattened out.
You're not going to hit a tree.Yeah.
Not necessarily.
If it's pretty small,if it's float ice,
it can like crunchinto each other. Yeah.
Also I imaginelanding on on like snow covered
(14:09):
ice would be really difficult
because of the,the whiteout that you get.
That'sI think it'd be hard to like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
During a party in New Yorkto celebrate his knighthood,
he would made his future wife,
an Australian actressnamed Suzanne Bennett,
which is pretty cool inNew York.
Just bumped acrossan Australian actress.
Oh, here. Another accent.
(14:29):
Because of his knighthood.Here from South Australia.
Hey, John.
With his knighthood,
you would gain the attention
of an American newspaperpublisher
named William Randolph Hearst,who would continue
to fund Hubert's expeditionsin the future.
Hearst had a flairfor the dramatic,
and he was very rich and hada pretty important newspaper.
(14:50):
I could sell newspaperswith this guy, pretty much.
And so in 1930, Hubertand his wife were on holiday
with a wealthy friend of theirsnamed Lincoln Ellsworth.
The 30 year?
Yeah, to the 30s again.
Sorry, everyone.
During the holiday,they planned a trans
Arctic expeditioninvolving a submarine.
Yeah.
The plan was to conductextensive meteorology
(15:12):
and to collect dataof academic interest
while they were along the way.
So drill into ice, study
the waters, do as much as theypossibly can
to try and get information.
But also, hey, we're going to be
the first people to crossthe pole underwater because.
Was it a U-boat?
Undersea boat?
Is that Britishundersea seaport?
I want to seewater was not undersea, but.
(15:35):
So Lincoln
also had contributed $70,000to the expedition.
It's like $6 trillion today.
Plus a 20 grand loan.
In the 1930s.
I'm going to guess
that's going to be roughly 1.5million wanted.
I love Titanic's yes.
William Randolph Hearst.
These point was much worthmuch more than.
William Randolph Hearst,the newspaper publisher.
(15:56):
He purchased the exclusiverights to the story for $61,000.
Jeez.
The Woods Hole OceanographicOcean Oceanographic
Institutecontributed a further $35,000.
Cha-Ching and Wilkins,who raised quite a lot of money
doing lecturing toursand wrote a book about his plan.
Sorry I couldn'tget it on Amazon in time,
(16:19):
I he managed to put forward$25,000 of his own money
towards the expedition.
And howmuch do I get? Total 115.
I gotta be one.
That there was one.
One was like 78 and then 68.
And 1760.
So I missed that 130,160, hundred and 50, 500 and.
70,180, 191,000plus 20 Grand line.
(16:40):
Yeah. So 210.
18, 1930.
Yeah, yeah, that's a.Lot of money. What do I say?
40,000 was roughly in 1940.
We're about 800,000. Yeah.
There's a fair bitmore money that comes into play.
Time's up by seven.
So you're looking at aboutmaybe $5 million.
And in prize money.
There's more moneythat comes into play later.
Even more money.
Almost as much as thatas an additional sum.
(17:02):
Must be nice.
So unfortunately,Hubert was not a U.S.
citizen.
This means that the old WorldWar One
submarine that he wanted to buy,he wasn't allowed to buy.
He wanted to purchase an oldwhat was one sub
called the oh, as us or theoh 12.
He wanted to buy it offa naval auction and the like.
You're not a U.S. citizen.
You can't buy a submarinebecause all.
(17:23):
Please, I want to.
Know, like, no,you can't do that.
So a, actually a submarine,a naval architect named Simon
Lake bought itand then leased it to him
for $1 every yearfor five years.
All right. Bargain, bargain.
This kind of way to the title.
This came with some clauses,however,
which proved to bea little bit of his undoing.
(17:44):
So the sub originally named theoh 12,
but that's a pretty boring name.
So he named it the Nautilus
after the Jules Verne story20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Yeah. Course. Excellent one.
Obviously he needed to try
and make thisas dramatic as possible
so he could, you know, get moneyoff his newspaper backing.
(18:04):
Rich manthat gives him all this cash.
The submarine was heavilymodified for the voyage.
The reinforcements were madeby the owner of the submarine
and renowned naval architectSimon Lake.
He put the heavy steel plates
and concretein the front of the vessel,
and a big hydraulic shockabsorbing rod
that just stuck outthe front of it.
So if it hit the iceit would go.
Oh, punchy,I'll punch it. Yeah, heavy.
(18:26):
Plates and concrete don't soundlike the best thing to put in.
There.
I sound buoyant,but they didn't want to hit ice.
Basically, they wantedto be able to ram some ice.
And if they were under the sea,don't die from hitting ice.
Under the sea. Under the sea,I guess.
Like it'sokay to be a little bit heavy
if you don't eat someice and immediately die. Yes.
(18:47):
So alongthe roof of the submarine.
If you do,
you run out of oxygen,
and then being a little bit tooheavy is.
So long,the top of the submarine
I've changed from roofbecause it seems wrong.
It's an underwater vessel.Let's just say the top.
Along the top, they have a wordfor the top and bottom.
Probably.
I can't fact check.
I'm telling the story.
You're monitoring the Sam,right? Right.
(19:07):
I'm monitoring the sound wave.
I'm just making sureit keeps recording. Fair enough.
So along the roof, he addedsteel sledges to glide along
the ice.If they hit the top of it.
So went roof skis, roof.
Skis, and a hydraulic arm.
To push themselves.
To, like, sort of keep likea distance away from the ice.
So if they did push upagainst it, the sledge is there.
(19:28):
But this hydraulic springloaded, they.
Could bounce off it.
I could sort ofjust they're like, okay,
we can feel it's greatbeing like a car antenna.
Keep going. Don't keep going.
Oh, so they know how to not getstuck then.
It had an interestingtime. Talk about it.
The top of a submarinewas called.
Like if you're doing something
professionally,you should, you know, plan.
The top of a submarine.
Understandthe conditions. A sail.
(19:49):
The sail or.Fin or shining tail.
That's like the oh. That'sjust the tail.
That's the tail.
The roof.
I don't think.
The top it.
So Simonlike, also added rather,
Foolishly top side.
Top side.
He added a giant ice drill.
So he wanted them to be ableto drill upwards through the ice
(20:11):
so they could get air
and recharge batteriesand get out of the vessel.
Yeah.
So he thought, oh, they're goingto be under the ice.
I'll just build a likea ice drill that can keep going.
He said that it could get 20ftthrough the ice for boating.
It did. No it didn't.
I would imagine thatwhat would actually happen
would be thatit would drill into the ice,
and then the whole boatwould start spinning.
(20:34):
Yeah.Like gets caught or something.
Yeah.
No, that's right.
It didn't work. Okay.
I didn't work very well.
He also turned the torpedo baysinto pressurized
diving chambers for the crew toconduct scientific experiments,
which did help a little bit.
It was
it was failing one becauseit didn't need torpedoes.
Human, however, didn't lovethe modifications very much.
(20:55):
He thought he thought
the hydraulic shock absorber wasgoing to get stuck in the ice
and then they'd get jammed.
He's like, ice is not concrete.
Like it'll it'll get stuckbecause it was like kind of big,
but by comparisonto the rest of the boat
probablywould have be quite sharp.
So he didn't thinkthat was going to work at all.
I feel like torpedoeswould be useful,
but also in front of you.
Just keep one.
(21:18):
He also.
I think if ifWorld. War one is what he does.
If it was not good for himto buy it as a U.S.
citizen, it's not going to begood for torpedo.
He's not.Going to get. Torpedo. Yeah.
He also didn't lovethe idea of the sledges,
along the top of the submarine,just grinding
and cutting into the iceand then getting stuck.
He didn't really like it at all.
He's like, no, these are really,really horrible modifications.
(21:41):
He wanted to installa photosensitive electrical cell
to measure the thicknessof the ice on the roof.
However,time and length was like my sub.
My rules? No. And Hubert went.
Okay, okay,I'll take my free sub.
Think he's like, I need the sub.
So Hubert hadto accept that the sub was going
on the expeditionthe way that it was.
(22:01):
All the gadgets,however, had heaps of problems
before they set off.I none of them really did.
They were supposed to do.And they weren't good.
So with months of repairs
and even a separateengineering company
that got brought in to fixthe drill to make it work,
it still didn't work properly,and they just kind of hoped,
it just didn't.
Yeah, it didn't work at all.
(22:22):
So after months of waiting,Hubert
had had enough and insistedthat they just set off.
So part of the deal for thisfunding from William Hurst,
it had some incentives.
And this is whyHubert was so keen to set off.
So William
Randolph Hearst owneda big Zeppelin
called the Graf Zeppelinbecause he was that rich
and he would fly people aroundin it, and it was pretty cool.
(22:43):
He actually flew Hubert
and his wife around in itas a prize for
his knighthoodwas very exciting.
So he was going to flyover the pole as well
because that personthat it could be done,
he was going to takelike rich people
on a tourist flightover the pole.
And he said,I'll give you $150,000
if you can time it, thatwhen we're getting to the pole.
You get.
You get to the pole
(23:03):
and you drill up through theawesome way of it. Everybody.
And he it's like,
you son of a bitch.
I mean. Can you imagine?
I reckon, I reckon an airshipvoyage over the pole.
It'd be pretty boring.
Real boring. Yeah. Like I'mprobably really uncomfortable.
You're like, oh, it's all lost.
And then they go,we're over the pole now.
And you're like,oh, it's just more ice high.
(23:25):
Santa. Yeah.
000, pretty much.
Get out of my airspace.
Launch the surface to air
missiles.
Just the elves likes to do.
That.
But it's like candy canes. Like
so on the 4th of June.
(23:47):
On the 4th of June, I think. The
that movie there.
Isn't that red one?
Isn't that one?
Not really.
Okay.
It's more or less the evilSanta Claus thing from.
Right? Futurama.
So on the 4th of June, 1931,Krampus? No.
No, Krampus was his brother.Yeah.
(24:08):
That was a Yuletide witch.
Now he's just called Santa Clausrobot Santa Claus.
And he's evil because they builta robot looking like trauma.
And if you draw. I'mtalking about Red one.
I haven't seen red one.I remember.
What do you meanyou haven't seen red one?
It was a smash hit. Okay.
I'm. I'm seeing him.No. You remember.
What? What?
I've seen red one.
Like you were talking about it.
(24:28):
No, I'm. Talking about Futurama.
I didn't even know basic plotpoints of it.
Maybe on June 4th.
Anyway.
Anyway,on the 4th of June, 1931,
the Nautilus set sailfrom Connecticut.
After the modificationswere completed in New York City,
the first journey acrossthe Atlantic, however, was crap.
It was not a very big submarine,and it wasn't really designed
(24:49):
to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
It was kind of just designedto do some cool stuff
so it will get towed across.
So it was trying to crossby itself.
Yeah, 20 men on the crewand a whole bunch of stuff.
That's a lot of seamen.
That's a lot of seamen anda whole bunch of stuff to do.
A very hard voyageto go somewhere
that no one's ever gone before.
It was so packed and so fullthey couldn't sit down.
(25:11):
Oh, no,there was no way to sit down.
And there wasn'tenough. Decided to do this, and.
There wasn'tenough bunks for everybody.
So they had to shiftand take turns.
And there was one toilet.
For 20 dudes.
Yeah.
Oh, smack bangin the middle of both engines.
Oh, that's athat's a noisy dump.
That's a noisy.
Noisy, hot, cramped.
(25:33):
The stormsand the waves battered
the small submarinethe entire way.
And at one pointthe bilge pump failed
and pumped oil and sewageall the
well of the sub.
Yeah. Who could be worse?
Remember that. Poop deck? Yeah.
Remember that subfrom my episode
that they had a special engineerjust to flush it? Yep. Yeah.
And then firedand then sunk it. Yeah.
(25:54):
That is worse.
Only marginally.
Even worse than that.
One of the engines failed
while they're tryingto cross the Atlantic.
So they only had one.
And it could just kind of likePeter along.
You imagine just walkingthe end of the engine,
you're like, are we leaking?Oh no, that's someone's turd.
That's blue.Yeah, that's a floaty. Oh,
a floaty in a stinky floater.
(26:15):
So after one of the engines
failed, eventually gave,it was like,
send out the SOS.
So they send in an SOS.
And funnily
enough,it did get picked up that day,
but they'd been in trouble fora couple of days at that point.
So by the time the USS Wyomingfound them on the 15th of June,
both engines had failed.
And the batteriesand the batteries are dead.
Oh, the days later.
Yeah. It'sjust floating around the sea.
(26:38):
And they were just hanging outat the top,
hoping that someonewould find them.
Having gone to the loss yet.Nope.
Haven't even gottento England yet.
I still think some of AmericaEngland. Oh right.
So the broken down.You enjoy a time. Yeah.
So the broken down.
So I've got towed to Ireland
and it arrivedon the 22nd of June
and then they movedacross to England.
So they get to Englandto try and repair everything.
Like okay, everything is broken.
(26:59):
Everything is broken.
Full crew members.
Jones poo on my feet.
Everything is broken.
We'retrying to cross the sea. Eat.
You know?
So four crew members quitwhen they go to know.
Yeah.
Like, instantlythey get there, like, now?
Yeah. Peace out.
(27:19):
Yeah.
I'm gonna go for shell fish.
Time out.
So he bits.
Planswere starting to fall apart.
I don't know.
What is that it?
I don't know,I've heard of something.
I think it. Is. Yeah, it is.
John's just going to Google it.
I'm just googling it,not fact check.
Just googling pop culturereferences, googling swears.
(27:40):
Anyway, so the ship wasthe submarine was falling apart
due to the time frame
of getting the essential repairscompleted.
Hubert would no longer be ableto make the made up
with the Graf Zeppelinfor the big prize money,
which he was prettyis pretty annoyed
about newspapersaround the world,
because all of this,they're right in radioing out
all of these updatesthat are going on,
and the newspapers are gettinghold of it and being like,
(28:02):
this man is gonna this up.
Update from the Nautilus.
Nothing's happened. Nothing'shappened. We're in trouble.
So newspapers around the worldwere beginning to trash Hubert,
printing scandal like Hubert,
printing slander and making funof his potential failure.
Would be slanderous.
That's pretty bad.
Is it slander? If it's fact.
(28:22):
So that's all theydidn't know there.
So on the 28th of June,
the Nautilus was now readyto go again and set off
for the people stopping offin Norway
to pick out the scientific partof. That two weeks.
I got back up and runningtowards this of about.
I feel like a week.
I got it into the 22ndin Ireland.
Yeah, yeah, that's not bad.If it's not bad if it.
Well done.
The 1930.
(28:43):
Wonder if it still stunk.
Yeah, definitely.
So they set off.
They set off for the PaulVI in Norway.
So they had to pick upthe scientific guys from Norway.
And then also they were bouncingaround the Norwegian islands
to get to the North Polebecause obviously Svalbard
and everything like that, sortof these northernmost areas.
So on the 15th of August,the sub had reached Svalbard,
which is the last inhabitedisland before the Arctic.
(29:06):
By this point,the Nautilus was having
constant mechanical issues,but the crew
had now gotten betterat repairing the sub on the go
and the little schedule stopsthat they had,
so that was still in panic mode,but they had
a little bit under control.
How many men are on itat this point?
At this pointwe had 20 to begin with.
Four had left.
I couldn't find outhow many scientific crew.
So let's assumemaximum of 20 men.
(29:28):
That for scientific.That sounds awful.
Still sounds pretty rubbish.
On the 19th of August.
19th of August,
the Nautilus had reachedthe first layers of Arctic ice
to celebrate.
The crew were given some respiteand a small break
as they stayed on the surfaceto collect scientific data
on the ice, which they actuallygot some pretty decent stuff.
One of the discoveries made
(29:49):
was finding out
about the layer of warm waterdeep below the surface,
like thatsort of current warm waters,
and how this can affectpredictable
wet weatherpatterns around the world.
It's pretty cool.
All right.So you like the ice. Yeah.
And then obviously like stylishcold water from that ice.
Yeah.
And then there's the currentflowing through that.
It's bringing in more water.
Yeah. So they were able to
(30:09):
they were able to detectand study that.
That part of the
Gulf Stream.
Is it that what it isthe Gulf Stream.
Is the Gulf Stream,the one that goes up past.
You're unable to fact check?
No. The got
I think the Gulf Stream is
one that goes downthe bottom of the US.
I don't know what it's called.
I was thinking of the,once the turtles going.
(30:30):
And Finding Nemo. Yeah.
So the Gulf Stream,
the Gulf stream is a powerful,
warm oceancurrent in the Atlantic Ocean
that originatesin the Gulf of Mexico.
It flows alongthe eastern coastline of the US
and then veers towardsthe north west of Europe.
You're probably right.
It's not Arctic
goes up towards Iceland,but that's about it.
It stops.
Yeah, because the Gulf streams,the reason why Europe is warm
(30:52):
compared to like Canada, eventhough they're the same latitude
longitude, one of the two.
Cool.
So after a week of travelingthrough the drift ice,
the crew had reached 82degrees north, which is further
than any vessel had ever madeunder its own power.
Onboard the Nautilus, thingswere beginning to become
(31:14):
very uncomfortable.
It's, seeming to me.
Yeah, it was getting worse.
So there's no insulationon the submarine at all?
It's just a steel.
Yeah. So it's cold.
It's just freezing. Yeah, yeah,it's just solid steel.
There's absolutely no insulationwhatsoever.
They were always sickfrom food poisoning.
And there were massiveamounts of lead
(31:34):
in the sub's waterpipes. Oh, no.
So that would just bepoisoning himself.
Yeah. They call thatthat poisoning themselves.
They got food poisoning.It's just it's nasty.
The repairs are taking so longthat we're now getting late
in the seasonto make the journey.
And winterwas getting much closer.
So it was getting colder
and getting harder,and the days were getting
shorterand it was getting pretty scary.
All the crew wantedto turn around, like, now
(31:56):
we've had it, we've had it,we want to turn around.
And then Hubert was like,no, no, no.
Well, okay. So we keep going.
We must push forward.
Yeah, we gotta keep going.
Hubert, I've got lead poisoning.
I don't care.
If itjust would have been rubbish.
I've got PPB poisoning.
I just would have beenabsolutely terrible.
(32:31):
So on August the 22nd,
Hubert said, dive.
He's like, we're gonna go underthe ice, but hit the big stuff.
We're going under the ice.Let's do it.
And you know what happened?
They hit more ice now.
They couldn'tsink under the ice.
They,
let's just call it the
the rudder for the depth controlof the submarine.
(32:52):
The water aileron.
It's not called that,but cold. The water.
Yeah. It's gone.
Oh, it's gone.
Off at a.
No, we don't know.
It's just gone.
So they sent some divers out,which would have been.
So. Slightly so cold.
Yeah. To investigate.
And they're like,yeah, it's gone.
(33:12):
It's just gone. So
it had a vertical.
It has a vertical. Yeah.That's what.
This isn't like. Ballast.
They have ballast as well.
So that's how submarineswork. They've got.
So the ballast. Is used.The boats go up and down.
The ballast helps them sink.
But this actually controls.
On the forward momentum.It could.
(33:33):
It controls. The nosedamn thing.
Right. Yeah.
So at this point they're drivingand they're trying to find it
and it's not there.
So they're all likeI don't know.
It must have been ripped off.
And Hubert's like,you bastards did it.
So he was starting
to get convinced thatthat sabotage this submarine.
Mad all to you,but to my poisoning to make.
Them turn around. Yeah.
The lead poisoning was startingto kick in.
(33:54):
Not real great.
Yeah, he was beginning tosuspect sabotage at this point.
The papers back home,even William Hurst
were telling Hubertto just give up and come home.
Yeah. This is getting reallydangerous.
It's late in the season.
Everyone's gonna die.
Except William Hurst
was saying that in the papers,but his company
(34:14):
was directly messaging him.
It was radiogram saying,get this done.
Yeah.
So Hubert went, yeah,we got to go
reminding him of his commitment
that he'd madeand the amount of money
that they'd actually giventowards him.
So on the 31st of August, Hubertordered that the ballast tanks
of the sub
be flooded with waterto weigh it down, and the trim
(34:35):
and pitch of the subto be set two degrees down,
and he would ramthe sub under the ice.
He was just going to hit it at
full speed and shove itunder the ice.
Something I've never reallyfully understood with submarines
is they fill their ballasttubes. Yes.
With water? Yes.
How didI empty them to go back out?
Pumps? Compressed air? Yeah.
(34:55):
They have compressed air.
Yeah. Okay.
I just pump the.
Water because you can'tjust find a reef refill with a.
Nice compressed air compressor.
Yeah. Okay.
I actually think they use, like,a chemical reaction.
I don't think it's air, but.
Yeah. Okay.
Anyway, no,I never looked into it, but.
Yeah.
So the sound of the seascraping.
(35:17):
Sorry, the sound of the.
So the sound of the subscraping on the.
I screamed through the metalon the substructure,
sounding as if the sub was beingripped apart.
Yeah, I couldn't imaginethat would have been funny.
You know,
it's just thisbig metal substructure
and they're just dragging iton the ice.
Oh, it's giving me.
I'm getting
but goosebumps in the hair
standing up just thinking a bitlike what
that could potentiallysound like.
(35:38):
There's a terrible soundthat happens on the rough base
every nowand again when the C-17 comes
hooking over the base and
the engines scream, it's alwayssounds like when they are like,
I don'timagine they're full throttle,
but they're probably close to itright
when they comeflying over the base low,
it sounds like they are tearingthe metal off the roofs
(36:01):
like they the engine screw.
It's terrifying.
I imagine something like that.
Just metal.
Metal ripping,bending and buckling.
Yeah, it's.
And you know,if you're in a metal tube
and that sounds happening
and you're poisoned with lead,I can imagine it's a good time.
(36:21):
And lead poisoning doesn't help,but it does look.
Well once they get under there,there.
That's it.
It's like we don't havea great deal of control.
We can go forward and go backand turn left or right.
That's about it.We can't control it.
It's under the bottom of the.
Pan, out of the. Box,just bumping.
It so they get out of there.
They're like, we should probablytest this drill pretty soon.
Doesn't work. Yeah.
It doesn't work at all.
Why didn't. They test itbefore they went under. On what?
(36:43):
Yeah. What are they goingto test on the.
Under the. It.Just make sure it works.
Oh I'm sure it worked on the airbut it got stuck in the ice
right away. And then it didthe spinny thing to some stuff.
So yeah, it got jammed andthey couldn't service it all.
They reckonit got like a few feet in
and then it would get jammedstraightaway.
It was supposed to be ableto go through 20ft of ice,
which also probably wouldn'thave been enough.
(37:04):
But yeah. Whatever.
Wilkins had now, like,sorry, Hubert, I don't know why
I called him by his last namein this paragraph,
given it now made the decisionthat the whole world
and his crew had been kindof hoping for, which was.
Time to. Go, time to go home.
So he made the radio callthat the expedition is over.
I'm returning home.
So that got radioed at all
the newspapers are like,no, Hubert failed or this other.
(37:26):
So this guy, you suck.Hubert. Yeah.
So they turn aroundand they start heading back.
The specifics of how they turned
the damn thingaround would have been awful.
They probably still hada vertical rudder.
Right? It.
Yeah,
it would have been bloody awfulbecause they're
dragging on the top at the time.
Like they didn'thave that much depth control.
So it would have been quitea challenge to actually
turn it around.Hubert. More like Hubert.
(37:50):
All right.
Don't do that.
Where did it that did you?
So Hubert is so human aboutthe stepping around the sewage.
Okay. Sorry, Sean.
So Hubert had decided that it.
Oh, my God.
You guys are the worst.
And you not hosting,
like, just the worst.
So he decided to headfor England.
(38:11):
Unfortunately,
he was forcedto take refuge in Bergen
because it couldn'tmake it back.
It was just busted up
because of the fierce storm
that they'd encounteredon the route.
The Nautilus had sufferedserious damage that made further
use of the vesselcompletely unfeasible.
The crew abandoned, and,
Hubert had received permission
from the United States Navyto sink the vessel off the shore
(38:31):
of a Norwegian fjordon the 20th on November 1931,
where it still. Is.
Did it have heating?
You know, I said that.
How cold do you reckonit would have got?
Oh, how cold water it would.
It got that cold.Very damn cold.
Probably like some subzero.
That would be Austin.
It'd be close to like one, two,two, three, four.
What it. Has allthe water has a long.
(38:53):
Term growth trajectory. Yeah.
Yeah. Nasty stuff.
So yeah,
it got sunk off the Norwegian
fuel on the 20th of November1931, and it's still there.
Despite failingto meet his intended objective,
he was able to provethat submarines
were capable of operatingbeneath the polar ice.
This paved the way for futuresuccessful
missions to the pole by newer,
(39:13):
more advanced submarinessuch as the USS Sk8,
which was the first nuclearpowered submarine
to crossunder the ice of the North Pole.
What was the first?
You know, he was that wasn'tthe first one by mistake.
That was actually the USSNautilus
was the first nuclear poweredsub to cross under the ice.
The skate actuallyscattered his ashes at the pole.
(39:33):
Oh, nice.
So he died at the ageLee slipped away?
Yeah, he died at the age of 70,in Massachusetts.
Poor and forgotten,He was once one of the greatest.
He was once one of the
greatest Arctic and Antarcticexplorers of his day.
But the world had forgotten
him, as others had later donewhat he could not.
The USS Nautilus,the nuclear sub named in honor
(39:54):
of the first attempt,
would make its crossingunder the North Pole in 1958.
So it took 30 years. Yeah.
Not only was it the first
nuclear powered subto go under the ice,
it was the first nuclearpowered sub.
I don't think I'd want to be onthe first nuclear powered sub.
Just so you know, I.
Think it didbetter than the first Nautilus.
Yeah. Yeah. Did. Yeah.
Well, that story and that's thestory of Hubert Wilkins. Sir.
(40:17):
Hubert Wilkins.
Yeah. Decorated war hero.
It's a shame that he diedpenniless.
Now penniless. Just.
He goes pretty well bankrupt.
But like, he made it to 70.It wasn't. Yeah.
After getting,like, $210,000 in the 30s.
In the 30s? Yeah.
He could have just walked awayand just.
Been fine for this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(40:39):
Interesting.
Sean, the, commanding officerfor the USS Nautilus.
Initial commanding officer.
Not quite. Herbert Wilkins.
It was Eugene Wilkinson.
Pretty force.
It's interesting.
I'm sure that came up.
Wilkins son.
It definitelywould have come up.
(40:59):
I enjoy these, like, explorationbased stories.
You love a good exploration.
Of a good exploration.
And they exploredthe hell out of that.
Well, we done both poles.
I love how janky it was to.
Yeah. Like, yeah.
Put like a tool, like a stickon top that bounces off the ice.
Don't get some skids.
So we could justskate on the ice
and we'll put like a big stickon the front.
(41:20):
We'll put a big drillon the top. Another. No, no.
What what are we going.
What if we got a bunch of iceskates
and turn them upside down? It'sliterally just at that.
Like there'sno it's just gadgets.
Just.
Yeah. Gadgets.
Like it's not even like,oh this is going
to be really amazing.Groundbreaking.
No. Just going to stick gadgets
on an alreadyexisting old submarine.
We're just gonna MacGyverit. Yeah.
It was already pretty old. Like.
(41:41):
Because it's unsolvedby that point.
I mean, like 15 years old. Yeah.
This is pretty awesome. Yeah.
And this is at the time where,like, things got better quickly.
It's like a 15 year old carwhich still has CarPlay.
Yeah. Things were going rapid.
This world.
Big young rugby.
Nice whole episode of the frontinterrupting me.
And then I going at the end.Yeah.
(42:03):
We love a good explorer.
We've done what both powers now.
It's done. The moon? Yep.
What else is there for? Cheese.
More at the 30s. Yeah.What else is it?
What else is therefor? Cheeky it.
Oh we haven't,we've. Done a lot. Of it.
Did you do Hillary.
No I haven't done Hillarybecause I. Haven't been doing I.
Talked about doing Hillary.
Just briefly talkedabout Hillary.
(42:23):
I haven't found a way to make itthat interesting. Yeah.
Surely there's
some sort of explorationof a desert
somewhere that we couldprobably cover, but.
Yeah, probably.I mean, we haven't done a book.
We haven'tdone Broken Wheels. Yep.
Sad. But
yeah, the, Lewis and Clark,one of them was murdered.
Yeah. Oh, no. No, the other day.
Today, actually, this morning.
We haven't done Mackenzie.He was a great explorer.
(42:45):
How to find the NorthwestPassage?
Yeah, a few of them.
This one. Yeah, yeah.
I did a terror.
Gonna do thatsometimes. Answers.
Good one.
Anyway. We're done.
Oh, Captain Cook. Yeah. We did.
Oh, yeah,we did the Captain Cook thing.
We did Captain Cook.
What about that episode?
We haven't done an authorvan Demon, but that's fair.
We sort of covered him inanything.
(43:06):
I covered him in passing.
Cheeky exploration, cheekyexplorations.
Exploration tales.
Yeah. Thanks for.
Yeah. Good episode.
Thanks for coming along andtrying to do that one for a bit.
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Thanks, Darren. Nautilus starfor being ourselves.
I'm not.
It was for the content.
It's for content.
I'm not really sorry.This apology was for content.
(43:27):
You guys were very good at me,actually.
Startinga sentence and then was.
This because this.
Will onlyever do in a bit for you?
We do it.
That's a bit in the intro. It'sbecause there's two of us.
Yeah, it's pain and usuallyit's only one person.
And then you're just over there
reading whatever you're reading.Keeping up to date.
Yeah, it'sbecause there's two of us, like
just we're just feeding offeach other. Yep.
(43:49):
Oh, we lost that camera anyway,
we will be backin another fortnight.
It as as always, been lovelyto listen to a story and to
to speak to you all. Yeah.
Thanks forthanks for tagging along.
Well, see you soon.
Hope you enjoyed boat chatwith Sean.
Keep exploring.
Check.
Knows exploring Chicago's goingdo a cartography to greater
(44:10):
map the worldthat's already been mapped.
Yeah, Google maps doesn't exist.
Yeah,you haven't make your own maps.
Good. Know what, big map?You could make.
Your own maps.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at cheeky.
(44:31):
Tell us Pod on Instagram,Facebook and YouTube.
You can watch our episodeson YouTube
or listen to them on Spotify,Apple Podcasts or whatever.
You get your podcasts. And.
In 1931,the world was a smaller place.
The unknown still plaguedmankind to explore.
And after onlya few years of powered flight,
the North Pole was viewed fromthe air in a modified airship
that never made landfall.
For one man, Hubert Wilkins,
this wasn't enough.
He had to make it to the polefor real.
Ship? Too Fragile.
(00:21):
Dogs? Too slow.
No. Wilkins neededsomething better.
He wanted to go under.
This week on Cheeky Tales,we dive down into the depths
of the Arctic to learn aboutthe expedition of the Nautilus.
(00:46):
Oh, behave.{Incredible Joke}
Hello, everyone.
Welcome back. Back.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
He got his Nautilus jokeout of the way.
Now, we.
Started that almost like we'vealready done Santa Claus, right?
We're doing Santa Claus again.
And nothingelse happens at the North.
Yeah. What else happensat the North Pole?
This guy Santa lives by.
Just doing more boats.
(01:06):
But is this a boat?
It's an underwater boat.
It's a sub boat.
Thought what about.
I mean we've covered the historyof submarines.
That we have.
Yeah I guess we just cover
some more of the historyof submarines. Yeah.
This is one submarine I didn'tinclude in my submarine episode.
That's a cool submarine.
This one I like thatwe're two episodes
into the secondhundred episodes.
(01:28):
I wish I could bring about one.Yeah. So, yeah.
And we did a little bit of WorldWar two.
And this one includesthat World War one.
But another one.
All right, we're back.
I'm back for another
episode I'm hosting this time,which is nice.
I suppose it's. Weird. It'snot New Year's Day.
No, it's not cuzI haven't hosted it for a while.
(01:49):
For New Year's Eve. Yeah.
Yeah, I doubt.
Yeah, it's been a whilesince I've hosted.
It's fun. Yeah. Glad to be back.
Got a real microphone this timeI'm hosting, which is good.
You going to sound good?
I probably won't be sound good.I'm not feeling real great.
Who's factchecking this episode?
We're off the chain.
Oh, crap. We're going off book.
I know, I'm scared. I'mmaking up facts.
(02:09):
All the facts are up hereabout. Me, boy.
All the facts are upwith me, boy. I'm scared.
I'm scared.
All right. So, yeah,this is a good episode.
We're covering the Nautilus.
This is. Fun.I like I like this story.
It's a really good story.
Based on what you've saidso far, I'm. I'm keen for it.
It's got Australians in it.
It's got a man big a Ernest.
Shackleton. The Shackleton. Oh,
(02:31):
Jackie.
Boys in here. Hey, Jackie boy.
For one down my throatfor Jackie.
Pulling out for man shackles.
Pull one out. Did you say.
No? No. Quite one.
We're not stopping that again.
Whereabouts on the cats.
Would you like me to pourthat wee tiny.
Brawny and big boy.
(02:53):
Oh, dear, I was thinkingI was watching YouTube
and there's a YouTube channelI watched.
There's no waythey've seen this.
But shout outto overly sarcastic productions.
And their historysummarized videos.
Big fan.
Think you'll like himif you haven't seen him before.
And he always enters a tagline,particularly
with his history oneswith let's do some history.
Maybe we need some sort of like
(03:13):
we're getting out of thethe ranting into the story.
We need like a tagline.
You want to you want to callyour shot on a tagline right.
Now? No, I'm.
Saying you're about to say we'llbe, the tagline of this show.
I kind of feel likewe've was always in the corner.
The pun was the tagline we got.
We got a bit, yeah,the pun started to run out.
On the on periscope.
Yeah. It's not a run out of airon the puns up there. Sky.
(03:35):
It's p this story.
Yeah.
Periscope is correct.
Down periscopewould be the option, right?
Yeah. Because it comes downfrom the roof. Don't worry.
I've already blown it.
Yeah. So I guess,let's let's get on with it.
Hubert Wilkins.
Kiwi. Sir.
Hubert Wilkins, technically,was born in Mount Brian East
in South Australiaon the 31st of October, 1888.
(03:57):
Say it he way to spooky. Spooky.
Huey or Bert?
What's his nickname?I just called him Hubert.
You can't.
I just point out quickly
how Australian Sean wentwhen he said South Australia.
I didn't pay attention.
Can you say it againpretty soon?
We haven't even gotten past
the first line of the script,and we're already stopping
to point out the wayI pronounce words.
(04:18):
Yeah, good, I said.
Hubert Wilkins was born in MountBrian East in South Australia.
Yeah, that's not what you said.
Hey, you said that unlike it's.
He's not pulling us up on Frenchor Italian or German words.
We're pulling him upon the Australian word.
Damn right I didn't.Say it wrong.
He just said it.
Okay, okay,so he goes for the safe option.
He goes forthe Australian English names.
(04:40):
So it's wellon the 31st of October 1888.
Very spooky.
One on Halloween.
The last of 13 children.
Three spooky.
In. A large family of pioneersand sheep.
Farmers.
That's unlucky.
How many childrenwas the 13, 13.
The last of 13 children.
As a teenager,
I moved to Adelaideto work in a traveling cinema,
which eventually took himall the way.
Yeah,he worked in a traveling cinema.
(05:02):
Does that. Work?
So they were.
To set up a screen somewhereoutside and off you go.
More or less.
They didn't have dedicatedlike cinema theaters.
They would travel aroundand like set up a system
to actually play moviesfor people
that they didn'thave a cinema nearby
so they could play likenewsreels and things like that.
Yeah. Because remember, cinemasweren't just movies.
They were theaters.
Theaters that then doubledas picture theaters.
So you'd rock out and pay
(05:23):
like one pence or whateverand see the news.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a common way for peopleto get updates on the wars.
I knew they did itlike before in the movie.
I'd have an update on the waror something like that.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So you workedin this traveling cinema.
And have a look at what'sgoing on on the eastern front.
Yeah, that'sthat's exactly what happened.
Yeah.
Anyway, the Germanskeep showing our troops.
(05:44):
But don't worry,our boys will pull through.
Anyway, here's Charlie Chaplin.
Pretty much. Pretty much.
So. Yeah,
he was workingin the traveling cinema
and learned a lotabout cinematography
as a whole,which was pretty cool.
And it eventually took himall the way to Sydney
as a cinematographer.
And then England.
Big jump.
Yeah, yeah.
The almostthe biggest jump in jump.
Yeah.
(06:04):
With his skillsin cinematography,
he became an early pioneer ofaerial photography, a skill set
which took him on several Arcticexpeditions to see the pole.
Well he was this, this.
Was in the
like sort of pre-World War one,like as his teenage years was.
Like 1908 or something.Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.
So after the advent of humanflight.
(06:24):
Yeah.
So Titanic's kept busygetting built. Oh, it's just
and in my last episode whenwe talked about Sydney Court
and he was also well knownfor being one of the pioneers
of aerial photography.He was. Another Australian.
He was more
he was more the pioneer of colorphotography.
That's what was colorphotography, correct?
He developed color film.
He got engaged in aerialphotography, but he developed.
(06:46):
Process in color film. Yes,that's what it was.
I do remember reading that now.
Yep. In 1917.
However, I was just doing. It,just killing it.
We used. To be a. Aussiesin the Sky.
Powerhouse.
Aussies in the Scots knots ofinvention, and then a bunch of.
The Kiwis.
Especially, Put the atom. Bomb.
In the aerial front too,
because there's that blokefrom Gympie who was like a
(07:07):
well known pioneerin Australian aviation.
And Isent around a photo of a piece
from his original gliderthat was on the Apollo 13. Yep.
That survived.
It's prettywell the explosion of Apollo 13.
I can't think of his name.
It'll come to you
about two hoursafter we finished recording,
so. Yeah.
So in 1979,Hubert returned to Australia
(07:29):
to fight in WorldWar One, enlisted
originallyinto the Flying Corps,
but then moved to beingan official war photographer.
This didn't affect his moxiethough,
as during the Battleof Passchendaele,
his efforts to rescue
wounded soldiersearned him a military cross.
To this day,he remains the only a stricken.
We've got to stop lookingat Apollo during our episodes.
It's very distracting.
(07:49):
For you.
Yeah.
When both of you
just, like, turn away from meand start looking at the cat.
He moved so he's looking at.
He's in. Sure.
Look at him.
He's adorable.
Fat bastard.
I'm talking about Hubert
Wilkins, the only official warphotographer
to ever receive a combat medal.And I'm very proud.
I knew you guys were Australian,but look at that cat.
(08:12):
You know,
nobody in the worldother than you would have known
if you didn't decideto absolutely chuck a tantrum.
Well,then I had to do it. Cut it.
I'll do it again, I refuse.
All right, we'll do it again.
We're just going to lookat the comic books I've talked.
Okay, Shaun,you have my undivided attention.
So I divided it to speak.
To my soul. Shaun.
(08:32):
So being an official warphotographer,
this didn't really affecthis moxie.
I really wanted to use the wordmoxie.
During the Battleof Passchendaele, his efforts
to rescue wounded soldiersearned him a military cross.
And to this day,he remains the only Australian
official photographerto receive a combat medal.
That is incredible,Shaun. It is.
I just imagine anythingtaking my attention
away from this story right now.
(08:54):
What's more incredibleis he got another one
to make, another one.
So later at the boy.
Twiceas many want to. Say later.
Sorry.We got something awesome too.
He gotto. We can't we can't say.
It's genuinely a good story.
Really good story.
It's a really good story.
(09:14):
But we wouldn't be doing thisif we.
Didn't have the picture of.
He turned and looked at the cat.
There's a watch on.
We're on camera.
But the editing is just you.
Tangent tangent.
Get back to the story.
I'm trying to.
Anyway, he's got his first.
(09:35):
Military photograph.
Here. The second one.
No, we haven't covered that yet.
But you said he'sjust told you that.
Okay. Yeah.
To try and keep you invested.
So again we invested whether I'm
looking at the cator Aaron's crotch, I'm invested.
So later
at the battle of the HindenburgLine, Hubert
took controlof a group of American soldiers
(09:55):
that had lost their officer
and then commanded themuntil the support had arrived.
For this, he was awardeda bar to his Military Cross,
which is what happensif you go again. Effectively.
So John Monash.Well done Hubert.
Sir John Monash, the fatherof modern combined arms warfare,
told an American journalist
that Hubert was Australia'sLawrence of Arabia.
I yeah.
(10:16):
So the general was
the journalist that asked himthat was the guy
that actually wrote the bookabout like Lawrence of Arabia.
And so he said, does Australiahave anybody of such caliber.
He goes all this one. Yeah.
So Hubert Wilkins his.
Yeah his, he said his,
his life is absolutely quiteextraordinary.
Why haven't we doneSir Lawrence of Arabia. No
(10:36):
I don't, I don'treally know that much about it.
Neither do I know the name.I don't know the story.
Keep it in the book.Keep it in the book.
After the war, Huberteven served as an ornithologist.
I person that watchesbirds aboard our man.
Big E Ernest Shackleton'slast ever expedition.
Just two episodes in a rowthat we've mentioned.
(10:58):
And I'm not going to say yes.
It's a great word, isn't it?
I just think it's an industry
I didn't expect to talk aboutin 100% of
what we recorded, too.
Yeah,
it's just funny the other way,I tell you, my sister
doing like, triviaand they're like, what is this?
I'm like, someone who studiesbirds. And my sister was like,
hey, did you know that?
I'm like.
I like that, I want you.
(11:19):
Oh, I got Cassie. He's me. Yeah.
So I'm him.
So Hubert Hubert was aboardErnest Shackleton's
last ever expeditionaboard the quest to Antarctica,
where he diedin 1922 aboard his vessel.
But, yeah, the quest. Yes.The quest.
It's not the name of the ship.That was the name of the ship.
Yep. Cheers. Shack. Jacko. How?
(11:39):
He was aboard the ship with him.
Shack is for shack. A.
There was quite a lotleft in that now.
There was a small pole.
In April 1928, a yearafter Charles Lindbergh
had flown across the Arcticin the airship, Hubert
and a pilot named Carl Ben Olsenflew across the Arctic Circle
(12:01):
from Alaska to Norway,and he stopped along the way
at Ellesmere Island,which is the furthest north
and biggest islandin the Canadian archipelago.
Sort of,I suppose you could call it,
like the largest islandis part of Canada
and also again, onsome some drift ice, which is
pretty cool. So.
This is what's got me stumped.
Yeah.
We got all nightI was yeah. Yep.
(12:22):
He's southern hemisphere.
Yes. He'sgone to the northern pole
to check it outand try and do stuff on it.
Yes. Your last episode,what was it, your last episode?
Chocolate. Shackleton. Scottishand northern hemisphere.
Gone to the southern hemisphere.
What is going on to discourageyou, the one closest to you.
Make it. Easy.
Yeah,
I think it's just all aboutlike what was available
(12:43):
at the time.Yeah, I get it at these points.
Other parts have been alreadyexplored.
On a time of the year.
But it just seems like these twoguys are crossing paths.
But also like it'sthe kind of exploration
because Antarcticais a continent.
Yeah.
So you're not like dealingwith shifting ice and stuff
all the time.
Whereas with the Arcticit is a constant flow.
(13:04):
Now, they weren't dealingwith shifting ice all the time.
They got stuck in the icefor two and a half years
and yeah,but all the thumbs. Yeah.
But the ice movedthe whole time.
But if if it goes correctly,they get onto land.
Yeah.
Whereas in the Arctic
you are literallyjust going into the ice
and then just hoping you floatpast the pole. Yeah.
Yeah. Pretty much.
And also all of this happened
well after what's consideredthe golden age
of Antarctic exploration,like in order to be once
(13:26):
Shackleton passed away,that was it. Basically.
Okay.
But you get my point.Right at two.
Like, yeah, I guess it. Yeah.You just do your own side. Yeah.
Stick to what you stay. Yeah.
I saw the fence anyway.
On this flight across the ArcticCircle, him and Carl Olsen
landed at Ellesmere Islandand also found some drift ice,
which is pretty cool
because they were the firstpeople to ever land a plane on.
(13:48):
Like a floating piece of ice,
for which he was knighted.
You may not. And he was justnice, plain sailing.
Yeah.
Oh, I mentioned. Thatsome of the.
StuffI mentioned, that kind of voice
is always kind of like,flattened out.
You're not going to hit a tree.Yeah.
Not necessarily.
If it's pretty small,if it's float ice,
it can like crunchinto each other. Yeah.
Also I imaginelanding on on like snow covered
(14:09):
ice would be really difficult
because of the,the whiteout that you get.
That'sI think it'd be hard to like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
During a party in New Yorkto celebrate his knighthood,
he would made his future wife,
an Australian actressnamed Suzanne Bennett,
which is pretty cool inNew York.
Just bumped acrossan Australian actress.
Oh, here. Another accent.
(14:29):
Because of his knighthood.Here from South Australia.
Hey, John.
With his knighthood,
you would gain the attention
of an American newspaperpublisher
named William Randolph Hearst,who would continue
to fund Hubert's expeditionsin the future.
Hearst had a flairfor the dramatic,
and he was very rich and hada pretty important newspaper.
(14:50):
I could sell newspaperswith this guy, pretty much.
And so in 1930, Hubertand his wife were on holiday
with a wealthy friend of theirsnamed Lincoln Ellsworth.
The 30 year?
Yeah, to the 30s again.
Sorry, everyone.
During the holiday,they planned a trans
Arctic expeditioninvolving a submarine.
Yeah.
The plan was to conductextensive meteorology
(15:12):
and to collect dataof academic interest
while they were along the way.
So drill into ice, study
the waters, do as much as theypossibly can
to try and get information.
But also, hey, we're going to be
the first people to crossthe pole underwater because.
Was it a U-boat?
Undersea boat?
Is that Britishundersea seaport?
I want to seewater was not undersea, but.
(15:35):
So Lincoln
also had contributed $70,000to the expedition.
It's like $6 trillion today.
Plus a 20 grand loan.
In the 1930s.
I'm going to guess
that's going to be roughly 1.5million wanted.
I love Titanic's yes.
William Randolph Hearst.
These point was much worthmuch more than.
William Randolph Hearst,the newspaper publisher.
(15:56):
He purchased the exclusiverights to the story for $61,000.
Jeez.
The Woods Hole OceanographicOcean Oceanographic
Institutecontributed a further $35,000.
Cha-Ching and Wilkins,who raised quite a lot of money
doing lecturing toursand wrote a book about his plan.
Sorry I couldn'tget it on Amazon in time,
(16:19):
I he managed to put forward$25,000 of his own money
towards the expedition.
And howmuch do I get? Total 115.
I gotta be one.
That there was one.
One was like 78 and then 68.
And 1760.
So I missed that 130,160, hundred and 50, 500 and.
70,180, 191,000plus 20 Grand line.
(16:40):
Yeah. So 210.
18, 1930.
Yeah, yeah, that's a.Lot of money. What do I say?
40,000 was roughly in 1940.
We're about 800,000. Yeah.
There's a fair bitmore money that comes into play.
Time's up by seven.
So you're looking at aboutmaybe $5 million.
And in prize money.
There's more moneythat comes into play later.
Even more money.
Almost as much as thatas an additional sum.
(17:02):
Must be nice.
So unfortunately,Hubert was not a U.S.
citizen.
This means that the old WorldWar One
submarine that he wanted to buy,he wasn't allowed to buy.
He wanted to purchase an oldwhat was one sub
called the oh, as us or theoh 12.
He wanted to buy it offa naval auction and the like.
You're not a U.S. citizen.
You can't buy a submarinebecause all.
(17:23):
Please, I want to.
Know, like, no,you can't do that.
So a, actually a submarine,a naval architect named Simon
Lake bought itand then leased it to him
for $1 every yearfor five years.
All right. Bargain, bargain.
This kind of way to the title.
This came with some clauses,however,
which proved to bea little bit of his undoing.
(17:44):
So the sub originally named theoh 12,
but that's a pretty boring name.
So he named it the Nautilus
after the Jules Verne story20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Yeah. Course. Excellent one.
Obviously he needed to try
and make thisas dramatic as possible
so he could, you know, get moneyoff his newspaper backing.
(18:04):
Rich manthat gives him all this cash.
The submarine was heavilymodified for the voyage.
The reinforcements were madeby the owner of the submarine
and renowned naval architectSimon Lake.
He put the heavy steel plates
and concretein the front of the vessel,
and a big hydraulic shockabsorbing rod
that just stuck outthe front of it.
So if it hit the iceit would go.
Oh, punchy,I'll punch it. Yeah, heavy.
(18:26):
Plates and concrete don't soundlike the best thing to put in.
There.
I sound buoyant,but they didn't want to hit ice.
Basically, they wantedto be able to ram some ice.
And if they were under the sea,don't die from hitting ice.
Under the sea. Under the sea,I guess.
Like it'sokay to be a little bit heavy
if you don't eat someice and immediately die. Yes.
(18:47):
So alongthe roof of the submarine.
If you do,
you run out of oxygen,
and then being a little bit tooheavy is.
So long,the top of the submarine
I've changed from roofbecause it seems wrong.
It's an underwater vessel.Let's just say the top.
Along the top, they have a wordfor the top and bottom.
Probably.
I can't fact check.
I'm telling the story.
You're monitoring the Sam,right? Right.
(19:07):
I'm monitoring the sound wave.
I'm just making sureit keeps recording. Fair enough.
So along the roof, he addedsteel sledges to glide along
the ice.If they hit the top of it.
So went roof skis, roof.
Skis, and a hydraulic arm.
To push themselves.
To, like, sort of keep likea distance away from the ice.
So if they did push upagainst it, the sledge is there.
(19:28):
But this hydraulic springloaded, they.
Could bounce off it.
I could sort ofjust they're like, okay,
we can feel it's greatbeing like a car antenna.
Keep going. Don't keep going.
Oh, so they know how to not getstuck then.
It had an interestingtime. Talk about it.
The top of a submarinewas called.
Like if you're doing something
professionally,you should, you know, plan.
The top of a submarine.
Understandthe conditions. A sail.
(19:49):
The sail or.Fin or shining tail.
That's like the oh. That'sjust the tail.
That's the tail.
The roof.
I don't think.
The top it.
So Simonlike, also added rather,
Foolishly top side.
Top side.
He added a giant ice drill.
So he wanted them to be ableto drill upwards through the ice
(20:11):
so they could get air
and recharge batteriesand get out of the vessel.
Yeah.
So he thought, oh, they're goingto be under the ice.
I'll just build a likea ice drill that can keep going.
He said that it could get 20ftthrough the ice for boating.
It did. No it didn't.
I would imagine thatwhat would actually happen
would be thatit would drill into the ice,
and then the whole boatwould start spinning.
(20:34):
Yeah.Like gets caught or something.
Yeah.
No, that's right.
It didn't work. Okay.
I didn't work very well.
He also turned the torpedo baysinto pressurized
diving chambers for the crew toconduct scientific experiments,
which did help a little bit.
It was
it was failing one becauseit didn't need torpedoes.
Human, however, didn't lovethe modifications very much.
(20:55):
He thought he thought
the hydraulic shock absorber wasgoing to get stuck in the ice
and then they'd get jammed.
He's like, ice is not concrete.
Like it'll it'll get stuckbecause it was like kind of big,
but by comparisonto the rest of the boat
probablywould have be quite sharp.
So he didn't thinkthat was going to work at all.
I feel like torpedoeswould be useful,
but also in front of you.
Just keep one.
(21:18):
He also.
I think if ifWorld. War one is what he does.
If it was not good for himto buy it as a U.S.
citizen, it's not going to begood for torpedo.
He's not.Going to get. Torpedo. Yeah.
He also didn't lovethe idea of the sledges,
along the top of the submarine,just grinding
and cutting into the iceand then getting stuck.
He didn't really like it at all.
He's like, no, these are really,really horrible modifications.
(21:41):
He wanted to installa photosensitive electrical cell
to measure the thicknessof the ice on the roof.
However,time and length was like my sub.
My rules? No. And Hubert went.
Okay, okay,I'll take my free sub.
Think he's like, I need the sub.
So Hubert hadto accept that the sub was going
on the expeditionthe way that it was.
(22:01):
All the gadgets,however, had heaps of problems
before they set off.I none of them really did.
They were supposed to do.And they weren't good.
So with months of repairs
and even a separateengineering company
that got brought in to fixthe drill to make it work,
it still didn't work properly,and they just kind of hoped,
it just didn't.
Yeah, it didn't work at all.
(22:22):
So after months of waiting,Hubert
had had enough and insistedthat they just set off.
So part of the deal for thisfunding from William Hurst,
it had some incentives.
And this is whyHubert was so keen to set off.
So William
Randolph Hearst owneda big Zeppelin
called the Graf Zeppelinbecause he was that rich
and he would fly people aroundin it, and it was pretty cool.
(22:43):
He actually flew Hubert
and his wife around in itas a prize for
his knighthoodwas very exciting.
So he was going to flyover the pole as well
because that personthat it could be done,
he was going to takelike rich people
on a tourist flightover the pole.
And he said,I'll give you $150,000
if you can time it, thatwhen we're getting to the pole.
You get.
You get to the pole
(23:03):
and you drill up through theawesome way of it. Everybody.
And he it's like,
you son of a bitch.
I mean. Can you imagine?
I reckon, I reckon an airshipvoyage over the pole.
It'd be pretty boring.
Real boring. Yeah. Like I'mprobably really uncomfortable.
You're like, oh, it's all lost.
And then they go,we're over the pole now.
And you're like,oh, it's just more ice high.
(23:25):
Santa. Yeah.
000, pretty much.
Get out of my airspace.
Launch the surface to air
missiles.
Just the elves likes to do.
That.
But it's like candy canes. Like
so on the 4th of June.
(23:47):
On the 4th of June, I think. The
that movie there.
Isn't that red one?
Isn't that one?
Not really.
Okay.
It's more or less the evilSanta Claus thing from.
Right? Futurama.
So on the 4th of June, 1931,Krampus? No.
No, Krampus was his brother.Yeah.
(24:08):
That was a Yuletide witch.
Now he's just called Santa Clausrobot Santa Claus.
And he's evil because they builta robot looking like trauma.
And if you draw. I'mtalking about Red one.
I haven't seen red one.I remember.
What do you meanyou haven't seen red one?
It was a smash hit. Okay.
I'm. I'm seeing him.No. You remember.
What? What?
I've seen red one.
Like you were talking about it.
(24:28):
No, I'm. Talking about Futurama.
I didn't even know basic plotpoints of it.
Maybe on June 4th.
Anyway.
Anyway,on the 4th of June, 1931,
the Nautilus set sailfrom Connecticut.
After the modificationswere completed in New York City,
the first journey acrossthe Atlantic, however, was crap.
It was not a very big submarine,and it wasn't really designed
(24:49):
to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
It was kind of just designedto do some cool stuff
so it will get towed across.
So it was trying to crossby itself.
Yeah, 20 men on the crewand a whole bunch of stuff.
That's a lot of seamen.
That's a lot of seamen anda whole bunch of stuff to do.
A very hard voyageto go somewhere
that no one's ever gone before.
It was so packed and so fullthey couldn't sit down.
(25:11):
Oh, no,there was no way to sit down.
And there wasn'tenough. Decided to do this, and.
There wasn'tenough bunks for everybody.
So they had to shiftand take turns.
And there was one toilet.
For 20 dudes.
Yeah.
Oh, smack bangin the middle of both engines.
Oh, that's athat's a noisy dump.
That's a noisy.
Noisy, hot, cramped.
(25:33):
The stormsand the waves battered
the small submarinethe entire way.
And at one pointthe bilge pump failed
and pumped oil and sewageall the
well of the sub.
Yeah. Who could be worse?
Remember that. Poop deck? Yeah.
Remember that subfrom my episode
that they had a special engineerjust to flush it? Yep. Yeah.
And then firedand then sunk it. Yeah.
(25:54):
That is worse.
Only marginally.
Even worse than that.
One of the engines failed
while they're tryingto cross the Atlantic.
So they only had one.
And it could just kind of likePeter along.
You imagine just walkingthe end of the engine,
you're like, are we leaking?Oh no, that's someone's turd.
That's blue.Yeah, that's a floaty. Oh,
a floaty in a stinky floater.
(26:15):
So after one of the engines
failed, eventually gave,it was like,
send out the SOS.
So they send in an SOS.
And funnily
enough,it did get picked up that day,
but they'd been in trouble fora couple of days at that point.
So by the time the USS Wyomingfound them on the 15th of June,
both engines had failed.
And the batteriesand the batteries are dead.
Oh, the days later.
Yeah. It'sjust floating around the sea.
(26:38):
And they were just hanging outat the top,
hoping that someonewould find them.
Having gone to the loss yet.Nope.
Haven't even gottento England yet.
I still think some of AmericaEngland. Oh right.
So the broken down.You enjoy a time. Yeah.
So the broken down.
So I've got towed to Ireland
and it arrivedon the 22nd of June
and then they movedacross to England.
So they get to Englandto try and repair everything.
Like okay, everything is broken.
(26:59):
Everything is broken.
Full crew members.
Jones poo on my feet.
Everything is broken.
We'retrying to cross the sea. Eat.
You know?
So four crew members quitwhen they go to know.
Yeah.
Like, instantlythey get there, like, now?
Yeah. Peace out.
(27:19):
Yeah.
I'm gonna go for shell fish.
Time out.
So he bits.
Planswere starting to fall apart.
I don't know.
What is that it?
I don't know,I've heard of something.
I think it. Is. Yeah, it is.
John's just going to Google it.
I'm just googling it,not fact check.
Just googling pop culturereferences, googling swears.
(27:40):
Anyway, so the ship wasthe submarine was falling apart
due to the time frame
of getting the essential repairscompleted.
Hubert would no longer be ableto make the made up
with the Graf Zeppelinfor the big prize money,
which he was prettyis pretty annoyed
about newspapersaround the world,
because all of this,they're right in radioing out
all of these updatesthat are going on,
and the newspapers are gettinghold of it and being like,
(28:02):
this man is gonna this up.
Update from the Nautilus.
Nothing's happened. Nothing'shappened. We're in trouble.
So newspapers around the worldwere beginning to trash Hubert,
printing scandal like Hubert,
printing slander and making funof his potential failure.
Would be slanderous.
That's pretty bad.
Is it slander? If it's fact.
(28:22):
So that's all theydidn't know there.
So on the 28th of June,
the Nautilus was now readyto go again and set off
for the people stopping offin Norway
to pick out the scientific partof. That two weeks.
I got back up and runningtowards this of about.
I feel like a week.
I got it into the 22ndin Ireland.
Yeah, yeah, that's not bad.If it's not bad if it.
Well done.
The 1930.
(28:43):
Wonder if it still stunk.
Yeah, definitely.
So they set off.
They set off for the PaulVI in Norway.
So they had to pick upthe scientific guys from Norway.
And then also they were bouncingaround the Norwegian islands
to get to the North Polebecause obviously Svalbard
and everything like that, sortof these northernmost areas.
So on the 15th of August,the sub had reached Svalbard,
which is the last inhabitedisland before the Arctic.
(29:06):
By this point,the Nautilus was having
constant mechanical issues,but the crew
had now gotten betterat repairing the sub on the go
and the little schedule stopsthat they had,
so that was still in panic mode,but they had
a little bit under control.
How many men are on itat this point?
At this pointwe had 20 to begin with.
Four had left.
I couldn't find outhow many scientific crew.
So let's assumemaximum of 20 men.
(29:28):
That for scientific.That sounds awful.
Still sounds pretty rubbish.
On the 19th of August.
19th of August,
the Nautilus had reachedthe first layers of Arctic ice
to celebrate.
The crew were given some respiteand a small break
as they stayed on the surfaceto collect scientific data
on the ice, which they actuallygot some pretty decent stuff.
One of the discoveries made
(29:49):
was finding out
about the layer of warm waterdeep below the surface,
like thatsort of current warm waters,
and how this can affectpredictable
wet weatherpatterns around the world.
It's pretty cool.
All right.So you like the ice. Yeah.
And then obviously like stylishcold water from that ice.
Yeah.
And then there's the currentflowing through that.
It's bringing in more water.
Yeah. So they were able to
(30:09):
they were able to detectand study that.
That part of the
Gulf Stream.
Is it that what it isthe Gulf Stream.
Is the Gulf Stream,the one that goes up past.
You're unable to fact check?
No. The got
I think the Gulf Stream is
one that goes downthe bottom of the US.
I don't know what it's called.
I was thinking of the,once the turtles going.
(30:30):
And Finding Nemo. Yeah.
So the Gulf Stream,
the Gulf stream is a powerful,
warm oceancurrent in the Atlantic Ocean
that originatesin the Gulf of Mexico.
It flows alongthe eastern coastline of the US
and then veers towardsthe north west of Europe.
You're probably right.
It's not Arctic
goes up towards Iceland,but that's about it.
It stops.
Yeah, because the Gulf streams,the reason why Europe is warm
(30:52):
compared to like Canada, eventhough they're the same latitude
longitude, one of the two.
Cool.
So after a week of travelingthrough the drift ice,
the crew had reached 82degrees north, which is further
than any vessel had ever madeunder its own power.
Onboard the Nautilus, thingswere beginning to become
(31:14):
very uncomfortable.
It's, seeming to me.
Yeah, it was getting worse.
So there's no insulationon the submarine at all?
It's just a steel.
Yeah. So it's cold.
It's just freezing. Yeah, yeah,it's just solid steel.
There's absolutely no insulationwhatsoever.
They were always sickfrom food poisoning.
And there were massiveamounts of lead
(31:34):
in the sub's waterpipes. Oh, no.
So that would just bepoisoning himself.
Yeah. They call thatthat poisoning themselves.
They got food poisoning.It's just it's nasty.
The repairs are taking so longthat we're now getting late
in the seasonto make the journey.
And winterwas getting much closer.
So it was getting colder
and getting harder,and the days were getting
shorterand it was getting pretty scary.
All the crew wantedto turn around, like, now
(31:56):
we've had it, we've had it,we want to turn around.
And then Hubert was like,no, no, no.
Well, okay. So we keep going.
We must push forward.
Yeah, we gotta keep going.
Hubert, I've got lead poisoning.
I don't care.
If itjust would have been rubbish.
I've got PPB poisoning.
I just would have beenabsolutely terrible.
(32:31):
So on August the 22nd,
Hubert said, dive.
He's like, we're gonna go underthe ice, but hit the big stuff.
We're going under the ice.Let's do it.
And you know what happened?
They hit more ice now.
They couldn'tsink under the ice.
They,
let's just call it the
the rudder for the depth controlof the submarine.
(32:52):
The water aileron.
It's not called that,but cold. The water.
Yeah. It's gone.
Oh, it's gone.
Off at a.
No, we don't know.
It's just gone.
So they sent some divers out,which would have been.
So. Slightly so cold.
Yeah. To investigate.
And they're like,yeah, it's gone.
(33:12):
It's just gone. So
it had a vertical.
It has a vertical. Yeah.That's what.
This isn't like. Ballast.
They have ballast as well.
So that's how submarineswork. They've got.
So the ballast. Is used.The boats go up and down.
The ballast helps them sink.
But this actually controls.
On the forward momentum.It could.
(33:33):
It controls. The nosedamn thing.
Right. Yeah.
So at this point they're drivingand they're trying to find it
and it's not there.
So they're all likeI don't know.
It must have been ripped off.
And Hubert's like,you bastards did it.
So he was starting
to get convinced thatthat sabotage this submarine.
Mad all to you,but to my poisoning to make.
Them turn around. Yeah.
The lead poisoning was startingto kick in.
(33:54):
Not real great.
Yeah, he was beginning tosuspect sabotage at this point.
The papers back home,even William Hurst
were telling Hubertto just give up and come home.
Yeah. This is getting reallydangerous.
It's late in the season.
Everyone's gonna die.
Except William Hurst
was saying that in the papers,but his company
(34:14):
was directly messaging him.
It was radiogram saying,get this done.
Yeah.
So Hubert went, yeah,we got to go
reminding him of his commitment
that he'd madeand the amount of money
that they'd actually giventowards him.
So on the 31st of August, Hubertordered that the ballast tanks
of the sub
be flooded with waterto weigh it down, and the trim
(34:35):
and pitch of the subto be set two degrees down,
and he would ramthe sub under the ice.
He was just going to hit it at
full speed and shove itunder the ice.
Something I've never reallyfully understood with submarines
is they fill their ballasttubes. Yes.
With water? Yes.
How didI empty them to go back out?
Pumps? Compressed air? Yeah.
(34:55):
They have compressed air.
Yeah. Okay.
I just pump the.
Water because you can'tjust find a reef refill with a.
Nice compressed air compressor.
Yeah. Okay.
I actually think they use, like,a chemical reaction.
I don't think it's air, but.
Yeah. Okay.
Anyway, no,I never looked into it, but.
Yeah.
So the sound of the seascraping.
(35:17):
Sorry, the sound of the.
So the sound of the subscraping on the.
I screamed through the metalon the substructure,
sounding as if the sub was beingripped apart.
Yeah, I couldn't imaginethat would have been funny.
You know,
it's just thisbig metal substructure
and they're just dragging iton the ice.
Oh, it's giving me.
I'm getting
but goosebumps in the hair
standing up just thinking a bitlike what
that could potentiallysound like.
(35:38):
There's a terrible soundthat happens on the rough base
every nowand again when the C-17 comes
hooking over the base and
the engines scream, it's alwayssounds like when they are like,
I don'timagine they're full throttle,
but they're probably close to itright
when they comeflying over the base low,
it sounds like they are tearingthe metal off the roofs
(36:01):
like they the engine screw.
It's terrifying.
I imagine something like that.
Just metal.
Metal ripping,bending and buckling.
Yeah, it's.
And you know,if you're in a metal tube
and that sounds happening
and you're poisoned with lead,I can imagine it's a good time.
(36:21):
And lead poisoning doesn't help,but it does look.
Well once they get under there,there.
That's it.
It's like we don't havea great deal of control.
We can go forward and go backand turn left or right.
That's about it.We can't control it.
It's under the bottom of the.
Pan, out of the. Box,just bumping.
It so they get out of there.
They're like, we should probablytest this drill pretty soon.
Doesn't work. Yeah.
It doesn't work at all.
Why didn't. They test itbefore they went under. On what?
(36:43):
Yeah. What are they goingto test on the.
Under the. It.Just make sure it works.
Oh I'm sure it worked on the airbut it got stuck in the ice
right away. And then it didthe spinny thing to some stuff.
So yeah, it got jammed andthey couldn't service it all.
They reckonit got like a few feet in
and then it would get jammedstraightaway.
It was supposed to be ableto go through 20ft of ice,
which also probably wouldn'thave been enough.
(37:04):
But yeah. Whatever.
Wilkins had now, like,sorry, Hubert, I don't know why
I called him by his last namein this paragraph,
given it now made the decisionthat the whole world
and his crew had been kindof hoping for, which was.
Time to. Go, time to go home.
So he made the radio callthat the expedition is over.
I'm returning home.
So that got radioed at all
the newspapers are like,no, Hubert failed or this other.
(37:26):
So this guy, you suck.Hubert. Yeah.
So they turn aroundand they start heading back.
The specifics of how they turned
the damn thingaround would have been awful.
They probably still hada vertical rudder.
Right? It.
Yeah,
it would have been bloody awfulbecause they're
dragging on the top at the time.
Like they didn'thave that much depth control.
So it would have been quitea challenge to actually
turn it around.Hubert. More like Hubert.
(37:50):
All right.
Don't do that.
Where did it that did you?
So Hubert is so human aboutthe stepping around the sewage.
Okay. Sorry, Sean.
So Hubert had decided that it.
Oh, my God.
You guys are the worst.
And you not hosting,
like, just the worst.
So he decided to headfor England.
(38:11):
Unfortunately,
he was forcedto take refuge in Bergen
because it couldn'tmake it back.
It was just busted up
because of the fierce storm
that they'd encounteredon the route.
The Nautilus had sufferedserious damage that made further
use of the vesselcompletely unfeasible.
The crew abandoned, and,
Hubert had received permission
from the United States Navyto sink the vessel off the shore
(38:31):
of a Norwegian fjordon the 20th on November 1931,
where it still. Is.
Did it have heating?
You know, I said that.
How cold do you reckonit would have got?
Oh, how cold water it would.
It got that cold.Very damn cold.
Probably like some subzero.
That would be Austin.
It'd be close to like one, two,two, three, four.
What it. Has allthe water has a long.
(38:53):
Term growth trajectory. Yeah.
Yeah. Nasty stuff.
So yeah,
it got sunk off the Norwegian
fuel on the 20th of November1931, and it's still there.
Despite failingto meet his intended objective,
he was able to provethat submarines
were capable of operatingbeneath the polar ice.
This paved the way for futuresuccessful
missions to the pole by newer,
(39:13):
more advanced submarinessuch as the USS Sk8,
which was the first nuclearpowered submarine
to crossunder the ice of the North Pole.
What was the first?
You know, he was that wasn'tthe first one by mistake.
That was actually the USSNautilus
was the first nuclear poweredsub to cross under the ice.
The skate actuallyscattered his ashes at the pole.
(39:33):
Oh, nice.
So he died at the ageLee slipped away?
Yeah, he died at the age of 70,in Massachusetts.
Poor and forgotten,He was once one of the greatest.
He was once one of the
greatest Arctic and Antarcticexplorers of his day.
But the world had forgotten
him, as others had later donewhat he could not.
The USS Nautilus,the nuclear sub named in honor
(39:54):
of the first attempt,
would make its crossingunder the North Pole in 1958.
So it took 30 years. Yeah.
Not only was it the first
nuclear powered subto go under the ice,
it was the first nuclearpowered sub.
I don't think I'd want to be onthe first nuclear powered sub.
Just so you know, I.
Think it didbetter than the first Nautilus.
Yeah. Yeah. Did. Yeah.
Well, that story and that's thestory of Hubert Wilkins. Sir.
(40:17):
Hubert Wilkins.
Yeah. Decorated war hero.
It's a shame that he diedpenniless.
Now penniless. Just.
He goes pretty well bankrupt.
But like, he made it to 70.It wasn't. Yeah.
After getting,like, $210,000 in the 30s.
In the 30s? Yeah.
He could have just walked awayand just.
Been fine for this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(40:39):
Interesting.
Sean, the, commanding officerfor the USS Nautilus.
Initial commanding officer.
Not quite. Herbert Wilkins.
It was Eugene Wilkinson.
Pretty force.
It's interesting.
I'm sure that came up.
Wilkins son.
It definitelywould have come up.
(40:59):
I enjoy these, like, explorationbased stories.
You love a good exploration.
Of a good exploration.
And they exploredthe hell out of that.
Well, we done both poles.
I love how janky it was to.
Yeah. Like, yeah.
Put like a tool, like a stickon top that bounces off the ice.
Don't get some skids.
So we could justskate on the ice
and we'll put like a big stickon the front.
(41:20):
We'll put a big drillon the top. Another. No, no.
What what are we going.
What if we got a bunch of iceskates
and turn them upside down? It'sliterally just at that.
Like there'sno it's just gadgets.
Just.
Yeah. Gadgets.
Like it's not even like,oh this is going
to be really amazing.Groundbreaking.
No. Just going to stick gadgets
on an alreadyexisting old submarine.
We're just gonna MacGyverit. Yeah.
It was already pretty old. Like.
(41:41):
Because it's unsolvedby that point.
I mean, like 15 years old. Yeah.
This is pretty awesome. Yeah.
And this is at the time where,like, things got better quickly.
It's like a 15 year old carwhich still has CarPlay.
Yeah. Things were going rapid.
This world.
Big young rugby.
Nice whole episode of the frontinterrupting me.
And then I going at the end.Yeah.
(42:03):
We love a good explorer.
We've done what both powers now.
It's done. The moon? Yep.
What else is there for? Cheese.
More at the 30s. Yeah.What else is it?
What else is therefor? Cheeky it.
Oh we haven't,we've. Done a lot. Of it.
Did you do Hillary.
No I haven't done Hillarybecause I. Haven't been doing I.
Talked about doing Hillary.
Just briefly talkedabout Hillary.
(42:23):
I haven't found a way to make itthat interesting. Yeah.
Surely there's
some sort of explorationof a desert
somewhere that we couldprobably cover, but.
Yeah, probably.I mean, we haven't done a book.
We haven'tdone Broken Wheels. Yep.
Sad. But
yeah, the, Lewis and Clark,one of them was murdered.
Yeah. Oh, no. No, the other day.
Today, actually, this morning.
We haven't done Mackenzie.He was a great explorer.
(42:45):
How to find the NorthwestPassage?
Yeah, a few of them.
This one. Yeah, yeah.
I did a terror.
Gonna do thatsometimes. Answers.
Good one.
Anyway. We're done.
Oh, Captain Cook. Yeah. We did.
Oh, yeah,we did the Captain Cook thing.
We did Captain Cook.
What about that episode?
We haven't done an authorvan Demon, but that's fair.
We sort of covered him inanything.
(43:06):
I covered him in passing.
Cheeky exploration, cheekyexplorations.
Exploration tales.
Yeah. Thanks for.
Yeah. Good episode.
Thanks for coming along andtrying to do that one for a bit.
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Thanks, Darren. Nautilus starfor being ourselves.
I'm not.
It was for the content.
It's for content.
I'm not really sorry.This apology was for content.
(43:27):
You guys were very good at me,actually.
Startinga sentence and then was.
This because this.
Will onlyever do in a bit for you?
We do it.
That's a bit in the intro. It'sbecause there's two of us.
Yeah, it's pain and usuallyit's only one person.
And then you're just over there
reading whatever you're reading.Keeping up to date.
Yeah, it'sbecause there's two of us, like
just we're just feeding offeach other. Yep.
(43:49):
Oh, we lost that camera anyway,
we will be backin another fortnight.
It as as always, been lovelyto listen to a story and to
to speak to you all. Yeah.
Thanks forthanks for tagging along.
Well, see you soon.
Hope you enjoyed boat chatwith Sean.
Keep exploring.
Check.
Knows exploring Chicago's goingdo a cartography to greater
(44:10):
map the worldthat's already been mapped.
Yeah, Google maps doesn't exist.
Yeah,you haven't make your own maps.
Good. Know what, big map?You could make.
Your own maps.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at cheeky.
(44:31):
Tell us Pod on Instagram,Facebook and YouTube.
You can watch our episodeson YouTube
or listen to them on Spotify,Apple Podcasts or whatever.
You get your podcasts. And.
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