The Art of Manliness - Leadership Lessons from a Disastrous Arctic Expedition

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.560 you've probably heard of ernest shackleton and his ill-fated antarctic expedition

00:00:14.480 the endurance the ship on which he and his crew sailed famously became trapped in ice

00:00:19.360 sunk and set the men and their indomitable leader off on an arduous journey to safety and rescue

00:00:24.460 but the shackleton expedition wasn't the only one to meet such a fate and to become a crucible for

00:00:29.540 leadership the year before the demise of the endurance the carluck flagship vessel the canadian

00:00:34.560 arctic expedition became icebound and sunk leaving its crew to trek 80 miles across dangerous ice

00:00:40.040 flows to an island and its captain to travel 1 000 miles more to obtain rescue for those maroon

00:00:45.140 survivors buddy levy shares that compelling story in his new book empire of ice and stone the

00:00:50.520 disastrous and heroic voyage of the carluck and unpacks it for us today on the show along the way

00:00:55.500 he brings out the leadership lessons in planning maintaining morale and embodying endurance you

00:01:00.500 can glean from the expedition's two dominant figures it's awesome principal leader who abandoned the

00:01:05.060 ship and the carlux captain who did all he could to save its shipwrecked survivors after the show's

00:01:10.420 over check out our show notes at aom.is ice buddy levy welcome to the show brett thanks for having me

00:01:26.780 so you just got a new book out called empire of ice and stone the disastrous and heroic voyage of the

00:01:32.740 carluck how did you learn about this story of the carluck it's considered one of the last great voyages of

00:01:38.200 the age of exploration but i didn't know about it until i read your book so how did you learn about it

00:01:43.040 yeah well that's a great question i guess the short version is i went to greenland in 2003 to cover

00:01:50.700 an expedition race in which this blind adventurer named eric weinmayer was doing a week-long multi-sport

00:01:58.220 competition and while i was there in greenland i met a norwegian woman who she was a really amazing

00:02:06.440 adventurer in her own right but she handed me a book called the first crossing of greenland by

00:02:11.460 a norwegian explorer and he talked about this incredible voyage that happened in the 1880s or

00:02:19.540 90s and i got really enthralled by arctic exploration and just also being there it was so amazing and remote

00:02:28.560 and brutal and as i started reading i began to come across these voyages in history that were really

00:02:35.680 remarkable and i ended up writing a book called labyrinth of ice about this greeley expedition that was

00:02:42.700 1881 and during my research for that book i bumped into the story of the carluck and the canadian arctic

00:02:49.580 expedition but i was so busy with the labyrinth of ice book that i just filed it into this folder and so i

00:02:57.660 saved it and came back to it later and i have to say that there was another sort of interest that i had

00:03:04.400 based on my upbringing my father was a nordic ski racer and he competed in the 1956 winter olympics

00:03:12.460 in ski racing which is really really an amazing feat but it was more remarkable because he was from

00:03:19.920 louisiana and i think at the time he was the first louisianan who had competed in the winter olympics

00:03:25.540 because he didn't see snow until he was about 18 years old but later on he moved us to a ski town

00:03:31.400 called sun valley idaho in 1970 and i spent a lot of time in the mountains and it's at 6 000 feet

00:03:38.280 elevation it's really a cold place much of the year and he used to take us out like duck hunting and

00:03:44.120 blinds that were like minus 25 30 degrees and so i kind of got this just interest in cold cold places

00:03:51.880 and the kinds of people who can survive there okay so returning back to the carluck the story

00:03:58.140 of the carluck happens at the sort of tail end of this age of polar exploration that started in the

00:04:04.000 late 19th century and then ran into the early 20th the carluck gets shipwrecked in 1914 and that's

00:04:10.680 about a year before the sinking of shackleton's endurance uh right yeah yes exactly yeah and do you

00:04:17.020 think that's why it gets overlooked because like the shackleton story seems to get all the attention

00:04:20.260 yeah that's a great question i mean actually nearly all arctic and antarctic stories get

00:04:24.960 overshadowed by shackleton's expedition and i think it's probably because in shackleton's voyage of the

00:04:31.280 endurance miraculously everyone lives in the expeditions that i write about and frankly in most

00:04:37.900 other expeditions of the period folks aren't so lucky in fact for most arctic and antarctic exploration

00:04:44.500 the mortality rate was about 50 so if you went there was a good chance you weren't coming home

00:04:52.140 and also the endurance is just a really well-written book and it's the one that comes to most people's

00:04:58.340 mind you know and but uh that said there are so many other great stories no yeah this is a great one i

00:05:06.300 couldn't put this book down i was enthralled by it so the carluck its expedition started in 1913

00:05:11.060 and it was kick-started by this guy i'm gonna let you pronounce his first name because it's

00:05:15.500 norwegian but his last name is stefenson tell us about stefenson sure a lot of people say wilhelmer

00:05:21.740 but he pronounced it williamer williamer stefenson was i say he's an unlikely explorer because of

00:05:30.780 his upbringing and the series of events that led him to the north he was originally born in manitoba

00:05:38.020 canada but a series of disasters floods and smallpox killed two of his siblings his family

00:05:43.360 moved by oxcart to north dakota when he was just three years old and they lived a really hard

00:05:48.320 scrabble existence of subsistence farming and he attended a one-room schoolhouse he was really smart

00:05:54.660 though and he had this active mind and a considerable intellect and by his late teens

00:05:59.240 mostly reading by lamplight in this little cabin he he had enrolled at the university of north dakota

00:06:05.500 and he was sort of a ne'er-do-well in certain ways he was always getting in trouble in his junior year

00:06:11.520 he got expelled for missing three consecutive weeks of school at north dakota and in fairness he had been

00:06:17.680 filling in for a high school teacher as a tutor but within days after expulsion he was accepted at the

00:06:23.140 university of iowa and he finished there in his undergraduate degree within a year he was a really

00:06:27.980 quick study and he ended up being accepted to harvard on a paid fellowship to do a phd program

00:06:33.680 in the divinity school and there he created his own curriculum studying religion as a branch of

00:06:40.660 anthropology but even at harvard there was some controversy around him already he borrowed money

00:06:45.460 from undergraduates and he became involved in a scandal for selling exam questions to students

00:06:50.180 but his mind was really restless and he didn't like teaching and he resolved to do anthropological

00:06:55.740 field work in equatorial africa and this is why i say he was kind of an unlikely arctic explorer because he

00:07:01.320 was all set to go to africa but while he was preparing for that expedition he received a

00:07:07.000 telegram from an american explorer and geologist named ernest leffingwell and he had been organizing

00:07:13.620 a polar expedition this is about 1906 and he had seen an article written by stefanson that piqued his

00:07:20.440 interest and he sent a telegram to stefanson and invited him along and stefanson went and then he spent

00:07:27.300 1906 to eight and then 1909 to 1912 almost full time in the arctic surveying and living among the

00:07:35.040 inuit peoples so it was really kind of a series of just events and and just doing the next thing that

00:07:41.700 came up that propelled him to become an arctic explorer and the other way you describe him the

00:07:47.380 impression i got he was incredibly incredibly ambitious like he wanted fame or glory absolutely

00:07:53.920 you know before the canadian arctic expedition as an example he organized all of these publishing

00:08:01.200 rights and he was writing a book about his time living among the inuit people even on the ship

00:08:08.080 heading to his 1913 canadian arctic expedition so he was always thinking ahead about how he could

00:08:14.520 monetize his expeditions and in that way you know his character i view him as kind of a a chameleon or

00:08:22.100 like a shape shifter he could just change the course of his life in a moment and then go with it and he

00:08:28.300 was also really i think he was egocentric and what we would now call a narcissist and this of course would

00:08:34.340 have profound implications on the members of the car look eventually yeah that idea of him being

00:08:39.540 chameleon like you quote him as saying i am what i want to be and so he's able to suss out what people

00:08:45.000 wanted in a person and he was able to become that to get what he wanted yeah and that proved to be

00:08:50.400 really useful for him in terms of let's say fundraising for the canadian arctic expedition

00:08:57.000 because these expeditions were really expensive you know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of

00:09:02.220 dollars in 1913 money which is millions today and so he had to be very persuasive and compelling and

00:09:12.160 he was able to get organizations like the american museum of natural history and the entire canadian

00:09:18.660 government i mean he even met with the prime minister of canada and he got him on board pardon

00:09:23.620 the pun uh to finance the expedition because it was canada's first major foray into arctic exploration

00:09:31.620 so stefanson yeah he was really charismatic and persuasive and also thinking about how this was going

00:09:41.640 to benefit him so before this expedition in 1913 he had been on arctic expeditions it's not as if he

00:09:48.820 was inexperienced but this was was this the first time he planned one on his own like he was in charge

00:09:53.760 of it well the the previous one that he did with this guy named rudolph anderson they shared the

00:09:59.720 leadership of it and it was smaller in scope and i think that's the major difference is that stefanson

00:10:06.000 was really good at planning and organizing modest expeditions that were manageable in terms of

00:10:13.040 numbers of people and you know he was good at that but the canadian arctic expedition was a whole

00:10:20.260 different animal it was much more ambitious and had more moving parts and that's where things

00:10:27.120 began to kind of fall apart so what was the aim of this expedition like what was stefanson hoping to do with

00:10:32.640 it so the canadian arctic expeditions stated goals were to explore the seas and ice north of alaska

00:10:41.520 and canada searching for new undiscovered lands including this place called crocker land that

00:10:48.760 american explorer robert peary who claimed to have been to the north pole and claimed the north pole

00:10:53.960 on a previous expedition robert peary said that he saw this land mass from the shore of elsmere island in

00:11:01.100 canada and he named it crocker land after this bank financier so they were looking for this place

00:11:09.360 called crocker land if it existed to expand the canadian archipelago and to expand land holdings

00:11:16.400 essentially and they also were going to engage in anthropology biology oceanography and geography

00:11:23.020 marine and terrestrial study so it was a pretty big and ambitious undertaking and then there were two

00:11:28.680 parties the northern and southern party and the southern party was going to do land-based anthropology

00:11:33.600 and geography in the coronation gulf region among the islands off of canada's northern coastline

00:11:40.020 and it was really a big expedition as i said it was canada's first major foray into arctic exploration

00:11:48.240 and stefanson brought along 16 international scientists which at the time was the largest staff

00:11:54.220 of scientists ever carried on a polar expedition and they were from all over the place they were

00:11:59.100 from canada france scotland new zealand norway and stefanson even brought along this photographer

00:12:06.160 and cameraman from australia named george hubert wilkins to document the endeavor so he was really

00:12:11.460 thinking about the media possibilities when he returned that was the plan anyway so this was a big

00:12:17.800 expedition and you think well a big expedition like this would take a year maybe two years to plan

00:12:23.860 but this guy it was in a few months he had the idea i think early 1913 and by june july 1913 they were

00:12:33.300 they're off to the races yeah well stefanson attempted to organize this expedition in a matter of months

00:12:39.920 and normally as you say it takes a year or more he bought this ship called the carlick which is the

00:12:47.280 illusion or the alut word for fish and it was an underpowered ship that was ill-suited for dealing with

00:12:53.620 the arctic ice pack and he picked up two more ships along the way this is like after they'd already

00:12:59.860 left from esquimalt british columbia so he's getting ships in route and you know he did a bunch of his

00:13:07.060 pre-organization in the late months of 1912 by going to europe and talking it up and it was at that point he

00:13:15.640 actually met robert peary and peary told him about this captain bartlett that he should hire but you

00:13:21.800 know his planning was rushed i will say and he ultimately had three ships that were the armada

00:13:31.860 of the canadian arctic expedition the carlick being the flagship but the problem was he ended up having

00:13:38.660 the wrong men and equipment on the wrong ships because the plan had been to meet at point barrow

00:13:46.760 at the northern tip of alaska get all their stuff kind of organized temporarily there and then head to

00:13:54.420 the east of this little island above canada called herschel island where they were going to rendezvous

00:13:59.080 and reorganize everything but the problem was that a massive winter storm in august of 1913 blew that plan

00:14:07.520 to smithereens and he had been acquiring skins and furs for winter clothing just days before leaving

00:14:14.720 point barrow which is quite late and unprepared since much of the clothing still had to be sewn from those

00:14:20.900 skins it's one of those expeditions where everything sort of went south immediately you know yeah no that

00:14:30.020 was the common refrain i mean a lot of the the scientists and the crewmen were concerned about the

00:14:35.300 slapdash preparations and they'd bring it up to steffensen and he would just say well we'll take

00:14:40.580 care of it at point barrow we'll take care of it then or if you know well and it just kept on getting

00:14:45.260 pushed further and further back until it was it was too late yeah actually it becomes a joke for some of

00:14:50.740 the members we'll sort it out at herschel island they keep saying and like they never even get to

00:14:55.300 herschel island the other scientists you're right they were concerned about a number of things

00:14:59.120 not only that things were a little haphazard but steffensen made them sign contracts that said they

00:15:09.140 couldn't publish anything within a year of returning because steffensen himself wasn't drawing a pay for

00:15:15.460 the expedition he was getting going to get all his money on the back end on publishing rights and the

00:15:21.420 other members were hired by the canadian government so they were actually drawing pay but also at the time

00:15:28.000 they were moving north from esquimalt british columbia and up to alaska when they would make

00:15:33.720 land steffensen was actually doing interviews with newspaper reporters and he was saying things that

00:15:39.520 were really disconcerting to the scientists like you know the mission itself and the expedition is more

00:15:45.940 important than either the ships or the members of the expedition because he knew that it wasn't uncommon

00:15:52.720 for ships to get beset or nipped in the ice and then drift maybe 4 000 miles so so the members of

00:16:02.240 these scientists are thinking well wait what have i signed up for all right so uh steffensen for the

00:16:07.660 most part his planning was very poor uh he picked an imp like the car look wasn't really suited for

00:16:13.080 what it was about to do was underpowered but he did do a few good things and one of them was

00:16:17.980 hiring robert bartlett to captain the car look tell us about robert bartlett sure yeah bartlett surfaces as

00:16:25.900 kind of the hero of this story to me he's really amazing he was a proud newfoundlander from a pretty

00:16:32.700 famous family in brigas newfoundland they were called the bartlets of brigas and they were his father

00:16:38.780 grandfather and uncles had all been involved in the whaling and sealing industry and exploring for

00:16:44.560 generations and bartlett had been at sea since he was 17 so he's 37 at the start of the canadian

00:16:52.000 arctic expedition a couple of decades of life on a ship almost exclusively he'd sailed all over the

00:16:59.400 world and most important to steffensen and to the members of the carlick bartlett had been with

00:17:05.420 american explorer robert perry on three north pole attempts including as captain of this specially built

00:17:13.160 steel hulled ship called the roosevelt on the final controversial north pole attempt and bartlett

00:17:19.480 had actually made it he he was off the ship and helping lead perry in 1909 on the final approach to

00:17:27.600 the north pole and bartlett made it to within 150 miles of the north pole but at any rate bartlett at

00:17:33.960 the time was known as the world's greatest living ice navigator and so he had learned to move a ship

00:17:39.480 through these weaving labyrinth of leads that you encounter in pack ice and he was an excellent

00:17:46.100 leader too he was he was severe if you were lazy or made mistakes but he was also kind and friendly and

00:17:53.640 fair and generous and he put his crew first he was devoted to his ship its members and to getting

00:18:01.220 everyone home and so that's why he was a great choice to captain the carlick and he was like a perfect

00:18:07.040 contrast to steffensen you know that's the impression i got bartlett was very he was very methodical he

00:18:11.980 was always thinking of contingencies all the time and he was always just thinking about his crew

00:18:17.220 first steffensen the complete opposite yeah they're sort of uh you know opposite sides of a coin really

00:18:25.780 bartlett and steffensen all right so the carlick it sets out from gnome in july 1913 and starts making

00:18:31.900 its way up the alaskan coast it's going to head east basically over canada but then in august it's

00:18:38.560 just north of alaska and it becomes icebound i think this is this year the arctic had a really

00:18:44.340 really cold winter so it is icebound earlier than usual and i loved how you described navigating

00:18:50.640 through arctic sea because it just you painted as this incredibly treacherous experience where the

00:18:56.520 landscape is constantly shifting so how did the carlick do this without being equipped to plow

00:19:02.080 through ice because i think most arctic ships they had the horsepower just to kind of steam through and

00:19:06.140 barge through ice the carlick couldn't do that so what did bartlett do right so yeah i'm glad you

00:19:11.500 described that because a lot of people think of polar ice as being this static frozen sheet of ice that's

00:19:18.300 flat kind of like a gigantic rink and it's not anything like that you know it's comprised of these

00:19:25.720 flows what are called ice flows and they're relatively flat masses of ice that move and

00:19:31.640 drift independently across the polar seas and if you compare those to say icebergs which are

00:19:37.180 often really high and jagged and sharp but smaller in volume and size so these ice flows are kind of

00:19:46.620 some of them are massive they're many miles wide and long and some are smaller just a few hundred yards

00:19:51.960 wide or long and they drift along the current and wind sometimes binding together to form larger flows

00:19:59.160 and they are they're propelled by wind and current and the trick of navigating through them is that

00:20:05.320 sometimes as they shatter and break up they create what are called leads and leads are open water

00:20:12.060 between flows and the ship has to kind of weave and snake its way through the water that is between

00:20:21.820 these giant flows of ice so it's rarely straight right and so bartlett was very good at finding his way

00:20:30.380 it's kind of like you get up in the crow's nest and scan with binoculars way out and you sort of can see

00:20:37.100 where openings are and then you you know yell down to the helmsman to go this way or that way but like you

00:20:44.220 said that august of 1913 was a severe winter and so they began to encounter massive snowstorms big gale force

00:20:55.380 winds and fog and they were no longer able to see where they were going and so that made it really difficult and

00:21:03.240 at this point like i said they were they were trying to move east above alaska and canada along the shoreline

00:21:09.520 to this place called herschel island but they ended up getting what's called beset or nipped

00:21:16.700 meaning stuck in the ice or ice bound and the way you described this was a common occurrence it wasn't

00:21:22.960 like i mean they didn't want to be ice bound but it was expected that this could happen and so they

00:21:27.640 were prepared for that well right so sometimes you get ice bound and then you wait it out and a few

00:21:33.760 days later there'll be a change in the weather and the flows will begin to shift and then leads will

00:21:39.440 open up and then you go for it you know you fire up the steam engines and you go but on this particular

00:21:46.660 journey they got hammered by storms and the ice was not cooperating and bartlett made a decision with

00:21:54.340 steffensen's permission actually to to go north farther offshore to try to get away from some of

00:22:01.060 the of these flows and it turned out to not solve the problem the flows were just as thick 10 or 12 miles

00:22:11.120 off of shore and they ended up becoming stuck and what happened too is that they started drifting

00:22:18.100 west the opposite direction from where they wanted it to go right so it's kind of amazing they try a

00:22:26.500 number of times to get out of the situation that they're in their leads will open and then bartlett

00:22:33.700 will try to go for them but ultimately they get so beset that they're just not under their own power

00:22:40.300 anymore and so they're at the mercy of the drift and at that point the winds shift and you're right

00:22:48.200 they begin drifting north and west so away from the mainland and at this point steffensen starts to get

00:22:56.540 kind of nervous or he starts acting like he wants to be anywhere but on this ship and i should say that

00:23:04.020 there was a library on board the carlick which had the logs of a number of other expeditions that had

00:23:11.280 gone and become encased in ice in a similar spot and they're reading by lamplight you know these stories

00:23:20.700 of the genet and stuff where these ships got encased in ice and then drifted for months and months and

00:23:27.380 ended up getting crushed and you know most of the people die so there's a kind of palpable nervousness

00:23:33.880 and edginess on board steffensen certainly knew about those previous voyages and so you know

00:23:40.900 while they're drifting along there's just kind of this um sense of unease and in the process at a

00:23:48.760 certain point bartlett because he's this experienced mariner and he read these logs and understood what

00:23:53.920 could possibly happen there's a chance that they might get crushed and the ship will sink he started

00:23:58.480 making the contingency plans he's actually started establishing a camp outside of the ship

00:24:03.160 in the event they had to abandon ship yeah absolutely so yeah bartlett was um he understood

00:24:11.180 from other expeditions to the one that i wrote about in the 1881 to 1884 greeley expedition

00:24:18.500 really learned a lot about you know what so-called cabin fever and what happens to members on a ship when

00:24:25.680 they are not doing much so bartlett you mean you know and also you're experiencing what's called the

00:24:34.100 long night at a certain point the sun you know sets up in those regions and it doesn't return for a few

00:24:41.000 months and so bartlett understood that he needed the men to keep busy to have regular routine and that

00:24:49.540 included you know sometimes going off the ship and doing exercise when they could when the conditions on the

00:24:54.940 ice were safe enough and also to practice fire drills in case the ship caught on fire there were a

00:25:02.560 couple of mini coal stoves and so there was a danger of fire so he had like periodic fire drills where

00:25:09.760 everyone had a job he had a structure to the day including when to get up when to eat when lights were out

00:25:16.320 and this was all complicated by the fact that bartlett wasn't i mean he was the ship's captain but it

00:25:22.600 wasn't a military expedition so there was a little disgruntlement among the scientists who were still

00:25:28.440 on board because you know they were thinking well i'm not i'm really stefanson's my boss but you know

00:25:34.780 i'm doing what bartlett says some of them were really cooperative and then others were kind of reluctant

00:25:40.320 but it really made a difference because like you say bartlett also had them practice moving

00:25:46.900 thousands of pounds of gear coal food off the ship and then bringing it back on board and people were

00:25:55.260 wondering why he was doing that and he was thinking ahead about the eventuality that what if the ship gets

00:26:02.420 crushed yeah that's the one thing whenever i read about these arctic mariners and arctic explorers the

00:26:07.660 really good ones had a keen understanding of human psychology and the need for to keep busy to keep

00:26:14.020 working to have a schedule to exercise i mean sometimes i laugh when they talk about their

00:26:18.200 exercise they'd go out and run around the ship when it was negative 30 degrees outside or oh we're

00:26:24.640 gonna go skiing they'd build like ski jumps and they'd have a day of skiing and bartlett encouraged

00:26:30.620 that because that this is good for them so keep them uh keep them mentally healthy yeah i mean that's

00:26:35.520 great you point that out because two of my favorite characters one is william mckinley who's a scottish

00:26:40.820 school teacher and he was really into it and he created like a course that he ran around the ship

00:26:48.280 like up the stairs from the cabins up onto the deck around the ship down onto the ice and he had it down

00:26:54.720 to like one lap was a mile and he would do this every day he was training for just so that he would be

00:27:00.560 fit and ready when you know when disaster struck if if disaster struck and there was another guy

00:27:07.800 young man named bjarne mamman from norway who was like you said he was an excellent skier he had

00:27:13.520 actually won some competitions in norway and he brought skis along and he built poles and he got

00:27:19.040 everybody out there on the ice including bartlett and he built jumps and bartlett seemed to understand

00:27:24.320 that you know everyone having physical activity and also mental activity was really important for

00:27:32.100 their overall well-being he encouraged mckinley to start this like weekly tutoring session they had

00:27:40.280 brought along an inuit family from point barrow alaska the man kuraluk the father was brought along to

00:27:46.960 run the dogs and also hunt seals and he was really really amazingly instrumental in the survival of a

00:27:55.300 lot of these people and also he brought along his wife and two kids his wife kuraluk ended up being

00:28:01.800 really really she was an excellent seamstress and so she was sewing constantly these skin and fur clothing

00:28:08.100 for the men and mckinley ended up doing a language course with them so he would learn their native

00:28:14.680 language and they would learn english so they could communicate better and be more efficient as a

00:28:20.100 group we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:28:23.520 and now back to the show so you mentioned that stefanson he was getting nervous and he was basically

00:28:34.060 giving off the impression that he wanted to be somewhere else and not on the ship he decides to

00:28:39.280 finally leave how he's able to do that without raising the alarms of the scientists and the other

00:28:44.500 crewmen yeah well that's one of the more controversial elements of the book and so in the third week of

00:28:52.600 september of 1913 stefanson announces that he's going to go on a caribou hunt he's going to cross the ice to

00:29:00.660 the alaskan mainland and go hunt caribou with a couple of the scientists and two of the inuit hunters

00:29:10.660 that he had hired these are different than curl look and his family and he wrote a letter or he wrote

00:29:19.700 instructions to bartlett saying i'm going to be gone for 10 days to two weeks we need fresh meat

00:29:26.200 if no accident happens i'll be back so you should build coal fires outside the ship on the ice so we

00:29:34.520 can see where this ship is um but and then he takes off and it's really amazing there's a you know

00:29:41.080 photograph of him that he took wilkins that photographer with him and there's a photograph

00:29:45.480 in the book of him you know striking out in front of these other folks with a dog sled team he brought

00:29:52.640 the best 12 dogs and he's just taking off and it's kind of like oh um what are you doing bro

00:29:58.780 like because he had said to some of the members before that there weren't very many caribou left

00:30:04.960 in the area that they were going to go to and i actually discovered that he had a secret

00:30:11.000 inuit wife named fanny and he had a son with her who was three years old from his previous trip and

00:30:18.240 he ends up going to see them so it doesn't look too good for stefanson because he takes off

00:30:25.160 ostensibly to hunt caribou but maybe to go see his inuit family which he ends up doing within

00:30:31.800 a few weeks and then this massive storm hits and stefanson and the others are stranded on this little

00:30:39.360 island off the north coast of alaska and by the time the weather clears and he's able to climb up

00:30:46.980 this little observation tower that they build out of driftwood the carlick is now careening at like

00:30:53.720 30 to 60 miles a day out into the middle of the arctic ocean towards siberia okay so stefanson he's

00:31:00.820 on the island does he i mean does he go get help i mean you think that'd be the first thing you do

00:31:05.300 i'm going to let people know there's this ship that's stuck and drifting away does he go do that

00:31:08.820 that's another problem with stefanson is that he makes it to land and he ends up so a couple of the

00:31:17.220 other ships got separated from the carlick early on and they ended up making it to wintering bays that

00:31:26.000 they're able to just anchor in and so stefanson ultimately finds the leader of the southern party

00:31:34.580 and he tells him that he's lost his ship which is kind of an embarrassing moment you know to have to

00:31:42.160 say uh yeah i'm on shore but my flagship carlick is somewhere out there he points towards siberia

00:31:48.560 and then he doesn't immediately go get help and you know he explains this away by saying well

00:31:55.400 we don't really know where the ship is i mean there's no radio on it there's no way to just go after

00:32:01.360 it but he dawdles for a while and you know he left the ship in mid-september and he ends up sending

00:32:08.240 a letter back to the canadian government knowing that that letter isn't really going to get there

00:32:12.860 for a few months because of how hard it is to get mail anywhere it has to go by like dog sled team

00:32:18.360 first and he ends up just re outfitting what he calls the new northern party and commandeering some of

00:32:28.060 the ships and gear from the southern party and then setting out on the ice on his own with a couple

00:32:36.220 members not to be really seen or heard from again until 1918 five years later after world war one is

00:32:43.320 over so it's a pretty dubious number of decisions that he makes that make him seem a little self-seeking

00:32:50.520 or villainous if you want to lean that way yeah when he did explain he'd basically be like well

00:32:56.880 there's nothing we can do about it so i'll just keep doing my thing and people yeah i mean he he says

00:33:02.900 some things that are really kind of shocking like either the ship or its wreckage is going to

00:33:07.840 surface somewhere and we won't know the results of that until spring or summer which in some ways is

00:33:15.220 actually true but he also doesn't say like we should immediately begin planning for rescue once the ice

00:33:23.940 breaks up in summer and have that all set up and ready to roll he just goes about his business and

00:33:30.920 his assumption is that bartlett will figure it out bartlett will get these people to safety one

00:33:38.840 way or another and then he sort of washes his hands of it so the carlet continues to drift towards

00:33:44.340 siberia it's still stuck can't get out of the ice in january 1914 it sinks and i guess what happens is it

00:33:51.780 just the it just got smashed by the ice flows pressing up against each other yeah so bartlett like you said

00:33:58.740 he had he had known about the contingency that the ship might get crushed so he ended up like getting

00:34:05.420 all this stuff out off the ship and having members get thousands of pounds of food and coal and also

00:34:11.180 liquid fuel and dog sleds and everything in case and then of course in january of 1914 the shifting ice

00:34:18.740 pack has encroached to such a degree on the hull of the carlet that these jagged fangs of ice pierce the

00:34:25.640 sides of it and water just begins rushing in and it's really incredible there's a scene in which

00:34:32.320 bartlett i mean he's he kind of had a flair for the dramatic because he's up in the in the galley

00:34:37.680 he's got a phonograph and he got everybody else down off the ship when it first got crushed and water

00:34:44.380 started coming and there's a maybe a day or two where it's going to stay floating but he knows that

00:34:49.860 the end is near and he ends up like playing record after record until at one point he he puts on

00:34:56.460 chopin's funeral march as the last record and then he sort of dramatically and cinematically steps off

00:35:03.500 of the side of the carlet as it's going down and they've raised the canadian flag to full mast and

00:35:12.360 the steam spout is sticking up and then the ship just sinks in the water and there's this puff of steam

00:35:18.520 smoke and everyone else is standing on the shoreline well it's not really a shoreline it's the

00:35:24.040 on this flat ice surface that is a stable place where they put all this stuff and they just watch

00:35:30.840 the ship sink and they have named this place shipwreck camp and and they barley was really clever because

00:35:38.020 he organized the building of a big igloo which curlook and his family built there's like 30 dogs still

00:35:46.680 so they have kennels for the dogs and they have this box house that they use crates and gear to

00:35:52.780 make the walls of this box house and at shipwreck camp they end up living for six weeks on the ice

00:36:00.020 while they're drifting waiting for the light to return so that they can potentially make a break

00:36:07.560 toward land this place called wrangle island and that was the other thing that impressed me so their

00:36:14.200 ship sank but they have this camp and uh you describe it most of the crew they were in pretty

00:36:19.140 good spirits despite their ship sinking because they had this this nice camp and bartlett was

00:36:23.620 generous with rations you know they had lots of bacon we're gonna make you sure everything is good

00:36:28.340 and it was kind of nice for a while which i was surprised i thought oh if your ship sank you'd be

00:36:32.200 just despondent and depressed yeah that's that's a really good point i mean you know if you imagine

00:36:37.580 yourself on a floating cake of ice that's about a mile and a half square being buffeted by winds and

00:36:47.060 sometimes fracturing at the edges and also you know if you've ever been on the arctic ice or you haven't

00:36:52.800 it's really really noisy it's it can be terrifyingly loud and it shears and creaks and groans and splits

00:37:00.920 but at shipwreck camp they had you know they had shelter they had warmth they had a ton of food more

00:37:07.900 than they were going to be able to bring across the ice to wrangle island this place they had spotted

00:37:12.600 which is now when they first saw it it was maybe 150 miles to the west but they're drifting generally

00:37:20.020 toward it but yeah they were quite comfortable for that six weeks and bartlett was really smart because

00:37:25.400 he started having them practice going toward wrangle island and building kind of an ice trail

00:37:33.400 with dog sled teams and then building igloos like a series of igloos along the way that they would be

00:37:39.860 able to use when the sun returned and they could go in small teams toward wrangle island and by the way

00:37:46.940 wrangle island is about a 90 mile long or actually 90 mile west to east and maybe

00:37:55.400 50 miles top to bottom north to south island above the northeastern coast of siberia

00:38:03.040 so yeah this uh this planning of creating caches along the way before they even made the push for

00:38:08.380 the islands another example of bartlett's i mean mastery of planning thinking about contingencies

00:38:13.040 so they at a certain point they decide to make the push towards the island but again it's not just that

00:38:19.000 the ice is just flat like a skating rink there is a changing landscape and you talk about these pressure

00:38:24.600 ridges that could just form in front of you and block your way and that happened to them correct

00:38:30.480 yeah i'm glad you bring that up that was one of the most dramatic journeys in the book and actually

00:38:36.480 that i've ever read about so when the sun comes back in in march of 1914 now bartlett has made all these

00:38:45.480 contingency plans and they start going in teams and there's all sorts of drama that happens in route

00:38:52.540 i mean it takes a few weeks to to finally get toward wrangle island to within striking distance of it

00:38:58.040 but all sorts of things are occurring like they're getting lost and some of the members get lost and go

00:39:03.400 to the wrong island this is other really small island called herald island that's only four miles long

00:39:08.760 and they few of the members end up there by accident because navigation is really difficult out there

00:39:13.960 there's no landmarks really and it's you know wind blows and it's shifts and also the conditions are

00:39:20.620 the ice is buckling all the time and there are these giant drifts where wind blows formations but more

00:39:28.200 problematic they come to these what you mentioned were pressure ridges and it's if you take these giant

00:39:34.300 flows some of them can be you know 15 miles long and they crash into each other and into land masses

00:39:40.320 like wrangle island and it's like tectonic plates of ice that ram together and then they rupture where

00:39:47.680 they meet and create giant ridges of ice that some of them are over a hundred feet tall and they come to

00:39:54.320 this wall like a mountain range of ice and bartlett realizes that you know he sends people a couple of

00:40:01.620 miles either way to see if they can go around it but it's the juice extends for many miles and so he

00:40:06.980 decides the most efficient way and the quickest is to cut their way through it so they build like a

00:40:12.540 four foot wide ice track using ice picks and shovels and they hack their way through these massive

00:40:21.020 pressure ridges it takes days and days and he calls it the hardest thing he's ever done and along the way

00:40:27.300 i mean weren't some of them getting attacked by polar bears at the same time or am i thinking about

00:40:32.120 something else absolutely so you know it's funny because people always say well why didn't they just

00:40:36.440 hunt polar bears well it turns out the polar bears were hunting them because they have they're getting

00:40:41.680 some seals along the way and then they're dragging the seals in their sleds and the polar bears of

00:40:46.780 course eat seals and they've got amazing sense of smell so they start tracking the members of the

00:40:53.320 carlick the survivors and they're following them and sometimes they'll be in their igloo sleeping at

00:40:58.160 night so they'll have like a you know 12 to 15 hour slog during the day build an igloo or use one of the

00:41:05.140 igloos that they built when they were getting ready to build the trail across and then they hear the dogs

00:41:11.140 going crazy and all of a sudden they crawl out of the igloo and there's giant polar bear like swiping at

00:41:16.920 the dogs and they have to shoot them and so the rest of their journey is you know not only are they

00:41:22.520 dealing with the ice cracking under the igloos sometimes in the middle of the night and they

00:41:27.720 have to get out and regroup and you know they're always sleeping fully clothed but then of course

00:41:33.300 there's this specter of polar bears you're looking over your shoulder like are we being followed and

00:41:38.260 they were yeah and we have to remember it we're there in the arctic so it's cold it's negative 30

00:41:43.420 negative 40 negative 50 degrees and that just adds to the complete discomfort of this situation not

00:41:48.740 only that the hack through ice or be afraid that the ice is going to break underneath them

00:41:52.100 but the cold just grinds you down oh it's incredibly cold and you know they fall in through the ice a

00:41:59.080 number of times and different members you know have to like crawl into an igloo and then another

00:42:04.840 expedition member or scientist will like strip them out of their wet clothing and put them in

00:42:10.340 dryish clothing but yeah you're right i mean the temperatures range from you know minus 20 to minus 50

00:42:17.520 and that's without the wind chill factor which was ever present so they finally make the island they

00:42:24.380 hack through that pressure ridge which seems awful they make it to the island and then bartlett decides

00:42:29.820 well i got to plan a rescue mission here because i think at this point he's like i don't think

00:42:32.980 steffens is doing anything so he has to make this 1 000 mile trek back to alaska via siberia so he gets

00:42:39.600 the island continues west till he gets to russia then he goes south along the coast of siberia so he

00:42:47.420 could cross over to alaska he took an inuit crewman with him to help him with this but he had to leave

00:42:53.600 most of the crew behind what happened to the crew after bartlett left because it seemed when when

00:42:58.100 bartlett there he was this he was a leader he was providing there was organization things were happening

00:43:02.800 things might have been hard but bartlett was there to you know figure things out what happened when

00:43:07.600 bartlett left right well that's a great point because they get to wrangle island in early march

00:43:13.240 of 1914 and bartlett realized within two days it was so hard to get to wrangle island that the marooned

00:43:22.220 that were there were in really bad shape when they got there you know he sees that they're hypothermic

00:43:27.640 and frostbitten you know they're really really in terrible shape and he decides that because no one else

00:43:34.640 in the world knows where they are no one is coming there the whaling industry is sort of in decline

00:43:40.280 and it's a remote place anyway so he understands that the only way that anybody's going to get there

00:43:45.640 is if he makes a go of it himself right so he leaves a dozen members on wrangle island and tells them

00:43:54.260 to separate into different camps by a number of miles and so that each camp can hunt on its own and try to

00:44:03.240 get subsistence food so he knows that there's arctic foxes around there are some polar bears

00:44:10.240 there are birds that are going to be coming in the spring and there's a lot of walrus but they won't

00:44:16.020 be there until the spring either and so he tells them to try to subsist until he brings help and it won't

00:44:22.340 be until maybe mid-july to late summer the following summer and so he leaves them there but they're

00:44:32.380 separated across wrangle island these small groups and he has left william mckinley in charge of the

00:44:37.420 stores of food and he's told one group to go all the way to the south because that's where he will

00:44:43.600 eventually send help if it can come but they grow malnourished pretty quickly and they begin to

00:44:51.000 suffer from this mystery sickness that in the end is probably a kidney disorder as a result of eating

00:44:58.200 only pemmican like the mixture of fat dried meat and berries that arctic travelers took with them but

00:45:05.620 surviving on that for great lengths of time can be problematic and is for them and then also

00:45:11.480 they be it sort of becomes a little bit like the lord of the flies on a frozen icy landscape because

00:45:18.380 they are remote they get anxious and depressed many of the members and so things begin to devolve

00:45:26.620 on this island pretty quickly but a number of the members end up kind of keeping things together

00:45:33.480 mckinley is one of them and then bjarne mamman that norwegian fellow is one of them but yeah things

00:45:40.140 are pretty grim so bartlett all the while he's still he's on this voyage and it's pretty much by foot

00:45:45.540 there's a few instances where he's on sled but he's walking this is about a 700 mile trek it takes him i mean

00:45:52.300 he leaves the island at the end of march and he's back near alaska is it i think may late may 1914 is

00:46:00.600 that right right he and katak tovic make this mythic quest voyage across what's called the long

00:46:06.880 straight which is no easy feat you know they they almost get engulfed by the ice numerous times but

00:46:12.620 they have some a few dogs and they're able to it's an ordeal i really really was impressed by

00:46:18.680 this journey and then they're aided by these different indigenous people in siberia that they

00:46:24.480 run into called the chuchki and so they end up making it back to alaska after this massive ordeal

00:46:33.120 but bartlett needs to organize rescue ships via the american and canadian governments when he finally

00:46:40.040 gets back and is able to send a telegram to the canadian government and say look there are you know

00:46:45.620 15 or so members of the carla marooned on wrangle island we need to rescue them and the problem

00:46:53.480 he has is that in that part of the world there's a very short window of navigable waters where the

00:47:01.860 ice moves off and you can make your way there in a ship that is not an icebreaker but the ice is so

00:47:09.080 thick most of the year that it's really difficult to get there and the weather and the ice conditions

00:47:13.080 have to cooperate and everything has to line up and so you need the right ship plenty of coal

00:47:18.600 and good weather and a hell of a lot of luck yeah and so he had a small window there's a lot of hurry

00:47:25.000 up and waiting at this period and you can sense the frustration bartlett had people just they had other

00:47:30.100 stuff they had to do they wasn't a sense of urgency he would reach out hey i got there's people up

00:47:34.300 there and like oh well i gotta go up to this place and drop some stuff off if i have time i'll go do it

00:47:38.940 and i imagine that was really frustrating for him so he finally does get a rescue mission going and

00:47:44.240 we'll save the details of what he finds back on wrangle island when he gets there for readers of

00:47:49.840 your book but overall what was the legacy of the carluck and what happened to some of the survivors

00:47:54.980 of this expedition i mean like many arctic stories the legacy of the carluck is one of survival of

00:48:01.900 travail under the harshest of circumstances imaginable but both you know weather and human

00:48:08.640 but i will say there was also a great deal of fellowship and camaraderie and selflessness too

00:48:13.700 or else none of them would have survived many of the members who survive they actually and particularly

00:48:20.140 some of them like william mckinley who i mentioned they grew as a result of these tests becoming more

00:48:25.700 than they ever believed they could as leaders you know mckinley he started out as a school teacher

00:48:32.180 and he ended up learning to ski to build igloos to hunt seals and walrus and birds and and to become a

00:48:38.880 leader some people diminished and resorted to stealing food from others and lying for self-preservation

00:48:44.320 many of the members immediately i mean world war one breaks out like right as bartlett is organizing the

00:48:52.120 rescue attempt and so to add insult to injury most of the men who survive end up going off to fight in

00:49:00.680 world war one you know pretty soon after their arrival some of them needed surgery immediately for

00:49:06.380 amputation of their frostbitten hands and feet ironically or maybe it's just a lesson we should

00:49:12.220 really take away from us is that the inuit members who survived returned home to alaska and lived out their

00:49:18.860 lives normally almost as if nothing had happened you know it was sort of like daily life for them

00:49:24.960 they were quite accustomed to it and so yeah i think it's kind of a cautionary tale but we can also

00:49:31.360 learn a lot about what humans are capable of i would say you know the endurance that they go through

00:49:38.800 there are certain times where members are awake for three days consecutively and travel over a hundred

00:49:45.600 miles on on foot in severe conditions and you start to realize that people are capable of much more than

00:49:53.340 you think yeah you mentioned uh some of the men who survived they went off to fight in world war one i think

00:49:59.860 one of them described he said world war one was awful but i said it didn't compare to anything like it was

00:50:06.540 when i was on the car look that was even worse than that did uh stefanson suffer any repercussions

00:50:11.440 for his abandonment of the crew well that's a good question not necessarily in terms of you know

00:50:19.460 being sanctioned in any formal way bartlett actually underwent a commission inquiry into his choice to

00:50:26.500 sail farther off coast but more stefanson in his reputation i mean he ends up going on to become and

00:50:34.400 i make this clear like i have no qualms with stefanson as a scientist there's a library with all of his

00:50:40.080 holdings and you know stefanson is a he's a major figure in polar exploration but i think the

00:50:47.840 carlick episode wasn't really great for his um pr you know yeah um so you mentioned some of the life

00:50:54.840 lessons you took from this you know the ability for humans to endure more than you think the

00:50:59.000 perseverance i mean what are some leadership lessons perhaps that was i was kind of reading this

00:51:03.200 book as a leadership book it's a great story action story but i think it is a book on leadership

00:51:07.040 are there some leadership lessons that you took away from researching and writing this book

00:51:11.680 you bet yeah i mean i think one would be to learn to work with others and to listen and to work

00:51:19.340 together certainly to plan for the worst plan for disaster plan for things to go wrong and if they

00:51:27.080 don't well great you over planned but i think small teams are generally better than large ones

00:51:33.240 and also learn to relish problem solving this book really is a is just series of problem solving

00:51:42.060 and bartlett is masterful at that he's constantly being confronted with new challenges on the daily

00:51:48.940 basis and his ability to not panic and just solve the problem as it comes to you is really crucial i think

00:51:57.060 it's a we can all take something away from that i i mentioned not to underestimate people because

00:52:02.160 they're capable of much more than you think and much more than they think they're capable of one

00:52:07.180 thing i've learned from studying arctic expeditions is that it helps you know how to do a lot of things

00:52:11.940 and that many of the tools we've lost is in our convenience-based society so you know reading maps to

00:52:19.260 navigate building fires building shelters finding water not relying on technology all of the time to solve

00:52:25.700 all our own problems are really things that like personal takeaways and also you know because a lot

00:52:31.940 of these stories have to do with you know like food debt you know is that we need we sort of need a lot

00:52:37.560 less food than we typically consume and we it's not so much that we become weaker or less tough as

00:52:44.380 people but i think we've socialized toughness out of ourselves by disuse and the other leadership

00:52:50.500 thing i would say is as a leader you know pick your directors and managers really carefully bartlett

00:52:56.420 was excellent i mean look stefenson picked bartlett which was a stroke of genius bartlett ended up picking

00:53:02.040 mckinley and bjorn momen and these two were really really useful and without them there you know there

00:53:09.600 would have been more carnage and then last i think is is lead by example you know bartlett leads by

00:53:14.980 example he he doesn't shirk responsibility he's right out there at the front of the fray and he

00:53:21.920 thinks of others before himself i love it well buddy uh where can people go to learn more about

00:53:26.540 the book and your work oh yeah great i appreciate it www.buddylevy.com and my books can be found at

00:53:34.900 independent bookstores and everywhere that books are sold fantastic well buddy levy thanks for time it's

00:53:40.800 been a pleasure my pleasure brett really appreciated talking with you my guest today was buddy levy he's

00:53:46.160 the author of the book empire of ice and stone it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:53:50.160 you can find more information about his work at his website buddylevy.com also check out our show

00:53:54.720 notes at aom.is slash ice where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:53:59.060 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:54:09.920 art of manless.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles written

00:54:13.840 over the years about pretty much anything you can think of and if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:54:17.160 episodes of the aom podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcherpremium.com

00:54:21.200 sign up use code manless to check out for a free month trial once you're signed up download the

00:54:25.180 stitcher app on android ios and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the aom podcast

00:54:28.620 and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a view on a podcast

00:54:32.260 or spotify helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show

00:54:36.780 with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it as always thank you for the

00:54:40.480 continued support until next time it's brett mckay remind you don't listen to the podcast but put what

00:54:44.900 you've heard into action

00:54:55.180 you

The Art of Manliness - February 15, 2023

Leadership Lessons from a Disastrous Arctic Expedition

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript