WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en-GB

1
00:00:00.429 --> 00:00:03.480
Up there is the bridge
of the Kaptran Klebnikov,

2
00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:04.991
the Russian ice
breaker that's taking me,

3
00:00:04.991 --> 00:00:08.640
and the rest of Chris Hadfield’s 
expedition, around the Arctic.

4
00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.310
Nowadays, navigation 
up there, and, well, on most

5
00:00:11.310 --> 00:00:13.070
on most ships 
is mostly automatic,

6
00:00:13.070 --> 00:00:16.090
it's handled by GPS 
and computer-driven charts.

7
00:00:16.090 --> 00:00:19.300
But hidden away up on that
bridge is an emergency backup

8
00:00:19.300 --> 00:00:22.730
that's roughly the same as explorers 
have been using for centuries.

9
00:00:22.730 --> 00:00:26.160
It's a sextant, and it's
used for celestial navigation.

10
00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:29.820
You get the angle between the horizon 
and a known star, even the sun,

11
00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:32.000
at least, when
it's not cloudy,

12
00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.010
consult a lookup table
and do a bit of maths,

13
00:00:34.010 --> 00:00:36.030
and you have
your latitude.

14
00:00:36.030 --> 00:00:39.220
Now a hundred years ago, when a
sextant was the only way to navigate,

15
00:00:39.220 --> 00:00:43.700
the claims of explorers had to mostly be taken
on the records that they kept…

16
00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:45.440
or else just on faith.

17
00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:46.440
To this day,

18
00:00:46.440 --> 00:00:50.940
no-one is entirely sure who it was who first
made it to the North Pole.

19
00:00:50.940 --> 00:00:53.340
Frederick Cook claimed to have reached it
in 1908,

20
00:00:53.340 --> 00:00:55.760
but his records don’t really add up,

21
00:00:55.760 --> 00:00:58.462
and his evidence was questioned, particularly
by a man

22
00:00:58.462 --> 00:01:03.860
who claimed to have made it to the Pole a
year later: Robert Peary.

23
00:01:03.860 --> 00:01:07.330
By most accounts Peary was a thoroughly unpleasant
man,

24
00:01:07.330 --> 00:01:10.570
but for many years he was widely considered
to have led

25
00:01:10.570 --> 00:01:15.980
the first expedition that actually reached
the North Geographic Pole in 1909.

26
00:01:15.980 --> 00:01:20.080
There’s a memorial to him on a high ridge
at Cape York in Greenland,

27
00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:22.799
although, admittedly, it was placed by his
widow.

28
00:01:22.799 --> 00:01:23.840
But he was the only one

29
00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:26.920
on the final part of his expedition who was
trained in navigation,

30
00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:29.380
the only one who knew how to use a sextant,

31
00:01:29.380 --> 00:01:32.560
and all his really claims don’t add up in
hindsight.

32
00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:36.200
He almost certainly -- whoa -- didn’t reach
the Pole.

33
00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:39.670
Then there was US naval officer Richard Byrd
and his pilot, Floyd Bennett,

34
00:01:39.670 --> 00:01:41.420
who claimed to have flown over the pole:

35
00:01:41.420 --> 00:01:43.549
but there were a lot of holes in their data
too,

36
00:01:43.549 --> 00:01:47.220
a lot of overprecise sextant results that
couldn’t possibly be right.

37
00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:50.880
Even the makers of their aircraft said they
were unlikely to have made it.

38
00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:54.080
And it’s not like any of them could leave
a flag or a marker.

39
00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:55.910
The north polar pack ice, the thick stuff,

40
00:01:55.910 --> 00:01:58.560
not the thin stuff we're going through, the
thick stuff,

41
00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:01.909
is still just floating around on the Arctic
Ocean,

42
00:02:01.909 --> 00:02:04.220
and it drifts back and forth.

43
00:02:04.220 --> 00:02:08.640
Roald Amundsen led the first expedition that
provided convincing evidence

44
00:02:08.640 --> 00:02:09.909
they reached the pole, by airship.

45
00:02:09.909 --> 00:02:12.969
But they didn’t land there, they just flew
over it:

46
00:02:12.969 --> 00:02:17.329
it was after the Second World War, in 1948,
when a Soviet expedition

47
00:02:17.329 --> 00:02:23.219
finally set foot at the exact geographic North
Pole, after flying there.

48
00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:26.110
Other explorers reached the Pole over the
pack ice, with air support,

49
00:02:26.110 --> 00:02:32.099
but the first confirmed surface expedition
to the North Pole without resupply:

50
00:02:32.099 --> 00:02:36.340
it took until 1986, when after several attempts,
Will Steger

51
00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:38.359
finally achieved something that most of us
would assume

52
00:02:38.359 --> 00:02:42.549
some Edwardian explorer had managed decades
earlier.

53
00:02:42.549 --> 00:02:45.829
Nowadays, if you have enough money, you can
fly to the Pole,

54
00:02:45.829 --> 00:02:47.959
or you can take a nuclear-powered icebreaker,

55
00:02:47.959 --> 00:02:49.949
you can check your GPS to confirm it,

56
00:02:49.949 --> 00:02:52.730
and you can send a selfie back via satellite
phone.

57
00:02:52.730 --> 00:02:56.150
We are not going that far north on board this
ship,

58
00:02:56.150 --> 00:02:59.090
and we don’t have a nuclear reactor to give
us enough power

59
00:02:59.090 --> 00:03:02.189
to get through the thick ice up at the pole.

60
00:03:02.189 --> 00:03:05.359
But if all the fancy technology on this bridge
fails,

61
00:03:05.359 --> 00:03:08.980
we can still use the same technique as explorers
centuries ago:

62
00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:11.010
and track our position by the stars.

63
00:03:11.010 --> 00:03:13.099
At least, where we can see them.

64
00:03:13.099 --> 00:03:16.139
I'm on this trip because of Chris Hadfield's
Generator Arctic,

65
00:03:16.139 --> 00:03:18.139
and so is this man!

66
00:03:18.139 --> 00:03:21.620
My name is Ben Brown, and I am so lucky to
be here right now!

67
00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:22.620
Go check out his videos,

68
00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:24.252
he provided the amazing drone shots for this,

69
00:03:24.252 --> 00:03:26.950
links are on screen or in the description
now.

70
00:03:27.660 --> 00:03:28.819
-- Thanks, bro!
-- That's okay!