I still see the ice squeezing the hull of the Fram like the clasp of a colossal vice, the wood groaning in protest, the decks heaving beneath a sky that never darkened. It was August 1893 when Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer with restless eyes and an unbreakable calm, deliberately froze his ship into the … Read more
I can still feel the slap of salt spray against my face and hear the timber creak underfoot as the Kon-Tiki set off from Callao harbor on April 28, 1947. Imagine you’re standing ankle-deep in a concrete slipway, the Pacific’s breath salty on your skin, as nine huge balsa logs lashed together yield beneath your … Read more
I still feel my heart pounding at the thought of that tiny sphere slipping beneath the waves. It was January 23, 1960, when the US Navy bathyscaphe Trieste—a cigar‐shaped vessel with a lead‐ballast float the size of a house—broke through the churning Pacific surface. Inside that steel hull, Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and US Navy … Read more
I can still hear the laughter of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett’s young son echoing through the mato grosso forest, a bright note of innocence swallowed by the jungle’s green embrace. It was March 1925, and Fawcett—brilliant explorer, cartographer, former artillery officer—stood at the mouth of a primal tributary of the Amazon, notebook in hand, eyes … Read more
I still feel the sting of that first gust of Arctic wind, so cold it sliced through wool and bone. It was July 14, 1897, when Salomon August Andrée’s hydrogen‐filled leviathan, the Örnen (the Eagle), gave its death rattle and tumbled onto the ice. Three men—Andrée, the engineer‐dreamer; Knut Frænkel, the seasoned Arctic hand; and … Read more
I still taste grit and ash in my mouth whenever I recall the day our brave horde first glimpsed the smoking peaks of Guatemala. Sunshine fought its way through great plumes of sulfurous steam, illuminating fields of black stone that shimmered like a sea of shattered mirrors. At the crest of a scorched ridge, Pedro … Read more
I can’t shake the memory of Hernando de Soto’s broad‐brimmed hat, perched at a rakish angle as he stared down the river’s shimmering surface. It was 1541, and he had just become the first European to glimpse the great Mississippi, its waters widening like a wound torn through the continent. Behind him, his battered company … Read more
I still recall the first image of Endurance rigid as a tomb in Weddell Sea ice, her masts trapped like splinters in a frozen tomb. It was January 1915, and Sir Ernest Shackleton stood on the quarterdeck, staring at a landscape of shifting blue–white that seemed to mock every plan he’d ever made. He had … Read more
I still feel the sting of that first African dawn. It was March 1871, and I had disembarked at Zanzibar’s bustling docks, the air thick with the scent of cloves and sweat. Ships laden with ivory and spices rocked gently, their timbers creaking in a language older than any I’d ever heard. I gripped my … Read more
I can’t shake the image of those two wooden ships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—lying silent beneath Arctic ice, their timbers splintered by pressure, their names whispered by moss and drift. In 1845, Sir John Franklin set out from England with 129 men, chasing a dream older than any living mariner: a navigable Northwest Passage linking … Read more