Five weeks starting winter 2007

Voyages of Discovery

Paul Rose article

UK TX Duration: 5 x 60’ BBC Science and History

Executive Producer: Anne Laking
Series Producer: Jeremy Phillips

Rugged Adventurer Paul Rose tells five stories of adventure on the high seas. These are the dramatic tales of men who set sail into the unknown and made scientific discoveries that changed our world forever. Paul travels to the other side of the world on the trail of great adventurers like Ferdinand Magellan and Captain James Cook. But his journey also takes him from the heat of the Ecuadorian jungle to the frozen wastes of the north as he reveals the incredible stories of lesser known explorers whose discoveries changed all our lives, even today.

Circumnavigation
Five hundred years ago a stricken ship limped in the port of Seville. Its crew were half dead from starvation and disease having just completed a voyage that would change the course of history and profoundly shape the way we live today. It was 1522 and the Victoria had just become the first ship to circumnavigate the globe with extraordinary consequences. This voyage had opened up the last great unknown ocean and proved once and for all that the world is round. It was a triumph of the human spirit - an epic tale of courage and endurance, starvation and mutiny, heroism and death. And it turned one man, Ferdinand Magellan, into one of the most celebrated explorers in the history of the world. But behind the legend of one of the greatest ever Voyages of Discovery lies another story. Paul Rose sets sail on a replica of the Victoria and shows how the real hero of the voyage was the little known Sebastian Elcano. Magellan had always planned to return the way he came when he reached the Spice Islands – he had no intention of circling the globe. But he was killed en route to the islands and the command fell to Elcano, who made the decision to continue westwards and complete the first circumnavigation of the world. The men had discovered the western route to the Pacific, charted the ocean’s true size, made important astronomical discoveries and proved the theory that the Earth was to be indisputable fact.

The Ice King
Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen was the founding father of polar exploration and he is Paul Rose’s all-time hero. In the spring of 1892, he made a bid to become the first man to set foot on the North Pole. His audacious plan was for his ship to become stuck in pack ice in the hope that it would carry him with the ocean currents to the Pole. Until then, ships had been crushed to pieces by the force of encroaching pack ice. Scientists refused to join his mission, claiming it was doomed. But Nansen had designed a special revolutionary hull for his vessel ‘The Fram.’ It was shaped like a duck, so instead of being crushed by the ice, it was simply lifted from the water and sat on top of the ice. At first, the plan seemed to be working and the ship slowly moved towards the pole, but the ice wasn’t taking her as close as Nansen hoped. So he struck out on foot, instead. He used breakthrough polar survival techniques such as the use of layered clothing, compressed gas for cooking, a revolutionary ski design and dogs to pull his sleigh. Nansen discovered that, unlike the South Pole, the North Pole was all ice with no land. He proved that it was possible to survive in the frozen wastes of the poles and travel great distances without support. However, there was a huge problem. The pack ice Nansen was crossing had begun travelling in the opposite direction from the pole – slowing his progress with devastating effect. Nansen had no option to turn back. But this was the most successful failure ever – he had travelled further north than anyone and pioneered a series of new techniques and discoveries which are still with us, even today. His work is even being used by NASA as they develop ways for astronauts to deal with the loneliness and isolation of space. Crucially, unlike leaders of the doomed expeditions before him, Nansen had brought all his men back alive. He was a true pioneer. He laid the foundations for the study of the planet’s ocean currents which today are crucial to our understanding of global weather systems and climate change. Whether you are on a simple family camping trip, climbing Everest or on the Arctic survey, his legacy will be with you. Nansen also ushered in the era of modern cross country and sports skiing. In fact, his name will never be forgotten, even on the moon and Mars – you’ll find a crater named after him on each.

Hanging by a thread
Today, we take for granted that men can be rescued from stricken submarines, but this wasn’t always the case. On May 23, 1939, the US Navy’s newest submarine, Squalus, suffered a catastrophic malfunction and the aft compartments flooded, taking her to the North Atlantic floor. No one had ever before been saved from a stranded sub. Thirty-three of the 59 crew survived the sinking and were trapped with poisonous gases rising from vast racks of batteries and the air running thin. They needed help fast. A distress flare was seen by a lookout on the sister submarine USS Sculpin and a dramatic rescue mission began under the command of a maverick genius, Commander Charles ‘Swede’ Momsen. He would use a new invention that had just emerged after years of red tape wrangling: a rescue diving bell. Worryingly, it had never been tested before. The first ever journey of the rescue bell was a nerve-wracking ascent, but seven very relieved men safely reached the surface. Two further seemingly uneventful trips brought more of the crew up – but, unnoticed, the winch cable was fraying. Then, as Momsen and his team were winching up the last of the survivors, the bell came to a sickening stop; the reel taking up cable became fouled. Momsen found to his horror that only one strand of the cable was left. Unable to attach new cables, he had to try to float the bell up, wary that it could start to rise out of control, killing those inside. Finally, all 33 survivors were safely on the surface, 39 terrible hours since the sinking - dramatic proof for the first time that submarine rescue was possible. Paul Rose meets Carl Bryson, the last living survivor of the Squalus, who was among the men trapped when the final diving bell was raised. He also interviews the last remaining survivor from the rescue team, who is 103 years old. Diving bells are still used by navies today. Paul joins the Italian navy on an exercise where he goes deep under the sea in a diving bell operation. The rescue of the Squalus changed the way we see the undersea world. It showed for the first time that it was possible to save men from the sea bed. Following his inspiration, rescue vessels are now on constant alert all over the world, ready to respond to submarine disasters.

The Figure of the Earth
To the point of almost being unbelievable, this 18th Century mission meets adversity and near-disaster at every turn, but has a profound resonance in all aspects of our modern lives. In what was to become a legendary tale of greed, adultery and despair, a French expedition set sail for what is now Ecuador in 1735 to determine the shape of the Earth. These men were intellectuals, innocents abroad, and had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. Their plan was to measure the curvature of the earth near the Equator and bring unprecedented accuracy to maps and navigation, along with rubber and quinine. Yet, even before they began their measurements, the team were beset by disease, waylaid a Frenchman’s desire for l’amour, and ripped apart by disputes. Just to reach Peru took 6 months, and during a stopover in the Caribbean, Jean Godin, the young, impetuous geographer nominally in charge, started an affair with a local girl who frittered away a large part of the expedition’s finances. Finally arriving on the Ecuadorian mainland, the expedition members argued, split up and made their way separately to Quito. On his way, Charles-Marie de la Condamine became lost in the jungle, but discovered rubber and realised its true potential for industry. Also, by pure chance, La Condamine was later to discover which tree bark provided the right kind of quinine to cure malaria. In a moment of inspiration, he also figured out a new system of standardised measurement, which became the basis of the metric system. A full year after they set out, the men could start taking proper measurements to establish the shape of the Earth. But they faced a monumental task: working in the thin air of the high mountains, in baking heat and savage snowstorms. Local people stole equipment and guides abandoned them. Having struggled up to mountain peaks they often had to wait a whole month for one clear day to make observations. At one stage, a misunderstanding over a woman led to the expedition’s doctor being murdered. Nevertheless, after their eight long years of struggle, they had their vital measurements. They confirmed Newton’s theory that the Earth bulged near the Equator. Paul Rose goes to Ecuador, where he retraces the men’s journey in some of the most hostile landscape on the planet and tells their story.

The Making of Captain Cook
Captain James Cook’s discoveries changed the face of the Earth. This is the story of the expedition that made his name. In 1768, he was part of a huge international scientific collaboration that set sail around the world to observe the Transit of Venus. Or at least that’s what the Portuguese were told. His real mission was to discover the vast southern continent that theoretically should ‘balance the Earth’. After battling the elements for months, Cook’s navigational skills brought his crew safely to a small island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean - Tahiti. Once he arrived there, he was kept busy trying to stop his sailors from selling goods to the natives in return for sex. The most prized commodity was iron and Cook had to take strong measures to protect the iron nails which held the ship together.

His observations were nearly destroyed by light-fingered locals, who were attracted to the gleaming metal quadrants and measuring devices. After a tense chase across the island, Cook’s men recovered their instruments and could make their observations. Their measurements would help establish the distance between all the planets in the solar system and unlock the secrets of the cosmos.

Cook sailed on, accurately charting New Zealand for the first time, and became rightly convinced that a great southern continent did not exist. Cook used special charts which enabled him to calculate his exact position of the planet, with unprecedented accuracy, using the position of the sun, moon and horizon. Cook and his men discovered thousands of new samples of flora and fauna. The botanist on board, Joseph Banks, became the forefather of botany and developed revolutionary ways of classifying plants and animals. Cook mapped the east coast of Australia, stopping at Botany Bay and claiming the country for Britain. The bay was later used as a penal colony. This ultimately led to the peopling of Australia by white Europeans; Australia’s history was changed profoundly. Heading for home, Cook unexpectedly discovered the Great Barrier Reef. In the dark, and seemingly in deep water, the Endeavour was suddenly almost ripped apart by a wall of coral. Everything they had

discovered looked set to become lost with all on board at the bottom of the Pacific. The fate of the whole mission was hanging by a thread. They struggled to stem the flow of water, re-float her off the reef and find a way of mending the gaping hole. Facing disaster at every turn, they finally made repairs that would hold until they reached port. Cook’s navigational skills enabled him to steer the ship safely through the reef and back home. A strict diet on board, including vegetables, ensured that not one man was lost to scurvy – and this was virtually unheard of until this voyage.

Paul Rose
Paul works with the BBC Science department presenting programmes about science and the history of science. His credits include ‘Take One Museum’ which was shown in 2005 on BBC4 and ‘Meltdown – A Global Warming Journey with Paul Rose’ shown in March 2006 on BBC2. Voyages of Discovery received outstanding reviews on BBC4.

He is now filming his new eight part series for BBC2, OCEANS.

A former Vice-President of The Royal Geographical Society, Paul is a man of many talents - an explorer and expedition leader, a professional diving instructor and mountain guide, a qualified yacht skipper, a mountain safety consultant and a very experienced public speaker. Paul has many years experience of running a large range of scientific expeditions in the worlds’ most remote and challenging locations, including Antarctica, Greenland and The Indian Ocean.

Paul was the Base Commander of Rothera Research Station, Antarctica for the British Antarctic Survey for 10 years and was awarded HM The Queen's Polar Medal. For his work with NASA and the Mars Lander project on Mt Erebus, Antarctica he was awarded the US Navy Polar Medal.

He has appeared live on BBC Breakfast and BBC News 24, Sky News, live national and regional radio interviews, US PBS & US local & national radio programmes.

Paul has retained his sense of wonder about the world – he is completely genuine and authentic. He’s an extreme adventurer with a genuine love of science, and a great gift for storytelling.