Original subtitles

[Josh Gates] In the deadly sands of Mongolia's Gobi desert,

a whip-cracking archeologist

discovers ancient artifacts that rewrite history,

and will one day inspire a Hollywood juggernaut

to make another type of history at the box office.

And in the farthest reaches of the Tibetan plateau,

a fugitive Nazi mountaineer makes a startling journey.

A journey that will one day make an unexpected "Pitt-stop"

with one of tinsel towns biggest heartthrobs.

While on the Arabian peninsula,

a rebellious pathfinder forms unlikely alliances

that thrust her directly into the region's A-list.

A century later, her story catches the eye of a different type of A-lister.

Grab your popcorn, as art imitates life,

and the Explorers Club goes to the movies.

Welcome to the world famous Explorers Club.

For over a 100 years,

this has been a gathering place for trailblazers.

The people who dared to venture higher...

...further,

and faster.

As a member of this exclusive club,

I'm bringing one of a kind access to its archives...

This is incredible!

...artifacts...

Oh, my word!

...and my fellow explorers.

This is actual lunar dust?

Unbelievable.

The expeditions planned here,

have tested the boundaries of human possibility.

Its flag has flown on death-defying voyages into the unknown,

that forever changed our world.

These are the greatest adventurers of all time.

These are...

...Tales from the Explorers Club.

The halls of the Explorers Club echo

with epic tales of high adventure

that have given rise to some of the most celebrated cinema ever made.

Case and point, if I say fedora-wearing,

whip cracking archeologist fighting off Nazis,

well, you're probably picturing big screen icon,

and also my personal idol, Indiana Jones.

Some of my own expeditions

have followed in Dr. Jones footsteps.

Where have I seen this bridge before?

Oh, Temple of Doom, that's right.

From searching for the lost ark of the covenant,

to coming face to face with a crystal skull...

Wow.

...it's safe to say my own path might not have led to The Explorers Club

without Indy.

But it turns out The Explorers Club

has its own real life Indiana Jones

in thrill seeker, and former club president,

Roy Chapman Andrews.

Who shrugged off the safety of his job at a museum,

to seek archeological treasures

in the world's most dangerous places.

And who many believe is the inspiration for Dr. Jones.

Don't wait for Indy's creator, filmmaker George Lucas,

to settle the issue.

He's always been tight-lipped about whether the hero

he originally called Indiana Smith,

is based on a real-world individual.

But it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination...

...to see that Dr. Jones just might be one of The Explorers Club's own.

Like Indy,

Roy Chapman Andrews is a child of the late 19th century.

He's a natural born explorer.

And spends every waking hour in the great outdoors of Beloit, Wisconsin.

But while sleeping out under the stars during a fateful excursion...

...and unwelcome brush with nature

plants the seeds of a lifelong fear.

One he just so happens to share with Dr. Jones.

[screaming]

[sighs]

[Gates] Creative legend Joe Rohde,

a former Disney imagineer, and theme park mastermind,

knows a thing or two about big screen heroes.

He thinks it's more than mere coincidence

that it's the same phobia we all associate with cinema's swashbuckling archeologist.

He wakes up with a snake around his wrist.

-And that's the "boing"! -Right.

And he's got this lifelong fear of snakes.

-Why did it have to be snakes? -That's right.

-He is the prototype Indiana Jones. -Absolutely.

We always hear, "Oh, this guy's a born explorer."

This dude is a born explorer, right?

-Like, from an early age he is just outdoors. -That's right.

He clearly has this deep fascination with the natural world.

Yes. Totally true, absolutely.

Andrews paid his way through school as a taxidermist.

He earned an English degree from Beloit College.

He also studied Archeology and Evolution.

Andrews was a lover of language, and a storyteller

with a passion for adventure and science.

The makings of a great protagonist.

Oh, and he wore this watch.

Not just this model,

he wore this actual early 1920s Hamilton wristwatch.

I am literally wearing history on my wrist.

And, you know, I think it looks pretty good.

I just have to be sure to give it back when I leave.

Now in his 20s,

his dream is to land a job at the American Museum of Natural History

in New York.

And after a 900 mile train ride,

he finagles a meeting with Hermon C. Bumpus,

the museum's director.

Sorry, son.

No work to be had.

-But Mr. Bumpus-- -There's nothing!

We're fully staffed.

I have to work here. I'll... I'll do anything.

[Gates] He spent morning's cleaning.

And afternoon's assisting the taxidermy department however he could.

From this humble start,

Andrew's was destined to become

the prestigious museum's future president.

His ascent is rapid.

While continuing his work for the natural history museum...

...Andrew's joins The Explorers Club

only four years after it's founded.

He's travels the world,

and receives a Master's in mammalogy from Columbia University.

He's a well-known naturalist,

with a reputation as a romantic traveler and daring academic,

by the time he embarks on the biggest adventure of his career.

Between 1922 and 1928,

Andrews sets out on a series of missions

called "The Central Asiatic expeditions".

His goal? To find scientific evidence of the "Out of Asia" theory.

A controversial hypothesis, asserting that human's originated in Asia.

While proof supporting the claim that humanity began in Asia

will prove hard to come by,

other discoveries will alter scientific knowledge

in profound ways Andrews never anticipated...

...and just might plant the creative seeds

for a legendary movie franchise.

These expeditions will take Andrews and his team,

including paleontologist and fellow Explorers Club member

Walter Granger...

...and filmmaker James B. Shackelford,

to one of the most remote locations on the planet.

In Andrews own words,

it's the biggest land scientific expedition

ever to leave the United States.

You're seeing the actual films and images captured by Shackelford.

They're fascinating records of both the team's work,

and their surreal setting.

Like any great movie,

the trek into Asia is full of plot twists and obstacles

for our hero to overcome.

After Andrews party passes through Peking

China erupts into full blown civil war.

They navigate through treacherous lands of hostile warlords,

and journey deep into Mongolia and the Gobi desert...

...a desolate expanse of roughly a half a million square miles.

The land is vast and foreboding.

They could be on another planet...

...or from one.

Because their choice of transportation in Mongolia is utterly alien.

[car honking]

He's doing this, by the way...

...not with camels, not with horses,

something that everybody knows.

He's doing it with cars, automobiles.

-They're taking automobiles across the Gobi desert? -Yes, yes.

It's impossible for me to imagine

these cars from 1920-something.

[Gates] What do you think... What do you think the locals made of it?

I mean they'd probably never seen a car in this part of the world.

-Where's the gas coming from? I don't... -Right!

-The whole thing. -The logistical crazy of this.

But I mean it's, like, this incredible expeditionary force

pushing in, uh, to look at these sites.

Andrews was no stranger to travel at this point,

but the Gobi desert is extreme.

Having been there, it does feel like another planet.

It is a dry, endless landscape of sand and rock,

with undulating canyons filled with violent winds.

Temperature's there range from freezing to 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

And, unfortunately for Andrews,

there was also the wildlife.

On one memorable night,

a nightmare haunts him not while he's asleep...

...but when he awakens.

[man yells] Viper!

They're everywhere!

Snakes.

-Why'd it have to be snakes. -[man] Watch out!

[man screams]

[screaming]

[Gates] What came to be known as "Viper Camp",

is the result of the cold blooded snakes seeking warmth.

On this single night, the slithering body count is said to have totaled 47.

Okay, full transparency, we took some artistic license there.

Andrews actually wielded a hatchet that creepy night, not his bullwhip.

But, we couldn't resist.

While searching the Club for more facts

about Roy Chapman Andrew's weapon of choice,

Explorers club's archivist, Lacey Flint,

tells me she has an artifact so significant

it's going to blow my mind.

-Josh, I have something so exciting to show you. -Okay.

You're gonna love it.

-I'm ready! I'm ready, yes, what do you got? -You ready? Okay.

Oh, boy.

-It's a big box. -Yeah.

[gasps]

-This is... -No.

This is unbelievable.

-It's a big box. -Yeah, what's in there?

-This is... -Oh.

-Really? -Really, really!

This is the bullwhip that belonged to Roy Chapman Andrews.

His actual bullwhip?

His actual bullwhip

from the series of Gobi desert expeditions.

-May I? -Of course!

My word, this is unbelievable.

And look at how beautiful this is.

Mmm-hmm, yeah.

This is incredible!

You are holding history.

So if...

...Roy Chapman Andrews is one of the real-life inspirations

for Indiana Jones...

...that's Indy's bullwhip.

-The real Indy's bullwhip? -Absolutely.

Now can I...

...you know, crack it?

No, you can put it right... right back down.

There's not a lot of room in here, it's probably not a good idea.

Thank you so much, yeah, mmm-hmm.

That is unbelievable!

Absolutely it is a piece of history,

and, uh... and somewhere around here, I have his watch.

Really? Wow.

Along the way, Andrews documents his adventures

with a flair that feels straight out of a summer action film.

A colleague of his once observed,

"Water that was up to our ankles,

was always up to Roy's neck."

Although his scientific discoveries are impressive on their own merits,

his lavish storytelling makes him a legend in his own time.

Amidst the high adventure and close calls,

the team makes incredible finds that shake up

the entire field of natural history.

Outer Mongolia and the Gobi desert

are essentially lands of the lost.

The landscape is bejeweled with fossils,

including the bones of an extinct supersized creature called

Paraceratherium.

He's out there in the middle of the Gobi desert.

Anybody else who's ever been out there, nomads,

they're not looking for fossils,

-they're not looking for this stuff. -Right.

So he's, in many cases, the first person to lay eyes on any of this.

And among the things,

Paraceratherium is this gigantic,

horse-shaped relative of a rhino.

The shoulders are 16 feet.

And then it's got a neck like a giraffe,

except as big around as a tree,

with the head the size of a refrigerator.

-This is, like, science fiction? -Yes!

-At the time it's literally science fiction, right? -Yes!

-Nobody had ever seen this? -Nothing.

And so that's... that is probably

the largest land mammal to ever have existed.

"Oh! Found that."

-"Put it in the car." -Yeah!

It's like a nightmare, giant, rhino-sized meat-eating warthog.

[laughs] Right, right.

But even at that size,

finding the right specimen could be a challenge.

I've combed through vast swaths of land in Canada and Siberia,

in search of the woolly mammoth, a similarly large beast.

In Siberia, I unearthed mammoth bones from the permafrost.

[chuckles]

[man] You good?

[Gates] Look at that!

And I have to tell you, it is humbling

and not a little bit terrifying,

to appreciate the sheer size of these animals.

[laughs] Look at this thing!

-[man] Yeah! -[Gates] Intact!

Even the herbivores are scary.

And then, there's the meat eaters.

[dinosaur snarling]

In 1923,

in a mineral-rich region known as the "Valley of the Jewels",

Andrews team discovers a massive skull.

The huge teeth immediately tell Granger, it's a carnivore.

A big one.

It turns out the skull belongs to a new species.

It's the first, and to date, only discovery of its kind.

It is an ancestor of the hippopotamus and also the whale.

At about 12 feet in length, and weighing in at a ton,

size definitely runs in the family.

In honor of Andrews, the president of the American Museum of Natural History

designates the animal Andrewsarchus.

Proof that humankind began in Asia

eludes Andrews and his team.

But just like in the movies,

sometimes the most amazing things happen when all seems lost.

In a region of the Mongolia desert

later known as the "Flaming Cliffs",

they make their most momentous discovery of all,

but they're a little slow to realize it.

-We have to get up early. -Absolutely.

Guys! I found something.

Can you take a look?

[Gates] Team member, George Olsen,

casually mentions he's come across

what seem to be intact fossilized eggs.

Incredible.

But where we're looking is too early in the timeline for large birds.

Most likely sandstone concretions.

Trust me, come on.

-Well, let's take a look, man. -All right.

Yeah, they better be good.

[Gates] Awaiting them is an archeological prize

surpassing their wildest dreams.

Gentlemen...

...no doubt about it...

...we're looking at the first dinosaur egg ever found.

[Gates] A historic first.

Call it a case of serendipity, or quirky fate...

...searching for the origins of humans,

Andrews and his team have instead stumbled upon

a dozen, 75 million year old dinosaur eggs,

give or take a few million years.

Others have come upon eggs like this before

but mistakenly chalked them up to birds.

Andrews is the first to realize

the significance of what they have found.

They discover even more at the site,

realizing they're in the middle of a dinosaur birthing ground.

In Andrews words,

the most important fossil deposit in Asia,

if not the entire world.

In a movie mashup for the ages,

Indiana Jones has discovered a Jurassic Park of sorts.

'Cause of the way animals are fossilized in this particular case,

it's like they're shrink-wrapped in time.

Entire skeletons of protoceratops,

which is an ancestor of all the ceratopsian animals with all the horn,

and then velociraptor, which is now as famous as anything.

-Right. -You never see this, right?

The head, the ribs, the arms, it's all, like, sitting there.

And, in one case, the protoceratops and the velociraptor

are, like, locked in combat, like frozen in time.

Right, you're... you're seeing their lifecycles.

You're seeing where they're born.

I mean, you are getting this crazy snapshot of life.

[Joe Rohde] Of life, exactly.

It's an incredible find, and it's not...

...replicated very much anywhere, ever, at all.

In the history of paleontology,

it's really rare.

[Gates] After his Gobi desert adventures.

Andrews continues to trot the globe.

In 1931, he becomes president of The Explorers Club.

Three years later, he's named President

of the American Museum of Natural History,

where he began, as a janitor, a few decades earlier.

After hearing his story,

you might be thinking, "Andrews has to be the real Indy".

Still, we don't know for sure.

George Lucas has remained neutral on the matter.

And there are other plausible options.

Some say it was Hiram Bingham, who found Machu Picchu,

or Sir Leonard Woolley, who excavated ancient Babylon,

or Colonel Percy Fawcett,

who mysteriously vanished in search of the Lost City of Z.

Regardless, anyone who trades a mop for a whip,

and embarks on a lifetime journey of exploration and discovery,

is worthy of the silver screen.

World War II has inspired countless big screen depictions

of bravery, adventure and exploration.

From Private Ryan...

...to the Dirty Dozen to Patton,

and everything in between, heroes abound.

But not every leading man's quest is a straight-line path to glory.

It's the implausible journey of Heinrich Harrer...

...the central character of Seven Years in Tibet,

oh, and the only Explorers Club member to be played by Brad Pitt.

It's the story of far-flung travel,

but also an allegory of redemption,

and dare I say, transcendence.

Every movie needs a hero.

And this is what Hollywood calls a "hero shot".

In 1938,

Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer is a climbing superstar.

The first to scale the Alps most dread peak,

the north face of the Eiger.

But there's a problem with this particular hero.

Like many Austrians of his day,

Harrer has joined a movement seeking to conquer much more than mountains.

Yes, that's Adolf Hitler next to Harrer.

And yes, in the years leading up to World War II,

Harrer climbed under the Nazi banner.

So how do we get from this...

...to the Dalai Lama...

...then to the silver screen and Brad Pitt?

It's one hell of a hero's journey.

In 1939,

Harrer is chosen for the opportunity of his dreams:

a scouting expedition in the Himalayas,

through what is today Pakistan administered Kashmir.

The mission, led by fellow Austrian Peter Aufschnaiter,

is to find viable routes to the top of Nanga Parbat,

the Himalayas western-most peak.

It's good, this trip with you.

[Gates] They succeed.

But for Harrer,

the real adventure begins during their journey home, in British-occupied India.

You know, it is so peaceful here.

Hmm.

Makes me never want to leave.

You have to go home sometime.

You won't find peace there.

War is coming.

Nothing can stop it.

[officer] Put up your hands, you're under arrest.

[Gates] It is two days before the outbreak of World War II,

when Heinrich Harrer is taken captive.

This leading man's fate may end in a prison camp with a life of confinement.

[Gates] As World War II rages,

Nazi mountain climber, Heinrich Harrer,

and his friend, Peter Aufschnaiter,

are being held captive

in a Northern India prison camp called, Dehra Dun.

Five years pass,

everyday is a battle to avoid surrendering to despair,

and no day goes by without plotting a new method of escape.

[guard] Lights out, five minutes.

[Gates] On April 29th, 1944, they put a daring plan into motion.

Disguised at English officers,

Harrer and Aufschnaiter make a break for it.

Harrer's dash to freedom was Great Escape caliber.

Minus Steve McQueen's motorcycle.

But his gamble worked perfectly.

He and Aufschnaiter walked right past the guards

by giving them a confident salute.

The only problem with their escape is that,

in short order, their captors discover they're missing.

The two men split up, hoping to increase their chances

of at least one of them avoiding recapture.

[guard] They can't have gone far, this way, Sergeant.

[Gates] For Heinrich Harrer, conquering the Alps Murder Wall

seems like child's play compared to staying alive in a world at war.

His hope was to reach German allies in Japan, China, or Burma.

But no matter which way he chose

it would have been a serious trek.

And the locals were not exactly friends of the Reich.

Reunited with his fellow climber, Peter Aufschnaiter,

Harrer heads deeper into the Indian hinterlands.

They pass through Tibet hoping to reach the forces of Germany's allies,

the Japanese, in China or Burma.

After months trekking Tibet's mountainous terrain

the war in Europe comes to an end.

But wary that British prison camps are still operating,

they keep moving.

Starving and friendless, the fugitives choose a new destination,

Tibet's capital, Lhasa.

On January 15th, 1946,

more than 20 months after their escape,

the men arrive hoping to find food and work.

Harrer, though, discovers something here far more precious.

Lhasa is the center of Tibetan Buddhism,

and home to the nations young holy leader, The Dalai Lama.

The compassionate and curious Lama embraces the lost climber.

Over the next five years,

Harrer is allowed to work as an official of the Tibetan government,

as a translator and court photographer.

The grateful Harrer reciprocates with an unusual cultural contribution,

introducing Tibet to one of Austria's favorite pastimes, ice skating.

He also tutors the Dalai Lama in geography and science,

and teaches him English.

In Tibet's spiritual head

Harrer finds a leader opposite in every way from Adolf Hitler.

One who seeks peace and finds value in every human life.

Every moment Harrer spends with the Dalai Lama

erases more of the stain of his former allegiance to the German Fuhrer.

One man's evil has lead him astray,

another's wisdom has guided him to his truth path.

He spends seven years in Tibet,

inspiring the title of his book,

which is later adapted into the feature film.

Few explorers have spent so long in one place,

yet discovered so much.

In 1992,

five years before Heinrich Harrer's story hit the silver screen,

The Explorers Club awarded him its highest honor,

The Explorer's Medal.

Putting him in the company of legends such as, Sir Edmund Hillary,

Neil Armstrong, and Dame Jane Goodall.

A wise professor once said,

"We do not follow maps to buried treasure

and X never, ever marks the spot."

I've certainly found that to be true, but I keep trying to prove the adage wrong.

But I can also attest that a map can get you out of a tight spot.

And, as we'll see, a map can also change the world.

Cairo, Egypt. 1921.

High-born and well-bred,

English renaissance woman, Gertrude Bell,

has spent much of her adult life exploring the Middle East,

navigating and mapping the challenging political and topographical terrain.

A woman breaking up the boy's club on the merits of her expertise.

Her stature in British foreign affairs

is evident in the company she keeps.

[clears throat] Miss Bell.

Gentlemen.

[Gates] That's 46 year old Winston Churchill.

Britain's new Colonial Secretary.

Destined, two decades later, to become Prime Minister.

Winston? Cigar?

Never before business is concluded satisfactorily, my boy.

And that's T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.

The military officer and diplomate,

made famous in the Oscar winning movie starting Peter O'Toole.

But that's another film for another day,

our screening room is all cued up with the Queen of the Desert.

Three years have passed since the end of World War I,

the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East's ruling power and former German ally,

has collapsed.

The fate of the region now rests in the hands

of the victorious Allied Forces.

Bell's unparalleled understanding of the regions complex culture,

at this critical moment in history,

makes her the most influential woman in the British empire.

And her hard-fought experience on roads less travelled

is about to shape world history

for the next century and counting.

Very well, Miss Bell, enlighten us regarding your proposal.

-Thank you, Minister. -Mmm.

Please, pay close attention there is much to digest here.

You've probably heard of Lawrence of Arabia.

T. E. Lawrence's epic adventures in the Middle East

inspired one of cinema's greatest achievements.

But there was another explorer, archaeologist,

cartographer, and British agent

gathering the goods at the same time,

a woman named, Gertrude Bell.

In 2015, Nicole Kidman portrayed Bell

in Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert.

Her remarkable adventures sound like the stuff of Hollywood,

but Gertrude of Arabia was a true legend.

History is made up of the rise and fall of empires.

The conclusion of World War I in 1918

leads to the demise of four of them,

The Russian, Germany,

Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires all collapse.

Although these political powerhouses are no more,

ancient lands, civilizations, and cultures remain.

New nations emerge from this vacuum,

that require revisions to world maps.

Work that falls, mainly, to Allied victors.

In 1921,

then Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill,

assembles a conference in Cairo

to forge a path out of war time for the Arab lands.

With her critical local perspective,

born from boots on the ground relationships and mutual respect,

Bell emerges as a key advocate for the region.

But how does the only woman present

end up at the very center of this process in the Middle East?

Archaeologist, Sarah Parcak knows.

She's used groundbreaking technology to map and explore many of the same lands.

And is an admirer of Bell.

Gertrude Bell is one of these people that you read about

and you can't believe their life is real.

Where does her life begin?

She was born in 1868 in northern England to a steel magnet family.

So she grows up in this extraordinary house

surrounded by wealth and privilege.

Her father and her grandfather

-were, essentially, scientists. -[Gates] Mmm.

And she grows up surrounded by savants, scientists, explorers.

-Mmm. -And so, from a very young age,

she was curious, she was outside, she was exploring.

And she was the oldest child in the family,

-her sin was that she was born a girl. -Right.

But she's absolutely brilliant.

She has the intellect of her father and her grandfather.

So she goes off to Oxford, does incredibly well,

in fact, she's the first woman to get high honors from Oxford.

-Wow! -And she goes to visit her uncle in Persia.

She completely falls in love with the region.

And she has this unbelievable ability to connect with people.

And people looked at her and thought,

"Well, who's this woman? What is she doing here?"

And she was disarmingly brilliant, she could talk to anybody.

-Wow. -And they trusted her.

She starts penning books about the region that get great acclaim.

So she's able to make her mark

in a way that she wouldn't be allowed to in British society.

[Gates] Explorer to the core, Bell keeps moving.

She returns to Europe and becomes the greatest woman mountaineer of her age.

From 1899 to 1904

she makes a dozen climbs in the Alps,

including numerous first descents.

She survives a blizzard on the Finsteraarhorn

dangling on the mountain side for 53 hours.

There's even a peak named in her honor,

Gertrudspitze.

After conquering the Alps,

Bell pivots from the brutal cold to the sweltering heat.

In 1907,

she's called backed by the charms of the Middle East.

The Ottoman Empire is already shrinking,

tensions are high,

territorial disputes are rampant, and conflicts are bloody.

She presses on.

Her ability to connect with local leaders

and immerse herself in centuries old traditions,

surrounds her with powerful allies.

But her friends aren't just in high places.

Bell becomes a legend among locals.

They call her al-Khatun, simply put, The Nobel Lady.

She journeys through the revered region of Mesopotamia,

what all the textbooks aptly refer to as the cradle of civilization.

She not only careful maps routes and landmarks,

-she also photographs what she sees. -[camera shutter clicks]

In the wake of civil war and mindless acts of terrorism

that destroyed ancient archaeological sites in recent years,

her photographs are priceless records.

-[camera shutter clicks] -And in some cases, all we have left.

[camera shutter clicks]

So she sounds like this incredibly

-rugged individual. -Right.

But she's also a little fancy.

-She grew up in upper class society. -Yeah.

-So she was used to balls, she was used to high teas. -Right.

So in addition to all the regular supplies

she's got her fancy tea set, she's got her furs, she's got her nice dresses.

Because when she returns from the desert, gets cleaned up,

you know, she's gotta go to dinner

in present day Jordan or Iraq or whatever consulate.

You know, the men are in tuxedos

and you have to put on your ball gown, so you have to be ready.

All right, fair enough.

She also carried a pistol strapped to her calf and kept ammo in her boots.

Anyone that knew her would tell you, Gertrude Bell did not mess around.

And although she lived the high life,

I can't knock anyone willing to ride a camel as far and wide as Bell did.

I hate camels.

Stand.

-Come on, [clicks tongue] here we go. -[Camel grunting]

Can we do this? Can we work together? Is it possible?

Notwithstanding her sometimes questionable choice of transportation

Bell presses on with her most ambitious expedition yet.

It is 1913,

and war with German is brewing.

Her married paramour, British Major Charles Doughty-Wylie ships out.

He will be killed at Gallipoli, another great film.

To gather information for the British foreign office

and distracted her worried mind and broken heart

she heads for the center of Arabia

to the deadly city of Ha'il.

The region is increasingly unstable,

and the Arabia peninsula is a quagmire of rival tribes.

Britain supports the Saudi's.

The desperate Ottoman Empire supports the Rasheed's,

who's capital is Ha'il.

Bell is marching toward a tinderbox.

Six months from the outbreak of the first world war,

Bell's caravan departs Damascus.

But Turkish authorities halt her caravan.

She spends the time taking notes and compiling map data.

She receives word that the British ambassador

is washing his hands of protection for her if she proceeds.

When a Turkish captain visits her

she convinces him to accept a document

absolving the Ottoman Empire of any responsibility for her.

Are you sure you want to do this?

Every job worth doing involves risk.

As you wish.

[Gates] Without cover from the British government,

or Ottoman Empire, she's on her own.

Bell continues her journey into hostile territory as an outlaw.

Alliances were now a matter of life and death.

She traversed the Nafud Desert,

and ate sheep's eyes with hardened local sheikhs.

She discerned their needs and registered their grudges,

all while chronicling her movements.

On February 25th, 1914,

Bell reaches Ha'il.

She is only the second foreign woman to visit the city.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Having survived the desert she observes the town

is a hive of lethal tribal competition.

In the last eight years three Arab rulers,

known as Emirs, have been assassinated here.

Without explanation she is then taken captive.

No! No, don't leave me in here!

-[banging on door] -You cannot leave me in here! No!

-[banging on door] -Let me out!

[Gates] Bell has no idea why she's been taken prisoner.

Let alone when she might be released.

-[gun shots] -[people screaming]

-[rapid gun fire] -[people screaming]

[Gates] But what is happening outside might be worse

than her captivity on the inside.

James Cameron's Oscar winning film Titanic

certainly added to the mystique of the doomed ocean liners legend.

If he decides to make a sequel history is on his side.

Since the Titanic has an oft overlooked sister, the Britannic.

In a cruel twist of fate

she also sank in 1916 off the coast of Greece

while serving as a hospital ship during World War I.

With the help of a grant from Discovery

world-class diver, Evan Kovacs,

conducted an Explorers Club expedition

penetrating far into Britannic's interior.

Documenting parts of the ship that haven't been seen for over a century.

An analysis of his data hopes to solve several mysteries about the ships demise.

Was it a German torpedo or mine that sank it?

Why did it sink so much faster than the Titanic?

And how can the wreck help answer the lingering questions

about Britannic's more famous ill-fated sister?

The movie based on Gertrude Bell's incredible accomplishments

is called, Queen of the Desert.

But in 1914, on the precipice of World War I,

this burgeoning spy was more or less a prisoner in a Middle Eastern hotspot.

Without the protection of any government on the planet,

Gertrude Bell endures her captivity

in the Arabian stronghold of Ha'il for 11 days.

Then, as suddenly as she was imprisoned, she is released.

The conquest of Ha'il will not end until 1921.

Despite the ongoing violence,

rather than hightail it out of town,

she spends 8 hours photographing every corner of Ha'il.

Before leaving with her pictures, journal, and maps.

Amazingly, some of these maps end up in the archives of The Explorers Club.

Displayed on this table are Bell's actual maps.

In 2018, these were found in The Explorers Club research collection.

They're from her 1913 and 1914 expeditions in the Middle East.

They indicate travel times and distances.

Her notes also contain records on tribal hierarchies and regional power conflicts.

Things that would come in pretty handy

at the outbreak of a world war.

War is declared in July of 1914.

Bell's intelligence lifts the veil

on a cloistered culture and difficult land.

She's recruited to lead British troops across the desert in secret.

And in 1915,

she becomes the first female hired by British Military Intelligence,

going to work at the Arab bureau in Cairo.

Known as Major Miss Bell,

she works along side T. E. Lawrence,

who relies heavily on her knowledge

as he rally's the Arabs against Germany's wartime allies, the Turks.

This. This seems like the ideal route.

No. No, that's ambush territory.

The Turks have been luring enemies there for centuries.

Here.

-Longer. But safer. -Mmm.

[Gates] The war ends four year later with Allies defeating the central powers.

But Bell is far from finished.

The lands of the vanquished Ottoman Empire are carved up between Britain and France.

Based on her proficiency on tribal politics

Bell draws the border of a new Arab nation called, Iraq.

The Cairo Conference is called to address the future of the region.

Bell stands firmly between British Imperialism

and the promise of a self-determined, self-ruled Arab state.

She becomes king maker when she backs Faisal.

A direct descendant of the prophet

and son to an Arab hero, as King of Iraq.

That's my proposal, gentlemen.

What do you think?

[Gates] Historians still debate

whether Bell's contributions to the making of the modern Middle East

were for better or worse.

But there's no argument that she was an explorer ahead of her time.

Who earned the respect of her era's greatest movers and shakers.

What happens to Bell after the Cairo Conference?

You know, she continues to work in the region,

and becomes an extraordinary archaeologist.

She makes amazing contributions to the field

that still have an impact today.

In fact, she eventually becomes the director of antiquities

at Iraq's National Museum.

-[Gates] Wow! -And she fights very, very hard

to keep objects in Iraq.

And what's amazing about Bell is,

that for someone who grew up supporting the Empire,

she came to realize, over time,

that all of these people that were her dearest friends and confidants,

who lived in modern day Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, and Jordan

they were the ones who should rule their lands, not the Brits.

And she was absolutely beloved in the region for all that she did.

Unfortunately, she dies far too young, at the age of 57.

But, you know, as befitting someone

who worked in the region for as long as she did

she's buried in Baghdad.

[Gates] While The Explorers Club does not induct members posthumously,

Bell is in the process of being recognized

for breaking barriers as an honored explorer.

The best stories, in life or on the big screen,

not only entertain us but also challenge what we think we know.

The world is complex and heroes, the interesting ones anyway,

they aren't perfect, but they all have an arc.

They start off in a familiar place

and they end up somewhere entirely unexpected.

That's what I call exploration.