Original subtitles

♪♪

narrator: Could a frozen body found

on the himalayas' killer mountain

be the long lost brother

of mountaineering legend reinhold messner?

They only found partial remains.

Most significantly,

they found a foot inside a boot.

When something goes wrong on a mountain

and life is lost,

questions pour into everyone's mind.

You know, "what happened?"

new evidence cracks open

an old franklin expedition mystery.

Did fights break out, did the crew mutiny,

or did their madness

lead to something far worse?

♪♪

and photographic evidence reveals a doomed arctic mission.

♪♪

to be completely stranded

on a frozen, deserted arctic island,

never knowing if you'll be rescued,

would've been a terrifying thought.

♪♪

these are the strangest mysteries,

trapped in the coldest places.

Lost relics,

forgotten treasures,

dark secrets,

locked in their icy tombs for ages.

But now as ice melts around the world,

their stories will finally be exposed.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

[ wind whistling ]

♪♪

the western edge of the himalayas.

On a frigid peak known as killer mountain,

a ghastly sight lies waiting to be found.

♪♪

this high up in the mountains, the air is so thin and so cold,

it hurts just to breathe.

[ wind whipping ]

what you have in a mountain like that

is the combination of extreme elevation

and technical challenge

and those two things combined make it a killer mountain.

♪♪

narrator: In 2005,

three pakistani mountain guides stumbled

on a pile of body parts, covered by scraps of clothing.

♪♪

o'keefe: They only found partial remains.

Most significantly, they found a foot inside a boot.

♪♪

with so little of the body left,

it's gonna be a challenge to figure out

who this poor climber was and how they died.

Narrator: But, there's a chance this climber isn't just anyone.

He could be linked

to one of this century's greatest mountaineers.

♪♪

rising dramatically out of the himalayas,

nanga parbat is one of 14 peaks in the world listed

among the eight-thousanders, mountains that measure more

than 8,000 meters above sea level.

♪♪

clarke: Climbing a mountain like nanga parbat is --

this is not a trophy.

This is not a weekend effort.

This is a lifetime of training and preparation.

Narrator: These ultra challenging mountains

have attracted climbers for more than a century.

Countless climbers have lost their lives

trying to summit killer mountain,

making an identification

of the body found here a challenge.

Billson: These remains look old,

like they've been on the mountain for decades.

Maybe this is a climber

from one of the first expeditions to the mountain.

♪♪

narrator: In the 1930s,

there was a rush of europeans to be the first to climb

the highest mountains in the world.

♪♪

countries were looking for ways

to enhance their image around the world

and bolster national pride.

Narrator: Determined to show their dominance,

the nazi regime declared nanga parbat

the german mountain of destiny.

Throughout the 1930s,

it sent five expeditions to killer mountain,

most of which were disastrous.

Scores of mountaineers and their sherpas

lost their lives.

Could this body belong to a german climber

who died in one of the failed attempts to climb the mountain?

♪♪

much of the body is missing,

but there are remnants of the climber's jacket,

and an intact boot.

♪♪

narrator: Inspection of the clothing scraps

shows that the fibers aren't natural.

They're synthetic.

♪♪

synthetic fibers weren't used until the 1960s,

so we know, then, that these remains

couldn't have been from the german expeditions.

Narrator: Next, they turn to the leather boot.

Rose: The leather boot went out of date around 1980.

So, whoever this was, they must've disappeared

sometime between the 1960s and the beginning of the 80s.

♪♪

so we have a window that narrows our search

and, when we focus on just those years,

the famous story of one particular climber stands out.

Narrator: Reinhold messner is one

of history's greatest mountaineers,

as he was the first person to climb

all 14 of the eight-thousanders.

And he managed to do it without the use of supplemental oxygen.

Clarke: Reinhold messner is to mountaineering

what michael jordan is to basketball.

He changed the game.

The way we climb today, the vision of what is possible,

messner made that happen.

Narrator: But reinhold's legacy has been marred by a great tragedy,

which turned into one of the biggest controversies

in mountaineering.

♪♪

in 1970, reinhold and his brother gunther,

along with 16 other expedition members,

set out to be the first to summit nanga parbat

via the rupal face,

one of the tallest alpine walls on earth.

♪♪

on the morning of June 27th,

the messner brothers left

the rest of the expedition members behind

and began their ascent on their own.

♪♪

after a grueling 12-hour climb,

they successfully reached the summit,

but, by then, it was too dark

to safely make their way back down to their camp.

♪♪

reinhold said that he and his brother spent the first night

on the mountain in an unplanned bivouac,

[ inhales sharply ] which is basically a hole in the ground

where you huddle up and try to survive.

♪♪

but when you climb into a hole like that,

even though you might be out of the wind,

your respiratory rate slows, your circulation is impeded.

♪♪

you're really just digging a grave for yourself,

not a shelter.

♪♪

reinhold explains, the next morning,

that, when they woke up, gunther was delirious.

Likely altitude sickness.

♪♪

he said they were no longer capable

of returning to base camp

down the same route they came up,

so the two decided to descend the unknown diamir face.

♪♪

narrator: The diamir face is on the opposite side of the mountain

and, although it was uncharted,

everyone knew it wasn't as steep as the rupal face.

♪♪

clarke: According to reinhold, as he neared the end of the descent,

he went ahead to scout for a safe route,

which is a common practice.

However, he lost touch with his brother

and, when he turned back then, to reconnect with him,

[ exhales ] he was gone, vanished.

♪♪

reinhold believes that he might've been

swept away in an avalanche.

♪♪

it took reinhold another two days

before finally making it to safety.

He lost seven toes and several fingertips to frostbite.

Narrator: But reinhold's account

of what happened on the mountain that day

raised questions in the mountaineering community.

When something goes wrong on a mountain and life is lost,

immediately, questions pour into everyone's mind.

You know, "what happened?"

was this a freak accident

or was it something more complicated,

in terms of a collection of decision-making

that led to climber error, that led to this fatality?

Narrator: Two of reinhold's fellow expedition members

questioned his decision to leave

his delusional brother behind, in the first place,

suggesting that it might've been motivated by a personal goal.

Clarke: Reinhold was known to be a competitive person.

Understandably, I don't think it's possible

to have that kind of drive and accomplishment in life

if there wasn't a real thirst for performance,

no one had ever ascended the rupal face

and made a traverse and gone down the diamir.

It was an ambitious, reinhold-like goal.

♪♪

narrator: Reinhold's two fellow mountaineers

have suggested this goal

was driving his decision to descend the diamir face.

♪♪

others have taken the speculation further,

wondering if he didn't abandon his brother altogether

at the summit.

♪♪

if these are the remains of gunther messner,

it would be monumental because it could prove

that reinhold was telling the truth all these years.

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: A body found on killer mountain in the himalayas

could be the remains

of reinhold messner's brother gunther,

who disappeared on the mountain

while the two were descending the diamir face

more than 50 years ago.

If it is, it could solve one

of the greatest mysteries of mountaineering.

♪♪

the remains from 2005 were found

around 14,100 feet in elevation,

which was more or less 1,000 feet below

where reinhold had said he last saw his brother.

It's entirely possible that gunther's body

could've been carried, or slid or moved

the 1,000 feet down the mountain,

when you take into consideration the wind,

an avalanche, and snow collection.

It's a very volatile environment.

Things change constantly on the side of a mountain like that.

♪♪

narrator: Could these remains belong to gunther messner?

Reinhold is determined to find out.

♪♪

when he heard of the 2005 discovery,

he returned immediately,

to see if the remains were his brother's.

Clarke: Reinhold says that, as soon as he saw the boot,

he knew that it was his brother's.

You know, when you're with a climbing partner,

you're very familiar with their gear.

When you're climbing a steep face,

it's not unusual for you to be staring right at their boots

when they're in front of you.

It's like a signature on the mountain.

♪♪

reinhold was certain that these were the remains of his brother,

so he held a small ceremony

and cremated him, right there on the mountain,

taking only the boot and a few toe bones back for verification.

Narrator: When he returned home,

reinhold sent the bones to the dna lab.

When the results came back,

they proved what he had suspected all along.

This is his brother gunther.

♪♪

so, now, we know that gunther was found in the region

where reinhold said he had last seen him.

♪♪

although this discovery is not conclusive

and won't end all speculation,

it certainly supports reinhold's claim

that they both descended the diamir face together.

♪♪

any climber's mind and, obviously, in messner's mind,

this thing that you love to do is so dangerous

and it's a real struggle, I think,

for climbers, for mountaineers,

because you love the thing,

but sometimes it kills the people you love

and it's very, very difficult to reconcile that.

♪♪

we won't ever really know exactly what happened that day,

but we do know two things.

One, that those remains belonged to gunther

and two, that it was a real tragedy.

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: On the windswept tundra of the remote canadian arctic,

a stunning new discovery might open up a mystery

that has eluded searchers for over 170 years.

♪♪

bellinger: The arctic is vast, cold, and inhospitable.

It's a beautiful place to look at,

but a pretty deadly place to be.

♪♪

narrator: On beechey island, north of baffin island,

searchers made a grisly discovery.

♪♪

this is an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere,

but on this one stretch of beach,

there's three graves sitting conspicuously on the shore.

♪♪

you don't find graves this far from any settlement

unless something strange has happened.

♪♪

this is a story of desperation,

cannibalism,

and two ships vanishing into the ice.

♪♪

narrator: Inside the graves lie the frozen corpses

of three men,

mummified by the cold.

♪♪

clarke: These bodies are not inuit.

From the clothes they're wearing,

we can tell that they're british,

which means they're a long, long way from home.

♪♪

narrator: The mummies may hold the answer to a centuries-old mystery.

♪♪

in 1845, a british expedition

to find a sea passage from the atlantic ocean to the pacific,

through the arctic, set sail from England,

led by captain john franklin.

The mission consisted of two ships,

hms erebus and hms terror.

They were manned by 134 crew members.

Macferrin: The ships set sail in may of 1845.

Their last known location was passing

by a whaling vessel at July

and then, they disappeared into the ice

and were never seen again for 170 years.

♪♪

narrator: The ships were eventually found, in 2014 and 2016,

but no one knows what happened to the crew members themselves.

♪♪

what happened to the franklin expedition

is arguably one of the great mysteries of arctic exploration.

♪♪

irving: The erebus and the terror were

among the most modern ships of their era.

They were equipped for a journey

that would last at least three years

and their crew was highly experienced.

♪♪

macferrin: The big question is what happened to these ships?

They set sail full of supplies.

What went so horribly wrong?

♪♪

narrator: The excavation of the graves on beechey island in 1984

provided possible clues to the fate of the expedition.

♪♪

the graves are marked with the men's names --

john torrington,

william braine,

and john hartnell.

All three were crew members of the franklin expedition.

Macferrin: These men died in the first winter of the expedition,

just a few months in.

Due to the extreme cold in this area,

these bodies were very well-preserved.

♪♪

anthropologist owen beattie

exhumed the body of john torrington

and ordered a multitude of tests.

♪♪

rose: Autopsies of the bodies can tell us an enormous amount

about conditions on the ship before the men died.

The bodies of these men might unlock clues

to what happened to the entire expedition.

♪♪

narrator: It's the toxicology results

that pique beattie's interest.

The report showed abnormally high levels

of lead in his system.

♪♪

with those high levels of lead in their system,

lead poisoning is a potential cause of death.

One of the symptoms of lead poisoning is

severely impaired cognitive functions.

To the rest of the crew, it would've looked like madness.

♪♪

did fights break out, did the crew mutiny,

or did their madness lead to something far worse?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: The discovery of high quantities of lead found

in three mummified bodies from the franklin expedition

is causing some to question

whether or not the crew fell victim to lead poisoning.

It was known that the ships at the time

used food tins soldered with lead.

♪♪

clarke: Lead poisoning can cause multiple symptoms.

As the brain deteriorates, it leads to increases

in nervous or aggressive behavior,

confusion, and, eventually, death.

♪♪

narrator: To investigate the theory further,

researchers turn to king william island,

more than 400 miles to the southwest.

It's here that they found scattered body parts

of even more crew members.

Why had they left their ships?

On the northern tip of the island,

underneath a large stone cairn,

a letter was discovered

by search parties of the 19th century.

It was written by officers

on April 25, 1848,

explaining that both ships

had become trapped in the ice about 15 miles off the coast

and the remaining crew members had no choice

but to abandon the ships

and try their luck on foot.

♪♪

macferrin: This expedition wasn't well-equipped

for overland travel in the arctic.

They were hauling enormous loads

and they had to travel hundreds of miles

to reach the nearest camp or settlement.

That's even if they knew which direction they needed to go.

♪♪

rose: These men on king william island

took a huge risk, trying to walk out of the arctic.

Were they critically short of supplies

or did lead-induced madness affect their decision-making?

♪♪

narrator: As archeologists studied

the remains found on king william island,

they made some shocking discoveries --

strange markings on the tips of some arm and leg bones.

Rose: The marks on the bones aren't from a fire.

They aren't from a medical procedure, either,

and they didn't happen during burial.

They're from something much more disturbing.

♪♪

narrator: The marks were made by knives.

♪♪

one of the bones was deliberately broken,

bone marrow was removed.

♪♪

narrator: It appears as if at least some

of the franklin crew members found on king william island

resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Were they simply starving,

or had lead-induced madness taken hold of the crew?

It's not until 2013 that the theory is put to the test.

♪♪

ron martin, an analytical chemist

with western university in canada,

analyzed bone fragments from several crew members

and found that they had experienced

consistent lead exposure throughout their entire lives,

with no spike during the expedition.

♪♪

rose: This makes it highly unlikely

they went mad or died from lead poisoning.

So, now, what exactly happened here?

How did this expedition come to such a terrible end?

♪♪

narrator: The answer may lie in where the ships were eventually found,

which was a far cry from where they were abandoned.

♪♪

from a note left by the crew on king william island,

we know that those ships were stuck in the ice

for a full two years, just northwest of the island.

♪♪

narrator: But, strangely, the ships weren't found

anywhere near there.

In 2014, hms erebus was found about 100 miles south,

off the coast of the adelaide peninsula;

and, two years later,

hms terror was found in terror bay.

♪♪

the ships were found by a multi-partner expedition

led by parks canada underwater archeologist ryan harris,

who scanned the sea floor for six years,

searching for traces of the wrecks.

♪♪

archeologists were surprised to find them so far

from where they were abandoned in the ice

up by the northern tip of king william island.

♪♪

some have posed the theory

that the boats floated down there on their own

when the ice eventually broke up.

♪♪

clarke: I think there are some holes in the theory.

The interior of the ships were found in pretty good condition.

Dinner plates were still neatly stacked on the shelves,

bottles lined the racks.

There's no significant damage to the ships.

♪♪

narrator: When the arctic ice breaks up in the spring,

it's a violent, aggressive event.

If the ships were unmanned, they would show signs of damage.

You'd think the ships would be in worse shape,

but they weren't.

Both of them were found in perfect condition.

♪♪

narrator: It begs the question --

did the remaining crew reboard the ships

after the ice broke up and sail themselves?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: Determined to crack the mystery

of what happened to the franklin expedition,

archeologists dig into records

from an american search expedition

that took place in 1879.

The u.S. Expedition members

spoke with an inuk man named puhtoorak,

who said he had visited the erebus

while it was locked in the ice west of adelaide peninsula.

♪♪

he said he saw open tins of food in the cabin,

the sails had been set, and the deck swept of snow.

He witnessed a gangplank

leading from the deck of the ship to land,

and footsteps in the snow,

and found a large, deceased crew member in one of the bunks.

The next year, he came back.

He said the ship had sunk.

♪♪

puhtoorak's eyewitness report corroborates the theory

that the boats were remanned and sailed south.

♪♪

so far, archeologists from the parks canada expedition

have excavated 400 artifacts from the ships,

but there are still thousands to sift through.

At some point, they hope to be able to piece together

the whole story of what happened

to the infamous franklin expedition.

♪♪

♪♪

buried deep in the permafrost

of russia's northern taymyr peninsula,

an ancient secret lies in wait

that could change everything we know

about the history of this continent.

♪♪

when you stand here in this pristine wilderness,

you get the sense that this landscape hasn't changed

for tens of thousands of years.

It's like looking straight back to another time.

♪♪

narrator: In 2012,

an 11-year-old-boy was walking his dogs on the beach

when he saw something sticking out of the cliffside.

When he moved closer,

he saw giant bones locked in the permafrost.

♪♪

these weren't just any bones.

They were mammoth bones.

It turned out to be one of the best preserved

mammoths on the planet.

♪♪

bellinger: It would be exciting at any age, but, at 11?

You could really believe you had found the remains

of some kind of ancient monster or something.

[ wind whipping ]

narrator: He ran back to tell his parents,

who immediately notified a group of scientists working

at the local weather station.

♪♪

it took the team of scientists an entire week

to extract the frozen bones from the cliff.

They had to use steam to melt the permafrost.

♪♪

and hack them out of the soil with axes and picks.

♪♪

irving: They didn't just find bones.

They were fragments of fur, flesh.

Even some of the animal's organs

were still attached to the carcass,

all of it perfectly preserved.

♪♪

narrator: The remains are identified as male

and they include the entire right half of the body,

weighing half a tonne.

♪♪

it turns out this was the best-preserved

woolly mammoth found in the area for over 100 years.

♪♪

but that wasn't even the most incredible part

of the discovery.

♪♪

narrator: There are dozens of unusual markings, dents, and punctures

on the animal's rib bones,

its shoulder,

and tusk.

♪♪

when you see markings like this,

you know there's a good chance

that something out of the ordinary happened here.

♪♪

these kinds of injuries seem to indicate

that it might have met a particularly violent end.

♪♪

narrator: But what could've caused these distinctive markings

and led to the death of this giant ice age mammal?

The most obvious answer --

cave lions.

Cave lions roamed throughout eurasia and north america

between 10,000 and 700,000 years ago.

♪♪

rose: These prehistoric cats were far larger than modern lions.

They were one of the most ferocious predatory mammals

the earth has ever seen.

♪♪

irving: Cave lions were top predators.

They would've eaten anything they could get their paws on --

giant deer, woolly rhinos, and, of course, mammoths.

♪♪

narrator: Did a group of cave lions

attack this woolly mammoth and tear it apart?

♪♪

with a large-cat attack, you'd expect to see claw marks

all over the body and the torso,

while the bites would've been mainly directed

at the nose and the throat.

♪♪

big cats have been known to have eaten ribs

or other, smaller bones of their prey,

but it isn't typically what they did.

Their teeth just simply weren't made for it.

♪♪

the markings on the bones

are actually quite precise in appearance

and at seemingly regular intervals,

so it doesn't look like the evidence you'd expect to see,

if the bones had been chewed or gnawed at.

♪♪

narrator: If this wasn't the work of cave lions,

what else could've killed this enormous beast?

♪♪

researchers continue to examine the remains

and discover an intriguing wound to the skull.

♪♪

researchers find an anomaly in part of the cheek.

There's an unusual hole

that they want to get a better look at.

♪♪

narrator: They wonder if this wound could've been caused

by a direct collision with something.

♪♪

this mammoth was a young male.

We know that modern elephants compete

for supremacy of a herd over other males,

with battles, that include forehead-to-forehead jousting.

♪♪

narrator: Could the mammoth have lost a battle fighting for dominance?

♪♪

irving: This hole seems too small

to have been caused by another mammoth tusk.

You would expect it to leave a larger, more ragged injury.

♪♪

narrator: If it wasn't another mammoth, what caused this wound?

♪♪

the object would've had to have enough force

to penetrate the bone without shattering.

♪♪

scientists examining the skeleton estimated

that the point of entry for this injury

would've been about five feet off the ground,

which matches up pretty well with the shoulder height

of an adult human.

♪♪

humans and mammoths did coexist for a long period of time.

♪♪

there's evidence that humans used

all parts of the mammoth -- furs, bones, and tusks --

for clothing and shelter and other purposes.

♪♪

narrator: Could it be that some ancient human hunters

killed this giant mammoth?

♪♪

there's a problem with this, though.

When scientists radiocarbon date the mammoths remains,

they make a surprising discovery.

This mammoth is 45,000 years old.

But humans aren't believed to have arrived in the arctic

until as early as 35,000 years ago.

This mammoth is 10,000 years older than that.

Narrator: If this mammoth was the victim of early human hunters,

it will change everything we thought we knew

about human migration to the arctic.

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: On an icy peninsula in northern russia,

researchers have unearthed a woolly mammoth skeleton

that they think might have been killed by human hunters.

♪♪

they look to the wounds on its shoulder blades

to test their theory.

♪♪

one of the markings looked like it could be the result

of a powerful blow that has gone right through the shoulder

and almost completely perforated the base of the shoulder blade.

♪♪

an adult male woolly mammoth

would've stood over 10 feet tall

and weighed around six tonnes.

Were early hunters even capable

of bringing down such a large beast?

♪♪

if hunters today wanted to take down an elephant,

they would target the major arteries,

to try and create devastating bleeding.

The injuries on the mammoth

seem like they could be consistent with that.

♪♪

bellinger: This kind of hunting would've been extremely dangerous.

There would've been serious risk

of getting trampled, or gored by its giant tusks.

♪♪

rose: When the mammoth finally went down,

a heavy blow to the head could've finished it off.

That would account for the wound in the skull.

♪♪

narrator: Scientists return to the skull

and discover a second wound,

a small hole, hidden in the jugal bone.

They perform a ct scan of the bone, to produce a 3-d model,

and the answer reveals itself.

The indentation matches the shape

of the tip of a stone spear.

♪♪

it's not a smoking gun,

but it certainly strengthens the theory

that humans must have arrived in the arctic

10,000 years earlier than previously thought.

♪♪

♪♪

between the arctic ocean and the greenland sea,

on a small, treeless, uninhabited island,

a strange discovery may unlock a mystery

that's gripped the world of exploration

for more than a century.

♪♪

this really is a remote and an untouched area,

miles and miles of barely explored shoreline,

until you spot this one beach, in particular.

♪♪

there are objects scattered all over the beach,

centered around what appears to be one large ruin.

♪♪

narrator: On the far north shore of virgo bay,

in the svalbard archipelago, north of the arctic circle,

the remnants of strange wooden structures cover the beach.

♪♪

macferrin: The ruins in the center of this beach have these curves in them.

It reminds you of something like a giant old boat

or the arches of a church

that have been flattened on the beach.

Narrator: Could it be the rotting hull of a ship that ran aground?

♪♪

but there are no signs of a deck or any of the metal pieces

that you would expect on a ship of that size.

♪♪

o'keefe: If this was a vessel, it would've have had

a large central spine, a keel,

and we don't see that here.

This isn't the remains of a boat.

It's more likely some kind of structure.

♪♪

when you look at these ruins, you have to wonder

if this was the center of a village,

or a town hall or a gathering place.

♪♪

when you take into account

the items that you find around on the beach,

it could indicate that this was a settlement,

but it's really hard to tell.

♪♪

o'keefe: Such a remote location

is a strange place for a settlement.

What would people have been doing here?

♪♪

clarke: Why go to all the effort of hauling lumber and gear

onto an uninhabited island?

This structure must've had a special purpose.

What was it for?

♪♪

narrator: The answer may lie over 200 miles away,

on remote white island,

where, in 1930,

a group of seal hunters made a perplexing discovery.

♪♪

macferrin: White island is usually inaccessible.

It's locked in by sea ice year-round.

But in 1930, the ice broke up enough

where seal hunting ships

could come in and resupply for fresh water.

♪♪

as the seal hunters were gathering water from the stream,

one of them spotted something popping out of the ground.

It was an aluminum lid.

♪♪

obviously, the hunters had to find out more,

so they worked their way up the stream

and they found something even stranger buried in the snow.

♪♪

macferrin: Sticking out of the snow was the tip of a boat.

The seal hunters found books, a barometer,

other supplies there.

Just a few dozen feet away

were boots, trousers, and a jacket.

♪♪

narrator: Buried beneath the ice and snow,

they find human remains.

♪♪

it was just a pair of legs and half a torso

and the body showed signs that it had been eaten.

It would've been quite the shock to find.

♪♪

narrator: The hunters examine the bite marks on the remains.

They appear to be from a large animal.

♪♪

considering that they were this far north

and, given the size of the bite marks,

the only animal that could've done this

would've been a polar bear.

♪♪

the big question for the seal hunters would've been,

"who was this man and how did he come to be deserted

and eaten by a polar bear on white island?"

♪♪

narrator: As the hunters dig the rest of the boat out of the ice,

they make another stunning discovery.

♪♪

near the frozen wreckage of the boat,

leaning up against a rock,

the hunters found another skeleton.

♪♪

inside the jacket, they found initials...

Narrator: S.A.

Could these remains solve a long-forgotten mystery?

♪♪

at the turn of the 20th century,

countries across the globe

were racing to be the first to the north pole.

One expedition was led

by swedish engineer and polar aeronaut

solomon August andrée.

♪♪

these expeditions were seen as heroically brave

and highly patriotic.

In 1896, the swedish powers that be

funded andrée's expedition to be the first to the north pole,

using an airship.

♪♪

these explorers were inventive.

The problem with trying to get to the north pole

by boat or by sled

is that the sea ice is constantly shifting,

making the terrain extraordinarily treacherous.

Andrée thought that, if you can't get there

by land or sea, then you should go by air,

in a hot air balloon or an airship,

which really was an outlandish idea.

♪♪

macferrin: To go by air carries extreme risks.

You have to be extremely light, very few supplies.

You can make good time, but you're also at the mercy

of every arctic wind and storm that comes in your path.

♪♪

clarke: In 1897,

andrée and his two companions launched their balloon.

They were carrying with them a collection of carrier pigeons

that they used to send messages

of their progress and well-being.

And, after three days,

one of these pigeons was received by a ship

and the message?

"all is well."

that was the last anyone ever heard

of andrée and his balloon.

♪♪

for years, people wondered

what had become of solomon August andrée

and his balloon mission to the north pole.

♪♪

narrator: If this is solomon August andrée,

what went so wrong as to leave him here,

dead, on a deserted island?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: After human remains are found on remote white island,

some wonder if this is the body

of long lost adventurer solomon August andrée.

♪♪

as the seal hunters explored the island,

they made a critical discovery.

♪♪

the camera.

The film inside?

Still intact.

Narrator: When researchers develop the film,

[ flashbulb explodes ] they find a series

of amazing photographs

and there's no question anymore.

These are definitely the bodies of the missing men.

[ flashbulb explodes ]

the first photograph shows andrée and his team moments

after their balloon crashed on the ice.

♪♪

macferrin: The photos they found are really something

in one of them, the men are standing over the wreck

of the eagle, calm and collected,

as if it was just a balmy summer day.

You'd never know they were stranded.

♪♪

o'keefe: There are photos of the men leaving their balloon behind,

pushing their boat,

and even setting up camp out on the ice.

This is a spectacular visual record

of what they did after the balloon crashed.

♪♪

considering the danger of the environment, alone,

and the inhospitable weather,

you'd think that would be enough to break one's spirit

or make this a treacherous journey.

They had to worry about polar bears.

There's a photo of them having shot one out on the ice.

♪♪

the photos confirm that this was andrée and his team,

but it doesn't tell us anything

about what happened to the expedition.

♪♪

many had assumed that andrée's

inadequate testing of the balloon,

and his insistence on using a drag-rope method of steering,

may have been what caused his balloon to go down.

Narrator: Andrée had a theory

that he could steer a balloon using sails,

but only if he dragged ropes behind the balloon,

to slow it enough to allow the sails to function.

Even during test flights in sweden,

andrée's drag ropes would snap, fall off,

getting entangled, caught in the ground,

and a situation like that could have

flipped the balloon and caused immense damage.

♪♪

the swedish society of physics

described andrée's drag-rope theory as wishful thinking,

but there was so much patriotic enthusiasm behind the mission,

andrée went ahead with his doomed attempt, anyway.

♪♪

narrator: It's likely that the drag ropes

contributed to the balloon's crash.

Also, we know that the team ran into fog.

Fog blocks out the sun

and causes the gas in the balloon to cool,

resulting in rapid altitude loss.

♪♪

we know the team survived the crash

and then walked across the ice to white island.

Narrator: It's clear that they must've waited for many weeks

on white island, hoping to be rescued.

To be completely stranded

on a frozen, deserted arctic island,

never knowing if you'll be rescued,

would've been a terrifying thought.

♪♪

narrator: Ultimately, no one came.

♪♪

but how does the discovery of the remains

of andrée and his team

help us with the remnants of the structure

over 200 miles away on danes island?

♪♪

if you tried to launch this balloon

from mainland sweden, the trip to the north pole

would've been over twice as far.

Danes island was an ideal location

to launch such an expedition.

♪♪

narrator: Could the lumbar structure

in virgo bay, on danes island,

be andrée's launch site?

♪♪

at first glance, there's nothing

at the virgo bay site that points to it being

a hot air balloon launch site.

But photos of andrée's expedition before he launched

confirm that he built a large shed to house his balloons.

♪♪

o'keefe: In andrée's photos, we can see the base camp

and it is clearly on danes island.

This confirms that this exact beach was his launch site.

♪♪

over the years, the beach on danes island

would become the launch site

of many attempts to reach the north pole,

not just by solomon August.

Narrator: None of the attempts were successful.

♪♪

years later, an american, walter wellman,

launched his own balloon expedition from danes island

and repurposed some of the lumber

from the exact same site.

Narrator: The remains you see today

are from walter wellman's reuse

of solomon August andrée's original launch site.

The shores of virgo bay are now a historical site,

paying tribute to the men who tried

to reach the north pole in hot air balloons

and lost their lives in the attempt.

Narrator: They may have died,

but these daring and ambitious airship adventurers

certainly showed immense bravery

in their quest to reach the north pole

in a way no one had ever done before.