Italian Arctic Expedition

Buried somewhere in the windblown snowdrifts along the north shore of our continent is a motorcycle. Some 30 years ago, it was destined for the North Pole until it’s driver, a Japanese adventurer, quickly realized that motorcycles are worthless on the fractured pack ice of the polar sea. Perhaps he knew his scheme was ill-conceived because as a precaution he’d filled the handlebars with jellybeans. They were his emergency food source in case he got stranded on the polar sea and ran out of trail rations before being rescued. The beans are still there — he aborted his mission before it was launched.

His polar quest ranks among the most wild & wacky but there have been plenty throughout history. In 1899, an Italian dogteam expedition attempted to lighten their loads by attaching small hydrogen balloons to back of each sled — for a little extra lift. In the deep cold the balloons failed to inflate which is probably a good thing since if they had worked too well, they might have sent both sleds and dangling sled dogs floating skyward! The team was at least able to salvage part of this scheme: they put their steam-powered hydrogen generator to work pumping water out of their ship. It had begun to leak badly while frozen in the sea ice at their shoreline basecamp.

In 1906, American adventurer Robert Peary, exasperated by several failed attempts at reaching the Pole, put out an appeal to the public for creative ideas for conquering the extreme challenges of the high arctic environment. He got plenty, nearly all of them more entertaining than practical. His personal favorite was the detailed description — complete with schematic drawings — of a rubber hose line, hundreds of miles long, that could be pulled along behind his sleds so that hot soup could be steadily pumped all way from his basecamp on Canada’s north shore to provide “meals on wheels” for his team to slurp as they dogsledded northwards over the frozen sea.

Related posts:

1. Ghost Ships of High Arctic
2. The Most Amazing Sled Dog in Polar History
3. The man who taught the Pope how to control Satan
4. Luck o’ the Irish finds the “Polar Time Capsule”
5. Polar Bears galore!