All language subtitles for Drain the Oceans S06E01 Alaska 720p DSNP WEB-DL DD+5 1 H 264-playWEB_track4_[eng]

♪ ♪

BRAD BARR: The thing
about the Alaska coast

is that there's still places
that are unknown.

Lots of islands,
rocky shorelines.

♪ ♪

Where we were working,
well above the Arctic Circle,

you have to have
everything with you.

We took 136 crates of stuff.

That's a measure of
the remoteness of the place.

JAMES DELGADO:
Alaska's a frontier.

It's a powerful place.

In the 20th century, it was oil;
in the 19th century, gold.

But this land lured
fortune seekers

long before then.

What they encountered
was a vast, relentless,

dangerous landscape.

We're now finding shipwrecks

of the first outsiders
who came here.

BRADLEY STEVENS: We know
the Russians came to Alaska.

But nobody had ever found
a Russian-era shipwreck

in the United States.

What was it doing,
and why was it lost?

In Alaska's far north,

there were 32 vessels
that were lost

over the span of one week.

It changed the world.

What was still there?

DELGADO: And why did people
risk everything

in these frigid waters?

Alaska can be unforgiving,

particularly if you go in
blind, unequipped,

or foolishly.

♪ ♪

STEVENS: When you come into
Kodiak, you see fishing boats,

you hear the seagulls,

you see the sea lions
and hear them barking.

(barking)

You could be there in 1850,

and you would have
seen and heard

those same identical
sights and sounds.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Ahoy!

FISHERMAN: Come aboard.

STEVENS: How's fishing?

FISHERMAN: Oh, you know.

STEVENS: Wow, that's
a lot of crabs.

Can I take a look at one?

♪ ♪

I'm a biologist.

Oh, there we go,
that's a big boy.

I went to Alaska in 1984,
specifically to study crabs.

I've studied every crab
in the world,

and I've been pinched by
every crab in the world.

Little did I know that Alaska
would have a hold on me

for the next 20 years.

Kodiak lies off
Alaska's southern coast.

It is an island with a lot

of very deep, narrow bays.

In 1991, I got some money
to use a submarine,

and about a week after
starting this project,

we literally ran into
a wall of crabs.

And it was in the news
in Kodiak,

and it got my name out there

as someone who was doing
interesting things underwater.

Sometime in the spring of 1991,
out of the blue,

I got a manila envelope in
the mail from Mike Yarborough.

He introduced himself and
he said he was an archaeologist.

I had no idea at the time,
but Mike's letter

was the beginning of
an incredible adventure.

He'd seen the stories
in the newspaper

about me diving in Kodiak,
and he wrote,

"I thought that you'd be
a good person to talk to

about a shipwreck in Kodiak."

The "Kad'iak."

The hairs stood up on my arm.

I, I literally got chills.

In the letter, Mike outlined
this incredible legend of a ship

that was abandoned
after hitting a reef.

It drifted, unmanned,
for eight miles,

and ended up in a lagoon
called Icon Bay,

the sacred burial place
of a Russian saint.

Somehow, the ship sank with
its mast poking above the water,

forming the shape of
a Russian Orthodox cross.

All this happened
without a soul aboard.

And nobody's seen a trace
of the Kad'yak ever since.

Now, that story's got to be
too good to be true, right?

When I first heard it,
I thought, nah.

That's, that's just...
it's mythical.

But what if it is true?

What if that's what
really happened?

The letter said
the ship sank in 1861.

That's only a few years before
the US took control of Alaska.

For more than a century,

the Russians had
claimed the territory.

There's not a lot
of physical evidence left

to say why they gave it up.

Nobody has ever found
a sailing ship

from the Russian colonial period
in Alaska.

To find something like that

would be spectacular.

I've got to do this.
I just have to do it.

There's no way
I can not do this.

I didn't really know much
about the ship,

so I began investigating that.

And through various sources,
I began to piece together

the story of the Kad'yak.

I discovered it was
a three-masted sailing ship

with copper sheathing
protecting the wooden hull.

The captain,
Illarion Arkhimandritov,

survived and later returned to
Icon Bay to chart the coastline.

This is just a few miles
from Kodiak's main harbor.

And the more I read,
the more fascinated I became.

He took compass bearings
to landmarks

such as capes and islands,

and took one final bearing
to the mast of the ship

that was still standing
in the center of the bay.

If I could find out where that
last bearing was taken from,

I'd be able to pinpoint where
in the bay the mast had been.

Arkhimandritov's notes were...

cryptic, to say the least.

I spent literally years

crisscrossing the bay
in my kayak,

trying to match his compass
bearings to the landscape.

They didn't line up, they didn't
take me where I wanted to go.

I still didn't know exactly
where he stood, and I thought,

I think it's this point here;

I'm gonna draw my X
on the chart.

That was what I had to go with.

But it was better than
anything else I had.

♪ ♪

STEFAN QUINTH:
Brad called me and he said,

"Hey, Stefan, I think
I've found Kad'yak.

I think I know where it is."

♪ ♪

And he said, "Would you like to
come with me diving on the boat

and film it?"
And I said, "Of course."

STEVENS: I jumped on it.

"Great, let's do it.
When can we do it?"

"Uh, three weeks from now."

"Who will we bring?"

"Well, invite all
the divers you know."

QUINTH: You always
want to be first,

see something with your own eyes

and with your camera
for the first time.

That's exciting
for any filmmaker.

♪ ♪

STEVENS: One morning
in late July of 2003,

we get together
to go find the Kad'yak.

CAPTAIN: Okay, so we're
at about 90 feet here.

STEVENS: The first thing I did
when we got to Icon Bay,

we get our gear on,
our tanks, our masks,

and we just roll off
into the water.

QUINTH: On our first dive,
we kind of thought

we'll see a boat sitting
down at the bottom.

STEVENS: We descended
something like 80 feet.

There was a lot of sediment.

I literally could not
see the seafloor.

We got to the end of our dive
and we hadn't seen anything.

So, I was kind of disappointed.

The next team of divers went in,

and they came back up
at the end of their dive,

and they said, we think
we've found something.

And one of the divers had picked
up some little bits of metal.

QUINTH: We knew that Kad'yak

had been covered
with copper sheets,

to protect the wood
from the sea worms.

STEVENS: This could be copper
from the bottom of a ship,

or it could be aluminum foil

somebody threw over
with their fried chicken.

We don't know what it is.

But it deserves another look.

So, the next team of divers
went down,

and they came back up
at the end of their dive,

and they said, "Brad, you're
not gonna believe this!

We saw a cannon!"

"A cannon? Really?
Are you sure it wasn't rocks?"

"No, it was a cannon,
we saw a cannon."

Does this mean that there's
a whole ship lying down there?

That diver went back down
with a camera

so we could see what
the diver was seeing.

And we're up on the deck
of the boat

going, "Wow! Look at that!
He found an anchor!

Oh, my gosh! Look at that!"

And then the diver swims
a little bit and turns around,

and here's the cannon,
and we're going, "Oh, my gosh!"

I think we found a shipwreck.

QUINTH: In the water, you can't
allow yourself to get excited,

because it could be dangerous.

But of course, when
you find something

that's hundreds of years old,

your heart starts
beating faster.

♪ ♪

STEVENS: I was elated
and ecstatic,

but I was also wary,

because hundreds of ships
were used

in the early centuries
of Alaska.

Ships were commonly lost.

How could we know if
we'd found the Kad'yak?

We didn't have the expertise
to answer the key questions:

When did it sink?

Is it even a Russian ship?

We needed a professional
archaeological survey.

♪ ♪

Nine months after we first
laid eyes on the wreck,

we were back with a pro team
from East Carolina University.

This dive was the first time
I had dived at that site

with professional
archaeologists.

FRANK CANTELAS: Ooh. (laughs)

STEVENS: Frank Cantelas, he was
the principal investigator.

CANTELAS: This comes back to
where these diameters are...

QUINTH: They had made out
a wonderful plan:

what to do and what to look for
and what to bring up.

STEVENS: What they revealed
was incredible.

Systematically,
the archaeologists removed

the sediment around
the artifacts.

What they uncovered was
the wooden remains of a hull.

The first thing that struck me

was the pile of rocks
in the middle.

It stands up about
three feet off the seafloor.

It's not a natural formation.

That's called ballast.

That would keep
the ship weighted

and prevent it
from tipping over.

There's ship timber sticking out
under the ballast pile.

Being able to see the wood
and the ribs there,

all of a sudden,
that ship takes shape.

We think that there
were supposed to be

six cannons on the ship.

If there's anything I wanted
to ever find underwater,

it was a cannon.

It was just amazing.

You wouldn't find that
on a modern wreck.

We found three anchors.

The largest one is probably
the main anchor.

Definitely 19th century anchors.

We found parts of what
obviously appeared to be

a sailing ship.

Could it be the Kad'yak?

STEVENS: As we searched the
wreck for clues to its identity,

we saw there were a lot
of unrecognizable things.

There was at one location

a big pile of what looked like
rusted metal machinery.

Part of it looked like
there was a wheel,

a round part that
might be a pulley.

I thought maybe it was
part of some mechanism

for raising and lowering
cargo into the hold.

I thought, if I could learn more
about Russian trading activity

in Kodiak, maybe it could
help me identify the ship.

Russians came to Alaska
to hunt sea otters

and other fur-bearing animals.

By 1861, they'd been running
the operation out of Kodiak

for nearly 70 years.

But there were a lot of
references to a set of docks

on a tiny little island

just across from
Kodiak's main harbor.

What were they up to over there?

I went there to visit,

and walked through the woods.

On Woody Island, there are
a couple of small lakes.

I saw that there was
physical evidence

that this place had been
manipulated by humans

over 100 years ago
for a specific purpose.

There was a trench about
maybe six feet across

and about four feet deep,

that goes straight down
through the woods.

These earthworks
didn't look like

they had anything to do
with the fur trade.

So what was this trench for?

Looking at the position of
the lakes, it became obvious.

This lake would have been
the perfect place to make ice.

Which was good for the Russians,

because there was
a new market opening up.

In 1849, the San Francisco
Gold Rush happened.

San Francisco became
a boomtown,

and they needed things
that cities need.

They needed
refrigeration for food.

Well, the Russians,
sitting up in Alaska,

saw this as an opportunity.

During the winter, they drew
horse-drawn saws along the ice

to cut it into blocks
to sell to San Francisco.

♪ ♪

The Russians probably dug this
trench and lined it with wood,

so that they could easily
slide ice from here

down to the storehouses,
before loading on the ship.

Those ice blocks
would have to be huge

to last the journey
to San Francisco.

Lifting them aboard would have
required specialized equipment.

This chunk of rusted metal
down there

might actually be
part of that system,

part of that ice machinery.

Buried in documents
on the Russian ice trade

was some fascinating detail.

The Kad'yak had
an ice elevator on board,

a piece of machinery
that was built

to help lower and raise ice
into and out of the hold.

I figured this metal
on the seafloor

must be related to that device,

but it was too corroded
to say for sure.

We needed more evidence
to say this was the Kad'yak.

A few days after
the archaeologists arrived,

I was diving with
Frank Cantelas,

and we saw this object
embedded in the seafloor

that was about a foot long
and sort of round.

And Frank indicated
to just leave it,

and maybe we'll come back
for it later.

♪ ♪

Several days later,
we'd all finished diving,

and Frank said, "Oh, by the way,

I had a look at that
interesting object today,

and it's got writing on it."

And my mouth just about
hit the floor.

And I was like, "Really?

We've got to go back
and get it."

QUINTH: They brought up
this item to the boat.

It was partly metal,
partly wood,

with the inscriptions on it.

Everybody gathered
around that piece,

and somebody was cleaning off
the top of it.

STEVENS: Sure enough, it's got
Cyrillic writing on it.

And I can read Cyrillic letters.

It says "K, O,"
the Cyrillic delta, "deh."

Jenya Anitchenko,
the Russian graduate student,

looked at that,
and she says, "That's it."

It says "Kad'yak."

This is the name of the ship.

QUINTH: Everybody
kind of went crazy.

STEVENS: To find an object
with the name of the ship

that you're studying
written on it

is the holy grail
of marine archaeology,

and we had found it.

What is it?

It's the hub of
the ship's wheel.

Not in our wildest dreams
could we have predicted that.

STEVENS: Here it is.

We found the Kad'yak.

QUINTH: When you know that
it's the correct boat,

that's when you can open
the bottle of champagne

and celebrate.

STEVENS: We'd found the only
Russian-era sailing ship

ever discovered
in Alaskan waters.

But the wreck was
eight miles from the reef

that tore its hull open.

How had the ship stayed afloat
without a crew

for three whole days
before it finally sank?

STEVENS: It turns out that
the Russian captain survived

and later described
the ship's sinking

in letters to his superiors.

On the morning
of March 30, 1860,

Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov
had his ship loaded,

and then he set sail.

The ship's going along well,
the sails are all set.

And suddenly there's crunching
and a shrieking

and a snapping of boards.

(rumbling)

The ship was probably
tearing its bottom out

across the rock reef
that it had hit.

There was nothing they could do;
the damage was too great.

They had to abandon the ship.

But it didn't sink.

It stayed afloat.

That would make sense if
the crew had just loaded up

with cargo at Woody Island,

because even though the ship
had a big hole in the bottom,

it was full of ice.

So, it was now
a wooden-hulled iceberg.

It kept the ship afloat
for three days,

drifting without
captain or crew.

(seagulls squawking)

The Kad'yak finally came to rest

with the top of the mast
sticking out of the water,

forming the shape of
the Russian Orthodox cross.

♪ ♪

The ship had settled
on top of the reef,

so Arkhimandritov could still
see the mast three months later.

At some point,
probably during the winter,

storms had broken up the ship.

The bow had fallen off
to the west,

and on the other side of the
reef was the rest of the ship.

And that is how we found it.

♪ ♪

Finding the Kad'yak proves
that these tales and records

about the ice business,
which are kind of obscure,

that they really were true,

and that it really did
contribute significantly

to the development of Alaska.

It brings it all back
and makes it real,

and it elevates it
from mystery to history.

♪ ♪

Not long after,
artificial ice became common,

and there were not enough
fur-bearing animals

left in Alaska to support
the Russian colony.

For the Russians, Alaska had
become a worthless wasteland.

And Russia, at that point,
began to talk about

selling Russian America
to the United States.

In 1867, just six years
after the Kad'yak sank,

the deal was done.

The US paid just
two cents an acre

for territory they still saw
as potentially valuable.

And American sailors saw
untapped resources offshore.

They sent hundreds
of ships in pursuit.

Unfortunately, many never
made it back out.

(wind whistling)

♪ ♪

(engine running)

RANDY BEEBE: I'm a retired
airline pilot who used to fly

back and forth on America's
busiest routes every day.

But I love to explore.

♪ ♪

Nowadays I use my license
to fly over

remote parts of
the North American wilderness.

I was always attracted to
the north coast of Alaska,

because of its incredible
history of human endurance.

I've been reading about
Arctic exploration

for probably 50 years now,
ever since I was very young.

The story of the whalers
and the voyages

that they did were
actually very remarkable.

Some lasted as long
as five years,

and these captains and sailors
were incredibly capable.

They faced perils of weather
and lack of provisions.

In the mid-1800s, whale oil
lubricated the machines

of the Industrial Revolution,

so it was a very
valuable commodity.

But when things
went wrong in Alaska,

they could be catastrophic.

(harpoon cannon fires)

I ran across the story
of the 1871 whaling disaster

very early on, and it really
captured my imagination.

This is the logbook
of Captain Valentine Lewis

of the whaling ship
the Thomas Dickerson,

and on Thursday the 14th
of September of 1871,

he writes this:

"With light winds from
the south, good weather,

and the ship still ice-bound,

may God please send us
a northeast wind

or all will be lost."

After that, the logbook ends.

He's saying that his ship
is stuck in an ice field.

They need help.

Then he goes quiet.

What is known is that a fleet
of more than 30 ships

had been hunting whales
off the north coast of Alaska

in the early fall,
late in the season.

This area was not
very well-known,

and they were actually
pushing the boundaries

of what was capable with
their ships of the time.

♪ ♪

Sea ice started forming
and trapped them

before they could escape to
the warmer waters in the south.

Almost all those vessels
went down.

So, out of the 32 ships
that were lost,

only one of 'em was salvaged.

You'd think more than 100 years
of being crushed by the sea ice

would have totally
destroyed 'em,

but I thought, could
the remains of those ships

still be out there?

BEEBE: For the locals,
the 1871 whaling disaster

must have been like
a hardware store

washing up along the beach.

Talking to the residents
on Alaska's north coast,

I discovered they'd
been salvaging debris

from the wrecks for generations.

They recycled the components
of these ships.

I knew the ships
must have been lost

close to where this debris
had come ashore.

Among the items we found on
the beach was a flensing tool.

And a flensing tool
is a broad blade

that is used to remove
the blubber from the whale

before it is boiled down
for oil.

This tool had been
found on a beach

just west of Point Franklin
on Alaska's north coast.

So I got my team together,
and that's where we headed.

We had a helicopter that brought
us directly to the campsite.

When they dropped us off
at the beach,

the silence of the tundra
kind of descended upon us.

In winter, ice covers up
the sea and the shore.

But in the summer, it melts
back to reveal the beach.

In August, along the shoreline,

when the wind is calm,
it's absolutely beautiful.

We enjoyed 24-hour daylight,

but we also had
an awful lot of down days

where the winds were howling.

So we started looking
upon the shoreline.

There is quite a bit
of driftwood up there,

but we started noticing in
and amongst all this driftwood

were ships' timbers.

Amongst all the artifacts
we found on the beach

were portions of the hulls
that are virtually intact.

And it's impressive.

There's an awful lot of it.

(camera shutter clicks)

In theory, this wreckage could
have been from any wooden ship.

But then we began to find
other intriguing items.

All along the beach, there were
portions of sheet copper,

and this copper was used
to cover the hull,

to protect the wood
from the teredo worm.

One of these copper sheets still
had the maker's mark on it.

The maker's mark said "A.B."

and was able to trace that to
a copper company in Connecticut,

the heart of
American shipbuilding

and the whaling industry
at the time.

(camera shutter clicks)

We knew we were
on the right track,

but we had no proof that these
ships were from the 1871 fleet.

We needed to search
for wreckage offshore.

We used a small inflatable boat,

and the best survey instruments
I could mount on that vessel.

But in the area we searched,
we couldn't find anything.

Out of a 14-foot
inflatable boat,

we were forced to use
a very compact sonar.

We, you know, could have
had better equipment,

a more stable vessel.

This area deserved an expedition

with more sophisticated
equipment,

and in 2015, that's what NOAA
brought to the table.

♪ ♪

DELGADO: What I loved about the
stories of the Alaska shipwrecks

is that it was so closely tied
to areas where I'd grown up.

The story of the lost
whaling fleet of 1871

is perhaps the most
incredible to me.

32 ships lost, with more than
1,000 people aboard.

Not only crew,

but also some of the captains'
wives and children.

Amazingly, everyone escaped.

That nobody died is
practically miraculous.

1,200-odd people.

How do you do that?

We would never know the answer

unless we found
wreckage offshore

where they originally sank.

The fear was that maybe that ice

had literally just
chewed up those ships

and left nothing.

But where there's smoke,
there's fire.

What Randy was showing us

was that ships had not
completely broken apart

and disappeared
into matchsticks.

There were big chunks of these
ships up on the beaches,

and those chunks of ships
had survived

over a century and a half
of being moved by ice.

That was an important clue.

The question in our minds was,
could we find these ships

and figure out what had happened
after they'd been abandoned?

DELGADO: Each winter, as the
Arctic freezes, icebergs form

and sea ice pushes right up
to the north Alaskan coast.

This is what trapped
the whaling fleet of 1871

in the area we now call
Alaska's North Slope,

before they could reach
warmer southern waters.

There was a big question:

Would that grinding sea ice

have left anything intact
on the seabed?

This chart, with
soundings and fathoms,

would suggest,
if you didn't know better,

that this area's charted and
we know what's on the bottom.

But the reality is,
is that there's whole areas

that are blank
and they're uncharted.

You've got gaps here and here,
and gaps in here.

There's no data here.

This is blank.

To stand any chance
of finding remains,

we had to plan for total data
capture to map the seabed.

♪ ♪

BARR: I had known about this,
this story for decades.

♪ ♪

The disaster of 1871
was one of the things

that basically ended
Yankee whaling

in the early 20th century,

because it was such
a devastating loss.

What was still there,
if anything was still there?

It was a question that
needed to be answered.

I was the mission coordinator.

Once we got there,
it was deeply personal.

♪ ♪

We were going out, we were going
to essentially develop a map

of the seabed between
Point Franklin and Wainwright.

♪ ♪

I remember sitting
on the afterdeck

of the vessel we were on
and thinking to myself,

you know, this is the same place
where the whalers tucked in.

They were here,
and now we're here.

And that was a very powerful
experience for me.

DELGADO: One of the first things
we did was to scan using sonar.

With sonar, you're basically
bouncing sound waves

off the seabed
and building a picture

from the returning signal.

What you're looking
for are straight lines,

which are rare in nature.

BARR: What's it look like
on the screen?

DELGADO: Suddenly you see
these straight lines

and then more horizontal
figures, blocks,

and it's like, that,
that looks interesting,

that could be a piece
of a shipwreck.

BARR: The sonar picked up
six features

that appeared to be manmade.

DELGADO: But the sonar can be
a bit misleading.

Is it a provocatively shaped
group of rocks,

or is that the outline
of a hull?

That's when you need
to put eyes on it.

Diving was not an option.

You're literally in water
that's just above freezing.

You get into that water
and it hurts.

(camera shutter clicking)

BARR: To avoid diving,
we created a drop camera system

that could be lowered
to the seabed.

We started to drag
the drop camera around,

try to get a better view
of what was there.

DELGADO: See that?

What is that?

Suddenly,
this structure appeared.

It was a mass of heavy wood.

You could see sections
of the hull that were there,

indicating some of that
structure had survived.

You had the broken ends
of the ribs, or the frames,

that had been gnawed by the ice.

But it's covered
in marine growth.

You had some
stone ballast as well

that helped stabilize that ship
when it was afloat.

You go, okay,
we've got a shipwreck.

Pieces of copper sheathing
were visible on sections

of planking next to
the 70-foot-long hull.

It was clear evidence that
what we were looking at

was a vessel that had at least
been built in the 19th century.

We now knew a shipwreck
could survive underwater

on the north Alaskan coast.

But were these the remains
of a whaling ship?

We needed more than
just an empty hull,

so we turned our attention

to another of the most promising
of the six sites,

10 miles up the coast.

BARR: What we saw on the bottom
were basically large timbers

that were ribs of a vessel.

And then we really saw
the cool stuff.

DELGADO: You're seeing
clear structure

that had survived
being in the ice,

and with that, artifacts
scattered around it.

BARR: What this wreck showed us
that the other didn't

was the actual ship's hardware.

DELGADO: You began to see things
like an anchor.

And then another feature
which shows up,

which is a metal bar, two bars,
that come around into a loop.

Right beside there was
a piece of iron

shaped like a corner bracket,
a couple of feet long.

The question was, did we have
enough in those wrecks

to prove that these
were the remains

of the largest wrecking event in
the history of American whaling?

DELGADO: To try to make sense
of what we were seeing

on the seabed,
we decided to study

the last 19th century
whaling ship still in existence.

BARR: This loop of iron
is very similar

to what we saw in that wreckage.

DELGADO: They're called
chain plates.

This is all part of the standing
rigging that supports the mast.

This is something that speaks
directly to the fact

that we've got a 19th century
ship lying in pieces.

That metal bar with the loop
was a clear indicator

that our wrecks were
of the right period.

But did any of these artifacts
prove that these were whalers?

This is a smoking gun.

BARR: Oh, absolutely.

I mean, they would
only be on vessels

that had tryworks installations.

DELGADO: Yeah.

That explained the
bracket-shaped piece of iron

that we found in our survey.

The tryworks is the big furnace
with its huge pots

for taking whale fat
and making it whale oil.

They were held in place with
iron brackets called knees.

That's bolted in place, and
that's bolted down to the deck.

They go out to sea, they get
onto the whaling grounds.

Out come the big pots,
out come the bricks.

They lay all the bricks,
they make this big tryworks,

and then they start whaling.

Seeing the chain plates and
the iron knees at Mystic Seaport

confirmed we had
19th century vessels,

and we had a 19th century vessel

that clearly had been
used as a whaler.

With this evidence,
and these clues,

the wrecks, the artifacts that
Randy had found on the beach,

everything was consistent with
19th century whaling vessels.

There's no doubt in my mind
that we had finally found

the submerged remains
of the greatest disaster

in the history
of American whaling.

The common sense
assumption would be

that the Arctic eats ships
and leaves very little.

No.

Things have been preserved

despite the violence
of the disaster

and the intervening
century and a half

of ongoing storms and ice.

Things survive
just as powerfully

as human stories survive.

The 1871 whaling disaster was
a major blow to the industry.

♪ ♪

BARR: The loss made news
around the world,

but we still had
one final question:

How did everyone
actually escape?

The ice was in,
and it wasn't going anywhere.

Their ships were caught.

The reports say that the crews
managed to make their way

to another group of
whaling ships 90 miles away.

In the ice-locked Arctic
in poor weather,

that's a very hazardous trek.

DELGADO: When we looked again
at our mapping data,

we found an important clue.

BARR: Where we did
the seabed mapping

close enough to the shoreline,

we did see evidence
of a raised feature

that runs parallel
to the shoreline.

DELGADO: The sonar clearly shows
this sandbar or reef offshore.

BARR: It was maybe five feet
below the surface of the water.

We wondered, did that sandbar
play a role in the escape?

We went through all the evidence
we could find.

If you look at the pictures
based on first-person accounts,

there are pictures of the shore,
open water, ice pounded up,

and then the vessels
stuck in the ice.

DELGADO: Looking at everything,
it all became very clear.

The ships are offshore,
and as the ice comes in,

many of them are caught.

As the ships are racing
to get south,

they're encountering
more and more ice.

They're stuck.

And as the days pass, fangs
of ice begin to pierce hulls.

Water floods in.

Pressure begins to crack
and break frames.

But that sandbar stops the ice.

It leaves a gap.

Between the sandbar
and the beach,

it's an open channel of water,
and that's the escape route.

That sandbar literally, I think,
helped save lives.

The ships themselves are
trapped, and some are crushed.

But they still have
their little whaleboats.

They get into those boats
and row to where ships

that have not been caught in
the ice are waiting for them.

And now packed in,
in large numbers,

they all get to go home.

BARR: The weather was awful,
the ice was bad,

and it's an incredible story
of human endurance.

DELGADO: 1,200 more people
walked out of this,

but this was the beginning
of the end for an industry

that had dominated the American
economy for centuries.

Whether you're
searching for fur,

whether you're searching
for fish,

whether you're
searching for whale oil,

this is a dangerous
place to sail.

In the 150 years since the US
purchased the territory,

people have taken huge risks

to pursue its abundant
natural resources.

It's a land of ice and extremes,
but people keep coming.

And just when Alaska
looks too challenging,

it offers up a new
irresistible temptation.

♪ ♪