Antarctica's Lost Aviator
The Epic Adventure to Explore the Last Frontier on Earth
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Narrated by:
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Paul Bellantoni
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By:
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Jeff Maynard
About this listen
By the 1930s, no one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent, and to honor his hero, Wyatt Earp, he would carry his gun belt on the flight.
The obstacles to Ellsworth’s ambition were numerous: He didn’t like the cold, he avoided physical work, and he couldn’t navigate. Consequently, he hired the experienced Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins to organize the expedition on his behalf. While Ellsworth battled depression and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, Wilkins purchased a ship, hired a crew, and ordered a revolutionary new airplane constructed.
The Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions became epics of misadventure, as competitors plotted to beat Ellsworth, pilots refused to fly, crews mutinied, and the ship was repeatedly trapped in the ice. Finally, in 1935, Ellsworth took off to fly from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. A few hours after leaving, radio contact with him was lost, and the world gave him up for dead.
Antarctica’s Lost Aviator brings alive one of the strangest episodes in polar history, using previously unpublished diaries, correspondence, and film to reveal the amazing true story of the first crossing of Antarctica and how, against all odds, it was achieved by the unlikeliest of heroes.
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- Unabridged
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In July 1881, Lt. A. W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge - vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures, and months of total darkness - as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. In May 1882, they broke the 300-year-old record, and returned to camp to eagerly await the resupply ship. Only nothing came.
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An incredible read
- By Lauren Olson on 12-06-19
By: Buddy Levy
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Empire of Ice and Stone
- The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk
- By: Buddy Levy
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator. The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again.
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Great adventure story
- By Elaine McCollough on 01-06-23
By: Buddy Levy
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The Ice at the End of the World
- An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Gertner
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the 20th century. Their original goal was to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling - one mile, two miles down.Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past.
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Adventure, Science, Advocacy
- By EM Goodkind on 09-08-19
By: Jon Gertner
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Race to Hawaii
- By: Jason Ryan
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-racking and uncertain 26-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world's largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Aviation.
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Calm winds and Clear Skies
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-22
By: Jason Ryan
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Frozen in Time
- An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II
- By: Mitchell Zuckoff
- Narrated by: Mitchell Zuckoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men vanished. In this thrilling adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors.
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Interesting Survival Story
- By Jennifer on 05-20-13
By: Mitchell Zuckoff
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Erebus
- One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time
- By: Michael Palin
- Narrated by: Michael Palin
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Palin brings the fascinating story of the Erebus and its occupants to life, from its construction as a bomb vessel in 1826 through the flagship years of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition and finally to Sir John Franklin’s quest for the holy grail of navigation - a route through the Northwest Passage, where the ship disappeared into the depths of the sea for more than 150 years. It was rediscovered under the arctic waters in 2014.
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Engrossing story
- By Anonymous User on 10-01-24
By: Michael Palin
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To the Edges of the Earth
- 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration - set at the world's frozen extremes - lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole", the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.
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brutally honest accounts unbelievable stories
- By Troy Hamilton on 07-17-18
By: Edward J. Larson
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The Moth and the Mountain
- A True Story of Love, War, and Everest
- By: Ed Caesar
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: He will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit — completely alone.
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this is very misleading as most of it is wwone
- By steve on 12-01-20
By: Ed Caesar
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Fatal North
- Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition
- By: Bruce Henderson
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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It began as President Ulysses S. Grant's bid for international glory after the Civil War - America's first attempt to reach the North Pole. It ended with Captain Charles Hall's death under suspicious circumstances, dissension among sailors, scientists, and explorers, and the ship's evacuation and eventual sinking. Then came a brutal struggle for survival by 33 men, women, and children stranded on the polar ice.
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An average reader says 10
- By Barbara on 11-10-16
By: Bruce Henderson
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The Lost Men
- The Horrowing Saga of Shackleton's Ross Sea Party
- By: Kelly Tyler-Lewis
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed south aboard the Endurance to be the first to cross Antarctica. Shackleton's endeavor is legend, but few know the astonishing story of the Ross Sea party, the support crew he dispatched to the opposite side of the continent to build a vital lifeline of food and fuel depots.
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Just OK
- By Michael on 05-17-07
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The Last of His Kind
- The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer
- By: David Roberts
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Last of His Kind, renowned adventure writer David Roberts gives readers a spellbinding history of mountain climbing in the twentieth century as told through the biography of Brad Washburn, legendary mountaineering pioneer and photographer. Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, has praised David Roberts, saying, “Nobody alive writes better about mountaineering” - and nowhere is that truth more evident than in this breathtaking account of the life and exploits of America’s greatest mountain climber.
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Great introduction to Washburn & climbing elites
- By Geoffrey on 04-27-22
By: David Roberts
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The Ice Diaries
- The Untold Story of the USS Nautilus and the Cold War’s Most Daring Mission
- By: Captain William R. Anderson, Don Keith - contributor
- Narrated by: Roger Mueller
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The Ice Diaries tells the incredible true story of Captain William R. Anderson and his crew's harrowing top-secret mission aboard the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine. Bristling with newly classified, never-before-published information, The Ice Diaries takes listeners on a dangerous journey beneath the vast, unexplored Arctic ice cap during the height of the Cold War.
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a great book about brave men
- By TDL Martin on 02-05-20
By: Captain William R. Anderson, and others
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A Wretched and Precarious Situation
- In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
- By: David Welky
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A remarkable true story of adventure, betrayal, and survival set in one of the world's most inhospitable places. In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted a line of mysterious peaks looming in the distance. He called this unexplored realm "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that the world-famous explorer had discovered a new continent rising from the frozen Arctic Ocean.
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it all comes together at the end
- By Kat on 01-30-18
By: David Welky
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The Man Who Ate His Boots
- The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
- By: Anthony Brandt
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: Find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over Northern Canada. For the next 35 years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route.
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They don't get any better than this
- By Christopher on 08-15-14
By: Anthony Brandt