Table of contents for Great Explorers 2020 in Great Explorers

The North Col approach to Everest’s summit pioneered by Mallory, Bullock and Wheeler in 1921 remains the main route from the Tibet side (although the Southeast Ridge route from Nepal is now much more popular). The crux of the North Ridge route is the infamous ‘Second Step’, a section of rock about 50 metres high, with the last five metres being virtually vertical. At sea level, most experienced climbers could clamber up it, but at 8,610 metres it becomes a huge hurdle. Whether Mallory could have accomplished such a feat in 1924 gear remains hotly debated. 1 MARCH 1924 Darjeeling, India Members of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition assemble, engage around 150 porters, and begin the long walk in, through Sikkim towards Tibet. Travelling in two groups, they retrace the…

Although John Cabot, sponsored by the English crown, was the first European to visit North America since the Vikings, it was Spain and Portugal that dominated transatlantic exploration in the 15th century. Finding a northwestern route to Asia, rather than colonisation, preoccupied the first English explorers, but for Spain and Portugal, conquest was the prime aim of early voyages. Within 50 years of Columbus’s landing in the Caribbean, the Spaniards had conquered three empires, including the Aztecs, and were shipping huge amounts of riches to Spain. Little wonder, then, that the Spanish crown was happy to sponsor the efforts of early navigators. 100 The number of Spaniards led by Cortés who captured huge Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in 1519 TREATY OF TORDESILLAS DIVIDE AND CONQUER Signed by Portugal and Spain in…

Life on board ships in the Age of Discovery was typically uncomfortable, unhealthy, dangerous and monotonous. Many expeditions lasted for several years, during which extended periods of time would be spent on the open ocean, where sleeping and working conditions were woeful and the daily diet dreadful. Exposure, draconic discipline, cramped conditions and the ever-present scourge of scurvy were sailors’ constant companions. Ships were often manned by a mix of nationalities. As well as Spaniards and Portuguese, Magellan’s fleet had sailors from as far afield as Sicily, England, France and North Africa. Ships were hierarchical: crew ranged from peasant pages (boys as young as eight, who did the most menial jobs) to skilled seamen such as the pilot, boatswain, gunner, carpenter and barber, who would also operate as the ship’s…

The Vikings crossed the Atlantic around 1000, some 500 years before Columbus was beached in the Bahamas and Cabot crashed into Canada. But did a Welshman beat both men to the Americas? An intriguing legend tells of Prince Madoc and his brother Rhirid who, in 1170 – upset with family infighting after the death of their father, the Welsh king Owain Gwynedd – upped sticks and set sail west, all the way across the Atlantic to a new land where they settled among the indigenous population. The story was given substance by the discovery of some Native American tribes with a dialect that sounded very much like Welsh. Moreover, the Mandan Indians used boats with the same design as traditional Welsh coracles. The yarn was popular currency in Elizabethan England,…

After Drake claimed North America for England in 1579, several attempts were made to establish colonies in Nova Albion. The earliest was organised by another man who’d caught the Queen’s eye: Walter Raleigh. An aristocratic soldier, Raleigh’s early career was spent in Ireland. In 1584, Elizabeth granted him a charter to establish a colony in America, essentially to gain a foothold in the continent and provide a base from which the English could attack the Spanish. He would name the area Virginia, in honour of the Virgin Queen. Raleigh never travelled to North America, but in 1584 he organised an exploratory expedition that travelled up the east coast and identified Roanoke Island, in present-day Carolina (then Virginia), as a potential site. The next year, Raleigh’s cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, took…

“I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests”Ibn Battuta Like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta’s adventures weren’t recorded until he’d stopped travelling – and some of his claims are deemed questionable. Yet the book about his wanderings, Rihla (Journey), remains a fascinating portal into Dar al-Islam – the medieval Muslim world – and an important source of information about everything from politics and geography through to cultural attitudes. Yet his wasn’t a carefree sojourn. During the course of his travels, Battuta was accosted by bandits and pirates, shipwrecked, became embroiled in battles and nearly executed by a notoriously unhinged sultan. MOROCCO TO MECCA Born in 1304 in Tangiers, Ibn Battuta studied Muslim law before beginning his first…

Cook’s final voyage is inevitably best known for his landing on Hawaii, as well as his death at the hands of its inhabitants. But arguably the biggest achievement of the great surveyor’s third major journey of exploration was the highly detailed mapping he completed of North America’s northwest coast. His charts led to the inclusion of the now-familiar coastline of Canada and Alaska on world maps for the first time, closing the gap between the known extent of the New World and Russia. 1 12 JULY 1776 Plymouth, England The Resolution sets sail from England, under the command of Cook, who is ostensibly tasked with returning Omai to the Society Islands. He sails via Tenerife to Cape Town. The Discovery, captained by Charles Clerke, leaves in August. 2 1 DECEMBER 1776…

For Italian romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, being locked up in a Genoan prison near the end of the 13th century was a blessing in disguise – for in his cell, he stumbled across a story that is still in print today. His cellmate was Marco Polo – the story the tale of the merchant’s travels. In that dank prison, the 40-something Venetian traveller let his exotic accounts of Jerusalem, China, India and beyond unfurl. The caged wordsmith lapped them up. A cosmography-cum-memoir, originally entitled Divisament dou Monde (Description of the World) now commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, was born. The book was a sensation – it created ripples in Italian society that would, over the years, turn into tidal waves, with his story inspiring many adventurers of…

“The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight. These men were very kind”Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé President Thomas Jefferson was a man with a vision. When serendipity gifted the United States a vast swathe of new and unexplored territory, he immediately sent a handpicked team of soldiers and frontiersmen across the Mississippi and into the void beyond, to explore North America’s longest river, the mysterious Missouri, and push his newborn nation’s horizons as far as they could go. The 35-man expedition was spearheaded by Jefferson’s personal secretary and, besides surviving whatever the wilderness threw at them – including bone-crunching rapids, mountains, grizzly bears and unknown tribes…

VOYAGE 1 1 1 MAY 1607 Gravesend, England Hudson departs with a crew of ten men and his young son John, on the 80-ton Hopewell. They sail via the Shetland Islands. 2 14–22 JUNE 1607 Greenland The Hopewell reaches Greenland. Hudson hugs the eastern coast as he sails north until 22 June, when he turns the ship east. 3 JULY 1607 Spitsbergen After first spotting ‘Newland’ on 27 June, the Hopewell enters Krossfjorden, a fjord on the west coast of Spitsbergen, on 14 July. Within two days, pack ice prevents them from continuing north and they return to England. VOYAGE 2 1 APRIL 1608 St Katherine Docks, London With 14 men and his son John, Hudson departs England, again aboard the Hopewell. This time, though, they seek a northeast route to…

During the reign of China’s Yongle Emperor in 1403, an imperial order was issued to begin the construction of a fleet of super-ships – vessels vastly bigger than anything ever seen before. Offcially called Xiafan Guanjun (‘The Foreign Expeditionary Armada’), the behemoth boats would become better known as the Ming Empire’s treasure ships. Capable of carrying as many as 1,000 men, some of these ships were purportedly 137 metres long, 55 metres wide and several stories high, and each boasted nine masts with 12 sails. They dwarfed contemporary European ships – by comparison, Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa María, built 60 years later, measured just 18 metres from bow to stern. Overseeing this immense shipbuilding project on the banks of the Qinhuai River was Zheng He, a eunuch who wielded…

5,000 The number of pirates killed in a battle during Zheng He’s first voyage. 1 JULY 1405 Nanjing The fleet departs Nanjing after ceremonies and sacrifices to Tianfei, the Chinese goddess of sailors. They shelter from a monsoon in the mouth of the Min River before leaving through the Wuhumen (Five Tiger Passage), then on via Champa (in modern Vietnam), Java, the Strait of Malacca and the Indian Ocean to reach Ceylon (Sri Lanka). 2 1407 Palembang, Sumatra Island While returning from the first expedition, Zheng He goes into battle with the large pirate forces of Chen Zuyi. The treasure fleet is victorious, 5,000 pirates are killed, ten pirate ships are destroyed and seven more are captured. 3 1408 Calicut During the second voyage, which left Nanjing in late 1407…

“What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life”George Mallory Around 1pm on 8 June 1924, George Mallory, one of the era’s leading climbers, and his young companion Andrew Irvine, were spotted as tiny black specks clinging to Everest’s towering Northeast Ridge, just a few hundred metres from the summit. And then the clouds closed in. Irvine has never been seen since, while Mallory’s frozen corpse was finally found in 1999. Their unfinished story is mountaineering’s greatest mystery. at they died on the mountain over 90 years ago isn’t in doubt, but what exactly happened up there, on the roof of the world, has been argued about endlessly by alpinists and armchair observers for decades. Did they reach the top…

During the 15th and 16th centuries, powerful European nations embarked on ambitious campaigns of exploration, colonial conquest and trade orientated empire building. is was an era of intense ocean-crossing exploration. is was the Age of Discovery. The impact of these missions was immense. The West’s understanding of the planet skyrocketed as a ‘New World’ was revealed across the Atlantic. Enormous wealth poured into Europe, the daily diet of millions changed and technology boomed. Meanwhile, the transatlantic slave trade escalated, and disease and death were delivered to many indigenous peoples, whose cultures were also damaged or destroyed. These consequences were as unpredictable as the new seas were uncharted. The Vikings had explored North America’s east coast centuries earlier, but their findings weren’t shared. While Aristotle showed, in the fourth century BC,…

“THE SHIPS ARRIVED IN KERALA, CAPITAL OF INDIA’S SPICE TRADE, AND HISTORY TOOK A SUDDEN SWERVE” Sponsored by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator (third son of King John I) and later his great nephew John II, the Portuguese explored Africa’s west coast throughout the 15th century. Ships returned with gold and slaves, but the ultimate goal was to find a route to the riches of the Orient. Diogo Cão ventured as far south as Namibia’s Walvis Bay in 1486, and explored the Congo River in a quest to find Prester John’s lost Christian nation (see facing page). When Cão died, the expedition returned to Lisbon. Bartolomeu Dias followed Cão’s route along the Skeleton Coast a year later, with orders to continue to India. His three ships rounded the tempestuous tip…

During the late 15th century, European eyes were firmly fixed on the Portuguese. They were making more and more headway on their mission to find a sea trading route with India in the east by sailing down the coast of Africa. at discovery, it was correctly anticipated, would trigger an earthquake in the global economy. With all of this to worry about, the powers of the world hardly noticed when two explorers with itchy feet set sail to the west. The story of how these two adventurers – Christopher Columbus and John Cabot – both came to be in the employment of foreign powers and accidently stumbled upon a new world is a remarkable one, and the impact of their The orts would change the course of human history. INTREPID…

1291 Brothers Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi from Genoa pass Gibraltar, between the Pillars of Hercules, in the first-known attempt to sail from Europe to India. They’re never seen again. c1450 Sponsored by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator, the agile caravel ship is developed, allowing explorers to venture further and faster. 29 MAY 1453 The fall of the Christian city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). The Ottoman Empire’s capture of the key city slams the door on overland trade routes between Europe and the east – making the discovery of a sea route imperative. 28 AUGUST 1481 John II becomes Portuguese King, rekindling The orts to explore Africa’s coast in search of a sea route to the Orient. JANUARY 1488 Portugal’s Bartolomeu Dias leads the first European expedition to survive rounding the…

MUSEUMS AND MONUMENTS GOLDEN HINDE, BANKSIDE, LONDON Fully working reconstruction of Drake’s flagship. Tours with costumed actors bring the history of the ship to life with tales of his voyages. www.goldenhinde.com ALSO LOOK OUT FOR Buckland Abbey, Drake’s Devon home www.nationaltrust.org.uk The Matthew, Bristol, a replica of Cabot’s ship www.matthew.co.uk The Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth www.maryrose.org BOOKS ELIZABETH’S SEA DOGS: HOW ENGLAND’S MARINERS BECAME THE SCOURGE OF THE SEAS by Hugh Bicheno (Conway, 2012) The story of the privateers, including Drake, Raleigh and others. THE LAST CRUSADE: THE EPIC VOYAGES OF VASCO DA GAMA by Nigel Cli (Atlantic, 2012) A well-written, lively and stirring book that tells the story of da Gama’s exciting adventures. ALSO LOOK OUT FOR The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a…

While he encountered Christian societies, multi-faith China and newly Muslim lands, Ibn Battuta mostly travelled through an established Muslim world known as Dar al-Islam. As an educated Muslim, the traveller enjoyed hospitality throughout the lands, where sophisticated networks facilitated trade and travel. Much of Dar al-Islam was still reeling from the 13th-century Mongol invasion that had created the Ilkhanate of Persia, weakened Baghdad and Damascus, and shifted power to Egypt. 1 TANGIERS June 1325 Ibn Battuta leaves home on his first hajj, arriving in Egypt in spring 1326, visiting first Alexandria and then Cairo. 2 DAMASCUS Ramadan 1326 Having tried and failed to reach Mecca via the Nile and Red Sea, Ibn Battuta travels to Damascus via Hebron, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 3 MECCA AND MESOPOTAMIA November 1326-27 After a month…

The exact chronology and geography of Leif Erikson’s adventures are debatable subjects, with the two primary sources offering differing accounts, but the following is a representation of events primarily described in the Grænlendinga saga (the Greenlanders’ saga), which most scholars accept as being the more reliable text. 1 SPRING/EARLY SUMMER, AD 999 Greenland Leif departs Greenland, heading for the Norse homeland of Norway, where he intends to serve the King, Olaf Tryggvason. His boat is blown off course, however, and he makes a forced landfall in the Hebrides. 2 SUMMER Hebrides, Scotland Confined to the islands for a month or more by extreme weather, Leif is shown hospitality by a local chief and begins an affair with his daughter, Thorgunna, which results in the birth of a son, Thorgils. 3…

Fawcett believed that other Amazonian citadel seekers were looking in the wrong places – too close to major rivers – and instead planned to explore inland between the Xingu and Tapajós tributaries, where he was convinced Z lay. Many tribes had tasted contact with the so-called civilised world were profoundly opposed to repeating the experience – having suffered slavery, torture, murder, rape, abuse and exploitation at the hands of the rubber barons who controlled the ‘black gold’ trade – and often met white intruders with lethal violence. 1 DECEMBER 1924 England – Rio de Janeiro Percy and Jack Fawcett leave from Liverpool on 3 December, bound for New York aboard the Aquitania. Raleigh Rimell is in America already, as is Fawcett’s business partner, Lynch, who is busy boozing through the…

For the first 2,000 miles of the journey, along the Missouri – against the current all the way – Lewis had a 55-foot shallow-draft keelboat built. It carried 12 tons of cargo and had a sail, but the cumbersome boat was primarily man-powered, with oars and poles. When the current became too much, the men would tow the boat from the bank. It was arduous work, and they often travelled only 13–14 miles a day. Without the assistance of friendly Native American tribes – including the Shoshone and Nez Percé nations, with whom they negotiated – Lewis and Clark would almost certainly have perished in the Rockies, a hurdle which they barely knew existed before running into it. 1 14 MAY 1804 Camp Dubois After spending the winter training on…

“Unknown to them, Burke and Wills had come within 12 miles of the ocean” Bound together in death, as they are in history books and monuments across Australia, Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills made an unlikely double act in life. Burke, a flamboyant Irishman, had an impulsive streak that saw him lurch from policeman to soldier to expedition leader. In contrast, Wills was an unexcitable Englishman. He had a methodical and careful character with the mind of a scientist. In fact, the only thing the pair did share was a lack of relevant qualifications for leading the Victorian Exploring Expedition of 1860, which was tasked with finding a south–north route across Australia. Burke had no exploration experience or knowledge of bushcraft whatsoever, while Wills was never supposed to…

“We reached a state of privation so great that we were eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes, cooked with certain herbs.”Friar Gaspar de Carvajal When Francisco de Orellana floated off down the Río Napo in December 1541, he was just trying to find food for a starving expedition party, fruitlessly searching for the mythical País de la Canela, ‘country of cinnamon’, in the foothills of the Andes, somewhere east of Quito. The current caught him, though, and by the time he popped out the other side of the continent eight months later, he’d led the first-known descent of the biggest waterway on Earth. It remains, perhaps, the most impressive feat of accidental adventuring in history. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE A blood relation of Francisco Pizarro, the man…

“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the Moon, and one plus God knows what on this side”Michael Collins, during his solo orbits of the Moon As the lunar landing module of the Apollo 11 space mission skimmed above the Sea of Tranquillity towards its touchdown area, alarms started going off across the console. Inside, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exchanged glances. Only two scenarios could possibly play out from here: either they would shortly become the first humans to walk on extraterrestrial soil, or they were about to die further from home than anyone had ever perished before. The men had…

“THE ARABIC NAME FOR THE VOID WAS BAHR AL-ZULAMAT… THE SEA OF DARKNESS” The Pillars of Hercules are mountainous points either side of the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, one being the rock of Gibraltar and the other a peak on the North African shore. In the 15th century, this is where maps ended and a knowledge vacuum began. The Atlantic expanse beyond the strait was known in Latin as Mare Tenebrosum, while the Arabic name for the void was Bahr al-Zulamat. Both mean ‘sea of darkness’. Why, then, by the 15th century, were Europeans keen to sail past the end of the known world and into the dark? The pursuit of wealth is the basic answer. Africa promised gold, jewels and slaves, while the East (India, China and the Spice…

Once the Portuguese established a viable trading route to India, the Spanish had a problem. The Treaty of Tordesillas (see page 16) granted Portugal control of the African route and without independent access to the Orient, Spain’s Iberian rivals could hold them to ransom. A potential solution came from an unexpected source: a Portuguese explorer with an audacious plan, who’d fallen out with his king. Ferdinand Magellan left Portugal in 1517, when Manuel I dismissed his idea of approaching the Spice Islands (Maluku, now in Indonesia) from the east via the Americas. However, he successfully sold his idea to the King of Spain, Charles I. Spanish adventurer Vasco Núñez de Balboa had discovered the ocean beyond the New World four years earlier. Magellan’s plan sounded plausible, and it avoided treading…

The Protestant Queen Elizabeth I ascended the English throne in 1558, succeeding her half-sister Mary I, a Catholic who’d been married to King Philip II of Spain. The relationship between the two European powers quickly soured. Philip considered Elizabeth a heretic and felt duty bound to protect England’s Catholics. The new Queen observed with alarm and resentment the growing wealth and power of the Spanish, as they extracted a seemingly endless supply of treasure from their new territories in the Americas. Fuelling the Spanish King’s anger and delighting the English Queen in equal measure were the buccaneer-like shenanigans of a swashbuckling English sea captain called Francis Drake, known to the Spanish, who considered him a pirate, as El Draque – the Dragon. The eldest of 12 sons born to a…

“Columbus wasn’t the first European to set foot on American soil. Not by a long shot” The second Monday of October is a federal public holiday in the United States. Known as Columbus Day, it marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492 – an event that, without doubt, marked a turning point in the histories of the conjoined continents, north and south of where he landed. But despite popular perceptions, the Italian explorer wasn’t the first European to set foot on American soil. Not by a long shot. Almost five centuries before Columbus crashed into the Bahamas, a boatload of flaxen-haired Europeans had made landfall in North America. And while the Vikings’ initial encounter with what would become known as the New World was almost…

“The difficulties are great and the tale of disasters a long one, for the few remaining unknown corners of the world exact a price for their secrets”Percy Fawcett In April 1925, veteran English explorer Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett hacked his way into the near-impenetrable jungle of Mato Grosso, deep in the sweaty, unmapped mess of the Amazon, accompanied by his son Jack and young Raleigh Rimell. Armed with custom-made machetes, rifles and a ukulele, the intrepid trio hoped to discover a long-lost city that Fawcett was convinced lay deep in the wilderness, beyond the Brazilian Pale: an Atlantis of the jungle, the shell of an ancient and highly developed civilisation. It was Fawcett’s eighth foray into the ferociously fecund forest. His 58-year-old body had thus far withstood everything the Amazon…

“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go”Captain James Cook Captain James Cook rose from humble beginnings in Yorkshire to become the most accomplished explorer of his age. A taciturn man, he was nonetheless a natural leader and diplomat, held in high esteem even by England’s many enemies in a violent era. He managed to negotiate peacefully with the great majority of indigenous communities he encountered during his globe-defining adventures. Cook’s journeys and discoveries had a profound impact on the fortunes of millions of people. He christened countless natural features around the planet, while his own name now adorns numerous places and landmarks around the world he circled several times. But his…

James Cook fine-tuned his famous surveying capabilities during the Seven Years’ War. The quality of his Saint Lawrence River charts, drawn during the siege of Quebec City, attracted the attention of the British Admiralty, ultimately leading to his first commission as a captain. The declared objective of his first quest was to sail into the heart of the Pacific to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus. Cook’s Endeavour left England in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti for the transit. He then began the second, more secretive part of his mission: the search for the mysterious southern continent of Terra Australis. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had already discovered parts of Australia and New Zealand, but myths about a massive, single southern landmass endured. With one ship,…

Ever since it was first let loose on Venetian society, The Travels of Marco Polo has been a source of controversy. While 13th-century readers were left flabbergasted by the idea of high culture in the East, modern historians have found reason to dispute the tale’s veracity. For some, the fact that the author fails to mention the Great Wall of China or tea drinking is pretty peculiar. He also claims a battle occurred during his visit, though it happened three years earlier, and he himself is not named in any Chinese document of the time. However, as Marco would most likely have been given another name, that is easily explained. There is much evidence in his favour, too, as he correctly refers to countless animals, plants, the use of paper money…

Orellana’s report came to be viewed with scepticism, when later explorers saw no evidence of the communities he had described. In recent years, however, deforestation has revealed evidence of vast man-made structures and it is now known that up to eight million people may have been in the region in 1500, before European diseases decimated the population. What is less understood, is why the Spaniards had so little success fishing that they ended up eating their shoes. 1QUITO February 1541 Conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro embarks on the expedition, taking with him over 4,200 men. Francisco de Orellana leaves with a smaller party shortly afterwards. 2 ZUMACO March 1541 Orellana meets up with the main party and is appointed Lieutenant-General, second-in-command to Pizarro. 3 EL BARCO/CHRISTMAS CAMP 26 December 1541 After the…

“Henry Hudson’s final quest ended in betrayal, abandonment and mystery” With the Portuguese, Spanish and Holy Roman empires consecutively controlling southern trade routes to India and the Orient, and the Silk Road effectively closed off by the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the search for a Northern Passage – a navigable trade route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, providing access to the markets of Cathay (China) – was an obsession for northern European nations from the 16th century onwards. During multiple attempts to chart such a course, mostly going northwest, Henry Hudson explored, and left his name all over, North America; his moniker still graces both the river that slides along the western flank of Manhattan Island and Canada’s immense Hudson Bay. But his final quest ended in betrayal, abandonment and…