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in September 1928, a few miles off Santaram, a port town in Brazil where the Amazon meets the Tapajos River.

36-year-old Ainor Oxen. where the Amazon meets the Topajos River.

36-year-old Ainor Oxen, a Norwegian-American sea captain,

stands on the deck of the cargo freighter Lake Farge

trying to figure out his next move.

His job is to deliver construction equipment and supplies to Ford Landia, Henry Ford's new rubber

plantation deep in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. But the Lake Farge is going nowhere. The 200-foot long ship is

grounded on a shoal in the middle of the Topajos River. Einar tried to tell his

superiors that traveling in the dry season risked the boat getting stuck, but Henry Ford didn't listen.

Now I know, I know, his ship and over a million dollars worth of goods are trapped a hundred miles from the plantation site.

The captain looks to the shoreline that seems at once so near and yet so far.

There's only one thing he can think to do.

Einar whistles to summon his first mate.

Well, there's no way we can get off the sandbank with water levels like this,

so we must unload, so get the small boats ready.

We'll take the cargo upriver one piece at a time if we must.

That'll take weeks, won't it, Captain? It'll be two days sailing there and back.

Well, yeah, but it could take months for the water to rise. If you want to tell Mr. Ford that we just

sat here and did nothing, then please be my guess, but I'm not waiting here

when we could be doing something about this. So let's offload the

...