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Join Wundery Plus in the W ice ahead. He wants to line up the polar ice ahead.

He wants to line up the ship's nose with the crack and ram through the ice.

He calls out to a sailor on his right.

Let out some rope.

20 feet.

As the sailor works Melville scans the horizon and feels his mood sink

There's nothing but ice as far as the eye can see. It's September 7th, 1879, still technically summer, but here,

a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, the air is a frigid 20 degrees and the slabs of pack ice are roughly 15 feet thick.

Melville is the engineer on U.S.S. Jeanette.

The 33 sailors aboard are trying to become the first people to reach the North Pole.

If they succeed, they'll be world famous.

It's an achievement Melville's been dreaming of for years.

But now, two months into their journey, they're at a standstill. The Jeanette's sharp nose and

thick hull are designed to break through pack ice. Normally they just line up her nose

with a crack between two slabs, fire the steam engines, and ram the fisher until it breaks open.

But the ice here is just too thick. The ship can't split it.

So Melville has jury rigged a possible solution. Two thick ropes are now anchored into the ice ahead. Each rope stretches back to the ship where they're connected to a pair of winches, steam-powered cranks that can pull the rope taught. Melville's idea is to turn the winches power added thrust will crack the ice jam. But they have to push forward at just the right angle to hit existing weak spots in the ice and break them open. Now that they've let out the ropes and

turn the ship, Melville peers over the bow again.

The angle looks better.

He calls out to the sailors.

Fire the engines and the winches on my count.

...