Werner Herzog tells her story in his 1998 documentary Wings of Hope. Once healed, Koepcke-the only survivor of the accident-helped search parties locate the crash site and recover victims’ bodies, including her mother’s remains. They transported her to a village and airlifted her to a hospital. After nine days of searching for help, she finally came upon logging camp, where workers there gave her first aid. She was ravaged by insect bites and developed a maggot infestation. Koepcke made her way through the sodden jungle with a broken collarbone and a wounded arm. After the crash, she spent 11 days alone in the Peruvian rainforest. Koepcke survived a fall of almost 10,000 feet, still strapped to her seat. Lightning struck the plane in mid-air, breaking it apart. Juliane Koepcke’s Fall from the Sky // 1971Īfter graduating from high school in Lima, Peru, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded a flight with her mother to the remote Panguana biological station, founded by her parents. Only eight of the original 19 members of the expedition survived, including Franklin, who would go on to achieve even greater notoriety. Miraculously, Back returned from a 1500-mile journey on foot with the hunters, who nursed the survivors back to health. Meanwhile, Franklin and Back found the fort perfectly devoid of food Back went in search of their First Nations hunters while Franklin and the rest of the party awaited almost certain death. The voyageur murdered Hood Richardson then shot the voyageur to save himself and Hepburn. Richardson and Hood realized one of the voyageurs had been secretly feasting on the bodies of colleagues who had already perished. The weaker members of the party lagged behind while Franklin went ahead to a deserted fort. Franklin boiled his own shoe leather for nourishment, earning him the nickname “The Man Who Ate His Boots.” (He caught up at the next port.) Once in Canada, their progress by canoe to the Arctic shore and back was plagued by awful weather, lack of food, and exhaustion. Back literally missed the boat when the group departed England. Their grueling journey seemed cursed from the start: Lt. The expedition also included naval surgeon John Richardson, midshipmen George Back and Robert Hood, seaman John Hepburn, and about two dozen Canadian voyageurs, plus First Nations guides and hunters. Sir John Franklin was put in charge of charting the Coppermine River from the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. Sir John Franklin’s Disastrous Coppermine Expedition // 1819–1822Īs part of Great Britain’s quest to find the Northwest Passage, its Admiralty organized a bare-bones expedition to seek an overland route through northern Canada. Several weeks and unsuccessful attempts later, Shackleton charted a Chilean ship to rescue the men left behind on Elephant Island-all of whom survived the ordeal. Then, he and two other men scaled the glacier-covered mountain range that ran down the center of the island to reach a Norwegian whaling station. After several tries, Shackleton landed them safely in a small inlet. They barely slept, ate, or drank for two punishing weeks.įinally, the James Caird approached South Georgia’s coastline, but a hurricane made landing nearly impossible. Aching and freezing, the men bailed with buckets as they took on water. Waves of icy seawater pummeled their bodies. The crew faced icebergs, enormous swells, and gale-force winds. He and a five-person crew sailed their largest lifeboat, the James Caird, 800 miles over the planet’s roughest sea to the island of South Georgia. After they made it to tiny, uninhabited Elephant Island in spring 1916, Shackleton made the decision to go for help. By November 1915, his ship, the Endurance, had been crushed by sea ice and his crew of 27 were stranded on an ice floe. Members of Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic Expedition pull one of their lifeboats across the snow following the loss of the 'Endurance.' / Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesĪntarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton had started out in 1914 with a mission to be the first to cross Antarctica on foot.
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