Mac's LRM Article - 'Dream Boats'

It has defeated them all - major car manufacturers, renowned Polar explorers, multi-millionaires and powerful television executives - but it took a mild mannered, 50 year old beef farmer from Yorkshire to achieve what they could not.

It all started back in the 1980's when British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, proudly announced that the Channel Tunnel would be built, linking England with France. On hearing the news, Canadian explorer Gordon Thomas, like many, assumed that this tunnel would be for cars and it got him thinking.

‘If it would be possible to drive from the British Isles to continental Europe, it should be possible to cross all of Russia to its eastern most sea-board. If you could drive across the sea-ice of the Bering Strait linking Russia with Alaska, it might then be feasible to drive all the way across North America.’

Alas, the tunnel was just for trains, but this didn't stop Gordon from formulating an ambitious plan, to be the first team to drive all the way from London to New York. He embarked on the massive task of raising the vast sponsorship needed for such an expedition and drumming up support. The 1980's were a time of economic growth and companies were doing well, paying their staff huge bonuses, but the shear scale of his ambitious venture was just too much for anyone to jump onboard.
In order to increase the credibility of his expedition, he registered his plans with the Royal Geographical Society in London, the home of British exploration since 1830. It enshrines such famous names as Livingstone, Stanley, Scott, Shackleton, and Hillary and was closely allied for many of its earlier years with ‘colonial’ exploration in Africa, India, central Asia and the Polar regions.
Unfortunately, by seeking out approval for his expedition, he made it aware to others, one of whom was Richard Creasey, a television executive within the ITV network. Richard was the first to jump onto this idea and with promises of a television series, he persuaded the Ford Motor Company to sponsor his expedition to be the first to drive between these two great cities.

Richard quickly assembled a 14-strong team and equipped them with a fleet of Mavericks and all-wheel drive Mondeos for the 18,000 mile journey. To a fanfare of trumpets, the team set out from London in December 1993, drove through the Channel Tunnel and headed out across mainland Europe and into Russia.

The Mondeos, unsurprisingly, floundered quickly in the Siberian winter and with no means of withstanding temperatures that had plummeted towards -60°C, they fell victim to one of the most hostile environments on the planet. The Mavericks bravely battled on, but as conditions worsened they ended up being towed like sledges behind the vast Ural support trucks.

Having fought their way across Russia for three months, the team arrived on the edge of the Bering Strait in early March. With only 56 miles of sea-ice to go and a place in the record books, the team were unexpectedly told by Richard that only three of them would be making the crossing. None of the Ford vehicles had been modified to take on the treacherous Straits and it was left to a prototype Canadian vehicle to tackle the frozen waters, while the Mavericks were airlifted to Alaska.

Designed to rescue oil-rig workers trapped out on the Arctic Ocean, the ‘Arktos’ looked like two First World War tanks stuck together. Its tracks were designed like Polar Bear claws, enabling it to climb out of the water and back onto the ice flows should it fall in. It was an impressive beast indeed, named after the Greek word 'Bear', it cast a menacing shadow across the wastelands of the Russian coastline.

With mixed feelings from the team, some believing they had been duped into a project they would not actually complete, Richard and his scaled down team set off east confidently expecting to reach Alaska to a rapturous applause.

It didn't quite work out like that, as a catalogue of comical failures plagued the Arctos. A thrown track, a fire in the engine compartment and a punctured hull, all occurred within a few miles of leaving! With the designer and company owner bravely clinging on to the bitter end, the Ford Overland team sensibly admitted defeat. The vessel was crippled for good and to this day lies off the Russian coast, a stark reminder of the ferocity of the Bering Strait.

All this time, Gordon had to sit back and watch helplessly as his idea was being played out before him on prime-time television. It was a huge sigh of relief when Ford failed, but he realised that he had to act quickly, for it was only a matter of time before another team would set out to attempt this world-first.

Gordon needed to enlist some help. With the British Empire having been built on daring expeditions where men and machine were pushed to the limit in search of new lands, Gordon crossed the Atlantic in search of Britain's foremost Polar explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

'Ran' had used Land Rovers on previous expeditions and Gordon was a big fan of the marque, believing that they were one of the few vehicles that were actually up to the job. After a series of meetings, Ran agreed to join him and due to his long and distinguished association with Land Rover, they came on board too. Now Gordon had an influential co-leader and the world's most respected all-terrain vehicles.

In order to stop any team bettering their expedition, the journey was then extended to take in the entire length of the world's horizontal landmass, western Ireland to eastern Canada. Four bodies of water now had to be crossed, the Irish Sea, English Channel, Bering Strait and Straits of Belle Isle, separating mainland Canada with Newfoundland. The team would pass through London en route and on completion drive into New York to a hero's welcome. That was the plan anyway!

Three Defender 110 Hardtops would complete the entire journey, each crewed by a co-leader and a mechanic, with provision for a film-crew member to occupy the middle seat - although the thought of being sandwiched there for 18,000 miles is just too uncomfortable to consider! I was brought in to deal with the all the logistics and carry out reconnaissance missions for the expedition.

The ‘Land Rover Global Expedition’ was born.

In January 2007 I set out explore all the options for crossing the Irish Sea and English Channel by LRPC – Land Rover Powered Catamaran. The design consisted of a Defender 110 sitting on top of two vast Kevlar hulls, assembled together like pieces of Meccano, on which was mounted a hydraulic pump driving two paddle-steamer blades. The whole mechanism was driven via a power take-off from the rear of the Land Rover, allowing the team to lay claim that the vehicle’s engine was to drive them the whole way around the world.

After a month on the road, I returned to the expedition HQ and confidently announced that the European leg of the expedition was feasible. Next stop – Alaska.

My journey out to the edge of the Bering Strait was a long one, involving six flights in aircraft ranging from trans-Atlantic jets to small ski-equipped turbo-props. Finally, after 72 hours on the go, the tiny Inuit village of Wales appeared into view, perched on the most western edge of the American mainland. It was a surreal place to be, 153 people, one school, one shop and all surrounded by ice and snow. Temperatures fell to -25°C, drinking water was ice cut from the frozen lagoons and snow was shovelled into a make-shift boiler to produce water for washing.

For ten weeks we tested the vehicles and ourselves, working out what ‘was’ and what ‘was not’ possible. Equipped with triangular Mattracks, the two Defenders battled their way across valleys, mountain passes and sea-ice to test every piece of equipment and modify any that didn’t come up to scratch. After two months we were happy that it was time to launch the LRPC. With the ice melting fast as the warmer months approached, we gingerly lowered the catamaran into the icy waters of the Bering Strait and inched a Defender onto it. Connecting up the power take-off, the hydraulic pump slowly came to life and with a gentle pull on the levers the massive blades, resembling huge cotton reels, gradually started to rotate. Power was applied, more and more and with much thrashing at the water, speed increased until a healthy six knots was achieved with the Defender powering her way towards the next ice flow.

As we dragged the LRPC back onto the ice and drove inland to Wales, we realised that there was just one problem, there simply wasn’t enough ice on the Strait to make claim of having been the first to ‘drive’ across. Satellite imagery showed that only one third of the crossing was actually ice and that was a turbulent mass of ‘rubble ice’, moving swiftly in the fast flowing currents. The vehicles would spend most of their time on the water and negotiating what ice there was to reach the smooth sea was going to be nigh on impossible.

The plan had to change, but we still had a plan. The Bering Strait, along with the other three bodies of water, would now be ‘swum’ across and not ‘driven’ and that meant waiting for the summer to arrive in Alaska. With a revised timetable, we returned to the UK and handed our report to Land Rover’s PR Director of the day and current LRM columnist, Bill Baker.

Unfortunately, the altered plans meant that the budget would have to be revised and it shot up to a massive £1.9 million. As much as Land Rover would have loved to show the world what it was capable of achieving in its 50th year, the economic climate had altered and the money just wasn’t available. The project was shelved, the LRPC broken up and the Defenders sold off.

The challenge of driving from London to New York was still open.

Fiat then decided that they would have a go at being the first and set out from Turin with a team of 6x6 Iveco trucks, but on arrival at the Strait discovered just how cold it was and decided to return home for a nice hot Cappuccino!

Steve Brooks, a wealthy property developer saw these other teams fall at the wayside and decided to have a go himself, bringing together a team of experienced engineers and adventurers, one of whom was Mark Cullum, the 1994 Camel Trophy UK representative. Ideas ranged from a GM Hummer converted into a hovercraft and a series of prototype snowcats (named Snowbirds) with Archimedes screws attached to their sides, before finally ‘Snowbird 6’ was ready to attempt the crossing.

Steve and his team, supported by a helicopter to help them pick the best route across the ice, set out from Alaska in good spirits and made blistering progress, proving that their design was the best way to deal with the frozen sea. They made it all the way to Little Diomede, the American island half way between the two continents and were just about to set out for Big Diomede, the Russian island, only a mile away, when bad news arrived. Their permission for crossing into Russian territory had been withdrawn.

The team were devastated, but there was nothing they could do, the Russian’s just weren’t budging on their decision. In defiance to the Communist authorities, Snowbird was driven over a coloured tape laid out on the ice marking the International dateline and once they were in Russian territory they turned around and dropped their trousers to the on-looking border guards! Needless to say they won’t be invited back into the country!

It was at about this time that I gave a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society on the subject of vehicle expeditions to remote areas. After my talk, seven different teams came over to confidently tell me how they planned to be the first to drive from Russia to Alaska. I was bewildered. Had they actually listened to my talk? Did they not hear about the others that had failed - Ranulph Fiennes and Steve Brooks, plus the might of Land Rover, Ford and Fiat? If they couldn’t do it, with all their resources and experience, I honestly doubted that anyone could.

Listening quietly at the back of this group was an unassuming guy, who, once all the others had left along with their hair-brained plans and over-confident personas, asked if he could contact me later as he too wanted to be the first to cross the Strait. I handed him my card, but didn’t expect to hear from him once he had looked into the challenge in more detail and realised the enormity of what was involved.

Over the next couple of years, I regularly received emails and phone calls from the teams, asking for advice, the majority wanting me to help them raise the huge funds needed to get their project off the ground. As the months ticked by, one by one they tailed off and I ceased to hear from them, all but one that was, the unassuming guy, whose name was Steve Burgess.

They say that ‘looks can be deceptive’ and this is never a truer word said in the case of Steve, a Yorkshire farmer who takes pride in his herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. There's no rugged looks, no chiselled jaw, no slick image and he definitely isn’t the product of some marketing man's 'X-factor'. He’s the complete opposite. Hair in a pony tail, unshaven and normally sporting a pair of overalls and wellies, up to his ankles in cow's muck!

My first suggestion to Steve was that if he was serious about his expedition then he had better get out to Wales in Alaska and see the conditions for himself, for only then would he realise just how difficult it would be. Steve and his partner Nicky flew out there almost immediately and on returning to the UK I assumed that I would hear from him no more. But I was wrong about Steve. Born and raised in the rugged hills of Yorkshire, working outside in all weathers to tend to his cattle, it would take more than a bit of floating ice to put him off his plans!

Steve might have had big plans, but he wasn’t stupid and like Land Rover, he adapted his trip to coincide with a summer crossing of the Strait. I’m using the word ‘summer’ in its loosest possible sense when it comes to describing this season that occurs on the most extreme edge of the Alaskan peninsula. For 5 months of the year the sea is littered with icebergs; rivers and lakes are frozen and the snows are shoulder deep. When the ice and snow melts it doesn’t get much better. Permafrost is always present, violent storms whip up the sea into a frenzied torrent and oceanic currents force billions of tons of water through the narrow Strait that separates the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.

Hundreds of lives have been lost to these conditions and modern technology is no match for Mother Nature when she turns angry. To face her head on and win, you either have to be very clever or very lucky. With the Bering Strait though, you need to be both.

Steve was determined to use a Land Rover to complete his drive around the world. The plan was to depart from Cape of Good Hope at the southern-most tip of South Africa and finish at Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America. The ‘Cape to Cape’ expedition was born.

Over the coming years, Steve spoke to everyone that had ever been involved in trying to swim across the Bering Strait, gleaning information from them as to what worked. A valuable source of information with regards to building the vehicle was Charles Whittaker, the chief mechanic for the Land Rover Global Expedition. Not only did Steve’s Defender have to swim at a minimum of 6 knots, it had to cope with the horrifying conditions found in deepest Siberia during the winter, for it is only then, when the rivers are frozen, can vehicles journey from one side of this mammoth country to the other.

-50°C are common temperatures to deal with if driving through what is one of the coldest places on earth, cold enough to freeze a vehicle’s engine in less than an hour if switched off and dangerous enough to freeze flesh in just a few minutes. It would have to be the most capable Land Rover ever built.

Steve had the plan and he knew how to do it, but when it came to actually building this Land Rover he came to a dead end. His experience of all things mechanical mainly stemmed from his years working on the farm, dealing with heavy plant machinery, but when it came to the very technical calculations of modifying the Defender to swim across this dangerous stretch of water, he turned to Dan Evans for help. Owner of the roll-cage company ‘Protection & Performance’, Dan was the ideal choice for designing and building the amphibious Defender.

To make the craft as safe as possible, it was decided to keep the centre of gravity as low as possible, which meant the vehicle would sit in the water, unlike the LRPC where the Defender sat high on its Kevlar hulls. This meant yet more hurdles to overcome, as the vehicle would now be submerged in the sea water, causing problems for the engine breathing, electrics, transmission and of course drag.

Apart from the LRPC, previous amphibious Land Rovers have used outboard motors to power them across the water, but Steve too wanted the Land Rover to be propelled under its own steam. It seemed daft having a powerful diesel engine under the bonnet lying dormant as dead weight, when it could be put to good use and propel the vehicle forwards. Modern Land Rover engines are too reliant on computer wizardry to keep them going, so Steve had to purchase a ‘Rest of the World’ spec Defender from his local Land Rover dealer. The model he finally settled on was a 110 double-cab with the 300 Tdi engine.

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