Kayaks Down The Nile (1955)

I search for adventure presenting each week the real Adventures of real people people who roam the face of the earth in search of drills and excitement and here to present tonight's real-life adventure is Jack Douglas thank you very very much tonight ladies and gentlemen we proudly present one of the most exciting and memorable adventures of modern times kayaks down the Nile now this is the true story adventure of the young American and the two Frenchmen who became the first man in all of history to explore and navigate the entire ancient Nile River now the young American who planned and led this courageous undertaking is here in our Studios ready to show us the actual films of this remarkable expedition so for real adventure stand by for kayaks down the Nile on I search for adventure we speak of the ancient Nile and we might just as well read the roll call of history Alexander the Great Cleopatra Julius Caesar Stanley in Livingston and yet in all of mankind's recorded history no one absolutely no one had ever explored and navigated the entire ancient Nile River no one that is until john goddard and two french companions turned the trick in 1950 and 51 and what's more they did it in canvas covered kayaks it's a very great pleasure for me to present to you at this time the young explorer who gambled his life 9,000 times in nine months on the Nile mr. John got it mr. Goddard welcome to our program series Thank You this is a fabulous adventure of yours we've heard about it for many many explorers all of them have said in the course of our meeting them in connection with our program jet kayaks down the Nile jet kayaks down in Iowa's all we've heard and we're very very proud sir but you've chosen you show it on our program series now mr. Goddard the first question why why would you risk your life on a venture that people said couldn't be done no one else had ever done it many people have tried why did you do it well to me it represented the height of my career as a professional Explorer I'd wanted to become an explorer since I was about six years old even before I hardly knew what it meant and as I studied and build up my knowledge about the primitive countries of the world to me the Nile Basin seemed an explorer's dream it had everything I see now what did the British authorities say when they found out that you're going to make the attempt for the Nile well frankly they were openly skeptical and pessimistic they seem to feel that we were embarking on a suicidal attempt to do the impossible in fact 1ik British Commissioner there in East Africa summed up the attitude of the others when he said well men you're embarking on a triple suicide by kayak uh-huh now how about mrs. Goddard what did she have to say well Jack I didn't know her at that time wisely I think all right now about the two frenchmen that we mentioned I wonder if you'd identify them mr. Goddard and also tell us how you came to meet them and sort of jointly put this expedition together well originally there were five French explorers associated with the Nile undertaking but by the time we left for Africa three had dropped out they felt the risk for too great so I made this memorable trip with Andre Davey and Jean Laporte and I might say two of the finest the most courageous men I've ever known and we connected through the adventures Club of Los Angeles and the French geographical society French explorer Society thank you mr. Goddard and uh ladies and gentlemen here is John Goddard's real life adventurer kayaks down the Nile our adventure takes place on the ancient Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea [Music] Jack we started the very source of the Nile and then trekked through the dense bush by means of boat carriages with our kayaks disassembled and our equipment piled up on top which wasn't too successful because in a few hundred yards those rubber tires were punctured by thorns and poof they were deflated here are our bags containing 600 pounds of equipment consisting of just the barest essentials after calculations now those are your two French companions are they not andre and jean two French explorers from Paris France dear Jean demonstrates the construction of one of our small cockle shells a kayak which is something of a paradox to youth be used in Africa it's patterned after the Eskimo kayaks and yet it was ideal for the Nile expeditions light and flexible resilient consisting of a flexible plywood framework and ash framework over which is stretched the canvas and rubber skin as you can see it's very flimsy and in fact when I first saw it I felt like giving up and coming back to explore the Colorado River now you you tell me a few moments ago mr. Goddard that had it not been for the kayak you you honestly didn't think you could possibly have made it an any other form of conveyance is that right that's true jack for example here on rapid such as we encountered on the Kagera River which is really the Nile it's called the Kagera on the map narrow channels through which the rivers surged with great speed and studded with rock and slightly heavier larger boat would have crashed up on the rocks and we no doubt would have drowned and getting a boat through jungle and swamp like this was a major problem and because the boats were light and slender we could move them with great dexterity notice jean slips into the muck of that swamp we did this every once in a while when we'd pull our legs off they'd be covered with slimy black leeches in fact one of the major hardships of the chip came from the kamikaze attacks of the buggy Air Corps I think every creeping crawling flying thing for miles around came to prospect our bodies for a meal and they weren't often disappointed in fact we found out what they mean when they say after could gets under your skin we gave until it hurt I I didn't mean no laughs I I know how serious it was you yourself suffered all half a dozen different illnesses didn't you yes I did my merrily carried by insects we spent a week in this unexplored region along the banks of the Nile we cracked up in the rapids I was nearly drowned Andre smashed his boat and as a result we had to replace it with an ad of dugout but we had a fascinating week here photographing and exploring this region on the seventh day a band of six Africans came out to our camp a rescue party and led us back to their village we make our way now to Lake Victoria the head reservoir of the Nile which is the second largest freshwater lake on earth with a crocodile population estimated at something like 4 million needless to say we didn't go swimming there did you say 4 million it was one late in this one leg of course its 27,000 square miles and it's so vast it actually has a tide of several inches and the natives say well that's because the hip will come out at night to feed now here you we see the birth of the Victoria Nile this is at the northernmost extremity there's rope on and no one Falls discovered by the British explorers speak in 1862 here was the first dugout we used and company with Houma and Cabrini to African explorers that set out on this adventure for the first hundred and 25 miles of the Victorian Isle these boys were adventures too they'd never been farther downstream than about 25 or 30 miles before in their lives of course they didn't tell us this so we reached about 32 miles downstream and then we had to guide them did you find that true of the different native tribes that lived on a banks of the Nile if they didn't explore too much above or below their village that's right Jack they live in a very restricted area now these are banheiro fishermen coming out to welcome us to their village to extend their hospitality and to throw a big feast for us here the kids come around to look over our equipment and our cameras these children had never before seen white men and it was really a thrill to win their confidence and friendship here Oh Moo paddles this big heavy matoom be our kayaks were an object of great Envy among the Africans because they were so light and maneuverable now this is what we had to contend with for the first 2,000 miles of the River Trail don't tell me hippo aren't dangerous because we were charged repeatedly by these animated General Sherman tanks he's not yawning there he's intimidating it and sometimes they would charge us in mass and just about get to it crocodiles were a menace to although we didn't have any real trouble with him they're pretty cowardly except when you go swimming I would imagine mr. Goddard that the hippo upsetting a kayak must have been a big fear yes it was a constant fear here's a 14-foot crocodile I shot with a borrowed rifle we had to go through the whole of Africa with one little popgun of a 22 rifle as our sole protection why was that well we lost our heavy guns in capsizing in the rapids on the Kagera River at the beginning of the trip obviously we faced elephant Rhino lion hippo and pythons and all sorts of big-game animals here an elephant is coming up out of the river after had chased me right out into the water gene takes my picture as this great pachyderm having done his duty and upheld his ego goes back on shore I couldn't buy anything like an elephant with the 22 but much to my surprise I brought down this wild boar this was now approaching the desert regions with flooded palms we're nearing the egyptian frontier where we were struck by a raging nubian sandstorm nearly buried us alive and we had to kick and squirm all night long swapped over food and Rapids we're on main concern through here we had to shoot 31 Rapids above Khartoum between Khartoum and Wadi Halfa sometimes we go sweeping around a bend like this and see a seething mass of rock studded Rapids seemingly with no channel through it really gave our kayaking ability a real test at this point how far you journey are you mr. Goddard we're about a little more than halfway down the Nile and you see we had no spray covers to keep the water from boiling in the cockpit there sometimes we'd nearly be swamped and we'd go through some of these bad untamed stretches of the river that looks more like a boiling sea out there does mitten here we push off downstream normally we were one and two miles separated because paddling was an individual enterprise here in the second cataract we were constantly baffled by the intricate maze of channels filtering through this grotesque keep tup massive limestone and granite where for 12 miles the Nile is swallowed up by rock how could you tell where you were going we couldn't we just had to keep moving hoping to get through just just your way along yes we were really flying blind here we lower our boats down a rock choke Channel we only had three very small Portage's through the rapids here's the first one carrying our boats over the jagged hot rocks when the channel we were following gave out in doing this I stepped on an electric eel and was nearly Joel it out of my skin really got a terrific charge out of it this is the second cataract a veritable Granite jungle resembling the landscape of the moon believe me the heat was fantastic through here in fact it set a record 147 degrees that brain curdling last destroying heat which was the highest recorded temperature in this part of the world you found that out later upon your return I imagine yes we did well you had occasion to remember it - didn't we did we nearly died this day actually it was painful even to breathe and the Sun seemed to be doubled in reflective power and being reflected on the fan and rock and water Thank You mr. Goddard we'll continue this amazing adventure of yours in just a brief moment back now to mr. John Goddard and kayaks down the Nile this is a typical day on the Nile fighting the highways whipped up by the costume north wind for nine months we had to fight against wind and wave like paddling upstream rather than downstream and it just doubled our work and made our expedition seem much longer [Music] here's the typical welcoming committee the chief of this tribe came down and asked if he might try my kayak out and I said well certainly and I started to show him how but he was impatient he jumped in paddled around the circle back river we were speaking Arabic by now Swahili was our language among the Negro Africans and now in the North among the Muslims the Sudanese and the Egyptians we spoke it Arabic are you in the Saddam country now we're nearing on Egyptian frontier yes and the people where the Ku Klux Klan clothing of turban and jela baya this Psalm that was so tickled with my little boat he wanted to trade me one of his four wives for it think he was just joking but we settled by giving his son arrived here I bagged an Egyptian goose with my little 22 I got a bull's-eye on him there and keeping us in foul his wife kept us from starving Rapids though kept us warned and nervous for six weeks we had to worry about these rockbound boiling stretches of the river and if we'd had a slightly larger boat or a boat with a solid bottom we would have never gotten through here imagine what a canoe or an outboard what it's done in the waterfall like this well gene Laporte capsized in going over this fall was sucked under by a whirlpool and nearly drowned he had ribs broken and several bruises and cuts his kayak was broken in several ribs infections too but he did get a get through safely we averaged about 25 miles a day on the trip Jack not very much in paddling a distance from Los Angeles to Lima Peru 25 miles a day here in Upper Egypt we were attacked by a gang of Arab bandits that came after us in these five high Mastiff palookas and we only escaped by the skin of our teeth and as a result of the attack the Egyptian government sent out 200 armed soldiers to clean up this mob of desperados so I think we did each of the service after all I liked your comment when I asked you earlier why you didn't have pictures showing them attacking you I'll say that mr. Goddard said we were too busy running to do any photographic churning the water to try to get out of their way here we are at the temple of Ramses which in my humble opinion is the most impressive temple and ruin in Egypt which after all is the archaeological Wonderland of the world but look at these colossi there are four of them seventy feet high notice the statue there on the left that was thrown to the ground during a great earthquake shortly after the temple was built 3200 years ago here I climbed to the base of one of them to give you an idea the magnitude just colossal of these three thousand-year-old statues but these statues are of Ramses the most the longest reigning monarch of Egyptian history he reigned for 67 years and throughout his rule he had workmen constantly employed in bellingham statues and monuments and pyramids and temples to perpetuate his name for eternity downstream aways we climbed a mountain to look out over the Nile you can see how vital this River is to Egypt because without this River there would have never been in Egypt and of course without Egypt the whole course of history would have been radically altered we visited Allah ruins and temples of Egypt some of them we found submerged or partially inundated by the impounded waters of the Aswan Dam this gave us the opportunity to explore them without even landing or getting out of our bullets we paddled through the colonnades into the courtyards where the pavements are now 18 feet underwater the boundaries of Egypt are equivalent to Texas the New Mexico combined and land area but because only the banks of the Nile can sustain human life you have a population of about 22 million people three times that of Texas living on a land area equivalent to Maryland here I explore one of the temples underwater by means of swim fence and diving masks this is the famous temple of Sallee which was once the most sacred and holy spot of ancient Egypt weren't you afraid of the polluted waters no it was remarkably clear here and beyond the Aswan Dam of course we had our greatest danger from pollution but we drank the water right down to this point right from the river here I used the temple for a diving board we drank enormous quantities of water up to ten quarts per man per day so we didn't have time to boil it or use chemicals here we have a wonderful reception that Cairo where we spent 10 days to refresh ourselves nearing the end of our expedition we were honored with a dance by two of each ins most beautiful girls Cleo and Patra 17-year old twins who danced for the expedition side for weary eyes mr. Goddard eight or nine months on the Nile gene looked at the Mount he says aren't they terribly anemic sohail after living with dark-skinned people and we ourselves were so dark these were beautiful charming girl fancy who sang they're anemic mr. Goddard just beautiful may 17 years oldest son yes they have never had a date with a man before mother won't allow them to go out and tell her 18 and then only if she comes along Hollywood is going to find out about those girls I think so they in fact that's their greatest ambition to appear in the Hollywood musical with Gene Kelly we would call these interpretive dancers as men so mr. Goddard Inc so here are the famous Pyramids of Giza which I'd always wanted to explore and climb first I traveled around them by means of the ship of the desert the camel rather an ill-natured creature but one of the most ancient beasts of burden and remarkably adapted to rugged arduous travel here's the famous Fink's which is practically a world trademark of Egypt 180 foot long statue guarding the famous Pyramid of Cheops a man-made Mountain 5,000 years old towering 480 feet high made up of about two million three hundred thousand granite blocks each block weighing two and a half ton here we look over at the second pyramid built about the same time now down in the Delta we pass through the most densely populated region in the world or the inhabitants number over 1900 per square mile and these people rarely see tourists or foreigners and they were very suspicious of us because Egypt and Israel we're at war and when they saw the three bearded men and the funny little boats taking pictures well someone started a rumor that we were spies and as we paddle along we noticed the people were very nervous sometimes we'd say hello to the women and this was the result they had scatter like a covey of quail and run and hide themselves but when I took a picture of these feluccas with a little bridge in the background there that precipitated an attack by a mob of people that had gathered on the bank they started stoning us because they thought we were collecting military information that bridge is a integral link in the irrigation system of Egypt and we had to surrender to soothe this mob and one of the mobsters grabbed my camera and took these scenes to follow here the mob gathers along the bank and we tried to be friendly and greet them but when they saw our cameras they mobbed us in here inadvertedly one of the mobsters takes a picture of this group of people leading us to a dungeon we were held captive for several hours until finally rescued by the Commandant of police who had been following our expedition for many months and as a result of the demonstration the Egyptian government provided us with an armed escort of a total of 24 soldiers in fact the next day when we continued on - and three of them at a time would take over the job of protecting this the last hundred mile of our trip and imagine how this seemed to us after traveling through nine wild virgin countries of Africa traveling 8,000 miles unarmed unaccompanied and then to think that in civilization we'd have to have armed guards that's just ironic isn't it he didn't have to come back to so-called civilization to find trouble but you know Jack I found and travels through 44 countries of the world that the people of the world do possess a sense of brotherhood and most of the people I've lived among especially the simple primitive people they're good-hearted they're warm-hearted and generous and always were eager to help us with no thought of compensation just out of the sense of brotherhood and I think as never before we've got to get that concept that our country is the world and our countrymen all mankind the differences we see here and along the Nile are a product of their environment and culture they have the same essential potentialities that we do and as me is remarkable to hear you hold that kindly feeling after the way they treated you all their minds have been poisoned by the communist and demagogues now here we're nearing the end of our journey that's the at vina barrage but it's which had just been completed now we're paddling on the salt water the Mediterranean Sea and here we are on the shores near Rosetta our goal mayor Rosetta told us well men I didn't think you would ever make it alive I hold the adventurer's club flag here which I had the privilege of taking up the matterhorn for the first time and now down the most fabulous water course on earth Thank You mr. Goddard ladies and gentlemen you've just seen the actual films of the amazing conquest of the Nile and of course we've called this episode kayaks down the Nile now mr. Goddard what were some of the physical after-effects of this long long journey on the ancient Maya you mentioned several of the diseases that you and the two Frenchmen ran into what happened thereafter well Jack for two years I suffered considerably from the worst of the illnesses that hit me which was called schistosomiasis and for about a month I was treated in the hospital for it finally got rid of it along with my little tapeworm that I picked up in Africa I see now I imagine them that you've seen the last of Africa haven't you mr. Goddard well no Jack I doubt that there's an old African legend that states that if you once strength of water of the Nile though you travel to the ends of the earth you will return to drink again so I wouldn't want to go against that legend I think I'll probably be going back to fulfill it huh now what's in the immediate future as far as your adventure plans are concerned well another river that's always intrigued me has been our own Colorado River the second longest in the United States it's only 1,700 miles long and I'd like to conduct an archeological botanical survey of it with special emphasis on shooting the rapids through the Grand Canyon I understand they're over 300 Rapids there and I think that would be an incomparable experience to follow up the Nile we're going to certainly wish you the very best of good luck and again our sincere thanks mr. John Gotti thank you and now ladies and gentlemen some scenes from next week's real life adventure after this very brief message now some scenes from next week's real life adventure next week we proudly go back an adventure history to Admiral Richard Ebert and expedition to the Antarctic ice continent these are the automatic films telling the dramatic story of Byrd and his men the men who gave up two years of their lives to live in the dismal wastelands of the Antarctic where no human being lives not even an Eskimo it was on this expedition that Admiral Byrd separated from the main base camp for more than a month almost lost his life and will be very honored to have with us in person commander George Neuville who served as the Admirals chief executive officer on this and many other expedition the Byrd Antarctic expedition [Music] [Applause] I hope you'll be with us again next week at the same time and perhaps you'll take a few moments to tell your friends about this unusual real-life adventure series I search for adventure thank you so very much and good night [Music]