Plot

A Dutch exploration team sets sail to find the North East passage to the Indies. The weather had other ideas for them.

This fact based drama chronicles the last journey of Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerk on their search for a new passage to the Indies. Due to icy waters, they are stranded on the island of Novaya Zemlya and have to spend the winter there. The story is told through the eyes of Gerrit de Veer, an officer on the same voyage, and is loosely based on the famous diary he published in 1598 after his safe return.—mahajanssen

1596, influential Amsterdam Calvinist leader Petrus Plancius plans an expedition to allow the poor Dutch United Provinces competing with the Spanish arch-enemy's colonial trade by discovering a North East passage to the Indies. It's to be lead by legendary explorer Willem Barentsz, who failed before, and pragmatic captain Jacob van Heemskerck. Plancius's orphan foster son Gerrit de Veer is assigned as clerk-chronicler, but secretly to sabotage his affair with Petrus's daughter Catharina. Initially the brutish crew except one shipmate belittles and pesters the 'spoiled land lubber', but proving courage he wins respect. Heemskerk finds out too late about secret instructions to replace vital supplies with trade commodities and Barentz blindly insists, despite obviously outdated cartography, to follow the original course, too northern. So they run into ice off Spitzbergen, must built a winter shelter from the wreck and defend their wretched bodies against polar bear attacks. The survivors can only hope to be rescued in 1578.—KGF Vissers

Young Gerrit de Veer is the rookie writer on a 16th century Dutch merchant vessel on a daring mission to find a northern trade route to Asia. The journey turns into a tragedy when the ship gets stuck in ice and the men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears , hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero