As the wavering cry of the foghorn fills the air, the taciturn former lumberjack, Ephraim Winslow, and the grizzled lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake, set foot in a secluded and perpetually grey islet off the coast of late-19th-century New England. For the following four weeks of back-breaking work and unfavourable conditions, the tight-lipped men will have no one else for company except for each other, forced to endure irritating idiosyncrasies, bottled-up resentment, and burgeoning hatred. Then, amid bad omens, a furious and unending squall maroons the pale beacon's keepers in the already inhospitable volcanic rock, paving the way for a prolonged period of feral hunger; excruciating agony; manic isolation, and horrible booze-addled visions. Now, the eerie stranglehold of insanity tightens. Is there an escape from the wall-less prison of the mind?

The true story of Shackleton's 1914 Endurance expedition to the South Pole, and his epic struggle to lead his twenty-eight man crew to safety after his ship was crushed in the pack ice.

The sole survivor of a lost whaling ship relates the tale of his captain's self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale, Moby Dick.

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. "In the Heart of the Sea" reveals the encounter's harrowing aftermath, as the ship's surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive. Braving storms, starvation, panic and despair, the men will call into question their deepest beliefs, from the value of their lives to the morality of their trade, as their captain searches for direction on the open sea and his first mate still seeks to bring the great whale down.

Season 1: In 1847-8, the crew of a real life Royal Naval expedition (later known as Franklin's expedition) led by three captains, Sir John Franklin, Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames, is sent to find the Arctic's fabled treacherous Northwest Passage but instead discovers a monstrous polar bear-like predator, a cunning and vicious Gothic horror that stalks the ships in a desperate game of survival. However, it soon becomes clear that that's just the beginning of their troubles. As things worsen and civilized behavior disintegrates in favor of survival at any cost, the crew must simultaneously battle the elements, the supernatural and eventually - themselves. The captains' only ally in all of this becomes a mute Inuit woman, who lives as an outcast from her tribe but still follows their old animistic religion. Season 2 (titled "Infamy") follows the inhabitants of the L.A. - based Terminal Island camp for Japanese Americans during WWII and a string of brutal deaths caused by a mysterious supernatural entity there.

The North Water tells the story of Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as ship's doctor on a whaling expedition to the Arctic. On board he meets Henry Drax, the harpooner, a brutish killer whose amorality has been shaped to fit the harshness of his world. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath. In search of redemption, his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.

Naval Exploration