The expedition
DefenderX was conceived by Jeff Willner, chief executive of the travel company Travel Edge and a long-time overlander, with Steve Brooks, an adventurer and historic racing driver, and the explorer and filmmaker Mikael Strandberg — a team that describes itself as expedition veterans and polar explorers — as what they called the last great overland journey: London to New York the long way round, three-quarters of the Earth's circumference, including the two sea crossings that had always broken such attempts. Two Defender 110 station wagons, named Princess and The Mothership, were built for it with HMS Engineering in Hereford: TDCi engines with stage-three tuning, higher-ratio gearing, 36- to 38-inch tyres for snow, bolt-on flotation pontoons that could be raised and lowered, and a propeller driven from the propshaft. A first attempt on the Channel in October 2021 ended in six-foot seas with twenty-knot winds, a broken chain drive and no rudder; the car was towed clear before a ferry could reach it, and the rudder system was redesigned.
The expedition proper left the Royal Geographical Society in London in January 2022, in a Covid lockdown, and drove east through France and Europe into Russia, crossing the border on 21 January after a seven-hour customs process. Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Lake Baikal followed in temperatures down to minus 35°C, with breakdowns and a road accident on the way, and the team reached Chita near the Mongolian border on 2 February. The plan for March was a sprint to Yakutsk, the Kolyma ice road north to the Arctic Ocean, and the sea ice and tundra of Chukotka to Uelen at the eastern tip of Russia, with Kamaz ice-road trucks and Trekol tundra buggies hired and permits in hand. Days before it began, in the last week of February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and the leg was cancelled. The Land Rovers were extracted from Russia into Mongolia in April 2022 and driven across its deserts, rivers, snowstorms and mountains, but with China closed by Covid there was no way on, and they were shipped back to Britain.
In September 2023 the Defenders were put to their amphibious challenges instead. They launched into the Thames from a slipway in south-west London and motored past the Houses of Parliament and under Tower Bridge, packed away the pontoons and drove to Dover, then swam the Channel to Sangatte in four hours — greeted by the mayor and a bottle of champagne — and went on to navigate the Seine through Paris, passing the Eiffel Tower by water and the Arc de Triomphe by road. The route was then turned round: rather than arrive in New York from the west, the team would work from the east coast of North America towards the Bering Strait. Shipped to Canada, Princess and The Mothership left St John's, Newfoundland, the easternmost point of the continent, and in twelve days of eight- to fifteen-hour drives in March 2024 crossed Newfoundland and Labrador and the length of the Alaska Highway to Fairbanks, 9,500 km, in temperatures between 0 and minus 20°C, with engine faults, electrical gremlins and an oil change forced by water that had got in during the Channel crossing.
In June 2024 came the Yukon. From Fairbanks the two cars drove the Dalton Highway to the Yukon River Bridge, where The Mothership's hydraulic pontoon pump burned out before she was afloat; she was launched anyway, riding low, and the team camped at the ghost town of Rampart. Past Tanana, the last village with a road, her starter motor failed and her engine was kept running without a break for the rest of the descent — a trick learned in Siberia. Spare parts were air-dropped by Arctic Wild of Fairbanks near Ruby; the crew camped at Kaltag in the rain and refuelled at Anvik, where the mayor opened the pump for them. Princess then dropped into limp mode and could not be revived, and was towed by a support boat for the last stretch to St Mary's, the last village before the delta. Over 1,200 km of river had been run; the planned 100-mile crossing of Norton Sound to Nome was not made. The Mothership, switched off after a week of continuous running, would not restart.
The Bering Strait remains the goal, and the team have said they would rather attempt it in winter; in the meantime the vehicles have been kept and the journey continued elsewhere. The expedition is filmed by Sofie Rørdam for a television series, and Strandberg writes about it. It is the most ambitious attempt yet to take pre-2016 Defenders across water under their own power.
