On the night of Nov. 11, 1633, a ship named Fortune, 34 passengers aboard, was making her way up the Baltic Sea from Lubeck to Riga, when a storm forced the crew to take in all sails.

In the bowels of the convulsing ship, one of the passengers was keeping a journal. “Those among us who were not used to the sea were so sick that some vomited blood,” he wrote.

That passenger was Adam Olearius, a 31-year- old university-educated Master of Philosophy, who was now on a 6-year, 7000-mile journey to Moscow and Persia. After less than 48 hours aboard ship, it looked like the Baltic Sea might never let them leave.

Welcome to the first episode of The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors, the epic story of a trade expedition that failed so completely that its leader was publicly executed upon his return.