Fort Conger
Coordinates: 81 ° 44'52 " N , 64 ° 46'3" W.
Fort Conger is an abandoned research and weather station in Discovery Harbor at the northern entrance to Lady Franklin Bay on the north east coast of Ellesmere Island in the arctic north of Canada . The area is part of the Quttinirpaaq National Park and is occasionally visited by cruise ships.
history
The bay, later, the small settlement was built on the explored for the first time in 1875/76, a British Arctic expedition headed by Admiral George Nares , the namesake of the Nares Strait (Engl. Nares Strait ) between Ellesmere Island and Greenland . The two ships HMS Alert and HMS Discovery anchored off the coast, where an initially provisional base camp was set up. Topographer Thomas Mitchell mapped and photographed the area and researched the living conditions of the Inuit living there . In the summer of 1881, a polar expedition headed by the American communications officer Adolphus Greely embarked in St. John's (Newfoundland) on the sealer ship Proteus and dropped off on August 11 at the approximate place where Nares had wintered. In addition to the 24 soldiers, all of whom were inexperienced in the conditions in the Arctic, a doctor, a civilian and two Inuit who had boarded during a stopover in Greenland went ashore. The station was named after the American Senator Omar D. Conger , who supported the expedition. In time for the internationally proclaimed polar year from July 1, 1882, meteorological, magnetic and astronomical measurements were to be carried out. The originally constructed wooden building is said to have been 18 m long, 5 m wide and around 3 m high, and the supplies were housed in extensions.
When exploring the near and far, expedition members led by James B. Lockwood (1852-1884) reached the northernmost position previously reached by researchers (83 ° 24 'N), which was only exceeded in 1895 by Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen . The newspaper Arctic Moon even appeared in Fort Conger on the initiative of the photographer George W. Rice (1855–1884) . In the end, 75% of the expedition members starved to death or frozen to death, as the supply steamer Neptune , which set out from St. John's on July 8, 1882, could not reach the fort due to the ice conditions and had to turn around after unloading supplies further south. A second rescue attempt, this time the ships Proteus and Yantic , which set sail from St. John's on June 29, 1883, failed, not least because of the lack of nautical knowledge of those responsible. In August 1883 Greely led his men south, where they set up a new station ( Camp Clay ) at Cape Sabine on Pim Island . From a third rescue expedition with four ships on June 22, 1884, only seven men were found alive, one of whom died shortly afterwards.
The American polar explorer Robert Edwin Peary came to Fort Conger three times. During his first expedition in 1899, he had to have a few frozen toes amputated here, which tied him to camp for a few weeks. He found the buildings covered with tar paper completely unsuitable for the arctic climate, which is why he had several smaller, closely spaced huts built with the wood. On the wall of one of these wooden huts he left the saying Inveniam viam aut faciam , a quote from Hannibal ("I find or I make my way"). In 1905 and 1908 Peary also set up camp briefly in Fort Conger during his research trips. Further polar expeditions followed in the years 1915 to 1935. In 1937, a privately financed, eleven-person American polar expedition headed by meteorologist Clifford J. MacGregor (1904–1985) planned to maintain a research and weather station in Fort Conger for a long time, but the schooner Donald, renamed A. W. Greely in honor of Admiral Greely II failed because of the ice drift and did not reach Fort Conger. MacGregor and his people had to do their weather observations in Etah (Greenland) instead .
Research work
The University of Minnesota investigated the decay of the two surviving wooden huts (a third is missing the roof), which Peary had built in 1900, due to the effects of weather and arctic life forms such as fungi, lichen and microbes. On-site analyzes revealed surprisingly large amounts of arsenic in the soil.
Threat from climate change
Due to the climate change , the ruins of Fort Conger like many other Arctic settlements are at great risk. The wooden huts threaten to sink into the softening permafrost soil , and the waves of the sometimes ice-free sea can penetrate much further inland during a storm than before. Cruise tourists can reach remote places in the Arctic, such as Fort Conger, more easily due to the warming of the climate and also cause damage when visiting. On behalf of the Archeology Chair at the University of Calgary , a three-dimensional model of the site with an area of 32,000 square meters was made in 2010 with the help of a used digital scanner. Further 3D models as well as extensive restoration work are to follow in the coming years.
Trivia
The American science fiction film Island at the End of the World (1974) is set in part in Fort Conger.
literature
- Geoffrey Hattersly-Smith: Fort Conger , in: Canadian Geographical Journal (1964), p. 105
- Jean Malaurie: Myth of the North Pole: 200 years of expedition history , Hamburg 2003
- Mark Nuttall: Encyclopedia of the Arctic , New York 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Route list of cruise ships , accessed on October 3, 2018
- ↑ a b Mark Nuttall: Encyclopedia of the Arctic p. 776
- ↑ Fridtjof Nansen: Farthest North , Vol. II, 1897, p. 170 (English)
- ^ Keith Henderson: Ordeal in the Arctic . In: Christian Science Monitor on October 12, 1984 (English).
- ↑ Research on the microbes attacking the historic woods at Fort Conger and the Peary huts on Ellesmere Island , University of Minnesota research project, accessed October 3, 2018
- ↑ Bill Graveland: Fort Conger, historic High Arctic fort, to be preserved in 3D CBC , July 30, 2015, accessed on October 3, 2018.
