History of the North Pole Expeditions

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Map of the North Atlantic from Scandinavia to Labrador (with some phantom islands such as Frisland ) by Abraham Ortelius , 1573
North polar region on a map by Gerhard Mercator (1595) with the legendary Magnetberg in the middle; but also, up towards the Bering Strait, another magnetic mountain with reference to the Cape Verde Islands and another drawn magnetic pole

North Pole expeditions are journeys undertaken with the intention of reaching the North Pole of the earth or as close as possible to it and exploring the countries and seas around the pole.

From the 16th century onwards, numerous expeditions pursued the goal of finding a northerly sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific , viewed from Europe either to the west ( Northwest Passage ) or to the east ( Northeast Passage ). From 1868 the North Pole expeditions were mainly used for scientific purposes. In 1882/1883, twelve permanent stations were set up in the Arctic ( First International Polar Year ).

The alleged conquest of the North Pole by the American Robert Edwin Peary in 1909 is still controversial today. The first person to reach the North Pole on foot without a doubt was the Briton Walter William Herbert in 1969 .

Early seafaring in the northern Atlantic

The earliest sea voyages in the northern Atlantic were certainly raids by the Scandinavian seafarers . Religious interests meant that already in the late 8th century, Faroe and Iceland by Irish monks were visited. A storm brought the two Vikings Naddoddur and Svasason to the coast of Iceland in 861 , but it was not permanently settled and given its current name in 874. As a result, there was a considerable immigration of Normans and the state capital Reykjavík was founded.

Around 983 Erik the Red sailed to the west coast of Greenland while Thorgil got to know the northern parts of the east coast on his arduous journey. In the year 1000 Erik's son Leif was the first to set foot on the coasts he called Hellu, Mark and Winland. H. today's Labrador and Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia). In the following period several trips to the new countries were undertaken. In 1266 a voyage of discovery took place along the west coast of Greenland northwards beyond the 76th parallel and westwards to Lancastersund and Baffinland . These discoveries fell into oblivion again over the following centuries.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, according to a report by Adam von Bremen , the Frisians , the Norwegians under Harald III. and the Basque North Rides. The alleged journey of the Venetian Zeno brothers Nicolò and Antonio to Iceland, Greenland and Frisland , which was described 160 years later by one of their descendants in the controversial Zeno map , to discover America for the republic , falls in the end of the 14th century Claim Venice .

In the first half of the 15th century, all news from the Nordic countries ceased. It was not until 1462, before Columbus , that the Portuguese João Vaz Corte-Real probably visited Newfoundland again , which he called Terra Nova do Bacalhau , which literally means “New Land of Stockfish ”. In 1474, as a reward for his discoveries, he was given lands on the Azores island of Terceira . Columbus himself is said to have traveled to Iceland from Bristol in 1477 .

The Venetian Giovanni Caboto drove west from Bristol on the orders of Henry VII of England in 1497 and came to the coast of Labrador. From 1500 to 1503 Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother Miguel made several trips to the north-western regions and also reached the fish-rich waters around Newfoundland and the coasts of Greenland and Labrador.

In 1521, after several expeditions , João Álvares Fagundes acquired the coast of the New England states and Nova Scotia and founded a Portuguese branch at Cape Breton , of which news has been received up to 1579.

Find the Northwest Passage

Caboto, Verrazzano, Gomez

Sebastiano Caboto may have discovered Hudson Bay in 1508/1509 . But neither did Giovanni da Verrazzano (1524) and Esteban Gomez (1525) succeed in finding the Northwest Passage and thus the hoped-for short route to Asia .

Frobisher and Davis

The English navigator Martin Frobisher sailed north-west three times between 1576 and 1578 to continue Caboto's discoveries, but only got as far as the Frobisher Bay named after him .

In 1585 John Davis sailed from England, circumnavigated the southern tip of Greenland, then crossed the Davis Strait , but had to turn back after he had reached the west coast of this road at 66.4 °. In 1587 it reached latitude 72 ° 12 'north and drove south along the coast of Baffinland.

Bylot and Baffin

Robert Bylot and William Baffin discovered a large number of Arctic islands in 1616, were forced to turn around by the ice in the Foxe Channel , sailed along the west coast of Greenland, discovered Baffin Bay and Smithsund, and reached latitude of 77 ° 30 '. They did not believe in the existence of a northwest passage.

Fox and James

After Luke Fox and Thomas James had also looked in vain for a way out in 1631, no further attempts in this direction were made for almost two centuries. The following expeditions were only sent out for the purpose of fishing and explored the known landscapes more closely.

Advance from the Pacific

In 1728, Vitus Bering , a Dane in Russian service, sailed northward from Kamchatka on the Asian coast ( First Kamchatka Expedition ). During the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–1743) he reached north again from Okhotsk in 1741 and examined the American coast up to latitude 69 ° north. He was shipwrecked on Bering Island and died of scurvy during the winter . The survivors of the expedition, including the German Steller and Johann Georg Gmelin , went to Kamchatka.

The third South Sea voyage by James Cook (1776–1779) actually had the purpose of resuming the development of the Northwest Passage from the Pacific. From Hawaii , Cook sailed northeast in 1778 until he landed in Oregon . He drove along the American coast to the Bering Strait and penetrated it. He reached the latitude of 70 ° 44 ', but was then stopped everywhere by the ice and dodged west to the coast of Siberia, in order to start the way back to Hawaii. After Cook's death, his successor Charles Clerke reached only 70 ° 30 'north latitude the following year. Cook and Clerke considered it impossible to pass through the northwest.

Otto von Kotzebue crossed the Bering Strait on his second trip around the world ( Rurik expedition 1815-1818) and in 1816 reached the Kotzebuesund on the west coast of Alaska. In 1817 he drove again towards the Bering Strait, but only got as far as St. Lawrence Island .

Further exploration of the north coast of America

A new phase in the effort to find a Northwest Passage began in 1818 when John Ross and William Edward Parry made a trip at the instigation of the British government , while at the same time David Buchan was sent to Spitsbergen to research the degree of glaciation in this region. The expeditions returned, however, with little success. Since the behavior of Ross was not approved by many sides, one sent Parry in 1819 alone with the ships Hekla and Griper to the Davis Strait . They opened up Lancastersund and sailed through the Barrow Strait to Melville Island , where they had to winter at latitude 74 ° 47 'north and longitude 110 ° 48' west. Knowledge of the North American archipelago was significantly expanded through this expedition.

After Samuel Hearne had already reached the mouth of the Copper Mine River in 1770 and Alexander Mackenzie that of the Mackenzie River in 1780 , John Franklin , John Richardson and George Back went down the Copper Mine River in 1820 and explored the Arctic coast until 1821 and on a second voyage in 1825 and 1826 Point Barrow , where Frederick William Beechey was attempting an advance at the same time.

Parry, too, together with George Francis Lyon , had gone to Hudson Street again with the Fury and Hekla and discovered, among other things, the Foxe Canal and Fury and Hecla Street . On a second trip, the expedition lost the Fury and returned after a tough winter.

1829 Ross sailed with the paddle steamer Victory , the first steamer in the history of polar exploration, the Lancaster Sound at the expense of Sir Felix Booth , and in 1831 by his nephew James Clark Ross on the peninsula Boothia Felix the magnetic North Pole was discovered. By 1833 they had already spent three winters in the ice and had to leave the Victory when Ross returned on a whaling boat.

In the following ten years it was mainly the expeditions under Back, equipped by the Hudson's Bay Company , but especially under Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson , who explored and mapped the North American coast between Cape Barrow and Boothialand. John Rae reached the Gulf of Boothia from 1846 to 1847 , completing the discovery of the American polar coast.

Franklin Expedition

An expedition, which was mainly due to their tragic end of far-reaching significance and the first time the world's attention focused on the polar regions, was the John Franklin in 1845 (the so-called Franklin expedition ), who along with Francis Crozier on the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror road was. When no news of them was received by the end of 1847, England sent three expeditions:

All efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. In 1850 the British government set aside £ 20,000 and Lady Jane Franklin a further £ 3,000 for the rescue of the survivors. After further attempts, which cost more lives overall than the Franklin expedition members, Rae was first able to receive messages from Inuit in 1854 about about 35 to 40 white people, many of whom are believed to have died of starvation and emaciation. Later, at the instigation of Lady Franklin, James Anderson and Stewart were able to find written records of the end of the expedition near King William Island .

Passing through the Northwest Passage

It was not until 1903 to 1906 that the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen managed to cross the Northwest Passage with his ship Gjøa . The subsequent project to get to the North Pole, he dropped in favor of his successful expedition to the South Pole .

Find the Northeast Passage and sea east of Greenland

16th and 17th centuries

The navigator Sebastiano Caboto drew up the plan to look for a shorter sea route to East Asia around the North Cape and the north coast of Asia , the so-called Northeast Passage or Northeast Passage . With the help of two merchants, he brought three ships together, two of which, however, already perished in the Barents Sea under Willoughby , while the third, led by Richard Chancellor and Stephen Burrough , was abandoned by the guides after a successful winter in the White Sea. They went overland to Moscow to see Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich, with whom they concluded a trade treaty, and returned to England in 1554. Here Queen Maria I elevated the company that had equipped the three ships to the Muscovite Trade Company and endowed them with great privileges. In 1556 and 1580 the company again sent ships to the east, sailing the Carian Sea and visiting the mouths of the great Russian rivers. However, they did not find the desired passage because of the large ice masses.

The boldest journeys north were those of the Dutchman Willem Barents to Novaya Zemlya , Svalbard and Bear Island , 1594 to 1597.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Danes visited the earlier colonies in Greenland several times, but without making any new discoveries (see Greenland expeditions under Christian IV ). First Henry Hudson advanced between Greenland and Svalbard from 1607 to 1610, then between Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya, but was stopped by the ice masses at the 81st parallel. In 1610 Jonas Poole was sent to discover deposits of hard coal on Svalbard and made a contribution to large-scale fishing.

In North Asia , geographical knowledge was expanded through smaller voyages of discovery. a. by Semjon Iwanowitsch Deschnjow , who circumnavigated the northeastern tip of Asia in 1648 and demonstrated the separation between the Old and the New World ( Bering Strait , Bering Sea ).

18th and 19th centuries

In 1741 Semyon Ivanovich Tscheljuskin discovered the northernmost continental tip of Eurasia, the Cape Tscheljuskin named after him, as part of the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–1743) .

At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, New Siberia , Wrangelland , etc. were found and investigated. It has also been proven that Novaya Zemlya does not consist of a single island.

In 1806, William Scoresby sr. and jr. in the East Greenland Sea and from Svalbard to 81 ° 30 'north latitude.

In 1823 Edward Sabine and Douglas Charles Clavering carried out extensive scientific research on the east coast of Greenland. Wilhelm August Graah circumnavigated Cape Farvel from 1829 to 1830 and examined the east coast of Greenland. William Edward Parry reached the latitude of 82 ° 40 'in the north of Svalbard in 1827.

Passing through the Northeast Passage

The expedition of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld on the Vega (1878 to 1879), which finally solved the problem of the Northeast Passage , became very important. On his voyage from Norway to Japan, passing the north coast of Asia, he gained essential scientific data, but at the same time proved that this route had no value for shipping.

Concerns about the whereabouts of Nordenskiölds had caused the Russian merchant Sibirjakow to equip a steamer to search for the Vega, which was shipwrecked at Jesso (today: Hokkaidō ).

The owner of the New York Herald , Gordon Bennett , had sent the steamer Jeannette to the Bering Strait under George W. DeLong , John Wilson Danenhower (1849–1887) and George Wallace Melville (1841–1912) . Until 1881 there was no news of the Jeannette's expedition , although several expeditions were sent out to investigate her own fate. Finally, in the fall of 1881, news of the ship's sinking was received. As it turned out after the survivors returned, the Jeannette had been crushed and sunk on June 13, 1881 by the ice that had soon enclosed her. After a march across the ice, the members set sail with their three remaining boats to reach the Lena delta . One boat disappeared without a trace during a storm, the crew of the second boat was taken in by the Tungus of Siberia, while those of the third boat, apart from two sailors (including Wilhelm Nindemann, who was born on Rügen ), succumbed to hunger and the cold. The New York Herald correspondent, William H. Gilder , who was sent on the Rodgers steamer from the USA to track down Bennett's expedition , brought the complete explanation of the fate of the crew . He also published DeLong's diary.

Scientific expeditions

American expeditions

Since 1868, the North Pole expeditions have served almost exclusively purely scientific purposes, initially to discover the presumed open polar sea . The Americans sent Captain Isaac Hayes to Smithsund in 1860 . After wintering on the east coast, he reached Cape Lieber at 81 ° 35 'and returned to Boston in 1861 . Ten years later, the expedition under Charles Francis Hall and Emil Bessels embarked on the same path on the steamer Polaris .

English expedition

The English expedition under Nares and Clements Markham , which sailed through Smithsund to the Kennedy Canal in 1875 , was very well equipped . Part of the west coast of Greenland was explored on sled trips and Markham penetrated to 83 ° 20 ', the northernmost point reached up to that point. The expedition returned to England in 1876 , firmly convinced that reaching the North Pole would be impossible this way.

German expeditions

Germany, too, has now entered into polar research: On the First German North Polar Expedition in 1868, Carl Koldewey entered the waters between Spitsbergen and the east coast of Greenland with the small sailing yacht Greenland . This served more public awareness than scientific knowledge.

After all, so much money was raised in 1869 that they could equip their own steamer Germania and a second ship, the Hansa, for another expedition to the east coast of Greenland. On the Second German North Pole Expedition (1869/1870) it was possible to significantly expand the physical and meteorological knowledge of the waters west of Spitsbergen. Hitherto unknown parts of the east coast of Greenland between 74.5 ° and 77 ° north latitude were mapped. The expedition also discovered and explored the Kaiser-Franz-Joseph-Fjord .

Austro-Hungarian expedition

An Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition started in 1872 when the steamer Tegetthoff set off under Carl Weyprecht and Julius Payer and a hand-picked crew to advance to the pole between Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen. In the vicinity of the Russian islands, however, the steamer was surrounded by ice and drifted north until the Franz-Joseph-Land archipelago blocked the journey. While Payer explored the country on sled runners, Weyprecht made meteorological and physical observations on board. In 1874, after leaving the ship, the members of the expedition returned to Novaya Zemlya in their boats. The Englishman Benjamin Leigh Smith also wintered on Franz-Joseph-Land in 1881/82 .

Establishment of fixed stations

Map of the North Pole (with international polar stations ) from 1885

Arctic research entered a new stage when Carl Weyprecht took the view at the Natural Scientists' Meeting in Graz in 1875 that there would only be a prospect of success if there was a simultaneous approach and observation from numerous fixed stations in the Arctic regions. In the following years it was decided to set up a series of scientific stations for hourly magnetic and meteorological records for a period of one year, the First International Polar Year 1882/1883. All European countries (except Italy and Spain) as well as the USA participated in this project. A total of twelve stations in the Arctic and two stations in the Sub-Antarctic were built. The stations were as follows:

The conquest of the North Pole

Nansen's Fram Expedition

The Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen , who was the first to cross Greenland in 1888, tried to reach the North Pole on his Fram expedition (1893-1896). He wanted to be locked in by the pack ice with his ship Fram and use the natural ice drift of the Arctic Ocean. When it became clear that the North Pole would be missed, the subsequent attempt to ski the rest of the way with Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen also failed. Both Nansen and Johansen, as well as the Fram and their crew, returned to Norway in 1896.

Andrées balloon ride

Salomon August Andrée , a member of the Swedish research group during the First International Polar Year, attempted to fly over the North Pole in the Örnen hydrogen balloon in 1897 ( Andrées polar expedition of 1897 ). The expedition failed and Andrée and his two companions perished while marching back over the ice. The last camp with her remains was only discovered 33 years later on the island of Kvitøya .

The expedition with the Stella Polare

In 1899/1900 Luigi Amadeo of Savoy undertook an expedition to Franz Joseph Land with his ship Stella Polare . On a march north, Umberto Cagni and three companions came closer to the North Pole than anyone before.

Controversial Achievements: Peary and Cook

According to their own information, the geographic North Pole was first discovered by the American researchers Robert Edwin Peary and Matthew Henson and the Inughuit Iggiánguaĸ (1883–1918, in Peary's notes Egingwah ), Sigdluk (1883–1927, Seeglo ) and Uvkujâĸ (1880–1921, Ooqueah ) under the leadership of Iggiánguaĸs brother Ôdâĸ (1880–1955, Ootah ) on April 6, 1909. However, it is not scientifically proven that this group actually reached the pole. Aside from doubts about Peary's incomplete record (the sheet for the day the North Pole was officially reached is blank), there are other facts that lead to the suspicion that Peary never reached the geographic North Pole: the Canadian captain and skilled navigator Robert Bartlett was sent back by Peary at 87 ° 45 minutes north latitude, about 150 miles from the Pole, so that Peary's measurements could no longer be directly confirmed by anyone. It is not clear why Peary only took companions for the final miles of the journey who were unable to confirm his measurements.

The main point of criticism, however, related to the huge daily stages that were allegedly covered from the point of separation. Up to this point, about 20 km were covered every day, which corresponded to the daily performance in the Arctic that was usual at the time. On the other hand, the last 250 kilometers or so were allegedly covered in 4 days on the way there, which would correspond to a daily performance of over 60 km. In the last eight days of the way back, Peary claims to have covered an average of 70 km a day; sometimes it was even more than 100 km a day, although even today researchers barely manage 35 km a day with modern sleds. These data can hardly be explained even by ice drift and other favorable circumstances. Even then, experienced Arctic researchers such as Roald Amundsen or Fridtjof Nansen believed that such long-term achievements were out of the question.

The growing controversies about the unsatisfactory measurements and records prompted Roald Amundsen to carry out more extensive and more conscientious measurements on his South Pole expedition in 1911. Even the sometimes enormous daily stages are now classified by experienced polar researchers as unrealistic. Matthew Henson, Peary's personal assistant, also reported in his memoir that he had been to the North Pole shortly before expedition leader Peary and met him there. Together they wanted to clarify the question of who was the first to arrive at the pole. However, this clarification apparently never came about.

In addition to the aforementioned, the New York doctor and polar explorer Frederick Cook claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole, on April 21, 1908, a year before Peary. Peary then launched a campaign against Cook. A central part of this campaign was to undermine Cook's credibility, which he ultimately succeeded when Cook's alleged first ascent of Denali was exposed as a clear fake. Cook actually climbed a peak 10 km from Denali. Whether he thought this was Denali can no longer be proven today, but since the records he has received point the way to this secondary peak, it is reasonable to assume that he himself made a mistake. If he had deliberately tried to commit a fraud, he would not have described the route to the secondary summit. Still, Cook's general credibility was destroyed. Indeed, several other inconsistencies in his report of his North Pole conquest also suggest that Cook presumably did not reach the North Pole.

Assured success

Only when Umberto Nobile , Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth overflyed the North Pole on board the Norge in 1926 has it been scientifically proven. Two years later, Nobile crashed on a second flight to the Pole with the airship Italia , Amundsen started a rescue mission by plane and disappeared with it without a trace.

It has also been proven beyond doubt that in 1937 a group of Soviet scientists under the direction of Iwan Papanin flew to the North Pole, landed there and actually entered the area around the pole.

The first person to reach the North Pole without a doubt and on foot was the Briton Walter William Herbert in 1969 .

See also

literature

  • John Barrow : A chronological history of voyages into the arctic regions . 2 vols. London (1846)
  • Fergus Fleming : Ninety degrees north. The dream of the pole . Piper, 2003, ISBN 3-492-24205-7 .
  • William H. Gilder: The Downfall of the Jeannette Expedition . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1925, Travel and Adventure No. 15, excerpt from In Eis und Schnee , 1884
  • Adolphus W. Greely : Handbook of arctic discoveries . New York (1896)
  • Hampton Sides : The Polar Voyage: From an irresistible longing, a grandiose plan and its dramatic end in the ice . mareverlag, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-86648-243-2 (English: In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette . New York 2014. Translated by Rudolf Mast, first edition: Doubleday).

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