Smithsund

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Smithsund / Smith Sound
Location of Smithsund
Location of Smithsund
Connects waters Baffin Bay
with water Kane Basin
Separates land mass Ellesmere Island
of land mass Greenland
Data
Geographical location 78 ° 25 ′  N , 74 ° 0 ′  W Coordinates: 78 ° 25 ′  N , 74 ° 0 ′  W
Smithsund (Nunavut)
Smithsund
length 50 km
Smallest width 40 km
Coastal towns Etah , Annoatok
Islands Pim Island , Littleton Island

The Smithsund ( English Smith Sound , Danish Smith Sund ) is a strait between Greenland and the Canadian Ellesmere Island . It forms the southernmost part of the Nares Strait , which connects Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea . Smithsund is about 50 km long and between 40 and 50 km wide. The passage is difficult because of the pack ice that can be found here almost all year round .

geography

To the north of Baffin Bay, Cape Alexander (Greenland) and Cape Isabella (Ellesmere Island), 48 km apart, mark the beginning of Smithsund, which extends north-northeast and finally widens to the Kane Basin . The northern exit is Cairn Point (Greenland) and Cape Sabine , the easternmost point of Pim Island , which is in front of Ellesmere Island. Here Smithsund is only 25 miles wide. Mighty glaciers slide into the fjords on both coasts of the strait. In the west, the Ekblaw and Tanquary glaciers end in Bairn Inlet , in the east the Brother John Gletsjer in Iitap Kangerlua (Foulke Fjord).

On the Greenland coast by the Foulkefjord are the now abandoned Inuit settlements Etah and Anoritooq , which were each the starting point for voyages of discovery at the beginning of the 20th century . They were the northernmost natural settlements in the world at that time.

history

Several waves of immigration from the Canadian Arctic to Greenland took place over the Smithsund . About 2300 BC The first Paleo-Eskimos of the pre-Dorset culture crossed the strait. The ancestors of today's Inuit did not reach the Smithsund area until the 13th century AD.

In 1616 Robert Bylot and William Baffin sailed the Discovery through the Davis Strait into Baffin Bay in search of a north-western sea route to China and India . They drove north on the west coast of Greenland and on July 5th sighted the entrance to Smithsund at their northernmost position at 77 ° 45 ′ N.B., which was blocked by solid ice. They named the strait after Sir Thomas Smythe (1558–1625), the financier of their trip, "Sir Thomas Smith's Sound" .

200 years later, in 1818, John Ross sighted Smithsund again, but thought it was a bay. He named Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella after his two ships. Edward Inglefield sailed Baffin Bay in 1852 in search of the missing Franklin expedition and was the first to penetrate Smithsund (up to 78 ° 28 ′ n. Br.).

HMS Pandora under Captain Allen Young (1827–1915) in Smithsund (1876)

In 1853, with Elisha Kent Kane , the US attempts to penetrate the Smithsund to the geographic North Pole began . Officially also looking for John Franklin , he passed the entire Smithsund for the first time and spent two winters in Rensselaerbucht in the Kane Basin. After his adventurous return and abandoning the ship, he reported seeing open water in the north, which gave rise to supporters of the theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean . This was followed by the expeditions of the Americans Isaac Israel Hayes (1860/61) and Charles Francis Hall (1871–1873) and the British George Nares (1875/76), all of which followed the route north through Smithsund, with Nares succeeded in traversing the entire length of the strait of the sea named after him and having his men explore the north coast of Ellesmere Island.

In 1884, Pim Island in Smithsund saw the tragic end of the American North Polar Expedition as part of the International Polar Year 1882/83. The Americans had built Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island in 1881, the northernmost observation station of all nations, but were unable to provide the crew with provisions and fuel in either 1882 or 1883. The expedition leader Adolphus Greely led the 25 men on a desperate march south to Cape Sabine, where 18 of them starved to death or froze to death before the rest could be saved.

The second Norwegian polar expedition with the Fram , which explored the Canadian islands west of Ellesmere Island from 1898 to 1902 under the direction of Otto Sverdrup , wintered at Cape Sabine in 1898/99. The expedition of the German-American Robert Stein from 1899 to 1901 had their winter quarters nearby . Even Frederick Cook and Robert Peary , the two polar explorer who in 1908 and 1909 each complaint for the attainment of the North Pole, had their base camp temporarily at Smith Sound, Cook in the Inuit settlement Annoatok, Peary in Etah.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir Thomas Smythe In: Britannica Online Encyclopedia , accessed January 23, 2016