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33 chapters
CHAPTER I EARLY VOYAGES
CHAPTER I EARLY VOYAGES
The story of the first few centuries of Arctic exploration can, of course, never be written. The early Norsemen, to whom must go the credit for most of the first discoveries, were a piratical race, and their many voyages were conducted, for the most part, in a strictly business-like spirit. Occasionally one of them would happen on a new country by accident, just as Naddod the Viking happened upon Iceland in 861 by being driven there by a gale while on his way to the Faroe Islands. Occasionally a
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CHAPTER II FROM HUDSON TO PHIPPS AND NELSON
CHAPTER II FROM HUDSON TO PHIPPS AND NELSON
With the voyages of Weymouth, Knight, and Hall, which occupied the first few years of the seventeenth century, we need not concern ourselves at all, for they resulted in no discoveries of any importance. In the year 1607, however, Henry Hudson started off on the first of that series of travels by which his name became famous, and during the course of which he succeeded in carrying the British flag to places that had never before been trodden by the foot of civilised man. As has already been seen
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CHAPTER III THE VOYAGE OF BUCHAN AND FRANKLIN
CHAPTER III THE VOYAGE OF BUCHAN AND FRANKLIN
What with the American War and the Napoleonic Wars, our sailors had their hands so full at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, that they had no time to spare for unnecessary exploration, and there is, in consequence, a hiatus of forty years in the story of Arctic discovery. In 1817, however, Captain William Scoresby, junior, one of the most famous of Scotch whalers, reported to Sir Joseph Banks that he had found nearly 2000 square leagues of the Spitzbergen S
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CHAPTER IV ROSS’S FAILURES AND PARRY’S SUCCESSES
CHAPTER IV ROSS’S FAILURES AND PARRY’S SUCCESSES
While Buchan and Franklin were in difficulties in the ice off Spitzbergen, Ross and Parry with the Isabella (385 tons) and the Alexander (252 tons) were searching the shores of Baffin’s Bay for the North-West Passage. They had set sail from Lerwick on May 3, and by the end of June they were past Disco Island. Here, through the medium of John Sackheuse, their invaluable interpreter, they opened up very friendly relations with the natives, in whose honour they gave a ball, which afforded immense e
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CHAPTER V FRANKLIN’S FIRST OVERLAND JOURNEY
CHAPTER V FRANKLIN’S FIRST OVERLAND JOURNEY
It is now necessary to return to Parry’s friend and fellow explorer, John Franklin, who, it will be remembered, was summoned into Lord Melville’s presence with Parry on November 18, 1818. The results of this interview were that while Parry was appointed to the command of the Hecla and Griper , Franklin was commissioned to undertake the no less important overland expedition to explore the shores of the North American continent from the mouth of the Coppermine River eastward. The members of this e
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CHAPTER VI PARRY’S LAST NORTH-WEST VOYAGES
CHAPTER VI PARRY’S LAST NORTH-WEST VOYAGES
We must now return to Parry, who, it will be remembered, landed in England on October 1820, after making a number of most valuable discoveries in Lancaster Sound. The results of his voyage had been so encouraging that the Government determined to prepare another expedition for the following year. It was only natural to suppose, however, that any further attempts to find a North-West passage through Lancaster Sound would be rendered abortive by the ice, which seemed to form an absolutely impenetr
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CHAPTER VII FRANKLIN’S SECOND LAND JOURNEY
CHAPTER VII FRANKLIN’S SECOND LAND JOURNEY
In no way deterred by the terrible dangers which he had encountered in his first journey, Franklin had scarcely returned home when he laid before the Government a scheme for a second expedition which was, according to his idea, to proceed “overland to the mouth of the Mackenzie River and thence, by sea, to the north-western extremity of North America, with the combined object, also, of surveying the coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers.” It was hoped at the same time that, if Parry’
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CHAPTER VIII PARRY’S NORTH-POLAR VOYAGE
CHAPTER VIII PARRY’S NORTH-POLAR VOYAGE
It is not necessary to concern ourselves much with Captain Lyon’s subsidiary voyage of 1824. His instructions were to proceed to Repulse Bay in the Hecla , and to explore the isthmus which connects Melville Peninsula with the mainland and the coast beyond it. For reasons best known to himself, however, he tried to reach the bay by sailing round the south and up the west coasts of Southampton Island, instead of taking the shorter route along the north of the island, which Parry had always adopted
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CHAPTER IX ROSS’S ADVENTURES IN THE “VICTORY”
CHAPTER IX ROSS’S ADVENTURES IN THE “VICTORY”
The idea of discovering a north-west passage, though temporarily eclipsed by Parry’s great effort to reach the North Pole, was by no means set aside, and in 1828, soon after the return of the Polar Expedition, Captain John Ross approached the Government with a plan for the long-dreamt-of route through Prince Regent’s Inlet. It will be remembered that Ross had had some previous experience of Arctic navigation, for in 1818 he had set out with the Isabella and Alexander on a voyage through Baffin’s
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CHAPTER X BACK’S TWO JOURNEYS
CHAPTER X BACK’S TWO JOURNEYS
The prolonged absence of Ross and his party naturally gave their friends at home cause for the keenest anxiety. Many, believing it to be impossible for any Englishman to survive four consecutive winters in the inhospitable Arctic regions, gave them up for dead. There were others, however, who, knowing of the abundance of supplies on Fury Beach, entertained a hope that they might still be alive, and among these was Mr George Ross, a near relative of the commander of the Victory . Mr Ross felt tha
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CHAPTER XI THE DISCOVERIES OF DEASE AND SIMPSON
CHAPTER XI THE DISCOVERIES OF DEASE AND SIMPSON
Meanwhile the exploration of the shores of Northern America was proceeding apace. At the time when the Terror sailed for Hudson’s Strait the situation was this. Beechey, starting from the west, had mapped out the coast as far as Point Barrow. No white man had yet examined the coast from Point Barrow to Return Reef, a matter of some 150 miles. The expeditions of Franklin and Richardson, however, had covered the whole distance between Return Reef and Point Turnagain, but the coast-line between tha
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CHAPTER XII FRANKLIN’S LAST VOYAGE
CHAPTER XII FRANKLIN’S LAST VOYAGE
The failure of Back’s expedition in the Terror to accomplish anything of importance proved so discouraging to the Government that, for a while, they desisted from any further attempts to discover the North-West Passage, and turned their attention to the Antarctic instead. The brilliant success of Dease and Simpson’s journey along the shores of the Polar Sea, however, had the effect of giving a fresh impetus to the public interest in Arctic exploration; so, when the Erebus and Terror returned fro
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CHAPTER XIII RAE AND THE BOOTHIA PENINSULA
CHAPTER XIII RAE AND THE BOOTHIA PENINSULA
In order to preserve the chronological order of events, it is now necessary to leave the Franklin expedition for a while, and to take up the thread of the exploration of Northern America where it was dropped by Dease and Simpson. It will be remembered that shortly before his untimely death Simpson had written a letter to the Governors of the Hudson’s Bay Company, suggesting that he should conduct an expedition along the undiscovered shores that lay between the Castor and Pollux River and Fury an
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CHAPTER XIV THE FRANKLIN SEARCH BEGUN
CHAPTER XIV THE FRANKLIN SEARCH BEGUN
It was in the summer of 1847 that serious doubts concerning the safety of the Franklin expedition were first entertained and the Government decided to take steps towards its relief. As we have already seen, the Erebus and Terror were last sighted in Lancaster Sound, and there was no means of knowing in what direction they had sailed from that day onwards. Accordingly, it was thought best to send out relief parties from the east, through Lancaster Sound, from the west, through Behring Strait, and
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CHAPTER XV THE VOYAGES OF COLLINSON AND M’CLURE
CHAPTER XV THE VOYAGES OF COLLINSON AND M’CLURE
It will be remembered that, in organising the Franklin search, the Government determined to send out expeditions from three points of the compass, east, west, and south. The first group was to follow in Franklin’s tracks, the second was to attempt to meet him by way of Behring Strait, and the third was to search the North American coast in the hope that he might have found his way thither. As we have seen, the Herald and Plover had already been sent to Behring Strait, but the authorities felt th
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CHAPTER XVI BELCHER AND THE FRANKLIN SEARCH
CHAPTER XVI BELCHER AND THE FRANKLIN SEARCH
We now come to one of the strangest chapters in the whole history of the Franklin search. That Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition, the last, and in every way the most complete equipped by the Government, was a fiasco it is quite impossible to deny. At the time public feeling ran very high about it, and Belcher became the object of much opprobrium, more, probably, than he actually deserved. The fact, however, that five valuable ships had been abandoned, apparently unnecessarily, that not a single tr
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CHAPTER XVII RAE’S JOURNEYS OF 1851-53
CHAPTER XVII RAE’S JOURNEYS OF 1851-53
Rae had displayed such ability when acting in conjunction with Sir John Richardson that the Government felt that they could not do better than entrust the conduct of the next expedition to him, so they asked Sir George Simpson for the loan of his services and commissioned him to continue the Franklin search in 1851 in whatever manner he thought best, only stipulating that the voyage should be made by boat. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in getting two small boats built at the Great Be
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CHAPTER XVIII M’CLINTOCK AND THE “FOX”
CHAPTER XVIII M’CLINTOCK AND THE “FOX”
The news that Rae brought home naturally created the greatest stir in England, and it was felt that steps ought to be taken at once to discover whether any of the luckless explorers had succeeded in making their way to the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Unfortunately the Crimean War was at that time occupying the full resources of the nation, and the Government accordingly appealed to the Hudson’s Bay Company to send out yet another expedition to search the neighbourhood of the Great F
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CHAPTER XIX THE VOYAGES OF KANE AND HAYES
CHAPTER XIX THE VOYAGES OF KANE AND HAYES
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century America had not played a very important part in the history of Arctic exploration. In 1853, however, an expedition set out under the command of Dr Elisha Kent Kane—the young doctor who accompanied Lieutenant De Haven in the Advance and Rescue —which won immortality for itself by penetrating Smith Sound to a point never reached by any previous explorer. Although Kane had special instructions from the Secretary of the United States Navy to “conduct an exp
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CHAPTER XX HALL AND THE “POLARIS”
CHAPTER XX HALL AND THE “POLARIS”
We now come to one of the most curious figures in the whole history of Arctic exploration, that of the American, Charles Francis Hall, who, in the year 1864, set sail for Smith Sound in the barque Polaris . Hall came from Cincinnati, and in his earlier days he followed the peaceful avocation of a blacksmith. He was an ambitious man, however, and something of a dreamer, and he had not the least intention of spending all his days at the forge. Journalism claimed his attention for a while, and he b
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CHAPTER XXI THE “GERMANIA” AND THE “HANSA”
CHAPTER XXI THE “GERMANIA” AND THE “HANSA”
As has been seen in the last chapter, Hall was first inspired to enter upon the field of Arctic exploration by the loss of the Franklin expedition, and we have, in consequence, abandoned the true chronological order of events and dealt with his expedition out of its place. We must now hark back to the year 1868, when Dr Petermann, the famous German geographer, fitted out a small ship called the Germania for a voyage of discovery along the east coast of Greenland, thus earning for himself the dis
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CHAPTER XXII THE VOYAGE OF THE “TEGETTHOFF”
CHAPTER XXII THE VOYAGE OF THE “TEGETTHOFF”
Many routes to the North Pole had now been tried and found wanting. Expeditions had started out by Behring Strait, through Smith Sound, up the eastern coast of Greenland and from Spitzbergen, but they had one and all been frustrated by those great Arctic currents, which, rushing down from the Polar basin, carried with them such quantities of ice that real progress towards the Pole was practically impossible. There still remained one route, however, which had scarcely been tried at all, namely th
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CHAPTER XXIII NARES AND SMITH SOUND
CHAPTER XXIII NARES AND SMITH SOUND
After the return of Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition in 1854 the British Government was content to rest on its laurels, so far as Arctic research was concerned, and to leave the field entirely to Germans, Austrians, Americans, and to such private individuals as cared to undertake the very heavy cost of equipping an expedition for the Polar regions. In the year 1874, however, it once again awoke to a sense of its responsibilities. There was still about the Pole a tract of some two and a half milli
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CHAPTER XXIV THE GREELY TRAGEDY
CHAPTER XXIV THE GREELY TRAGEDY
Valuable as were the immediate results of Lieutenant Charles Weyprecht’s voyage in the Tegetthoff , its indirect results were greater still, for he came back from his adventurous journey full of plans for revolutionising the manner in which Arctic exploration had been conducted. Up to that time each nation or each group of individuals had gone on its own way, practically regardless of the scientific or geographic work of the others, and there had been no attempt to solve the mysteries of the Arc
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CHAPTER XXV NORDENSKIÖLD AND HIS WORK
CHAPTER XXV NORDENSKIÖLD AND HIS WORK
Of all the men who have added to the world’s scientific knowledge of the Polar regions there is none who has made his name more famous than Adolph Erik Nordenskiöld. The data that he collected, and the discoveries that he made on his many voyages to the Arctic world have proved invaluable, and his explorations have not merely been rich in scientific and geographical results, but they have also benefited the mercantile world by opening up new fields for enterprise, and proving the practicability
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CHAPTER XXVI THE STORY OF THE “JEANNETTE”
CHAPTER XXVI THE STORY OF THE “JEANNETTE”
There is a double interest attached to the voyage of the Jeannette , for not only is the story itself one of the most terrible tragedies in the whole history of Arctic exploration, but, as will be seen later, it was the fate of the unlucky ship which prompted Nansen to formulate his plan for reaching the Pole by forcing his ship into the ice, and allowing her to drift north with the current. The Jeannette expedition owed its inception to Mr J. G. Bennett of the New York Herald , who had frequent
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CHAPTER XXVII LEIGH SMITH AND THE “EIRA”
CHAPTER XXVII LEIGH SMITH AND THE “EIRA”
Not a little of our knowledge of Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land is due to the exertions of that able yachtsman and hunter, Leigh Smith, of whom mention has already been made in connection with his rescue of the unfortunate Swedes at Mussel Bay. Leigh Smith first comes into the story of Arctic Exploration early in the ’seventies, when in a series of three voyages, he examined the coast of Spitzbergen and corrected several errors which then obtained credence concerning the outline of North-East
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CHAPTER XXVIII GREENLAND AND THE EARLIER JOURNEYS OF NANSEN AND PEARY
CHAPTER XXVIII GREENLAND AND THE EARLIER JOURNEYS OF NANSEN AND PEARY
On the whole of the earth’s surface there is probably no more desolate and uninviting country than Greenland. Extending for a distance of over 1400 miles from north to south, and of some 900 miles from east to west at its broadest point, almost the whole of it is covered with a permanent ice-cap, which probably attains in places a depth of 3000 feet, and on which it is absolutely impossible for a human being to sustain life for long. Some small portions of the coast are inhabited by tribes of Es
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CHAPTER XXIX THE JACKSON-HARMSWORTH EXPEDITION
CHAPTER XXIX THE JACKSON-HARMSWORTH EXPEDITION
It was, no doubt, the success which attended Mr Leigh Smith’s expedition that first directed the attention of another well-known English explorer, Mr F. G. Jackson, to Franz Josef Land, and led him to think seriously of undertaking an expedition thither, with a view partly to surveying that still almost unknown country and partly to pushing on, if possible, another step towards the Pole. Mr Jackson first published the plans of his proposed journey in 1892, but, though they were very generally ap
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CHAPTER XXX NANSEN AND THE “FRAM”
CHAPTER XXX NANSEN AND THE “FRAM”
A careful study of the history of Arctic travel had convinced Nansen that the routes by which most of his predecessors had attempted to reach the North Pole were either impracticable or else beset by such difficulties that he who could overcome them would be fortunate indeed. Vessels attempting to penetrate far to the north had always been stopped by an impenetrable barrier of ice. Travellers trying to make the journey by sledge had found the ice so rough and the movements of the pack so disconc
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CHAPTER XXXI CONWAY AND ANDRÉE
CHAPTER XXXI CONWAY AND ANDRÉE
Though Nordenskiöld had succeeded in exploring North-East Land pretty thoroughly, and had shown that it is practically nothing but one large ice-field, for many years very little attention had been given to West Spitzbergen, and up till the end of last century nothing whatever was known about its formation or its geographical features. In 1896, however, the famous mountaineer, Sir Martin Conway, seeking for fresh worlds to conquer, decided to repair thither himself and to elucidate once and for
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CHAPTER XXXII THE LATER VOYAGES OF SVERDRUP AND PEARY
CHAPTER XXXII THE LATER VOYAGES OF SVERDRUP AND PEARY
As we have already seen, it was as Nansen’s companion on his journey across Greenland, and as his second in command on the Fram , that Otto Sverdrup first acquired the taste for Arctic travel which, in 1898, led him to undertake an expedition on his own account. The primary object of his new journey was to complete the survey of the northern shores of Greenland which had been so brilliantly begun by Peary, and to discover once and for all whether there lay any land beyond it in the direction of
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CHAPTER XXXIII OTHER RECENT EXPEDITIONS—ABRUZZI, WELLMANN AND TOLL
CHAPTER XXXIII OTHER RECENT EXPEDITIONS—ABRUZZI, WELLMANN AND TOLL
From his earliest days Prince Louis Amadeus of Savoy, Duke of the Abruzzi, displayed a strong taste for adventure, and while he was still very young, he made a name for himself as a mountaineer of more than average daring and skill. It was in 1897, after he had returned from a successful attempt to climb Mount Elias, the great Alaskan mountain which had hitherto proved too much for even the most intrepid adventurers, that he first conceived the idea of organising an expedition, the object of whi
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