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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arctic exploration | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_exploration | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:13:01.610599+00:00 | kb-cron |
In the first half of the 19th century, parts of the Northwest Passage were explored separately by a number of different expeditions, including those by John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross; and overland expeditions led by John Franklin, George Back, Peter Warren Dease, Thomas Simpson, and John Rae. Sir Robert McClure was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage by sea in 1851 when he looked across M'Clure Strait from Banks Island and viewed Melville Island. However, the strait was blocked by young ice at this point in the season, and not navigable to ships. The only usable route, linking the entrances of Lancaster Sound and Dolphin and Union Strait was first used by John Rae in 1851. Rae used a pragmatic approach of traveling by land on foot and dog sled, and typically employed less than ten people in his exploration parties. At this time, Arctic exploration was catching the interest of the public, notably in Britain, and many articles and images circulated among the many journals interested in travelogues. The Northwest Passage was not completely conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa. At the end of this trip, he walked into the city of Eagle, Alaska, and sent a telegram announcing his success. His route was not commercially practical; in addition to the time taken, some of the waterways were extremely shallow. Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) led several Arctic expeditions. He grew up in Greenland speaking Greenlandic and Danish, and has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first Greenlander of Inuit and European descent to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. Rasmussen and his friend Peter Freuchen participated in seven Thule Expeditions, named after ultima Thule, and wrote numerous books on their Arctic experiences.
=== The North Pole === On April 6, 1909, Robert Peary claimed to be the first person in recorded history to reach the North Pole (although whether he actually reached the Pole is disputed). He traveled with the aid of dogsleds and three separate support crews who turned back at successive intervals before reaching the Pole. Many modern explorers, including Olympic skiers using modern equipment, contend that Peary could not have reached the pole on foot in the time he claimed. A number of previous expeditions set out with the intention of reaching the North Pole but did not succeed; that of British naval officer William Edward Parry in 1827, the tragic American Polaris expedition under Charles Francis Hall in 1871, the ill-fated Jeannette expedition commanded by US Navy Lieutenant Commander George W. De Long in 1879, and the Norwegian Fram expedition of Fridtjof Nansen in 1895. American Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, but this has not been widely accepted. On May 9, 1926, Americans Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown over the North Pole in a Fokker F.VIIa/3m Tri-motor monoplane. However, their claim to have reached the Pole is disputed. The crew of the airship Norge (including Roald Amundsen and the American sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth) flew over the Pole on May 12, 1926. This is the first undisputed sighting of the Pole. Norge was designed and piloted by the Italian Umberto Nobile, who overflew the Pole a second time on May 24, 1928. Nobile's second trip was in the airship Italia that ran into a storm on the return trip and crashed on the ice. Survivors were eventually recovered. Amundsen disappeared, with the crew of his sea plane, during the rescue operations. The first people to have without doubt walked on the North Pole were the Soviet party of 1948 under the command of Aleksandr Kuznetsov, who landed their aircraft nearby and walked to the pole. On August 3, 1958, the American submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571) reached the North Pole without surfacing. It then proceeded to travel under the entire Polar ice cap. On March 17, 1959, the USS Skate (SSN-578) surfaced on the North Pole and dispersed the ashes of explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. These journeys were part of military explorations stimulated by the Cold War context. On April 19, 1968, Ralph Plaisted reached the North Pole via snowmobile, the first surface traveler known with certainty to have done so. His position was verified independently by a US Air Force meteorological overflight. In 1969 Wally Herbert, on foot and by dog sled, became the first man to reach the North Pole on muscle power alone, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous but disputed expedition. The first persons to reach the North Pole on foot (or skis) and return with no outside help, no dogs, airplanes, or re-supplies were Richard Weber (Canada) and Misha Malakhov (Russia) in 1995. No one has completed this journey since. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher and Lieutenant William Pershing Benedict landed a plane at the Pole on May 3, 1952, accompanied by the scientist Albert P. Crary. On 2 May 2007, BBC's Top Gear reached the 1996 position of the magnetic north pole (78°35.7′N 104°11.9′W) in a modified Toyota Hilux. On 2 August 2007, during Arktika 2007 Russian crewed submersibles were the first to descend to the seabed below the pole. On April 26, 2009, Vassily Elagin, Afanassi Makovnev, Vladimir Obikhod, Sergey Larin, Alexey Ushakov, Alexey Shkrabkin and Nikolay Nikulshin after 38 days and over 2,000 km (1,200 mi) (starting from Sredniy Island, Severnaya Zemlya) drove two Russian built cars "Yemelya-1" and "Yemelya-2" to the North Pole.