Arctic exploration

“ With the appliances of steam to aid us, with the lights of science to guide us, it would be a reproach to the world to permit such a large portion of its surface any longer to remain unexplored. For the last 200 years the Arctic Ocean has been a theatre for exploration; but as for the antarctic, no expedition, has attempted to make any persistent exploration, or even to winter there. ”

“ At a time when the attention of this country is again being specially directed to the question of Arctic exploration, it becomes interesting to take note of what other nations have recently achieved in the region of Polar discovery. It is not too much to say that it is with justice that England considers herself in the van as yet of Arctic enterprise; but we have little hesitation in affirming that the expedition the story of which is told in the two volumes under notice, [A] is worthy of ranking side by side with the most memorable of our own voyages of discovery ”

“ It is indeed due to the comparatively rich fauna and flora of the arctic regions, both east and west, that arctic exploration has been carried out so frequently. The utter absence of plant or animal or human life in the dead antarctic has greatly militated against the success of southbound expeditions. ”

“ Without these animals the Arctic tundra of Europe, Asia, and America could not have been crossed and opened up so thoroughly, the coast of Greenland could not have been explored except in the most meagre way, and the great Archipelago of islands—great and small, that stretches towards the Pole to the north of our Canadian Dominion—could not have been investigated as it has been. ”

“ The history of arctic exploration goes back nearly four hundred years. The history of antarctic efforts covers a little more than one hundred and forty years. The record of arctic exploration is studded with crushed and foundering ships and the deaths of hundreds of brave men. ”

“ Hence arose the Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872. The promoters of this undertaking assumed neither the existence of an open Polar Sea, nor the possibility of reaching the Pole by sledge or boat expeditions. Their object, simply and broadly stated, was the exploration of the still unknown Arctic regions, and it was their belief, that a vessel could penetrate further into this region by the route between Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, where the Isbjörn in her pioneer voyage found the ice more loose and navigable than had been imagined possible. ”

“ Profiting by the advance of science and the experiences of their predecessors, Arctic explorers have, of course, reduced the danger of travelling in the frozen regions to a minimum, and it is very rarely that an expedition ends in tragedy. ”

“ It is quite possible that by favorable circumstances an expedition might succeed in getting far north, or discovering large areas of the unknown regions, as has happened in former years. However, the risk which the adventurers run can not be compared with the probable results. By deliberate perseverance, though the progress may be slower, the exploration of the Arctic will be accomplished in greater safety and with far greater results for science. ”

“ In the autumn of 1850 there were fifteen vessels in the Arctic ocean, hunting for Franklin and his ships. America joined England in the search, and as a result the Arctic regions became far better known than ever before. ”

“ It is necessary here to interpolate a few remarks in explanation of the difficulties which beset the Baffin Bay route of Arctic exploration. Geographers assert, and the assertion seems confirmed by the experience of navigators, that a surface-current is constantly flowing down this bay, and carrying great fleets of icebergs and shoals of ice-floes into the Atlantic from its southern channels—Lancaster, Jones, and Smith Sounds. ”

“ The leading interest of arctic exploration thus far, in connection with our present study, has been seen to be concerned with the opening of sea routes, by north-west and north-east, from Europe to Asia. The story of antarctic discovery, on the other hand, brings into prominence a problem of far different character which we have already had occasion to notice incidentally. It might be labelled as the problem of the Fifth Continent, though its origin dates from a period long before the discovery of the fourth. ”

“ A floe is a detached portion of a field; a large area of floes, closely compact together, is known as pack-ice; while drift-ice is loose ice in motion, and not so firmly welded as to prevent a ship from forcing her way through the yielding fragments.
IN AN ICE-PACK, MELVILLE BAY.
This “pack-ice,” however, is the great obstacle to Arctic exploration; and frequently it presents a barrier which no human enterprise or skill can overpass. At times, it has been found possible to cut a channel through it, or it breaks up and opens a water-way through which the bold adventurer steers. ”

“ Those who are interested in the proposed expedition in Australia are right in believing that a thorough knowledge of Antarctic conditions would be of the greatest service to a continent whose climate must be largely determined by those conditions ; doubtless also the whaling industry might gain much by the information which the proposed expedition would obtain. Arctic exploration has in these respects been of the greatest: service to the northern hemisphere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They had only provisions for a fortnight or three weeks, and little prospect of adding to their supplies, while, to make matters worse, they had no warm clothing with them. It is to be feared that the latest victims claimed by the Arctic regions must have suffered severely before death brought them release from their troubles and robbed the world of two of its ablest and most enthusiastic men of science.
So ends the story of Arctic exploration up to the present time. ”

“ Arctic exploration was exciting special interest. The Erebus and Terror had come home from a remarkable voyage to the Antarctic [see Ross, Sir James Clark] , so that suitable ships were at once available there was, too, a stagnation in the shipping interest, and seamen were everywhere clamouring for employment. ”

“ The running after this sort of fame gradually assumed such proportions that arctic exploration became a sort of international steeple-chase toward the north-pole, a system opposed to true scientific discoveries. Topographical geography must be subordinated, in arctic regions, to physical geography. Geographical discovery derives its value only from scientific discoveries connected with it. The exploration of the great and unknown latitudes near the poles of our globe must be continued without regard to the expenditure of money and of life which it demands. ”

“ THE severe sufferings of the last Arctic expeditions, and the losses of life and property they occasioned, have depressed the public mind in regard to Arctic explorations. Great hopes have given way to the conviction of the impossibility of penetrating the ice-bound seas and accomplishing the task which formerly seemed easy. The effect of these failures is even more profound than we could anticipate; for scientists themselves, and other men of intelligence and influence, now doubt if Arctic expeditions could be of any use either for mankind or for science. ”

“ Surrounded by almost every conceivable difficulty and danger, Arctic research has witnessed and developed more genuinely heroic skill and enterprise than has been needed or found in the exploration of any other portion of our globe. With all its dangers the North Polar world possesses a rare fascination for the adventurous, and has something to offer in palliation of its monotonous desolation. The yet unknown must always have charms for the greatest minds, even though it should prove practically unknowable ”

“ 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. ”

“ The north polar regions lie within the Arctic circle, and at their center is the North Pole. The distance from the circle to the pole is more than fourteen hundred miles. Intense cold and the hardships of ice navigation have made the discovery and exploration of this region very slow and hazardous.
It is believed that Norsemen from Norway and Sweden, after colonizing Iceland, made settlements on the Greenland coast and carried their seal hunting beyond the Arctic circle, far into the polar regions. But in 1347 a plague broke out in Norway, and the people forgot their far-off colonies. ”

“ These countries, which may be reached without serious difficulties, are the proper place for investigations of great importance, and the exploration of these parts of the Arctic is even more urgent than that of the far north, as the study of the numerous tribes which live on the shore of the Arctic Ocean has to be accomplished very soon ”

“ These three search expeditions effected an enormous increase in the knowledge of the Arctic regions. Thousands of miles of unknown lands were brought to light, and the diligent collecting and observations of officers enabled a good general idea to be formed of the geology of the newly-discovered region and of the tidal phenomena. The discoveries also opened a new area for exploration to the westward quite distinct from the region of the Parry Islands. Like all great discoveries Prince Patrick Island pointed to further research. ”

“ Yet, quite independent of material results, Polar exploration presents no unworthy object for scientific investigation—a region of the globe 120,000 square miles in extent never yet entered by man. The Polar question, as a problem of science, aims at determining the limits of land and water, at the perfecting of that network of lines with which comparative science seeks to surround our planet, even to its Poles. ”

“ The Commission is convinced that an exploration of the Arctic regions, based on such principles, will furnish valuable results, even if limited to the region between Greenland and Spitzbergen; but it is also of opinion, that an exhaustive solution of the problems to be solved can only be expected when exploration is extended over the whole Arctic zone, and when other countries take their share in the undertaking. ”

“ Whatever the new plans may be, the public and men of science must ask that the plan be not confined to a single expedition. The best results will be gained by considering the exploration of the polar regions as one continuous task, and fitting every new expedition into the far-seeing scheme of a thorough investigation of all the problems subject to Arctic researches. ”

“ Daily Motion of the Heavens as seen at the North Pole.
There are but two seasons in the Arctic regions—a [5] long, cold winter and a short, dry summer. It is during the summer that the explorers do their work. Throughout the dark winter they can do nothing. Even in the summer, navigators meet with many perils, for Arctic navigation is not an easy matter. Besides the danger that the vessel may be frozen in an ice pack, or crushed between icebergs, the navigator is often blinded by fogs and snows, and has to face unknown tides and currents. ”

“ 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 that which lay round the north-east shores of Nova Zembla. ”

“ And it must be admitted that our national virtues of resolute perseverance and patient courage have never been more happily displayed than in the prosecution of the great work of Arctic Discovery. Our explorers have refused to know when they were beaten; and in defiance of a terrible climate, of icebergs and ice-floes, of hurricanes and driving snow-storms, of obstacles, dangers, and difficulties, have pressed onward, until the latest adventurers have crossed the Threshold of the Unknown Region, and confronted the immense plain of ice that extends for four hundred miles from the Pole. ”

“ It has always been a grave error in all these northern land expeditions, that they have been too unwieldy, too much encumbered with the comforts and luxuries of civilization at the outset, and too much loaded with a philosophical paraphernalia, for a pioneering survey,—and cherishing too fondly the idea that the wide shores of the Arctic sea could be explored in a single season. ”

“ All these and various other similar accounts of north-east, north-west, or Polar passages achieved by vessels in former times have this in common, that navigation from the one ocean to the other across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as drawing a line on the map, that meeting with ice and northern animals of the chase is never spoken of, and finally that every particular which is noted is in conflict with the known geographical, climatal, and natural conditions of the Arctic seas. ”