Polar Exploration. Dixie Dansercoer

      Economic reasons lured many early expeditions to the far ends of our globe

      The first explorer to set out on an expedition specifically aimed at finding the North Pole was the Englishman William Edward Parry, who reached latitude 82°45’ in 1827. He was followed by the American Charles Francis Hall in 1871 with the Polaris expedition, which ended in disaster with his death in November of that year, the ship being crushed in the ice the following October.

      The same fate awaited George Washington DeLong on the USS Jeanette, when the ship was crushed by ice at the end of their expedition between 1879 and 1881. DeLong and half of his crew were lost.

      In 1895 Fridtjof Nansen invited Frederik Johansen to leave their icebound ship the Fram and try to reach the North Pole on skis. They managed to reach latitude 86°14’ and then began their incredible trek southward to reach Franz Jozef Land.

      In 1897 Swedish engineer Salomon Andrée and two of his companions tried a novel way of reaching the North Pole using a hydrogen balloon, but were stranded 300km from their start point at Kvitoya in the northeastern part of the archipelago of Svalbard and lost their lives in the process.

      Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, and Captain Umberto Cagni sailed the converted whaler Stella Polare from Norway in 1899. When they reached latitude 86°34’ on 25 April 1900 they had beaten Nansen's record by 40km.

      1900–1940

      The biggest mystery in the discovery of the North Pole arises from the claims of two controversial explorers, neither of whom managed to produce adequate proof that they had actually placed foot on the northern part of the imaginary axis between both poles.

      The American explorer Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole on 21 April 1908 with two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook, but he was unable to produce convincing proof and his claim was widely disputed. Another American, Navy engineer Robert Peary, claimed to have reached the pole on 6 April 1909, accompanied by another American, Matthew Henson, and four Inuit men: Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah and Ooqueah. However, Peary's claim remains unsubstantiated. The party that accompanied Peary on the final stage of the journey included no one who was trained in navigation and could independently confirm his own navigational work (which some claim to have been particularly sloppy as he approached the pole).

      Many consider the distances and speeds that Peary claimed to have achieved once the last support party turned back – almost three times that which he had accomplished up to that point – incredible. Peary's account of a journey to the pole and back while travelling along the direct line – the only strategy that is consistent with the time constraints he was facing – is contradicted by Henson's account of tortuous detours to avoid pressure ridges and open leads.

      The first recorded flight over the North Pole was made on 9 May 1926 by US naval officer Richard E Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett in a Fokker tri-motor aircraft but this claim has also been disputed.

      The first undisputed sighting of the pole was on 12 May 1926 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who used the airship Norge, together with his American sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth and pilot Umberto Nobile. The flight started from Svalbard and crossed the entire ice-cap to Alaska. Nobile, along with several scientists and crew from the Norge, overflew the pole a second time on 24 May 1928 in the airship Italia, but it crashed on its return, with the loss of half the crew.

      1940–2000

      Discounting Peary's disputed claim, the first men to set foot at the North Pole are likely to have been members of a Soviet Union party, variously described as including Pavel Gordiyenko and three or five others, or Aleksandr Kuznetsov and 23 others, who landed a plane (or planes) there on 23 April 1948.

      On 3 May 1952, US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O Fletcher and Lieutenant William P Benedict, along with scientist Albert P Crary, landed a modified C-47 Skytrain at the North Pole. Some sources consider this (rather than the Soviet mission) to be the first ever landing at the pole.

      The US Navy submarine USS Nautilus crossed the North Pole on 3 August 1958, and on 17 March 1959 she surfaced at the pole, becoming the first naval vessel to do so.

      Setting aside Peary's claim, the first confirmed surface conquest of the North Pole was that of Ralph Plaisted, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean Luc Bombardier, who travelled over the ice by snowmobile and arrived on 19 April 1968. The US Air Force independently confirmed their position.

      On 6 April 1969 Wally Herbert and companions Allan Gill, Roy Koerner and Kenneth Hedges of the British Trans-Arctic Expedition became the first men to reach the North Pole on foot (albeit with the aid of dog teams and air drops). They continued on to complete the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean – and by its longest axis, from Barrow, Alaska, to Svalbard – a feat that has never been repeated.

      The Antarctic

      The history of exploration of the Antarctic continent and the quest for the South Pole is far more prolific than that of the Arctic Ocean.

      Early exploration

      In September 1519 Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain in search of a westerly route to the Indies. Sailing down the coast of South America, he discovered the narrow strait passing through to the Pacific Ocean which today bears his name. To the south lies Tierra del Fuego, which the early geographers assumed to be the edge of the southern continent.

      Francis Drake passed through the Straits of Magellan in September 1578, only to find himself blown significantly southward due to a tremendous storm in the Pacific. This event proved that Tierra del Fuego was separated from any southern continent, and the passageway came to be known as the ‘Drake Passage’.

      The Englishman John Davis discovered the Falkland Islands in August 1592 during a tragic expedition. The crew were forced to kill some 14,000 penguins for food, which were stored as properly as possible, but once the ship reached the Tropics the penguin meat spoiled. Only 16 members of the original crew of 76 ever reached home shores.

      The first men to cross the Antarctic Circle, in January 1773, were Englishman Captain James Cook and his crew. On his third voyage, in January 1775, he sailed past South Georgia and discovered the South Sandwich Islands two weeks later.

      1820–1899

      On 27 January 1820 the Russian Fabian von Bellinghausen became the first person to see the Antarctic continent. In that same year American Nathaniel Palmer, on the Hero, claimed to see the Antarctic Peninsula. Palmer was a member of a sealing fleet from New England. Only 19 years old, he was dispatched from the sealing grounds in the South Shetlands by his commanding officer to search for land to the south.

      The next year von Bellinghausen returned to the Antarctic waters and discovered Peter I Island and the Alexander Islands. He completed a circumnavigation of Antarctica, being only the second explorer, after Cook, to do so.