Reaching the North Pole

The quest to reach the North Pole grew out of the goal of finding a sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Arctic Ocean—a route known as the Northwest Passage. On an early attempt to navigate this route, British sailor Constantine Phipps reached 80°48’ north in 1773 before severe weather turned his expedition back. The British Arctic Expedition (1875-1876), led by Sir George Nares, sailed up the strait between Ellesmere Island and Greenland (later called Nares Strait) and sledged to within 6 1/2° of the North Pole before scurvy forced the team to retreat. In 1893 Norwegian sailor Fridtjof Nansen sailed to the New Siberian Islands and intentionally stuck his ship, the Fram, in the polar ice. After drifting in the ice for months, in 1895 Nansen and one crewmember set off with dogsleds for the pole. They were shortly forced to turn back, and were eventually rescued near Franz Josef Land. In 1909 Robert Peary and Matthew Henson made a dash for the pole from Ellesmere Island. Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole on April 9, 1909, was not universally accepted at the time, but subsequent research has led most scholars to believe his claim. In 1926 explorers Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth, and Umberto Nobile crossed the entire Arctic Ocean from Svalbard to Alaska in a dirigible (airship).

Appears in these articles:

Polar Exploration; Fram; Exploration, Geographic; Henson, Matthew A.; Arctic; North Pole; Nansen, Fridtjof; Peary, Robert Edwin

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