| I | INTRODUCTION |
Roald
Amundsen (1872-1928), Norwegian polar explorer, who was the first to
successfully navigate the Northwest Passage (1903-1906) in the Arctic and the
first to reach the South Pole (December 14, 1911) in Antarctica.
Amundsen was born in Borge, near Oslo, and was
the son of a shipowner. He briefly studied medicine before going to sea at the
age of 20 aboard an Arctic sealing vessel. In 1897 he joined the crew of the
Belgica as a member of the Belgian Antarctic expedition led by Adrien de
Gerlache, the first to winter in Antarctica. Trapped in the ice for 13 months,
Amundsen and the ship’s doctor, Frederick Cook, fed the crew on seal meat to
prevent scurvy.
| II | FIRST TRANSIT OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE |
After returning to Norway, Amundsen purchased
a small sloop, the Gjöa, and set out with a crew of seven in June 1903 to
the Arctic. His primary goal was to find the Northwest Passage, a northern sea
route linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Amundsen sailed up the west coast
of Greenland, via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and through the many small
islands of the Canadian Arctic to King William Island. There he spent two
winters calculating the exact position of the north magnetic pole, which changes
over time and had moved since James Clark Ross first located it in 1831. He also
discovered some of the remains of an 1845 expedition led by Sir John Franklin.
It was the first discovery of any remnant of the expedition, which had seemingly
vanished, and finally showed that Franklin and his men had perished after their
ships became stuck in the ice.
By the summer of 1905 Amundsen had reached the
mouth of the Mackenzie River, near the border between Canada and Alaska. When
the Gjöa became ice-bound, he traveled 800 km (500 mi) overland to the
telegraph at Fort Eagle, Alaska, to announce the first successful voyage through
the Northwest Passage in a single vessel. He returned to his vessel, and reached
San Francisco in October 1906, where he presented the Gjöa to the city.
The achievement, which had eluded explorers for centuries, made Amundsen a
world-famous explorer.
| III | FIRST TO REACH THE SOUTH POLE |
Amundsen had just announced his intention to
use the Fram, a sturdy ship designed by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof
Nansen, for an Arctic expedition and attempt on the North Pole when he heard
that American explorer Robert Peary had reached it first. He decided instead to
go for the unconquered South Pole and set sail in August 1910. British explorer
Robert Scott, who had already announced his plans to make an attempt on the
South Pole, received news of Amundsen’s plan by telegraph in Melbourne,
Australia, on his voyage to Antarctica.
Amundsen established his base camp at
Framheim, in the Bay of Whales at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, some 95 km (60
mi) closer to the Pole than Scott’s camp at McMurdo Sound. Amundsen wintered
there, preparing for the journey. His first attempt on the South Pole in
September 1911 failed due to bad weather, but on October 20 he set out with four
men, using sledges and 52 dogs. They reached the South Pole on December 14,
1911, becoming the first to claim this feat. They spent three days in the
vicinity of the pole taking measurements to confirm their position, and left at
the pole a marker flag and letters to the king of Norway and to Scott. They
returned to the Bay of Whales 99 days after they had first set out.
Amundsen’s success was due primarily to his
extensive experience in polar conditions, his meticulous planning and attention
to minute details, and his ability to endure great physical stress. Amundsen
also had more favorable weather conditions during the journey than his ill-fated
rival Scott, whose five-man team perished on their return from the pole.
Amundsen’s use of dogs for hauling the sledges and as food contrasted sharply
with Scott’s expedition, which man-hauled the sledges, thus slowing their
progress as well as fatally weakening them.
| IV | LATER EXPEDITIONS |
Amundsen was still making plans for another
Arctic expedition when World War I began in 1914. Eventually, despite the threat
of German submarines, he set out in July 1918 in the Maud, voyaging along
the Arctic coasts of northern Norway and Russia and reaching Nome, Alaska, by
the spring of 1920. This made him only the second person to navigate the
Northeast Passage.
In the following years Amundsen became
interested in the use of air transport for polar travel. In May 1926 he embarked
on a flight in an Italian dirigible balloon, the Norge, accompanied by
its designer and pilot Umberto Nobile and the American aviator Lincoln
Ellsworth. They succeeded in crossing the North Pole during a flight of more
than 70 hours from the Svalbard islands to Teller, Alaska. American aviators
Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown over the North Pole a few
days earlier. However, Byrd’s diary, which came to light in 1996, suggests that
they may have turned back a considerable distance before reaching the pole. In
any case, the Norge was the first to cross from Europe to North America
via the North Pole.
Nobile and Amundsen subsequently quarreled,
each claiming that the credit for the flight belonged to his respective country.
In 1928, however, when Nobile’s airship Italia was wrecked during a polar
flight, Amundsen, who had retired, volunteered to search for him. Nobile was
eventually rescued, but Amundsen was last heard from on June 28, 1928, a few
hours after he and five others had left Tromsø, Norway, by airplane. The remains
of the airplane were found near Tromsø on August 31.
| V | WRITINGS ON EXPLORATION |
For most of his life Amundsen was a well-known
lecturer and magazine writer. His books include North West Passage
(1908), The South Pole (1912), The North East Passage (1918-1920),
Our Polar Flight (with Lincoln Ellsworth, 1925), First Crossing of the
Polar Sea (with Lincoln Ellsworth, 1927), and My Life as an Explorer
(1927).