The North Pole | Page 4

to the arctic regions. While most of these expeditions
were not directed against the Pole so much as sent in an endeavor to
find a route to the Indies round North America--the Northwest
Passage--and around Asia--the Northeast Passage--many of them are
intimately interwoven with the conquest of the Pole, and were a
necessary part of its ultimate discovery. England hurled expedition
after expedition, manned by the best talent and energy of her navy,
against the ice which seemingly blocked every channel to her ambitions
for an arctic route to the Orient.
In 1819 Parry penetrated many intricate passages and overcame
one-half of the distance between Greenland and Bering Sea, winning a
prize of £5000, offered by Parliament to the first navigator to pass the
110th meridian west of Greenwich. He was also the first navigator to
pass directly north of the magnetic North Pole, which he located
approximately, and thus the first to report the strange experience of
seeing the compass needle pointing due south.
So great was Parry's success that the British government sent him out in
command of two other expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage.
In explorations and discoveries the results of these two later
expeditions were not so rich, but the experience in ice work so obtained
gave Parry conclusions which revolutionized all methods in arctic
navigation.
Hitherto all attempts to approach the Pole had been in ships. In 1827
Parry suggested the plan of a dash to the Pole on foot, from a base on
land. He obtained the assistance of the government, which for the
fourth time sent him to the Arctic provided with well-equipped ships
and able officers and men. He carried a number of reindeer with him to
his base in Spitzbergen, purposing to use these animals to drag his
sledges. The scheme proved impracticable, however, and he was

compelled to depend on the muscles of his men to haul his two heavy
sledges, which were in reality boats on steel runners. Leaving
Spitzbergen on June 23 with twenty-eight men, he pushed northward.
But the summer sun had broken up the ice floes, and the party
repeatedly found it necessary to take the runners off their boats in order
to ferry across the stretches of open water. After thirty days' incessant
toil Parry had reached 82° 45´, about 150 miles north of his base and
435 geographical miles from the Pole. Here he found that, while his
party rested, the drift of the ice was carrying him daily back, almost as
much as they were able to make in the day's work. Retreat was
therefore begun.
Parry's accomplishments, marking a new era in polar explorations,
created a tremendous sensation. Knighthood was immediately
bestowed upon him by the King, while the British people heaped upon
him all the honors and applause with which they have invariably
crowned every explorer returning from the north with even a measure
of success. In originality of plan and equipment Parry has been equaled
and surpassed only by Nansen and Peary.
In those early days, few men being rich enough to pay for expeditions
to the north out of their own pockets, practically every explorer was
financed by the government under whose orders he acted. In 1829,
however, Felix Booth, sheriff of London, gave Captain John Ross, an
English naval officer, who had achieved only moderate success in a
previous expedition, a small paddle-wheel steamer, the Victory, and
entered him in the race for the Northwest Passage. Ross was assisted,
as mate, by his nephew, James Clark Ross, who was young and
energetic, and who was later to win laurels at the opposite end of the
globe. This first attempt to use steam for ice navigation failed, owing to
a poor engine or incompetent engineers, but in all other respects the
Rosses achieved gloriously. During their five years' absence,
1829-1834, they made important discoveries around Boothia Felix, but
most valuable was their definite location of the magnetic North Pole
and the remarkable series of magnetic and meteorological observations
which they brought back with them.

No band of men ever set out for the unknown with brighter hopes or
more just anticipation of success than Sir John Franklin's expedition of
1845. The frightful tragedy which overwhelmed them, together with
the mystery of their disappearance, which baffled the world for years
and is not yet entirely explained, forms the most terrible narrative in
arctic history. Franklin had been knighted in 1827, at the same time as
Parry, for the valuable and very extensive explorations which he had
conducted by snowshoes and canoe on the North American coast
between the Coppermine and Great Fish rivers, during the same years
that Parry had been gaining fame in the north. In the interval Franklin
had served as Governor of Tasmania for seven years. His