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Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (July 16, 1872 – c. June 18,
1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic
expedition to the South Pole between 1910 and 1912. He was also the first person to
reach both the North and South Poles. He is known as the first to traverse the
Northwest Passage. He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue
mission. With Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Amundsen
was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
 Early
life
Amundsen was born to a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge,
between the towns Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. His father was Jens Amundsen. The
fourth son in the family, his mother chose to keep him out of the maritime industry
of the family and pressured him to a doctor, a promise that Amundsen kept until his
mother died when he was aged 21, quitting university for a life at sea. Amundsen
had hidden a lifelong desire inspired by Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in
1888 and the doomed Franklin expedition. As a result, he decided on a life of
exploration.
Polar
treks
Belgian
Antarctic Expedition 1897–99
He was a member of the Belgian
Antarctic Expedition (1897–99) as second mate. This expedition was led by
Adrien de Gerlache, using the ship the Belgica, became the first expedition to
winter in Antarctica. The Belgica, whether by mistake or design, became locked
in the sea ice at 70°30'S off Alexander Land, west of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The crew then endured a winter for which the expedition was poorly prepared.
By Amundsen's own estimation, the doctor for the expedition, American
Frederick Cook, probably saved the crew from scurvy by hunting for animals and
feeding the crew fresh meat, an important lesson for Amundsen's future
expeditions.
Northwest
Passage
In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully
traverse the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
(something explorers had been attempting since the days of Christopher
Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and Henry Hudson), with six others in a
47 ton steel seal hunting vessel, Gjøa. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a
small, gas engine. They travelled via Baffin Bay, Lancaster and Peel Sounds,
and James Ross and Rae Straits and spent two winters near King William Island
in what is today Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada.
During this time Amundsen learned from the local Netsilik people about Arctic
survival skills that would later prove useful. For example, he learned to use sled
dogs and to wear animal skins en lieu of heavy, woolen parkas. After a third winter
trapped in the ice, Amundsen was able to navigate a passage into the Beaufort Sea
after which he cleared into the Bering Strait, thus having successfully navigated
the Northwest Passage. Continuing to the south of Victoria Island, the ship cleared
the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on August 17, 1905, but had to stop for the winter
before going on to Nome on the Alaska Territory's Pacific coast. Five hundred miles
(800 km) away, Eagle City, Alaska, had a telegraph station; Amundsen travelled
there (and back) overland to wire a success message (collect) on December 5, 1905.
Nome was reached in 1906. Due to water as shallow as 3 feet (0.91 m), a larger ship
could never have used the route.
It was at this time that Amundsen received news that Norway formally became
independent of Sweden and had a new king. Amundsen sent the new King Haakon VII
news that it "was a great achievement for Norway." He hoped to do more he said and
signed it "Your loyal subject, Roald Amundsen."
South Pole
expedition (1910–12)
After crossing the Northwest Passage,
Amundsen made plans to go to the North Pole and explore the North Polar Basin.
Amundsen had difficulty raising funds for the departure and upon hearing in
1909 that first Frederick Cook and then Robert Peary claimed the Pole, he
decided to reroute to Antarctica. However, he did not make these plans known
and misled both Scott and the Norwegians. Using the ship Fram ("Forward"),
earlier used by Fridtjof Nansen, he left Norway for the south, leaving Oslo on
June 3, 1910. At sea, Amundsen alerted his men that they would be heading to
Antarctica in addition to sending a telegram to Scott notifying him simply:
"BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC--AMUNDSEN." The expedition
arrived at the eastern edge of Ross Ice Shelf at a large inlet called the Bay
of Whales on January 14, 1911 where Amundsen located his base camp and named
it Framheim. Further, Admundsen eschewed the heavy wool clothing worn on
earlier Antarctic attempts in favour of Eskimo-style skins.
Using skis and dog sleds for transportation Amundsen and his men created supply
depots at 80°, 81° and 82° South, along a line directly south to the Pole. Amundsen
also planned to kill some of his dogs on the way and use them as a source for fresh
meat. After a premature attempt to set out on 8 September 1911 the Pole team
consisting of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and
Amundsen himself departed on 19 October 1911. They took four sledges and 52 dogs.
Using a route along the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier they arrived at the
edge of the Polar Plateau on November 21 after a four-day climb. On 14 December
1911, the team of five, with 16 dogs, arrived at the Pole (90°00'S). They arrived
35 days before Scott's group. Amundsen named their South Pole camp Polheim, "Home
on the Pole". Amundsen renamed the Antarctic Plateau as King Haakon VII's Plateau.
They left a small tent and letter stating their accomplishment, in case they did
not return safely to Framheim. The team returned to Framheim on January 25, 1912
with 11 dogs. Amundsen's success was publicly announced on 7 March 1912, when he
arrived at Hobart, Australia.
Amundsen's expedition benefited from careful preparation, good equipment,
appropriate clothing, a simple primary task (Amundsen did no surveying on his route
south and is known to have taken only two photographs), an understanding of dogs
and their handling, and the effective use of skis. In contrast to the misfortunes
of Scott's team, the Amundsen's trek proved rather smooth and uneventful.
In Amundsen's own words:
"I may say that this is the greatest factor -- the way in which the expedition is
equipped -- the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken
for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck,
people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary
precautions in time; this is called bad luck."
--from The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen.
Later
life
In 1918 Amundsen began an expedition with a new ship Maud, which was to last until
1925. Maud sailed West to East through the Northeast Passage, now called the
Northern Route (1918-1920). Amundsen planned to freeze the Maud into the polar ice
cap and drift towards the North Pole (as Nansen had done with the Fram), but in
this he was not successful. However, the scientific results of the expedition,
mainly the work of Harald Sverdrup, were of considerable value.
In 1925, accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and three
other team members, Amundsen took two aircraft, the N-24 and N-25 to 87° 44' north.
It was the northernmost latitude reached by plane up to that time. The planes
landed a few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed to reunite.
One of the aircraft, the N-24 was damaged. Amundsen and his crew worked for over
three weeks to clean up an airstrip to take off from ice. They shovelled 600 tons
of ice on 1 lb (400 g) of daily food rations. In the end six crew members were
packed into the N-25. In a remarkable feat, Riiser-Larsen took off and barely
became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphant when everyone
thought they had been lost for ever.
In 1926, Amundsen, Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, Wisting and Italian aeronautical
engineer Umberto Nobile made the first crossing of the Arctic in the airship Norge
designed by Nobile. They left Spitsbergen on May 11, 1926 and landed in Alaska two
days later. The three previous claims to have arrived at the North Pole – by
Frederick Cook in 1908, Robert Peary in 1909, and Richard E. Byrd in 1926 (just a
few days before the Norge) – are all disputed, as being either of dubious accuracy
or outright fraud. Some of those disputing these earlier claims therefore consider
the crew of the Norge to be the first verified explorers to have reached the North
Pole. If the Norge expedition was actually the first to the North Pole, Amundsen
and Wisting would therefore be the first persons to attain each geographical
pole.
Disappearance
and death
Amundsen disappeared on June 18, 1928 while flying on a rescue mission with
Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson, French pilot Rene Guilbaud, and three more
Frenchmen, looking for missing members of Nobile's crew, whose new airship the
Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole. Afterwards, a pontoon from
the French Latham 47 flying-boat he was in, improvised into a life raft, was found
near the Tromsø coast. It is believed that the plane crashed in fog in the Barents
Sea, and that Amundsen was killed in the crash, or died shortly afterwards. His
body was never found. The search for Amundsen was called off in September by the
Norwegian Government. In 2003 it was suggested that the plane went down northwest
of Bjørnøya (Bear Island).
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Roald
Amundsen - Projector - Biography
