North Pole was in a sea, which in the nineteenth century was called the Polynia or Open Polar Sea. It was therefore hoped that passage could be found through ice floes at favorable times of the year. Several expeditions set out to find the way, generally with whaling ships, already commonly used in the cold northern latitudes.
One of the earliest expeditions to set out with the explicit intention of reaching the North Pole was that of British naval officer William Edward Parry, who in 1827 reached latitude 8245 North. In 1871 the Polaris expedition, an American attempt on the Pole led by Charles Francis Hall, ended in disaster. An 18791881 expedition commanded by US naval officer George Washington DeLong also ended tragically when their ship, the USS Jeanette, was crushed by ice. Over half the crew, including DeLong, were lost.
Nansen’s ship Fram in the Arctic ice
In April 1895 the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen struck out for the Pole on skis after leaving Nansen’s icebound ship Fram. The pair reached latitude 8614 North before they abandoned the attempt and went southwards, eventually reaching Franz Josef Land.
In 1897 Swedish engineer Salomon August Andre and two companions tried to reach the North Pole in the hydrogen balloon rnen (“Eagle”), but were stranded 300 km north of Kvitya, the northeasternmost part of the Svalbard Archipelago, and perished on this lonely island. In 1930 the remains of this expedition were found by the Norwegian Bratvaag Expedition.
The Italian explorer Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi and Captain Umberto Cagni of the Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) sailed the converted whaler Stella Polare from Norway in 1899. On March 11, 1900 Cagni led a party over