to attain a high latitude by the Franz Josef Land route and was
supported financially by Mr A. C. Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe).
He was accompanied by Lieut. Albert
Harmsworth Armitage, R N.R., as second in command and six Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition.
scientific men, including Dr Reginald Koettlitz,
Dr W. S. Bruce also was one of the number in the second year.
The Jackson-Harmsworth expedition sailed in 1894, and was
landed at Cape Flora, where log houses were built. In the
spring of 1895 Jackson made a journey northward to 81° 19′, N.,
the highest latitude reached, and added considerably to our
knowledge of the archipelago by discovering a channel between
groups of islands west of the Austria Sound of Payer. He
made numerous other journeys by land and in boats, and
surveyed a considerable portion of the islands on which he
landed, the most interesting being that of 1897, to the western
portion of the group. The geological collections were of some
value and the specimens secured indicated that Franz Josef
Land and Spitsbergen were parts of an extensive land existing
in Tertiary times. The expedition returned in 1897.
In 1897 and subsequent years a party led by Sir Martin Conway explored the interior of Spitsbergen. Dr A. G. Nathorst, the Swedish geologist, explored the eastern coast and off-lying islands, and made important observations on North-East Land, circumnavigating the Spitsbergen archipelago in 1898. In 1899 Nathorst visited the north-east coast of Greenland in search of Andrée’s balloon expedition, and here he mapped Franz Josef Fjord and discovered the great King Oscar Fjord in waters that had never been navigated before.
In subsequent years valuable surveys and scientific observations were made by the Prince of Monaco in his yacht “Princesse Alice,” by Dr W. S. Bruce, notably on Prince Charles Foreland, and by others. Franz Josef Land was visited by the American explorer W. Wellman in 1898 and 1900, and his companion E. Baldwin in the former year made the discovery of several islands in the east of the archipelago. A wealthy American, W. Zeigler, also sent out expeditions to Franz Josef Land in 1901 and between 1903 and 1905, in the course of which A. Fiala reached the high latitude of 82° 4′ N. in the “America,” but the ship was afterwards lost in Teplitz Bay. These expeditions added little to our knowledge of polar geography, but some useful meteorological, magnetic and tidal observations were made.
The Italian expedition under the command of H.R.H. Prince Luigi, duke of the Abruzzi, was the most successful of all those which have attempted to reach high latitudes by the way of Franz Josef Land. Embarking in the summer of 1899 on the “Stella Polare” (formerly the Norwegian whaler “Jason” which had landed Nansen on Duke of the Abruzzi. the east coast of Greenland in 1888) the expedition put into Teplitz Bay in Rudolf Land, where they wintered and there the ship nas seriously damaged by the ice. In the spring of 1900 a determined effort was made to reach the North Pole by sledging over the sea-ice. The duke of the Abruzzi having been disabled by frost-bite. the leadership of the northern party devolved upon Captain Umberto Cagni of the Italian navy, who started on the 11th of March 1900 with ten men (Alpine guides and Italian sailors) and nearly a hundred dogs. His plan was to sledge northward over the sea-ice, sending back two parties as the diminishing stores allowed the advance party to take on the whole of the supplies destined to support them on their way to the Pole and back. Before losing sight of Rudolf Island three men forming the first party started to return, but they never reached winter quarters and all must have perished. The second party went back from latitude 83° 10′ N., and reached their base in safety. Cagni pushed on with three companions, determined if he could not reach the Pole at least to outdistance his predecessor Nansen, and on the 25th of April 1900 he succeeded in reaching 86° 34′ N. in 65° 20′ E. Diminishing food supplies made it necessary to turn at this point, and although he had reached it in 45 days it took Cagni 60 days to return. The advance of summer loosened the ice-floes, and the westward component of the drift of the pack became a more and more serious danger, threatening to carry the party past Franz Josef Land without sighting it. Fortunately Cape Mill, a headland of characteristic outline, was sighted just in time, and with this as a guide the party succeeded in reaching Teplitz Bay, having eaten the last of their dogs and been reduced to great extremities At the farthest north no land was visible, the rough sea-ice extending to the horizon on every side.
As early as 1895 a scheme for an exploring expedition in a balloon was put forward seriously, and in 1897 the Swedish aeronaut S. A. Andrée carried it out. He had Andrée brought a balloon to Danes Island, in the north of Spitsbergen, the previous year, but the weather was unpropitious and the ascent had to be postponed. On the 11th of July 1897 he started in a new and larger balloon with about five tons of supplies and two companions. It was hoped that the balloon could be steered to some extent by the use of heavy guide ropes dragging over the ice, and Andrée had already made successful flights in this way. Rising at 2:30 p.m. the balloon was out of sight of Danes Island in an hour. At 10 p.m. Andrée threw out a buoy containing a message which was recovered, and this stated that the balloon was in 82° N. 25° E., moving towards the north-east at an altitude of 800 ft. above a rugged ice-field. This was the last news received, and although scarcely a year has passed without some rumour of the balloon having been found in Siberia or North America, nothing further has ever been ascertained.
In 1899 Admiral Makaroff of the Russian navy arranged for the trial trip of the great ice-breaker “Yermak,” which he designed, to take the form of an expedition into the sea-ice off Spitsbergen. Though no high latitude was attained on this occasion he formed the opinion that a vessel of sufficient size and power could force a passage even Makaroff. to the Pole. The Russian-Japanese War put an end to the polar projects of this gifted man of science.
Captain Otto Sverdrup, who had been Nansen’s companion on his two polar expeditions, planned an Arctic voyage for the circumnavigation of Greenland, and the “Fram” was altered and refitted to suit her for the work. Starting in 1899, he was obliged to abandon the attempt to get northward through Smith Sound, and making his way westward Sverdrup. into ]ones Sound he spent three years in exploring and mapping the portion of the Arctic archipelago which lay to the north of the field of labour of the Franklin search expeditions. Ellesmere and Grinnell Lands were shown to be part of one large land mass called King Oscar Land, which is separated by a narrow channel, Eureka Sound, from an extensive island named Axel Heiberg Land. Two of his party (Isachsen and Hassel) discovered and explored two islands west of Heiberg Land, and Dr Schei made most valuable observations on the geology of the whole of the district examined. Sverdrup’s journeys cleared up a great deal of uncertainty regarding the geography of the least known portion of the Arctic archipelago, and leave little more to be done in that quarter. He brought the “Fram” safely back to Norway in 1903.
Many American whalers working in the sea reached through Bering Strait believe that land of considerable extent lies farther west than the Arctic archipelago, north of the mouth of the Mackenzie River, but neither the English traveller A. H. Harrison in 1905, nor the Dane Einar Mikkelsen in 1907, was able to find any trace of it, though the latter sledged over the sea ice as far as 72° N., where in 150° W. he got a sounding of 339 fathoms with no bottom. This depth makes it somewhat improbable that land exists in that quarter.
Russian surveyors and explorers continued to map portions of the Siberian coast, and in 1886 Dr Bunge and Baron Toll visited the New Siberia Islands and made known the remarkable remains of mammoths which exist there in great numbers. In 1893 Baron Toll made an important geological expedition to the islands, discovering Baron Toll. many well-preserved remains of mammoths and other extinct mammals and finding evidence that in the mammoth period trees grew at least as far as 74° N. Indefatigable in the pursuit of his studies, Toll set out once more in 1901 on board the
