List of Arctic expeditions

Gerardus Mercator's 1595 map of the Arctic

This list of Arctic expeditions is a timeline of historic Arctic exploration and explorers of the Arctic.

15th century

  • 1472: Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst mark the first of the cartographic expeditions to Greenland
  • 1496: Grigoriy Istoma [ru], venturing out of the White Sea, travels along the Murman Coast and the coast of northern Norway

16th century

The death of Willem Barentsz
  • 1553: English expedition led by Hugh Willoughby with Richard Chancellor as second in command searches for the Northeast Passage
  • 1557: English expedition led by Stephen Borough reaches the Kara Strait
  • 1576–1578: English expeditions led by Martin Frobisher reach Baffin Island
  • 1579: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by James Alday fails to reach Greenland due to ice
  • 1580: English expedition led by Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman reaches the Kara Sea
  • 1581: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by Magnus Heinason fails to reach Greenland due to ice
  • 1585–1587: English expeditions led by John Davis explore the Davis StraitBaffin Bay region and reach Upernavik
  • 1594: Dutch expedition led by Willem Barentsz, Cornelis Nay and Brandt Tetgales reaches the Kara Sea via Yugorsky Strait
  • 1595: Dutch expedition led by Cornelis Nay fails to make further progress towards a Northeast Passage than in the previous year
  • 1596–1597: Dutch expedition piloted by Willem Barentsz discovers Spitsbergen and registered the first recorded Farthest North

17th century

Thomas Button
  • 1605–1607: Danish-Norwegian king, Christian IV of Denmark, sends three expeditions led by John Cunningham, Godske Lindenov and Carsten Richardson (all piloted by James Hall), to search for the lost Eastern Settlement, one of the Norse colonies on Greenland
  • 1606: John Knight, who had captained the Katten in 1605 with John Cunningham, dies commanding a joint Muscovy Company/East India Company expedition in search of the Northwest Passage
  • 1607: Henry Hudson explores Spitsbergen
  • 1608: Henry Hudson gets as far as Novaya Zemlya in his attempt to find the Northeast Passage
  • 1609: another unsuccessful attempt by Henry Hudson at finding the Northeast Passage
  • 1610: Jonas Poole thoroughly explores Spitsbergen's west coast, reporting that he saw a "great store of whales"; this report leads to the establishment of the English whaling trade
  • 1610: Russian Kondratiy Kurochkin explores the mouth of the Yenisei River and the adjoining coast
  • 1610–1611: Henry Hudson reaches Hudson Bay in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage
  • 1612: James Hall and William Baffin explore southwest Greenland
  • 1612–1613: Button expedition, commanded by Thomas Button, in search of the Northwest Passage
  • 1613: Several whaling expeditions, consisting of a total of at least thirty ships from England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands crowd Spitsbergen's west coast
  • 1614: Dutch and French expeditions discover Jan Mayen
  • 1615: Robert Fotherby, in the pinnace Richard, is the first English expedition to reach Jan Mayen
  • 1615: English expedition captained by Robert Bylot and piloted by William Baffin reaches the Foxe Basin in search of the Northwest Passage
  • 1616: English expedition captained by Robert Bylot and piloted by William Baffin explores the Davis StraitBaffin Bay region
  • 1619–1620: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by Jens Munk in Enhiørningen (Unicorn) and Lamprenen (Lamprey) to discover the Northwest Passage penetrated Davis Strait as far north as 69°, found Frobisher Bay, spent a winter in Hudson Bay
  • 1633–1634: I. Rebrov explores the mouth of the Lena River
  • 1633–1635: Ilya Perfilyev explores the Lena and Yana Rivers and intervening coast
  • 1638: I. Rebrov explores coast between the Lena and Indigirka Rivers
  • 1641: Dimitry Zyryan and Mikhail Stadukhin explore the mouth of the Indigirka River and adjoining coast
  • 1646: I. Ignatyev explores the mouth of the Kolyma River and adjoining coast
  • 1648: Ya. Semyonov explores the mouth of Kotuy River and adjoining coast
  • 1648: Semyon Dezhnev and Fedot Alekseyevich Popov explore from the Kolyma River through the Bering Strait
  • 1649: Mikhail Stadukhin explores the coast from the Kolyma River to the Bering Strait
  • 1676: English expedition led by John Wood fails to find the Northeast Passage
  • 1686–1687: Ivan Tolstoukhov expedition explores the mouth of the Yenisey River and the coast of the Taymyr Peninsula

18th century

Vasily Chichagov

19th century

Ferdinand von Wrangel
John Rae
J. A. D. Jensen
Salomon August Andrée

Early Period (1800–1818)

Ross, Parry and Franklin (1818–1846)

1820s

1830s and 1840s

Search for Franklin (1846–1857)

Nordenskiöld Period (1857–1879)

1860s

1870s

Race for the Pole (1879–1900)

  • 1879–1882: Jeannette expedition commanded by George W. De Long attempts to reach the North Pole by sea from the Bering Strait
  • 1880: Henry W. Howgate leads the Howgate Arctic expedition for scientific and geographical exploration of Greenland
  • 1880: Benjamin Leigh Smith's fourth expedition explores the southwestern area of Franz Josef Land
  • 1881–1882: Benjamin Leigh Smith's final expedition is shipwrecked in Franz Josef Land

International Polar Year

  • 1881–1884: Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, US Army Signal Corps expedition led by Adolphus Greely
  • 1882–1883: The Danish Dijmphna expedition travels to the territory between Russia and the North Pole
  • 1883–1885: Umiak expedition, led by Gustav Frederik Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde along the southeastern coast of Greenland in the shallow waters between the coast and the sea ice
  • 1883: Failed attempt by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to cross Greenland from the west
  • 1886: Failed attempt by Robert Peary to cross Greenland
  • 1888–1889: First successful crossing of the Greenland inland ice by the Norwegian expedition led by Fridtjof Nansen (from east to west)

1890s

20th century

Johan Peter Koch
Knud Rasmussen
Georgy Ushakov
David Scott Cowper

Amundsen and the Heroic Age (1900–1925)

Disputed Polar Claims

Byrd and the Aircraft Age (1925–1958)

Polar Conquest

Second International Polar Year

Post-War

  • 1946: Operation Nanook was a US cartographic mission to Thule and to erect a radio and weather station
  • 1948: Russian scientific expedition led by Aleksandr Kuznetsov lands an aircraft at Pole
  • 1952–1954: British North Greenland expedition was a British scientific mission, led by Commander James Simpson
  • 1955: Cross-polar flight by Louise Arner Boyd

Era of Satellites, Submarines and Icebreakers (1958–onward)

  • 1958: USS Nautilus (SSN-571) crosses the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific to the Atlantic beneath the polar sea ice, reaching the North Pole on 3 August 1958
  • 1959: Discoverer 1, a prototype with no camera, is the first satellite in polar orbit[10]
  • 1959: USS Skate (SSN-578) becomes first submarine to surface at the North Pole on 17 March 1959
  • 1960: TIROS-1, is the first weather satellite in polar orbit; eventually returned 22,952 cloud cover photos[11]
  • 1968: Ralph Plaisted and three others reach the North Pole by snowmobile and are the first confirmed overland conquest of the Pole
  • 1968–1969: Wally Herbert, British explorer, reaches Pole on foot and traverses the Arctic Ocean
  • 1971: Former football player Tony Dauksza becomes the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage in a canoe
  • 1977: Arktika, nuclear-powered icebreaker, reaches the North Pole
  • 1979–1982: Kenichi Horie in Mermaid, was the first person to sail the Northwest Passage solo
  • 1982: As part of the Transglobe Expedition Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton cross the Arctic Ocean in a single season
  • 1986: Will Steger and party reach the north pole by dog sled without resupply
  • 1986–1989: David Scott Cowper became the first person to have completed the Northwest Passage single-handed as part of a circumnavigation of the world
  • 1988: Will Steger completes first south–north traverse of Greenland
  • 1988: Soviet–Canadian 1988 Polar Bridge Expedition a group of thirteen Russian and Canadian skiers set out from Siberia skiing to Canada over the North Pole aided by satellites.
  • 1989: Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner are the first to reach the South Pole and cross Antarctica (1,750 miles route) with neither animal nor motorised help
  • 1991-1992: Lonnie Dupre completes first west to east winter crossing of arctic Canada traveling by dog team from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska via the northwest passage before turning south ending in Churchill, Manitoba. The 3000-mile journey started in October and ended in April.
  • 1992: Crossing of the Greenland inland ice from east to west by a Japanese expedition led by Kenji Yoshikawa
  • 1993–1994: Pam Flowers dog sledded alone2,500 mi (4,000 km) from Barrow, Alaska, to Repulse Bay (Naujaat), Canada[12]
  • 1994: Shane Lundgren led expedition that began in Moscow and proceeded north of the Arctic Circle across Siberia to Magadan
  • 1995: Marek Kamiński and Wojciech Moskal reached the North Pole on 23 May 1995 (27 December 1995, Marek Kamiński reached the South Pole alone)
  • 1997: Børge Ousland completed the first unsupported solo crossing of the Antarctic

21st century

Fiann Paul, Alex Gregory and Carlo Facchino ocean rowing aboard Polar Row.
  • 2000: Ukrainian parachute expedition to the North Pole
  • 2001: Lonnie Dupre with teammate John Holescher complete the first circumnavigation of Greenland, a 6,500 mile, all non-motorized journey by kayak and dog team.[citation needed]
  • 2002: Jean Lemire and the crew of the Sedna IV successfully navigate the Northwest Passage on a three-mast schooner, sailing from Montreal to Vancouver in five months while filming La grande traversée and four other documentaries about the effects of global warming on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (at the time, only the seventh sailboat in history to make the legendary Northwest Passage from east to west)[13]
  • 2003: Pen Hadow makes solo trek from Canada to North Pole without resupply[14]
  • 2004: Five members of the Ice Warrior Squad reach the Geomagnetic North Pole, including the first two women in history to do so.[citation needed]
  • 2006: Start of the French Tara expedition
  • 2007: Arktika 2007, Russian submersible descends to the ocean floor below the North Pole from the Akademik Fyodorov
  • 2007: Top Gear: Polar Special, BBC's Top Gear team are the first to reach the magnetic North Pole in a car
  • 2007: The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition uses Mars analog sites on Svalbard for testing of science questions and payload instruments onboard Mars missions
  • 2008: Alex Hibbert and George Bullard complete the Tiso Trans Greenland expedition. The longest fully unsupported land Arctic journey in history at 1,374 mi (2,211 km)[citation needed]
  • 2009: David Scott Cowper becomes the only person to have sailed the Northwest Passage solo in a single season.[citation needed]
  • 2011: MLAE-2011 led by Vasily Igorevich Yelagin travelled from Dudinka, Russia – North Pole – Resolute, Nunavut, Canada
  • 2011: Old Pulteney Row To The Pole, a publicity stunt sponsored by Old Pulteney whisky, organised by Jock Wishart who also operated the Polar Race
  • 2015: Interdisciplinary Arctic Expedition "Kartesh" – complex arctic expedition, organized by the Polar Expedition Gallery project (later rebranded as Polar Expedition "Kartesh") in collaboration with the LMSU Marine Research Center. Research tasks: assessing the Arctic coastline vulnerability towards human impact; marine and coastal ecosystem and Arctic seas landform condition monitoring; West Arctic biodiversity research; oil oxidizing microorganism activity research; testing new methods of water areas remote sensing.[citation needed]
  • 2017: Polar Row, led by Fiann Paul, is the world's most record-breaking expedition (14 Guinness World Records). The team covered 1440 miles measured in a straight line in the Arctic Ocean open waters in a row boat and pioneered ocean rowing routes from Tromsø to Longyearbyen, from Longyearbyen to Arctic Ice Pack (79º55'500 N) and from the Arctic ice pack to Jan Mayen.[15][16]
  • 2019: MOSAiC Expedition under the direction of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research with 300 scientists from 20 nations on board the German ice-breaker Polarstern to collect data about the ocean, the ice, the atmosphere and life in the Arctic in order to understand climate change

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ E. C. Coleman (2006). The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration: From Frobisher to Ross. Tempus. pp. 65–77. ISBN 9780752436609. Retrieved 22 October 2012.
  2. ^ Roots, Fred (14 March 2017). "Why the North Pole matters: An important history of challenges and global fascination". Canadian Geographic. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
  3. ^ Beechey, F. W. (1843). A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, Performed In His Majesty's Ships Dorothea And Trent, Under The Command Of Captain David Buchan, R. N., 1818. London: Richard Bentley. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  4. ^ *An Officer Of The Expedition (1821). Letters Written During The Later Voyage Of Discovery In The Western Arctic Sea. London: Sir Richard Phillips And Co. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  5. ^ "Polar Discovery". Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  6. ^ King, Richard (1836). Narrative Of A Journey To The Shores Of The Arctic Ocean In 1833, 1834, and 1835; Under The Command Of Capt. Back, R. N., Volume I. London: Richard Bentley. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  7. ^ King, Richard (1836). Narrative Of A Journey To The Shores Of The Arctic Ocean In 1833, 1834, and 1835; Under The Command Of Capt. Back, R. N., Volume II. London: Richard Bentley. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  8. ^ Sonntag, August (1865). Professor Sonntag's Thrilling Narrative Of The Grinnell Exploring Expedition To The Arctic Ocean In The Years 1853, 1854, and 1855 In Search of Sir John Franklin, Under The Command of Dr. E. K. Kane, U.S.N. Philadelphia: Jas. T. Lloyd & Co. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  9. ^ "Charles Everett Ranlett Papers". Williams College Archives and Special Collections. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
  10. ^ Discoverer 1
  11. ^ "POES Project Timeline". NASA. Archived from the original on May 11, 2012.
  12. ^ Alone Across The Arctic
  13. ^ "Jean Lemire Chief of mission". 1000jours.canald.com. Canal D. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
  14. ^ Dougary, Ginny (May 20, 2003). "Pen Hadow makes history by walking solo to the North Pole". The Times. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  15. ^ "Polar Row". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  16. ^ "Freezing Temps and Rotting Hands: Speaking With the Men of the Record-Breaking Polar Row Expedition". Men's Journal. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
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