Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen | |
|---|---|
 Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen | |
| Born | July 16, 1872 |
| Died | c. June 18, 1928 (aged 55) |
| Occupation | Explorer |
| Parent | Jens Amundsen |
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 of Roald Amundsen
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 become a doctor, a promise that Amundsen kept until his mother died when he was aged 21, quitting university for a life at sea.[1] 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.
pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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 the famous Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson, the 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).
Legacy
A number of places have been named after him:
- The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is named jointly with his rival.
- Amundsen Sea, off the coast of Antarctica.
- Amundsen Glacier in Antarctica.
- Amundsen Gulf, in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of the Northwest Territories in Canada (separating Banks Island and the western parts of Victoria Island from the mainland).
- A large crater covering the Moon's south pole is named Amundsen Crater.
The following ships are named after him:
- The Canadian Coast Guard named an icebreaker CCGS Amundsen, whose mission is to perform scientific research in the waters of the Arctic.
- The Norwegian Navy is building a class of Aegis frigates, the second of which, is the HNoMS Roald Amundsen (completed 2006).
- The German brig Roald Amundsen.
Other tributes include:
- Writer Roald Dahl was named after Amundsen.
- The Amundsen Trail, Staten Island, New York
- Amundsen High School, Chicago, Illinois
Notes
- ^ Thomas, Henry (1972). Living Adventures in Science. Ayer Publishing. pp. pp. 196-201. ISBN 0836925734.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help)
See also
- Explorers
- Northwest Passage
- Antarctica
- Robert Falcon Scott (of the Scott Expedition)
- List of Antarctica expeditions
- List of people who have disappeared
External links
- The Fram Museum (Frammuseet)
- Arctic Passage at PBS' Nova site has photographs, maps, excerpts from Amundsen's autobiography and an interview with Roland Huntford.
- Roald Amundsen article at south-pole.com
- 70South - information on Roald Amundsen
- Short biography from Norwegian Foreign Ministry
- DIO vol.10 2000 Amundsen's unparalleled record of polar firsts, including evidence that he was 1st to each geographical pole.
- The Last Place On Earth 1985 miniseries depicting the race between Amundsen and Scott.
- Roald Amundsen At Find A Grave
- The Red Tent Sean Connery plays Amundsen
Works by Amundsen:
- Works by Roald Amundsen at Project Gutenberg
- Arthur G. Chater's 1912 translation of Amundsen's The South Pole
- Template:Worldcat id
Bibliography
- Roald Amundsen's Belgica Diary. The first Scientific Expedition to the Antarctic by Hugo Decleir Bluntisham Books, Erskine Press.
- The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford Modern Library (September 7, 1999)
- The South Pole:An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910 - 1912, by Roald Amundsen, John Murray, 1912. Online edition at eBooks @ Adelaide
- Roald Amundsen, a full biography by Tor Bomann-Larsen, ISBN 0750943432
- Langner, Rainer-K. 'Scott and Amundsen - Duel in the Ice', Haus Publishing, London, 2007, ISBN 978905791088