ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS
Beginning with the earliest authentic expedition (1526), it is possible to touch only on the most important incidents of the record of this later phase of the subject. The time from 1526 to date may be roughly and generally divided into three periods:
The first, from 1526, the time of the first North Polar expedition by England, to about 1853, the close of Great Britain’s Franklin search expeditions. In this period the preponderance of British efforts over those of all other nations combined was so great as almost to obscure them and make this period preëminently British.
In this period British navigators essayed every route to the polar regions, attempted the Northeast and Northwest Passages again and again, and wrote some of the most brilliant pages of Great Britain’s history over the names of Hudson, Davis, Baffin, Ross, Parry, Franklin, McClintock, and others.
From “On the Polar Star,” by the Duke of the Abruzzi. Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
THE HUT OF THE DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI
From a photograph taken by moonlight in the Arctic regions.
The second period covers from about 1850 to 1895, In this period other nations—the United States, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Norway—showed equal activity with Great Britain, and the names of Kane, Hayes, Hall, Lockwood, Brainard (United States), Nares and Markham (Great Britain), Koldewey and Weyprecht (Germany), Payer (Austria), Nordenskjöld (Sweden), and others were written indelibly into Arctic history. In this period the record of farthest north which had been held by Great Britain was wrested from her in 1882 by Lockwood and Brainard of the United States.