[157] Announced in the Morgenblad by Professor Mohn in 1884.
[158] Quite unknown to Nansen I had come to a similar conviction in contemplating the results of the Nares expedition. In my Report on the origin, proceedings, and results of this expedition (R. G. S. Proceedings, 1877), I pointed out that a current flowed across the polar sea from the eastern to the western hemisphere, that Franz Josef Land was part of the Spitsbergen group, rising from the same plateau with a deeper sea to the north, and that to overstep the boundary of the known polar sea, though attended by great difficulties, would reward with important discoveries the future explorer who boldly forced his way north in this direction. My Report came to Nansen’s knowledge after his return home.
[159] Length of keel 102 feet, length of deck 128 feet, beam 36 feet, depth 17 feet, thickness of ship’s side 24 to 28 inches. In the stern the oak beams were 4 feet thick.
[160] The British sledges 1850–9 were 3 feet wide, the runners of metal, 3 inches wide, and slightly convex.
[161] See Nansen’s “Oceanography of the North Polar Basin” in Vol. III of the results of the expedition, the “Bathymetrical Features” in Vol. IV, also The Sea West of Spitsbergen (Christiania, 1912) and the oceanographic observations of the Isachsen Spitsbergen expedition, by Bjørn Helland Hansen and Fridtjof Nansen.
[162] Through Siberia (Heinemann, 1914). Appendix on the navigation of the Kara Sea.
[163] The writer was shipmate with one of them for more than a year, and there could not be a better disposed lad or a more reliable comrade when travelling.
[164] He may have adopted the position fixed by the observations of Lieut. Aldrich. The sun was below the horizon when Peary started.
[165] Commodore Jansen was one of the most active and accomplished of the honorary corresponding members of our Royal Geographical Society of his time and the chief promoter of the revival of Arctic voyages in Holland. He saw much service in the Royal Dutch Navy, joining its surveying branch, and was for several years engaged on a survey in the Riouw Archipelago, the Straits of Sunda, and elsewhere. As a Lieutenant on board the frigate Prins van Oranje he served in the West Indies, and during a visit to Washington in 1851 formed a life-long friendship for Maury, the great American hydrographer. He contributed the chapter on land and sea breezes to Maury’s Physical Geography of the Sea and in 1864 published an important work The Latest Discoveries in Maritime Affairs. In the following year he became a Commodore in the Royal Dutch Navy, and was appointed to superintend the building of the ironclad Prins Hendrik, which he afterwards commanded. In 1868 he retired from active service, after a distinguished naval career of 35 years. At my request Jansen examined the Dutch archives with a view to a study of ice navigation in the Spitsbergen and Barentsz seas, and the results of his researches were published in the R. G. S. Proceedings (Old Series, IX. 9, 163). In 1873 he was appointed a Councillor of State, and attained the rank of Rear Admiral. He died in September 1894, aged 77.
[166] Beynen published De Reis van de Pandora in den Zomer van 1876.