Six Daring Crossings — From Franklin's Frozen Ships to Hillary's Summit, the Heroic Age of Cold Exploration
Northwest Passage, 1845–1848 • The Vanishing of 129 Men
On May 19, 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from Greenhithe with two of the strongest steam-powered ships ever built and three years of provisions to find the Northwest Passage. They were last seen by whalers in Baffin Bay that July. None of the 129 men returned. The slow Victorian unravelling of their fate — including evidence of starvation, lead poisoning, and cannibalism — became the greatest detective story of 19th-century exploration. The wrecks of Erebus (2014) and Terror (2016) were located only after 169 years of searching.
1786–June 11, 1847 • Royal Navy officer, Arctic veteran
A veteran of Trafalgar and three previous Arctic expeditions, Franklin was 59 and overweight when given the command. His earlier 1819–22 overland expedition had killed eleven men and earned him the nickname "the man who ate his boots." His wife Lady Jane Franklin would spend the rest of her life and her fortune trying to find him.
Funded five search expeditions and lobbied governments for a decade. Awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 1860 — the first woman so honoured.
Veteran of Antarctic exploration with James Clark Ross. Took command after Franklin's death. Last seen leading 105 men south on the ice.
Hudson's Bay Company surgeon. In 1854 brought back Inuit reports of cannibalism, recovered relics, and was vilified by Lady Franklin and Charles Dickens for telling the truth.
Their oral histories, dismissed by Victorian London, accurately described the expedition's fate — including the location of the ships — for 169 years before being vindicated.
Franklin's catastrophe inaugurated the modern era of polar exploration the same way Magellan's death had inaugurated circumnavigation: as a cautionary tale. The Royal Navy's reliance on heavy ships, tinned food, and woollen uniforms gave way over the next half-century to ski, sledge, dog, and Inuit-style fur clothing. Every later expedition in this gallery was built on lessons paid for in Franklin's bones.
Norwegian Arctic Drift, 1893–1896 • A Heretical Theory Tested in the Polar Sea
Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian zoologist who had skied across Greenland in 1888, designed a uniquely round-bottomed ship that would be lifted up by pack ice rather than crushed. He sailed it deliberately into the ice north of Siberia in 1893 to test his theory that a transpolar current would carry it across the top of the world. The drift took longer than expected and missed the Pole. So in March 1895 Nansen and stoker Hjalmar Johansen left the Fram on skis with three sledges, three kayaks and twenty-eight dogs, attempting the Pole on foot.
1861–1930 • Zoologist, oceanographer, statesman, Nobel laureate
Norway's greatest scientist-explorer of the era. He pioneered the use of skis and the lightweight sledge-and-kayak combination later perfected by Amundsen. After his polar career, he organised the post-WWI repatriation of 450,000 prisoners and won the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for the "Nansen passport" that gave stateless refugees legal status.
Captain of the Fram after Nansen left. Brought all 12 men and the ship safely home. Later led his own four-year Canadian Arctic expedition mapping over 250,000 km².
Stoker who skied to 86°14' N with Nansen. Later joined Amundsen's South Pole expedition but was sent home in disgrace after a public confrontation. Suicide, 1913.
Norwegian-Scottish naval architect who designed the Fram. Her hull shape allowed ice to lift rather than crush her — the breakthrough that made the drift possible.
British explorer leading the Jackson–Harmsworth Expedition to Franz Josef Land. The astonishing chance of his meeting Nansen on Cape Flora is one of polar history's miracles.
Where Franklin had relied on naval discipline, heavy ships, and tinned food, Nansen embodied a completely different model: scientific reasoning, indigenous-style equipment (skis, dogs, fur), and a small expert crew. The Fram herself would carry Otto Sverdrup, Roald Amundsen, and eventually serve as the platform from which Amundsen launched his own ship for the South Pole.
Norwegian Antarctic Expedition, 1910–1912 • Five Norwegians, Fifty-two Dogs, and the Pole
Roald Amundsen had told the world he was sailing for the North Pole when he left Norway in June 1910. Only after they reached Madeira did he turn his ship and inform his crew that they were going south. He had learned that Robert Peary had reached the North Pole the year before; without a "first" he could not pay off his debts. With five hand-picked Norwegians, four sledges, and dogs trained to be eaten in stages, Amundsen reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911 — five weeks ahead of Captain Scott. He did not lose a man.
1872–1928 • First to navigate the Northwest Passage; first to the South Pole; probably first to the North Pole (1926, by airship)
Born to Norwegian shipowners, Amundsen had abandoned medical studies after his mother's death and trained obsessively with the Inuit on the Northwest Passage voyage of 1903–06, learning to live in fur clothing and run dog teams. He was a relentless logistician for whom every tin of pemmican was weighed and every day's distance plotted. He vanished in the Arctic in 1928 on a rescue mission for Umberto Nobile.
Norwegian ski champion. Cross-country gold at the Holmenkollen 1902. Made the sledges lighter at Framheim and was first man to ski over the geographic South Pole.
Master dog driver. Had been with Amundsen on the Northwest Passage. Drove the lead sledge throughout the polar journey.
Naval gunner and sledge maker. Co-stood at the South Pole with Amundsen and later flew with him over the North Pole in 1926. Died in his bunk on the Fram, 1936.
King of newly-independent Norway. The South Pole victory, achieved by a Norwegian crew using Norwegian skis and an old Norwegian ship, was a defining moment in Norwegian national identity.
Amundsen's victory was not luck or speed but logistics: depot-laying, dog husbandry, ski technique, fur clothing, and a willingness to slaughter trained dogs on schedule. His chief contrast is to Scott, whose simultaneous attempt failed catastrophically. The two expeditions, attempting the same Pole at the same time with different methods, became the textbook case study of polar planning.
British Antarctic Expedition, 1910–1913 • Reached the Pole — And Never Came Home
Captain Robert Falcon Scott had been to within 850 km of the South Pole in 1902. He returned in 1910 with the steam-yacht Terra Nova intent on finishing the job. He reached the Pole on January 17, 1912 — only to find Amundsen's tent and Norwegian flag already there. The return journey killed all five men in the polar party. Edgar Evans died first on the Beardmore Glacier; Captain Oates walked out of the tent into a blizzard saying "I am just going outside and may be some time"; Scott, Wilson, and Bowers froze in their tent eleven miles from the One Ton Depot.
1868–c. March 29, 1912 • Royal Navy officer, Antarctic explorer
A torpedo officer with no Arctic background, Scott was selected to lead the National Antarctic Expedition (1901–04). For the second expedition he relied on a mixed transport plan: ponies, motor sledges, and man-hauling. Charming, scrupulous, and self-doubting, his death was canonised as the perfect Edwardian sacrifice. Modern reassessment is more nuanced.
Expedition physician, naturalist, watercolourist, and Scott's closest friend. Died with Scott in the last tent. His unfinished portrait of an emperor penguin is at the Natural History Museum.
Indian Marine officer of legendary toughness. The fifth man chosen at the last moment. Co-undertook the appalling "Worst Journey in the World" winter trip with Wilson and Cherry-Garrard.
Cavalry officer in charge of ponies. His self-sacrifice in the blizzard remains the most quoted death in polar literature. He was 31; he died on his 32nd birthday.
Survivor and member of the search party that found the last tent. His 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World is widely considered the greatest travel book ever written.
The Scott–Amundsen race is the textbook case in polar planning. Scott's mixed transport, late-decided fifth man, longer route, and reliance on man-hauling stood against Amundsen's dogs, fur, skis, and obsessive depot-laying. The lesson, as Amundsen wrote, was that "victory awaits him who has everything in order." Scott's diary, by contrast, made tragedy compatible with British self-image: lost, but nobly.
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1916 • The Greatest Survival Story in Polar History
Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed for Antarctica in August 1914 intending to make the first land crossing of the continent. The First World War had broken out a week earlier; Churchill cabled "Proceed." His ship the Endurance was crushed in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea before he ever set foot on the Antarctic mainland. Over the next twenty-two months Shackleton brought all twenty-eight of his men home alive, including a 1,300-km open-boat journey across the Southern Ocean to South Georgia and the first crossing of that island's interior on foot. He did not lose a single man.
1874–January 5, 1922 • Anglo-Irish merchant marine, Antarctic explorer
Shackleton had been invalided home from Scott's 1902 expedition and returned in 1907 to set the southern record at 88°23' S, just 180 km from the Pole, before turning back to save his men. After Amundsen took the Pole, he turned to the trans-Antarctic crossing. His genius was for leadership in catastrophe; his maxim was "by endurance we conquer."
New Zealand-born captain of the Endurance. His boat-handling and four extraordinary sun-sight celestial fixes hit South Georgia in the open-boat voyage. Later survived two Atlantic torpedoings.
Irish-born Royal Navy Petty Officer who had walked 56 km alone to save Scott's life in 1912. With Shackleton in 1909 and 1916. Crossed South Georgia in his finneskos.
Second-in-command. Held the 22 men on Elephant Island together for 137 days while Shackleton went for help. "Lash up and stow!" was his daily morale-keeping order.
Australian photographer whose glass plates and cinema reels documented the entire expedition. Plunged into the icy water to save the negatives, then chose 120 to keep before smashing the rest.
Where Scott's expedition succeeded in objective and failed in survival, Shackleton's did the reverse. He pivoted instantly from "cross the continent" to "save the men." His leadership — daily routine, equal rations, careful pairing of incompatible characters in tents, and personal example — is now studied at Harvard Business School. The 2022 wreck discovery, almost exactly a century after Shackleton's own death, closed the longest live story in polar history.
British Mount Everest Expedition, 1953 • The Highest Place on Earth
On May 29, 1953, at 11:30 a.m., Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand bee-keeper, and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, stood on the summit of Mount Everest. Their expedition leader Colonel John Hunt had drawn on three decades of British attempts that had killed George Mallory and Sandy Irvine in 1924 and turned back nine subsequent expeditions. The news reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, June 2, fusing imperial twilight with national renewal. Hillary and Tenzing publicly refused to disclose who had stepped on the summit first.
Hillary 1919–2008 • Tenzing c.1914–1986
Hillary was an Auckland bee-keeper turned RNZAF navigator turned mountaineer, on his second Everest expedition. Tenzing was a Sherpa from Tibet's Tshechu Valley who had attempted Everest six times before, including with the Swiss in 1952 when he had reached 8,595 m. Together they were the climbing pair Hunt held back as his second-summit team after the first pair, Bourdillon and Evans, turned back at the South Summit on May 26.
Expedition leader, chosen ahead of Eric Shipton in a controversial last-minute switch. His meticulous planning and the masterful use of two-man assault teams set the template for high-altitude expedition climbing.
Hillary's fellow New Zealander and lifelong friend. Cut steps for nine days up the Lhotse Face. First to greet Hillary on his return: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."
Times correspondent embedded with the expedition. Filed the coded telegram that produced the coronation-day scoop. Decades later transitioned and became the celebrated travel writer Jan Morris.
1924 climber whose body was found at 8,160 m in 1999. Whether he reached the summit before Hillary remains the great mystery of mountaineering. His camera was not found.
Everest is not a polar expedition in the strict sense, but the climbing tradition that produced Hillary — supply chains, multiple high camps, supplemental oxygen, expert local guides — descended directly from Antarctic and Arctic practice, with Sherpas filling the role that Inuit dog-drivers had played in earlier polar journeys. The 1953 ascent closed the era of the "third pole" and prefigured a half-century of commercial climbing on the world's highest mountain.
| Expedition | Years | Goal | Personnel | Method | Casualties | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin | 1845–1848 | Northwest Passage | 129 men | Heavy ships, tinned food | 129 dead | All Lost |
| Nansen | 1893–1896 | Transpolar drift / Pole | 13 men | Fram drift + skis | 0 | 86°14' N |
| Amundsen | 1910–1912 | South Pole | 5 polar party | Skis & sledge dogs | 0 | First to Pole |
| Scott | 1910–1913 | South Pole | 5 polar party | Ponies, motors, man-haul | 5 polar party | Pole then Death |
| Shackleton | 1914–1916 | Trans-Antarctic crossing | 28 + Ross Sea Party | Ships, sledges, lifeboats | 0 in Endurance party | All Returned |
| 1953 Everest | 1953 | Summit Mt Everest | ~400 incl. porters | Oxygen, fixed camps | 0 | First Ascent |
Amundsen v. Scott is the textbook lesson: identical destination, near-identical conditions, completely different outcomes. Depot-laying, dog husbandry, ski technique, fur clothing — the small disciplines compound into the difference between five graves and five medals.
Every successful expedition borrowed from Inuit, Sami, or Sherpa practice: kayaks, anoraks, sledge construction, dog handling, stove design. The expeditions that ignored this knowledge (Franklin) tended to die; those that absorbed it (Nansen, Amundsen, 1953 Everest) tended to survive.
The polar age produced exceptional literature: Nansen's Farthest North, Scott's last journal, Cherry-Garrard's Worst Journey in the World, Hillary's High Adventure. Several expeditions are better remembered for their books than their geography.
Each polar success became a national myth: Norwegian independence (Amundsen), Edwardian sacrifice (Scott), British post-war renewal (Hunt 1953). The geography of the poles became, briefly, geopolitical symbolism on the cheap.
Three of these six expeditions ended in death (Franklin, Scott, three in Shackleton's Ross Sea Party). The heroic age was a high-mortality endeavour. Modern polar travel, by contrast, demands GPS, satellite phone, and helicopter rescue infrastructure that would have astonished Shackleton.
Both Erebus (2014), Terror (2016), and Endurance (2022) were located on the seabed in the 21st century, all sitting upright. Sonar, ROVs, and Inuit testimony together completed the polar record more than a century after the events.
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