The New Student's Reference Work/Amundsen, Capt. Roald

Amundsen (ä' mŭnd-sěn), Capt. Roald. For nine months of the year no stranger comes to the mining camp of Eagle City, Alaska. It is on the Arctic circle, and its one street of log houses fronts on the frozen flood of the Yukon. When, therefore, one short, dark day in December, 1905, a dog-sledge dashed into town over the ice of the river, not from the coast 150 miles to the west, but from the north, down the slope of the Canadian Rockies, everyone was amazed. The stranger was of powerful build and had the sea-blue eyes and blond coloring of a Norse viking. He was clothed in yellow seal-skins, and his dogs were of Esquimaux breed, unlike Alaskan huskies.

"Captain Roald Amundsen of the Sloop Gjoa, Christiania, Norway," is the way in which he registered in the log hotel. It was the Norwegian explorer, whose little ship had been reported crushed in the ice six months before. He had sailed from Greenland to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, through the Northwest Passage that had been sought for very nearly four hundred years—from the time Sebastian Cabot coasted along Labrador, in 1497. He had spent two long years on King William's Land, where Sir John Franklin had perished sixty years before; had determined the position of the north magnetic pole in King William's Land; and had brought his gallant little craft and crew of six men through unharmed.

Roald Amundsen was born of Norwegian parents in the city of Christiania, Norway, in 1872. After completing a common school education he became a sailor. At 25 years of age he joined a south polar expedition. Returning, he sought the friendship of Dr. Nansen, the Arctic explorer, for he had decided to try to locate the magnetic pole and to make the Northwest Passage, both of which Sir John Franklin's expedition had determined to lie in the neighborhood of King William's Land and Boothia. He fitted out a 73 foot, 60 ton sloop to be propelled by a petroleum engine and manned by six Norse sailors. He left Christiania in June, 1903, got dogs and supplies at Godhaven, Greenland, and disappeared. He reached Herschell Island, Mackenzie River, in Oct., 1905. Here he was frozen in, made his way overland to Alaska and returning in the spring took the Gjoa around through Behring Straits to San Francisco.

But Amundsen's crowning achievement was the discovery of the South Pole. He sailed from Norway in Nansen's vessel, the Fram, in 1910. Early in 1911 he reached Whales Bay, where he went into winter quarters. In Feb. he pushed south with food supplies and established depots as far as 82 south latitude, returning to winter quarters. The sun disappeared April 22 and reappeared Aug. 24. On Sept. 8 he started for the pole, but, finding the date too early, he returned to winter quarters. On Oct. 20 with 4 men, 4 sledges, 52 dogs and four months' provision he made his final start for the goal. On Nov. 17 he reached the great ice barrier, latitude 85°, and climbed to the top of the polar plateau, to a height of 10,000 feet. Here he killed 24 dogs, and with 18 dogs and three sledges pushed on over a vast plateau clad in snow and glacier ice, reaching the pole Dec. 14. Here he remained three days, taking observations, and located the pole in a vast plain, which he named King Haakon VII Plateau. Returning he reached his winter quarters Jan. 25, and on March 7 he cabled to Christiania, Norway: "Pole attained fourteenth—seventeenth December, 1911. All well."