Otto Sverdrup

Otto Sverdrup. Well-known Norwegian sailor and explorer . He entered the merchant navy at the age of seventeen.

Summary

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  • 1 Biographical synthesis
    • 1 Expeditions
  • 2 See also
  • 3 Sources

Biographical synthesis

(Haarstad, 1854 – Copenhagen, 1930) In 1878 he became a pilot and a short time later the captain of the ship. In 1888 he was part of the expedition that Fridtjof Nansen organized to Greenland . Nansen was very satisfied with Sverdrup’s services, so that for the expedition that Nansen himself organized to the North Pole, he requested his services as captain of the ship, the Fram.

Expeditions

The Fram expedition took place between 1893 and 1896 and its intention was to reach the north pole. At one point, Nansen left the ship with other members of the expedition and headed north on sleds; It was March 14, 1895 . Otto Naumann Sverdrup remained as captain of the ship and head of the part of the expedition that was in it. The expedition was a failure: Nansen had to be rescued in Arctic lands by the expedition of the British Jackson, while the Fram was on the verge of being destroyed by the ice and remained adrift for three years.

After his first experience on the Fram, Sverdrup, with the permission of Nansen, owner and builder of the ship, undertook a new Arctic expedition financed with the collaboration of some individuals and the Norwegian government. The objective of it was to explore North Greenland and reach the North Pole. The Fram sailed again, this time from Norway, on June 27 , 1898, bound for the northern tip of the island of Greenland.

In the summer of 1898 they reached the Smith Sund area , but it was impossible to continue north across the ice and they had to await the arrival of the spring of 1899 . When the time came, two sledding expeditions set out for the Greenlandic west coast. Arriving at Kanebcken and unable to overcome it, they set course for Jonessund, and made the second Greenlandic wintering between 1899 and 1900 on the southern coast of Ellesmereland.

But the Fram was blocked by ice for two consecutive years, from 1900 to 1902 , in the Belchner Canal. In the springs of 1900 and 1901 , sledding expeditions took place off the coast of Ellesmereland where they were. In these expeditions the islands Axel Heiberg , Rey Cristian and Ellef Ringnes were discovered , all of them east of Ellesmereland. Finally, after more than four years of absence, Sverdrup and the expedition arrived at the port of Stavanger on September 19, 1902.. The most significant results of this second expedition, classified as the first of a modern nature, were, apart from the discovery of the aforementioned islands, the mapping of the South and Southwest coast of Ellesmereland, the realization of complete series of meteorological observations and a archaeological study of ancient Eskimo sites.

In the years 1914 – 1915 and again in 1920 , Sverdrup once again led Arctic expeditions to rescue Russian explorers lost on their expeditions. Similarly, in 1928 , he led the search for the crew of the airship Italia. Shortly before his death, the Canadian Dominion Government awarded him $ 67,000 for his discoveries in the Canadian Arctic, especially that of the Sverdrup Archipelago, west of Ellesmereland, discovered and explored between 1898 and 1902 . In 1904 he published the summary of his exploration experiences, entitled New Land: Four Years in the Artic Regions.

 

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