Amundsen, Roald

Amundsen, Roald (1872-1928), Norwegian polar explorer. Born in Borge, near Oslo, the son of a shipowner, he briefly studied medicine before going to sea at the age of 20 aboard an Arctic sealing vessel. In 1897 he joined the crew of the Belgica as a member of the Belgian Antarctic expedition led by Adrien de Gerlache, the first to winter in Antarctica. Trapped in the ice for 13 months Amundsen and the ship's doctor Frederick Cook fed the crew on seal meat to prevent scurvy.

On his return to Norway Amundsen purchased a small sloop, the Gjöa, and set out with a crew of seven in June 1903 to locate the North Magnetic Pole, and find a route through the North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. He sailed up the west coast of Greenland, via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound and through the many small islands of the Canadian Arctic to King William Island. Here he spent two winters calculating the exact position of the North Magnetic Pole, and discovered the bodies of two members of the 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin. By the summer of 1905 he had reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River and when the Gjöa became ice-bound, he travelled 800 km (500 mi) overland to the telegraph at Fort Eagle, Alaska, to announce the first successful voyage through the North West Passage in a single vessel. He returned to his vessel, and reached San Francisco in October 1906, where he presented the Gjöa to the city.

Amundsen's voyage of 1903-1906 made him a world-famous explorer. He had just announced his intention to use Fridtjof Nansen's ship the Fram for an Arctic expedition and attempt on the North Pole when he heard that Robert Peary had reached it first. He decided instead to head to the Antarctic and set sail in August 1910. He sent a telegraph message to British explorer Robert Scott who had already announced his plans to reach the South Pole. Amundsen established his base camp at Framheim, in the Bay of Whales at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, some 95 km (60 mi) closer to the Pole than Scott's camp at McMurdo Sound. Amundsen overwintered there, preparing for the journey. His first attempt on the South Pole in September 1911 failed due to bad weather, but on October 20, 1911, he set out with four men, using sledges and 52 dogs. They reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, the first expedition to do so. They spent three days in the vicinity of the pole taking measurements to confirm their position and then left a marker flag and letters to the king of Norway and Scott, before returning to the Bay of Whales, making a round trip of 99 days. Although subsequent commentators have pointed out that he had more favourable weather conditions during the journey than his ill-fated rival Scott, Amundsen's success was due primarily to his knowledge of polar conditions, his attention to minute details, and his ability to endure great physical stress. Amundsen's professionalism and meticulous planning contrasted sharply with the approach of Scott's expedition which man-hauled their sledges rather than using dog teams, thus slowing their progress as well as fatally weakening them.

Amundsen's South Pole expedition is his most famous achievement, but he was still making plans for his Arctic expedition when World War I began. Eventually, despite the threat of German submarines, he set out in July 1918 in the Maud, along the Arctic coasts of northern Norway and Russia reaching Nome, Alaska, by the spring of 1920, to become only the second person to navigate the North East Passage. In the following years he became interested in the use of air transport for polar travel. In May 1926, using an Italian dirigible balloon the Norge and accompanied by the American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth and the designer and pilot Umberto Nobile, he succeeded in crossing the North Pole during a flight of more than 70 hours from Svalbard to Teller, Alaska. Although Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown over the North Pole a few days earlier, Byrd's diary, which came to light in 1996, suggests that he may have turned back a considerable distance before reaching the Pole. In any case, the Norge was the first to cross from Europe to North America via the Pole. Nobile and Amundsen subsequently quarrelled, each claiming that the credit for the flight belonged to his respective country. In 1928, however, when Nobile's airship Italia was wrecked during a polar flight, Amundsen, who had retired, volunteered to search for him. Nobile was eventually rescued, but Amundsen was last heard from on June 28, 1928, a few hours after he and five others had left Tromsø, Norway, by aeroplane. The remains of his aeroplane were found near Tromsø on August 31.