334 North Polar Exploration. 



When Mr. Barrington asked the Dutch skippers themselves, 

 he got the simple truth from them ; they said, "We can seldom 

 proceed much higher than 80 \°, but almost always to that lati- 

 tude/'* Captain Jansen, of the Dutch Navy, also says, " I do 

 not think our Polar navigators have been further north than 

 82°.-"f There is not, in reality, a shadow of evidence that any 

 vessel has ever passed through the Polar pack, and the latitudes 

 attained by whalers have depended on the position of this 

 pack in the different seasons. If it has drifted south late in 

 the year, they have been able to go further north, and Captain 

 Scoresby certainly, in 1806, reached 81° 30', and found the 

 navigation quite open for many leagues to the E.N.E. If, on 

 the contrary, it has come down early, then they have been 

 stopped in lower latitudes. So much for the whaling fables. 



Attempts to reach the Pole were first renewed by the 

 Russian Government, and Yassili TschitschagofF, in two suc- 

 cessive expeditions (1765 and 1766), perseveringly, but vainly 

 attempted to find a way through the ice between Spitzbergen 

 and Greenland. He only reached 80° 30' N". At that period 

 the President and Council of the Royal Society of England 

 were ever foremost in urging the Government to under- 

 take scientific expeditions. Would that their successors of the 

 present day more closely followed their noble example. In 

 1773, a memorial was addressed by the Royal Society to the 

 King, to obtain his sanction for an expedition to see how far 

 navigation was practicable towards the North Pole. J Two 

 vessels were forthwith fitted out and despatched, under the 

 command of Captain Phipps, who had orders to proceed as 

 near the North Pole as the ice would permit, but to return 

 before the winter should set in. He made the attempt be- 



* The Commissioners of Longitude, in 1821, reported that there was no well- 

 authenticated account of any vessel having gone so far as 81° N . 



t Captain Jansen (the learned author of that charming chapter on land and 

 sea breezes in Maury's Physical Geography of the Sea) has undertaken to investi- 

 gate this subject, and to examine such ancient journals of Dutch explorers as are 

 still extant in Holland. He tells me that the learned Pontanus, in 1646, said in a 

 speech : — " There are some persons who think the best route to the East is to go 

 to 82 3 N. of Nova Zembla, or thereabout, because there the days and summers are 

 longer, there is not so much ice, and it does not drift from the shore. Also because 

 the climate is more mild than in 76° and lower down. Although I am convinced 

 that this opinion is true, and that there will be no difficulty in navigating the sea 

 when once in 82°, yet the difficulty is to come there and return." With this 

 learned conviction for his starting-point, Captain Jansen will search for the data 

 whence Pontanus derived his knowledge. 



X Py the Act 16 Geo. III. cap. 6, Parliament offered a reward of £5000 to 

 the person who should first sail beyond 89° N. A new Act on the same subject 

 was passed in 1814 (58 Geo. III. cap. 20). To the first ship that should sail to 

 83° N., £1000 was granted ; to 85°, £2000 ; to 87°, £3000 ; to 88°, £4000 ; and 

 to 89°, £5000. I am glad to see that, in the recent Acts of Parliament sweeping 

 away a great number of Statutes (24 and 25 Victoria, cap. 101' and 25 and 26 

 Victoria, cap. 125), these rewards for Polar discovery have not been repealed. 



