The Expeditions of the First International Polar Year, 1882-83

David T. McNab was Senior Indian Land Claims Researcher, Toronto.

Since the celebrated Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry headed by Thomas Berger in the 1970s, Canadians have taken more of a public interest in the Canadian Arctic. However, it is also well documented that Canadians have seen themselves to be a northern people. Muskoka is not the Yukon. Notwithstanding this public perception, there have always been a few Canadians who have been truly interested in the Canadian Arctic, and generally in the polar regions. The Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary, established in 1945, is a prominent example. William Barr, a Professor of Geography at the University of Saskatchewan, has made a scholarly contribution to our knowledge of the Arctic and the Antarctic with his The Expeditions of the First International Polar Year 1882-83, published by the Arctic Institute of North America as “Technical Paper No. 29” For the first time since these expeditions occurred, Professor Barr has brought together in one volume a narrative of the fourteen major expeditions, twelve in the Arctic regions and two in the Antarctic, as well as three auxiliary expeditions. The focus of this paper is, as the author explains, “to highlight the achievements, hardships, everyday life and weaknesses” (p.5) of each, and in this the book succeeds.

The purpose of the First International Polar Year was to co-ordinate the first scientific approach to the study of the polar regions. The brainchild of Lieutenant Karl Weyprecht of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, it marked the beginning of a late nineteenth century European imperialism based on technology and science, an imperialism that was historically contiguous to the expansive imperialism of the mid-nineteenth century and that also laid the basis for its more modern, and frequently more ugly, forms in the twentieth century. In terms of science, the major concern was directed to “meteorology, aurora, and earth magnetism, since these were the areas where the greatest gaps in the knowledge of the polar regions existed” (p.3). However, the expeditions have a larger interest because of the information they provided about living in polar regions and about geographical explorations — their attention to ethnology as well as their human suffering and tragedy. The fourteen expeditions included:

the American expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska; the British expedition to Fort Rae, Northwest Territories; the German expedition to Kingua Fjord, Baffin Island; the American expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Ellesmere Island; the Danish expedition to the Godthab; the Austrian expedition to Jan Mayen; the Swedish expedition to Kapp Thordsen, Svalbard; the Norwegian expedition to Bossekop; the Finnish expedition to Sodankyla; the Russian expedition to Malyye Karmakuly, Novaya Zemlya; and the Russian expedition to Ostrov Sagastyr’ in the Lena delta. Finally the Dutch expedition was bound for Dikson at the mouth of the Yenisey, but the expedition ship became beset in the ice of the Kara Sea, and hence the expedition spent the year adrift. In the southern hemisphere the Germans occupied a second station at Royal Bay, South Georgia, and the French station was established at Bahia Orange near Cabo de Hornos (Cape Horn). (pp.4-5)

The tragic American expedition to Lady Franklin Bay at Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island was the most fascinating. In this expedition, the “most highly publicized and the best known” (p.6), of the 25 members who set out on it, only Lieutenant Adolphus Greely and five others returned. Unable to get relief through a number of errors, this expedition had to spend another winter in the Arctic. Yet, Greely saved all of the expedition’s scientific records and thus increased knowledge of the Arctic.

The other expeditions were more routine yet just as valuable. The ones to the Antarctic, to Cape Horn, and to South Georgia were more exotic in their attention to the Patagonians and the Penguins. In the name of science, Dr. Karl von den Steinen, the German medical officer and zoologist, caught and tethered three king penguins in “leather corsets,” a sketch of which is in this book (p. 169), illustrating the sadness of the young penguins. The three, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, lasted only a few months, and the last died on the homeward trip, making it only as far as Montevideo. The Patagonians were, for the time being, somewhat more fortunate, as the excellent photographs indicate.

Professor Barr has a challenging subject and this is an important book. Bringing together the historical information from the different languages of the expeditions is an original contribution to knowledge. The paper is free of punctuation, stylistic, or other similar errors, a rarity nowadays. Nevertheless, it is flawed. There is a map of the Arctic expeditions but not of Antarctic ones. Some of the contemporary maps are almost illegible and should perhaps have been deleted. It is virtually impossible to follow each expedition without adequate maps. The photographs and sketches are usually apt. More seriously, the scholarship could have provided a larger focus. There is no historical context provided to help the reader understand this particular, and significant, form of European imperialism. The conclusion, only five pages, is weak. There is no explanation of why Canada did not participate in the First International Polar Year, although three expeditions were based in Labrador and in Fort Rae and Ellesmere Island in the Northwest Territories. It seems that Canada was as much a scientific colony of Europe as parts of Africa were at the same time. Seemingly by default, for it is not discussed in this book, the First International Polar Year witnessed the “scientific partition” of the Canadian Arctic.

Professor Barr’s publisher has not always been supportive. At $21.00 this is an expensive and a painful book to read. The glossy paper and the microprint make it virtually impossible, except in small doses, to follow the scientific narrative of European imperialism that is on each page.