AMUNDSEN’S EARLIER WORK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1021, 21 March 1912, Page 4

AMUNDSEN’S EARLIER WORK.

INSPIRED BY FRANKEIN

THREE YEARS IN NORTH-

WEST PASSAGE

In his story ol how he forced the North West Passage in the tiny sloop Gjoa (47 ions), Amundsen acknowledges his debt to the late Sir John Franklin. It was Franklin who first captivated his imagination as a boy of eight or nine years old. Franklin was a memory. For a living guide he had Lis compatriot, the great Dr Fridtjoy Nansen, who was worshipped in Norway, and who for a long lime held the Farthest North record. Amundsen formed a boyish resolve to attempt the North-West Passage, and would have liked to have gone with Dr. Nansen when he left again in 1893. At that time Amundsen was barely 20; he was too young. “My mother,” he writes, “bade me stay at home and go on with my lessons. And I stayed. My mother passed away, ana for a time my affection for her memory struggled to keep me laithful to her wish, but at last it gave way. No bond could restrain my yearning to pursue the object of my old aud ouly desire. I threw up my studies aud decided to start the long training lor the goal I had set before me, that ol becoming au

Arctic explorer. In 1894 I engaged as an ordinary seaman on board the old Magdalema, of Tousberg, and went out seal hunting in the Polar Sea. This was ray first encounter with the ice, and I liked it. Time passed, ray training progressed, and from 1897 to 1899 I took part, as mate, in the Belgain Antarctic expedition, under Adrien de Gerlache.”

He goes on to describe how, after his return. Nansen approved of his plan to force the North-West Passage. His little ship, the Gjon, was originally built on the Hardauger, for a herring boat. Franklin had long before proved that the strip of open sea bathed the whole coast of North America. “We knew,” writes Amundsen, “there was a sea passage round North America, but we did not know whether this passage was practicable for ships, and no one had ever navigated it throughout. This unsolved question agitated above all the minds of those who, from their childhood, had been impressed by the profound tragedy of the Franklin expedition. Just as the Vega had to navigate the entire passage to the east (to prove the North-East Passage) so our knowledge as to this strip of open sea to the west must remain inadequate until this passage also had been tracked Irom end to end by one ship’s keel.” 'That was the task which Amundsen set himself, and which he accomplished. The Gjoa was fitted with a petroleum motor of 39 h.p. for use in calm weather, and was strengthened to withstand the ice pressure. Her cabin measured only 9 lt by 6ft. Her company totalled six. She left Christiana on June 17, 1903, and reached Behring Btrait on August 30, 1906, the first ship to pass from Atlantic to Pacific north of Patagonia.

Prior to Admiral Peary's announcement of his arrival at the North Pole, Amundsen had also announced his North Polar drift voyage. He was to attack the North Pole from the Behring Sea, drift across it, and emerge on the other side in five or seven years. Following Peary’s announcement, it appeared to him that he could not raise the additional he required for this venture, unless he stimulated public interest by conquesting the South Pole. “It is my intention,” be wrote to Nansen, “not to land near the English expedition- They, of course, have the first right ; we shall have to be content with what they leave us.” He chose the Bay of Whales as indicating, from the contour of the background, that there was solid land to be reached, once the ice was penetrated. “There would be no perilous wintering on a floating barrier. The ground was safe enough.” In that respect probably his anticipation was realised.