THE POLAR SIEGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 70, 18 March 1912, Page 7

THE POLAR SIEGE.

Amundsen’s Earlier Work. In his Story of how lie forced the North-West Passage in the tiny sloop Gjoa, of 47 tons, 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 guiding ! light, he had his compatriot, the great Dr. Fricltj of Nansen, who was worshipped in Norway, and who .for a long time held the Farthest North record. Amundsen formed a boyish resolve tc 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 twenty; he was too young. “My mother,” he writes, “bade ms stay at home, and go on with my lessons. And I stayed. My mother passed away, and for a long time my affection for her memory struggled to keep me faithful to her wish, but at last it gave way. No bond could restrain my yearning to pursue the object of my old and only desire. I threw up my studies and decided to start- the long training for the goal il had set before me, that of becoming an Arctic explorer. In 1894 I engaged as an ordinary seaman on board the old Magdalena, of Tonsberg, and went out seal hunting ip the Polar ■Sea. This was my first encounter with the ice, and I liked it. Time passed, my training,-progressed, and from i 1897 to 1899 I took part, as mate, in the Belgian Antarctic expedition, under Adrien do Gorlgche.” He goes-on-to describe how, after his return, Nansen approved his plan to force the North-West Passage. His little ship, -the Gjoa, was originally built, on, the Hardangcr, for a herringboat. Franklin had long before proved that a. strip of open sea bathed the whole coast of North America. “We knew,” writes Amundson, “there was a sea passage round Northern America, but we did'Hot 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 traced from 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 engine of 39 horse-power, for use in calm weather, and was strengthened to withstand ice pressure. Her cabin mens- ' ured only 9ft by Gft. Her company 1 totalled six. She left Christiania on June 17th, 1903, and reached Behring Strait on August 30th, 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 conceived and also announced his North Polar drift voyage referred to the other day. 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 £8250 he required for this venture, unless lie stimulated public interest by conquering the South Pole. “It is my intention,” be -wrote to Nansen, “not to land near the British 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 has been realised.