User:Godsy/Portal example
Portal maintenance status: (February 2019)
|
Introduction
Polar exploration is the process of exploration of the polar regions of Earth – the Arctic region and Antarctica – particularly with the goal of reaching the North Pole and South Pole, respectively. Historically, this was accomplished by explorers making often arduous travels on foot or by sled in these regions, known as a polar expedition. More recently, exploration has been accomplished with technology, particularly with satellite imagery.
From 600 BC to 300 BC, Greek philosophers theorized that the planet was a Spherical Earth with North and South polar regions. By 150 AD, Ptolemy published Geographia, which notes a hypothetical Terra Australis Incognita. However, due to harsh weather conditions, the poles themselves would not be reached for centuries after that. When they finally were reached, the achievement was realized only a few years apart. (Full article...)
Selected general articles
-
Image 1
Vasily Yakovlevich Chichagov (Russian: Василий Яковлевич Чичагов, romanized: Vasiliy Yakovlevič Čičagov; 11 March [O.S. 28 February] 1726 – 16 April [O.S. 4 April] 1809) was an admiral in the Russian Navy who distinguished himself in the Russian–Swedish war by fighting three major battles, and an explorer who researched Svalbard.
He was the father of Pavel Chichagov, a Russian admiral during the Napoleonic Wars. (Full article...) -
Image 2
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November [O.S. 27 October] 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He served during the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. (Full article...) -
Image 3
Nathaniel Brown Palmer (August 8, 1799 – June 21, 1877) was an American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer. He gave his name to Palmer Land, Antarctica, which he explored in 1820 on his sloop Hero. He was born in Stonington, Connecticut, and was a descendant of Walter Palmer, one of the town's founders. (Full article...) -
Image 4Mikhail Vasilyevich Stadukhin (Russian: Михаил Васильевич Стадухин) (died 1666) was a Russian explorer of far northeast Siberia, one of the first to reach the Kolyma, Anadyr, Penzhina and Gizhiga Rivers and the northern Sea of Okhotsk. He was a Pomor, probably born in the village of Pinega, and the nephew of a Moscow merchant. By 1633 he was on the Lena River. (Full article...)
-
Image 5
Faddey Faddeyevich Bellingshausen or Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin von Bellingshausen (18 August [O.S. 9 August] 1778 – 25 January [O.S. 13 January] 1852) was a Russian cartographer, explorer, and naval officer of Baltic German descent, who attained the rank of admiral. He participated in the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe, and subsequently became a leader of another circumnavigation expedition that discovered the continent of Antarctica. Like Otto von Kotzebue and Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Bellingshausen belonged to the cohort of prominent Baltic German navigators who helped Russia launch its naval expeditions.
Bellingshausen was born in the Estonian island of Saaremaa (Ösel), in the eponymous family. He started his service in the Russian Baltic Fleet, and after distinguishing himself joined the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth in 1803–1806, serving on the merchant ship Nadezhda under the captaincy of Adam Johann von Krusenstern. After the journey, he published a collection of maps of the newly explored areas and islands of the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, he commanded several ships of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets. (Full article...) -
Image 6Godske Christoffersen Lindenov or Lindenow (d. 1612 Copenhagen) was a Danish naval officer and Arctic explorer. He was a commander on one of King Christian IV's expeditions to Greenland. (Full article...)
-
Image 7
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD.
The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in the 15th and 16th centuries proved that Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land"), if it existed, was a continent in its own right. In 1773, James Cook and his crew crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time. Although he discovered new islands, he did not sight the continent itself. It is believed that he came as close as 240 km (150 mi) from the mainland. (Full article...) -
Image 8
Ingólfr Arnarson, in some sources named Bjǫrnólfsson, (c. 849 – c. 910)
is commonly recognized as the first permanent Norse settler of Iceland, together with his wife Hallveig Fróðadóttir and foster brother Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson. According to tradition, they settled in Reykjavík in 874. (Full article...) -
Image 9
Sir Hugh Willoughby (fl. 1544; died 1554) was an English soldier and an early Arctic voyager. He served in the court of Henry VIII and fought in the Scottish campaign where he was knighted for his valour. In 1553, he was selected by a company of London merchants to lead a fleet of three vessels in search of a Northeast Passage.
Willoughby and the crews of two ships died on the voyage while the third vessel Edward Bonaventure, under the command of Richard Chancellor, who went on to open a successful, long-lasting trading arrangement with Russia. (Full article...) -
Image 10
Nikolai Nikolaevich Kolomeitsev, also spelt Kolomeytsev (Russian: Николай Николаевич Коломейцев) (16 July 1867 – 6 October 1944) was a naval officer of the Russian Empire and Arctic explorer. During the Russian Civil War, he fought for the Whites. (Full article...) -
Image 11
Camp Barneo (Russian: Лагерь Бaрнео) is a private temporary tourist resort located on Arctic Ocean ice near the North Pole. When it is occupied for a few weeks in April, it is the northernmost inhabited place in the world. It was first established in 2002 and re-occupied annually thereafter, but it has remained vacant since 2018. When operating, the price for a visit starts at about $20,000. (Full article...) -
Image 12
Helmer Julius Hanssen (24 September 1870 – 2 August 1956) was a Norwegian sailor, pilot and polar explorer. He participated in three of the polar expeditions led by Roald Amundsen and was one of the first five explorers to reach the South Pole. (Full article...) -
Image 13
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November [O.S. 27 October] 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He served during the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. (Full article...) -
Image 14
Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov (Russian: Алексе́й Ильи́ч Чи́риков; 1703 – November 14, 1748) was a Russian navigator and captain who, along with Vitus Bering, was the first Russian to reach the northwest coast of North America. He discovered and charted some of the Aleutian Islands while he was deputy to Vitus Bering during the Great Northern Expedition. (Full article...) -
Image 15
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957), an American naval officer, was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. He is also known for discovering Mount Sidley, the largest dormant volcano in Antarctica.
Byrd claimed to be the first to reach both the North and South Poles by air. However, there is some controversy as to whether or not Byrd was actually the first person to reach the North Pole. It is generally believed that the distance Byrd claimed to fly was longer than the possible fuel range of his airplane. (Full article...) -
Image 16
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.
Pressed by Franklin's wife, Jane, and others, the Admiralty launched a search for the missing expedition in 1848. In the many subsequent searches in the decades afterwards, several artefacts from the expedition were discovered, including the remains of two men, which were returned to Britain. A series of scientific studies in modern times suggested that the men of the expedition did not all die quickly. Hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning or zinc deficiency and diseases including scurvy, along with general exposure to a hostile environment while lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition in the years after it was last sighted by a whaling ship in July 1845. Cut marks on some of the bones recovered during these studies also supported allegations of cannibalism reported by Franklin searcher John Rae in 1854. (Full article...) -
Image 17
Karl Weyprecht, also spelt Carl Weyprecht, (8 September 1838 – 2 March 1881[inconsistent]) was an Austro-Hungarian explorer. He was an officer (k.u.k. Linienschiffsleutnant) in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He is most famous as an Arctic explorer, and an advocate of international cooperation for scientific polar exploration. Although he did not live to see it occur, he is associated with the organisation of the first International Polar Year.
In 1852, he studied at Gymnasium in Darmstadt, but later switched to Höhere Gewerbeschule Darmstadt, now the Technische Universität Darmstadt. (Full article...) -
Image 18
Semyon Ivanovich Chelyuskin (Russian: Семён Иванович Челюскин; c. 1707 – 1764) was a Russian polar explorer and naval officer.
Chelyuskin graduated from the Navigation School in Moscow. He first became a deputy navigator while serving in the Baltic Fleet (1728) and later promoted to navigator (1733). Chelyuskin was chosen for the Second (Great Northern) Kamchatka Expedition, in which he took part until 1743. He participated in expeditions, led by Vasily Pronchischev and Khariton Laptev. In spring of 1741, Chelyuskin made a voyage from the Khatanga River to the Pyasina River by land. He described the western coastline from the Taimyr Peninsula to the Middendorff Bay and then from the mouth of Pyasina to the mouth of the Yenisei River. In winter of 1741–1742, he traveled from Turukhansk to the mouth of the Khatanga River, describing the northern coastline of the Taimyr Peninsula from the Faddey Bay on the East to the mouth of the Taimyra River on the West. Chelyuskin found the northern extremity of Asia, which Aleksandr Fyodorovich Middendorf would later name after him in 1843 (Cape Chelyuskin). (Full article...) -
Image 19
A nuclear-powered icebreaker is an icebreaker with an onboard nuclear power plant that produces power for the vessel's propulsion system. Although more expensive to operate, nuclear-powered icebreakers provide a number of advantages over their diesel-powered counterparts, especially along the Northern Sea Route where heavy power demand associated with icebreaking, limited refueling infrastructure along the Siberian coast, and endurance required make diesel-powered icebreaker operations challenging. As of 2023, Russia is the only country that builds and operates nuclear-powered icebreakers, having built a number of such vessels to aid shipping along the Northern Sea Route and Russian arctic outposts since the Soviet era. (Full article...) -
Image 20
Georges Lecointe (29 April 1869 – 27 May 1929) was a Belgian naval officer and scientist. He was captain of the Belgica and second-in-command of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, the first to overwinter in Antarctica. After his return to Belgium he was the founder of the International Polar Organization and deeply involved in the foundation of the International Research Council and the International Astronomical Union. (Full article...) -
Image 21
Isaac Israel Hayes (March 5, 1832 – December 17, 1881) was an American Arctic explorer, physician, and politician, who was appointed as the commanding officer at Satterlee General Hospital during the American Civil War, and was then elected, after the war, to the New York State Assembly.
His book, The Open Polar Sea: A Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole, in the Schooner United States, was published in 1867. (Full article...) -
Image 22
New Swabia (Norwegian and German: Neuschwabenland) was a disputed Antarctic claim by Nazi Germany within the Norwegian territorial claim of Queen Maud Land and is now a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land. New Swabia was explored by Germany in early 1939 and named after that expedition's ship, Schwabenland, itself named after the German region of Swabia. (Full article...) -
Image 23Joseph Billings (c.1758 – 1806) was an English navigator, hydrographer and explorer who spent the most of his career in Russian service. From 1790 to 1794 he commanded a marine expedition that searched for a Northeast Passage and explored the coasts of Alaska and Siberia. Between 1797 and 1798 he conducted a hydrographic survey of the Black Sea. (Full article...)
-
Image 24Captain Henry Parkyns Hoppner (1795 – 22 December 1833) was an officer of the Royal Navy, Arctic explorer, draughtsman and artist. His career included two ill-fated voyages culminating in the loss of HMS Alceste in 1816 and HMS Fury in 1825. (Full article...)
-
Image 25
Henry Hudson (c. 1565 – disappeared 23 June 1611) was an English sea explorer and navigator during the early 17th century, best known for his explorations of present-day Canada and parts of the Northeastern United States.
In 1607 and 1608, Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a rumoured Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle. In 1609, he landed in North America on behalf of the Dutch East India Company and explored the region around the modern New York metropolitan area. Looking for a Northwest Passage to Asia on his ship Halve Maen ("Half Moon"), he sailed up the Hudson River, which was later named after him, and thereby laid the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region. His contributions to the exploration of the New World were significant and lasting. His voyages helped to establish European contact with the native peoples of North America and contributed to the development of trade and commerce. (Full article...)
Need help?
Do you have a question about Polar exploration that you can't find the answer to?
Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
Selected images
-
Image 1Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting at the South Pole (from Polar exploration)
In the news
- 12 June 2024 –
- The Royal Canadian Geographical Society announces that a Canadian-led team has located the wreckage of Quest, the polar exploration ship of the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition off the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. (Reuters)
Subcategories
- Select [►] to view subcategories
Subtopics
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
- What are portals?
- List of portals