FATES OF POLAR EXPLORERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15736, 12 April 1913, Page 4

FATES OF POLAR EXPLORERS

BRAVE MEN WHO NEVER RETURNED. Tho terrible fate of Captain Scott and his companions in the Antarctic adds another tragedy to the already long list of Polar catastrophes. The first great tragedy of Polar exploration was tlie third and fatal expedition of Sir John Franklin. On May 18, 1845, he sailed from England in the Erebus, with the Terror in company, in an attempt to discover a-north-west passage through Lancaster Sound and Behring. Strait. The ships were last seen on' July 26, 1845, in Baffin's Bay. Month after month passed by and nothing was heard of Sir John and his hundred companions. Public anxiety increased at the long, unbroken silence, and an expedition started in 1848 in search of the party. From then till 1857 various other expeditions were sent out with the same object, but all without success. In 1859 M'Clintock found traces of the expedition in a tin box beside the cairn, a record of the abandonment of the Erebus and the Terror and the death of Sir John Franklin on June 11, 1847—just over two years after lie left England, never to return alive. Like Scott, however, the famous explorer succeeded in his object before his death, for he demonstrated the existence of the north-west passage. In 1904, on Beechey Island, in Lancaster Sound, five solitary- graves were found, with inscriptions showing that two were those of Franklin and some of his men.

Captain Hall, an American Arctic explorer, was one of the men who attempted to find Franklin. He sailed in 1860 in a whaler, was icebound, and lived for some months with the Eskimos near Frobisher Bay. In June, 1871, he sailed on his third Arctic voyage in the Polaris. He was frozen in by the following. September and died in November, after making a, sledge journey northwards, another victim of the everlasting cold. Eight years later the ill-fated Jeannette, commanded by Captain George De Long, left San Francisco for Behring Strait. From the very beginning the Jeannette was faced with bad luck. After braving a thousand perils it eventually sank during a terrific hurricane, broken in two by the pressure of the ice, in Juno. 1881. The whole of the crew managed to escape, however, only to be faced with one of the most terrible struggles against hardship and famine that have ever confronted any body of explorers. Starved and footsore,, they wearily struggled on until they came to the open sea, where they embarked in three boats.- While making for the Siberian coast one of the three boats foundered with all hands. The other two, in charge of De Long' and Commodore Melville respectively, separated. De Long managed to reach the Lena Delta, while Melville and his companions reached a Siberian settlement on the River Lena. The latter party travelled inward, and, after obtaining assistance, returned to the help of De Long and his companions. When they reached their last camping place it was, alas! only to find the frozen remains of 13 men half buried in the snow. Greely's expedition in the Proteus was almost as.tragic as that of the Jeannette. In 1881 he | headed the American Arctic Expedition and reached the then farthest north. It was not till 1891 that a relief ship- managed to rescue him and his party, then reduced to seven all told and on the verge of starvation. Maddened by hunger, the men stole from the slender store of provisions, and Greely was forced to issue an order that any man caught would be punished by death. One man, unable' to stay the gnawing pangs, was cilight ultimately red-ha-nded. ". Private Henry will be executed to-day," wrote Greely in his diary, and the unfortunate rhan was summarily shot by three of his companions. At the beginning of the long Polar night, with only 40 days' provisions, less than one-fifth of the quantity required, a steamer's whistle was heard.' Soon afterwards a relief party burst into the hut where the starving men had sheltered, and the seven survivors' were dragged from the very jaws of death. On July 11, 1897, Andrei'started from Dane's Island, Spitsbergen, with two companions, Strindberg and Frnenkcl, in an attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. The three vanished completely, though several buoys which were carried have since been found. The last news from the explorers themselves came two days after the expedition started—a message sent by carrier pigeon announcing all was well. Just over three years ago a missionary among the.Eskimos was told of a groat "white house" that had descended from the skies with two starving men in it, who afterwards died. That was the last news of any kind of Andree and his brave companions, and their wild attempt to reach the Pole.

The exploration of the Antarctic lias been singularly free, from disaster, the tragedy of Captain Scott and bis comrades bein« by far tho most terrible that has overtaken any Soutli Pole expedition.