Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
latter also tried unsuccessfully to reach the land offshore (Wrangel Island) that is
now named after him.
Knowledge of the North American Arctic lagged far behind that of northern
Eurasia. In Northwestern Canada, the combined interests of commercial and mining
opportunities, as well as company sovereignty, led to land expeditions mounted by
the Hudson's Bay Company northwestward from Churchill. Samuel Hearne crossed
overland to the Arctic coast at the mouth of the Coppermine River on his third
attempt in 1771-1772. The UK Royal Society aided in scientific investigations, and
Dymond and Wales (
1770
) published meteorological observations made at Prince
Wales's Port (Churchill), on the coast of Hudson Bay in 1768. Trading posts also
kept records of the freeze-up of the ice (Catchpole and Faurer,
1983
). In 1789,
Alexander Mackenzie, a fur trader, reached the delta of the river named after him,
but the rest of the North American Arctic coast remained largely unknown until the
1850s.
In the late eighteenth century, recurring fanciful notions of an open polar sea led
to several attempts to sail northward to find it (Wright,
1953
). In 1764-1765, M.V.
Lomonosov sailed north from Svalbard with little success, and in 1773, C. Phipps
made a similar unsuccessful attempt in the same area, using two Royal Navy ships
equipped with ice-strengthened bows and bottoms. Phipps's chart shows the loca-
tion and nature of the marginal ice zone north of Svalbard during July-August 1773
(Savours,
1984
). In 1818, John Barrow prepared a chronology of early voyages
of discovery. It includes many reports of ships encountering sea ice and icebergs.
Barrow (
1818
) also observed that conditions were generally colder on the eastern
as opposed to the western coasts of continents and islands. He accepted the views
of Martin Frobisher, John Davis, and others that the central Arctic Ocean was deep
and thus ice-free. William Scoresby Jr., a British whaling captain, made regular vis-
its to northern waters in the early nineteenth century. Encouraged by contacts with
scientists of the day, he made observations of ocean temperature, meteorological
phenomena, atmospheric refraction, ice conditions, and snow crystals (Scoresby,
1820
; McConnell,
1986
). In one paper he rejected the notion of an open polar sea
(Scoresby,
1811
-1816). But after encountering much less ice than usual off the east
coast of Greenland between 74°N and 80°N in 1817, he suggested that ice-free con-
ditions might recur once every ten or twenty years (Martin,
1988
).
Explorations of Otto von Kotzebue in Russian Alaska (1815-1818) and the impe-
rial ukaz (decree) of 1821, claiming the western North American Arctic as Russian,
led to concern and objections by the British and U.S. governments. This prompted
new explorations of northwest Canada by the British Navy. John Franklin, accom-
panied by several scientifically trained explorers, made overland journeys from
Hudson Bay to the Arctic in 1819-1822 and 1825-1827. The discovery of coal for-
mations and fossiliferous limestone along the Mackenzie River, indicative of warmer
past climates, added to nineteenth-century controversy over climatic change. John
Richardson reported the existence of permanently frozen ground (permafrost) and
encouraged the Hudson's Bay Company to begin taking ground temperature mea-
surements. The first results, available in 1841, and similar observations made by
