Roald Engelbreggt Gravning Amundsen (born July 16, 1872 - died June 18, 1928) is a polar explorer from Norway.
What Roald Amudsen discovered
The first in the world to reach the South Pole (December 14, 1911). The first person (with Oscar Wisting) to visit both geographic poles of the planet. He was the first in the world who was able to pass the North-West Passage from Greenland to Alaska, later he made the transition to the North-East Way (along the coast of Siberia), for the first time closing the round-the-world distance beyond the Arctic Circle. One of the pioneers of the use of aviation - seaplanes and airships - in Arctic travel. He died in 1928 in search of the missing expedition of Umberto Nobile. He has received awards from many countries of the world, including America's highest award - the Gold Medal of the Congress; numerous geographical and other objects bear his name.
Childhood. Youth
Roald Amundsen was born into a family of hereditary seafarers and from a young age dreamed of continuing the family tradition. But he knew very well that this requires good health - something that he did not have. However, being sickly and physically weak, Roald set himself the task of strengthening his body as much as possible, for which he trained and hardened daily. He even wanted to become a doctor, but after two courses in the medical faculty of the University of Christiania (now Oslo) he left his studies and was hired as a sailor on a sailing schooner, which went to seal the Greenland Sea.
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First travels. Training
After two years of sea wanderings, Amundsen, salted by the sea winds, strengthened and even more confident in himself, passed the exams for a long-distance navigator. In 1897-1899. as a navigator he took part in the Belgian Antarctic expedition aboard the ship "Belgica", after which he passed the exam for sea captain.
Northwest Passage Opening
In 1903-1906 Roald, for the first time in the history of navigation, sailed on his own sailing schooner "Joa" with a crew of 7 people from Greenland to Alaska along the waters of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. From Barrow Sound, he headed south through the Peel and Franklin Sounds to the northern tip of King William Island. Having rounded the island on the east side, he spent two winters in the harbor off the south-eastern coast of King William Island. Autumn 1904 - He surveyed the narrowest part of the Simpson Strait by boat, and at the end of the summer of 1905 headed west along the mainland, leaving the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to the north. 1906, summer - after the third wintering, the traveler passed through the Bering Strait to the Pacific Ocean and finished his voyage in San Francisco. With this he was able to open the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean from east to west. During the expedition, he conducted valuable geomagnetic observations and mapped more than 100 islands.
Norwegian Antarctic Expedition (1910-1912)
In 1910-1912 Amundsen on the ship "Fram", which belonged to F. Nansen, led an expedition to Antarctica in order to discover the South Pole. The Fram team included a Russian sailor and oceanographer Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin. In January, Amundsen's expedition landed on the Ross Glacier in Whale Bay. A base camp was established there to prepare for the trip to the South Pole.
1911, October 19 - a group led by Roald Amundsen (Oskar Wisting, Helmer Hansen, Sverre Hassel, Olaf Bjaland) set off on 4 sledges pulled by 52 dogs and on December 17, 1911 was able to reach the South Pole. During the work of the expedition in Antarctica, the traveler discovered the Queen Maud Mountains. But only on March 7, 1912, while in the city of Hobart (Tasmania), Amundsen informed the world about his victory and the safe return of the expedition.
Northeast Sea Route
In 1918-1921. Roald built the ship Maud with his own money and sailed on it from west to east along the northern shores of Eurasia, repeating Nansen's drift on the Fram. With two winters, he passed from Norway to the Bering Strait.
1) "Maud" at sea on March 7, 1918; 2) Spitsbergen in preparation for the start (May 1925)
Air expedition 1925
In 1923-1925. Amundsen made several attempts to reach the North Pole. The biographers of the great Norwegian have preserved the details of the 1925 expedition. On May 21, 1925, two seaplanes headed for the North Pole. On one were Ellsworth, Dietrichson and Omdahl, on the other Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, and Voicht. At a distance of 1000 km from Spitsbergen, the engine of the plane on which Amundsen was located began to malfunction. I had to make an emergency landing, since there was a big hole nearby. The second seaplane failed during landing.
It took more than 3 weeks to wait in the ice for the weather suitable for takeoff. It was clear that everyone would have to return on the same plane. Everything was thrown out of it except the most essential. The pilot seat was taken by Riiser-Larsen. The remaining 5 people could barely fit in the cockpit.
Roald described what was happening: “Here the engine was started, and the plane moved off. The next seconds were the most exciting of my entire life. Riiser-Larsen immediately gave full throttle. With an increase in speed, the unevenness of the ice affected more and more, and the whole seaplane tilted so terribly from side to side that I was afraid more than once that it might roll over and break the wing. We were quickly approaching the end of the starting lane, but the blows and jolts showed that we were still on the ice. With increasing speed, but still, without separating from the ice, we approached a small slope leading into the wormwood. We were transported through the wormwood, fell on a flat ice floe on the other side and suddenly rose into the air …"
After 8 hours and 35 minutes of flight, the rudder drives stuck. But open water was already glistening under the wing of the plane. The pilot confidently landed the seaplane on the water and drove it like a motor boat. This happened near the northern shores of Spitsbergen. Soon a small fishing boat approached the travelers, and the captain agreed to tow the plane to Kingsbay. From Svalbard, its participants together with the plane sailed on a steamer. 1925, July 5 - Amundsen's plane, met by thousands of cheering people, landed in Oslo harbor. Norway honored its national heroes.
Airship "Norway"
1926 May - Roald led the first successful flight across the North Pole in an airship. The lighter-than-air aircraft bore the name of the hero's native country - "Norway".
Doom
Two years later, when another airship - with the proud name "Italy" - crashed after reaching the Pole, Amundsen went in search of the expedition of General Umberto Nobile. He took off from Tromsø in a French twin-engined seaplane Latham-47. During a flight from Norway to Spitsbergen, the plane crashed into the waters of the Barents Sea for unknown reasons. And nobody else heard anything about the famous polar explorer.
General Nobile was rescued five days after the disappearance of the traveler.
Memory
A mountain in the eastern part of Antarctica, a bay in the Arctic Ocean, a sea off the coast of the southern continent and the American polar station Amundsen-Scott are named after Roald Amundsen. His works “Flight across the Arctic Ocean”, “On the ship“Maud”,“Expedition along the northern coast of Asia”,“South Pole”and a five-volume collected works were translated into Russian.
Fridtjof Nansen dedicated sincere words to the memory of his colleague and compatriot: “He will forever occupy a special place in the history of geographical research … Some kind of explosive force lived in him. In the hazy sky of the Norwegian people, he rose as a shining star. How many times did it light up with bright flashes! And suddenly it went out right away, and we cannot take our eyes off the empty place in the firmament."