Polar Expedition Leaders and How They Traveled on Ice

The 1845 Northwest Passage expedition Franklin took two Royal Navy ships, Erebus and Terror, into the Canadian Arctic. The crews eventually abandoned both ships after they became trapped in sea ice. The expedition’s paper trail breaks off before its story does. Inuit accounts of encounters with the crew helped later researchers find the wrecks.

The 1854 Boothia survey Rae traveled by dog sled, wore Indigenous clothing suited to the cold, and learned to build snow houses. In the Pelly Bay region, Inuit told him about starving men from the lost expedition. Read his account alongside Franklin’s voyage to see how much a small overland party could learn by listening to the people who knew the coast.

The first Fram expedition Nansen deliberately let the Fram freeze into the Arctic pack so the ice would carry it across the ocean. When the drift looked unlikely to bring the ship close enough to the North Pole, he and Hjalmar Johansen struck out with dog sleds. The ship’s drift tested his theory even though the two men fell short of the Pole.

The Belgica expedition De Gerlache’s ship spent an Antarctic winter in the ice. What kept the crew going was partly a change in rations. The expedition doctor, Frederick Cook, introduced fresh seal and penguin meat as the men developed scurvy. It’s a case where the doctor’s decisions mattered as much as the captain’s.

The 1909 North Pole attempt Peary sent support parties back in stages. Matthew Henson and four Inuit men continued with him on the last leg. The claim that the group reached the Pole is disputed, but the composition of the final party is worth remembering: sled travel depended on a team whose role can disappear behind a single famous name.

The South Pole expedition Amundsen’s party traveled with dog teams and laid supply depots before the final push. Helmer Hanssen, one of the five men who reached the Pole, had learned dog sledding from Inuit during the Northwest Passage voyage. The route south shows how skills learned in the Arctic could make a difference in Antarctica.

The Terra Nova expedition Scott’s plan called for tractors, ponies, dogs, and then human hauling near the Pole. Equipment failures and other setbacks meant his party pulled sledges farther than planned. The distance they had to cover on foot makes a useful comparison with Amundsen’s reliance on dogs and depots.

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition At Cape Denison, Mawson’s crew built huts for work that needed a fixed base, including weather and magnetic observations. A second party on Macquarie Island was equipped to relay wireless messages to Australia. Here the infrastructure mattered as much as how far a sledging party could travel.

The Endurance expedition When sea ice crushed Endurance, the crew reached Elephant Island in lifeboats. Shackleton and five others took the James Caird to South Georgia to seek help, with Frank Worsley navigating. The people who stayed behind were eventually picked up by a Chilean navy tug. Each leg depended on a different crew doing its part.

The Fifth Thule Expedition Rasmussen, Arnarulunnguaq, and Miteq traveled by sled from Canada toward the Bering Strait. The wider expedition carried out ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork, and the long sled journey put Inuit travel knowledge at the center of the work. Follow the route as fieldwork across inhabited country, with communities along the way.