Jonathan Karpoff, an Arctic history buff, examined the 91 expeditions from the view of a business professor. He wanted to know how government-funded expeditions fared compared to private ventures. Comparing the Stats His research shows that privately funded expeditions generally fared much better than the large-scale extravaganzas sponsored by governments, particularly the British Navy. Among expeditions based primarily on ships, more than half the public ventures lost at least one ship compared to less than a fourth of the private expeditions. An 1849 imagining of the John Franklin expedition attempting to cut a path through Arctic ice.
Northern lights shine in the background.
His findings are at least partially supported by historians, including Pierre Berton, author of a fascinating book, Arctic Grail , which covers the same expeditions studied by Karpoff. In fact, it was Berton's book that first hooked Karpoff on the Arctic 10 years ago. The early expeditions to the Arctic were carried out primarily by the British Navy, fresh from dispatching Napoleon and searching for a new cause. Berton's book is filled with examples of the Navy's failure to learn from its past mistakes, and to adapt to the harsh conditions of the Arctic. They would have learned, for example, how the local people kept warm wearing furs, how they never encountered scurvy because of their diet, and how they used dogs to pull their sleds.