page_title: Gustave Lambert
section_title: Concept of the journey to the North Pole
hierarchical_section_title: Gustave Lambert / Concept of the journey to the North Pole
caption_attribution_description: English: 1869 Univers Illustre cover on the Boreal boat for the North Pole expedition of Gustave Lambert
context_page_description: Marie Joseph Gustave Adolphe Lambert was a French hydrographer. He taught for 20 years, then went on a voyage into Arctic seas and conceived the idea of an expedition to the North Pole. He thought that in summer the effect of the constant sunshine would be to melt the ice and allow passage to the Pole. The plans had been made, about half the funding had been subscribed, and a ship had been purchased when the project was disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Lambert enlisted in the National Guard and died of wounds at the Battle of Buzenval.
context_section_description: It was around this time that Lambert began to think about an expedition to the North Pole. He outlined his plan later, for an expedition with about 15 sailors and scientists:
  One would have to leave in the winter, and reach the Pacific Ocean by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, cross the ocean from south to north, pass the Bering Straits, reach the Polynya, open water found recently by the navigators Herold and Plower. One would have to get there for several days to follow the path of Wrangel and then reach the pole. One would have to spend the winter with the Eskimos, in ice huts, and when summer returned move on and eventually return to France after several years of absence.
  Samuel Richard Van Campen wrote in 1878 of the plan,
  It was conceived, it is only just to say, in complete ignorance, as M. Malte-Brun tells us, of the projects of Osborn and Petermann, and the ground over which it would be necessary to proceed was suggested to the projector by the sight of the thin ice covering the Polar Sea to the north-west of Behring's Straits, about 73° N., promising apparently a passage to the mariner bold enough to advance right through it, together with the appearance of the physical state of the sea in those high latitudes, the probable effect of insolation, and, finally, the information he was able to draw from the scattered traditions of Arctic navigators.
caption: 1869 L'Univers illustré: The Boreal ship for the North Pole expedition
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