page_title: Farthest North
section_title: Conquest
hierarchical_section_title: Farthest North / Conquest
caption_attribution_description: English: Nautilus, 90N, 19:15, 3 August 1958, zero to North Pole
context_page_description: Farthest North describes the most northerly latitude reached by explorers before the conquest of the North Pole rendered the expression obsolete. The Arctic polar regions are much more accessible than those of the Antarctic, as continental land masses extend to high latitudes and sea voyages to the regions are relatively short.
context_section_description: On 9 May 1926, Richard Evelyn Byrd attempted to fly over the North Pole in an airplane. He was widely credited with achieving this, but his claim subsequently became subject to doubt.
  Finally, on 12 May 1926, the airship Norge carried Roald Amundsen and fifteen other men including the craft's designer and pilot Umberto Nobile, helmsman Oscar Wisting, navigator Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and the expedition's sponsor, Lincoln Ellsworth, over the North Pole, en route from Spitsbergen to Alaska, the first achievement of the Pole about which there is no controversy.
  The first person definitely to set foot on the Pole was the Russian Alexander Kuznetsov, who landed an aircraft there in 1948.
  On 3 August 1958, a US Navy submarine, also named USS Nautilus, was the first to sail under the ice pack to reach the North Pole. On 17 March 1959, the USS Skate became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole.
  Ralph Plaisted and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse by snowmobile across the ice to the North Pole on 20 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the Pole before being airlifted out. 
  On 6 April 1969, British explorer Sir Wally Herbert became the first person to indubitably reach the Pole on foot, having sledged from Alaska. His expedition was supported by air drops.
caption: Navigator's report: Nautilus, 90° 00.0′N, 3 August 1958
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