page_title: Otto Sverdrup
section_title: Career and expeditions
hierarchical_section_title: Otto Sverdrup / Career and expeditions
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: nationalgeograp131902nati (find matches) Title: The National geographic magazine Year: 1888 (1880s) Authors: National Geographic Society (U.S.) Subjects: Geography Publisher: Washington&#160;: National Geographic Society Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: enry Powel, curator of the botanicalstation on St Vincent, in company withMessrs J. P. Ouinton and E. W. Foster,visiting botanists, iu spite of the con-tinued activity of the crater. Theyascended the mountain from the lee-ward side and found the journey verydifficult on account of the erosion whichhas taken place since the early erup-tions. They found the crater morefunnel-shaped than had preceding vis-itors, but with boiling muddy water inthe bottom. Hot ashes, which weresteaming profusely, were piled severalhundred feet high against the walls ofthe pit. Coarse gravel and fragmentsof rock covered the exterior slopes ofthe cone. The saddle between the twocraters is still existent, and Mr Powelwas satisfied that no eruption had comefrom the small crater. No stream oflava has been ejected yet. The rent inthe crater on the western side has beenenlarged. At 8.15 p. m., October 29, a loudgroan was heard from La Soufriere,followed by a column of dark vapor,and further eruptions were feared. Text Appearing After Image: GEOGRAPHIC NOTES SVERDRUPS WORK IN THE ARCTICS, 1898-1902 THE map on the opposite pageshows the routes followed andcoastline explored by Captain Sverdrupin his four years of Arctic work. In theNovember number of the GeographicalJournal Sir Clements R. Markham, Pres-ident of the Royal Geographical Society,has summarized the work of Sverdrupand his gallant companions as follows&#160;: The&gt;_ have discovered the westernside of Ellesmere Island and its in-tricate system of fiords, as well as threelarge islands west of Ellesmere Island ;they have explored the northern coastof North Devon&#160;; they have connectedBelchers work with the coasts of JonesSound&#160;; they have reached a pointwithin 60 miles of Aldrichs furthest ;and the)* have discovered that landnorth of the Parry Islands, the existenceof which was conjectured, as far westas the longitude of the eastern coast ofMelville Island. This includes the dis-covery of the northern sides of NorthCornwall and Findlay Island. In ad-dition to the main Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.
context_section_description: Sverdrup joined Fridtjof Nansen's expedition of 1888 across Greenland. In 1892 he was an advisor to Fridtjof Nansen when the ship Fram was built. In 1893 Sverdrup was given command of the ship, and in 1895 he was left in charge of it while Nansen attempted to reach the North Pole. Sverdrup managed to free the ship from the ice near Svalbard in August 1896 and sailed to Skjervøy, arriving just 4 days after Nansen had reached Norway.
  In the summer of 1897 Sverdrup worked as the shipmaster of Lofoten, a passenger ship to and from Svalbard. In 1898 he embarked on another expedition with Fram. Sverdrup attempted to circumnavigate Greenland via Baffin Bay but failed to make it through the Nares Strait. Forced to overwinter on Ellesmere Island, he and his crew explored and named many uncharted fjords and peninsulas on the western shores of the island, explaining the Norwegian names, such as Hoved Island ("main island") and Prince Gustav Adolf Sea (after the Swedish king Gustav VI Adolf)  in the Canadian Arctic.
  Between 1899 and 1902, he overwintered three more times on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic with the Fram, continuing to explore and map, culminating in the discovery of the islands to the west of Ellesmere Island, namely Axel Heiberg, Amund Ringnes and Ellef Ringnes, collectively known as the Sverdrup Islands. In adopting Inuit methods, Sverdrup and his crew were able to chart a total of 260,000 square kilometers - more than any other polar exploration. The area was famously mapped by his topographer, Gunnar Isachsen, and 35 academic publications were penned as a result of the expedition. Upon Sverdrup's return in Norway, he was treated as a national hero. However, he remains relatively unknown in North America, and relatively unknown for his Canadian exploration in Norway.
  Sverdrup officially claimed all three islands he discovered for Norway in 1902, setting off a sovereignty dispute with Canada, which claimed sovereignty over all land, discovered or undiscovered in what is now the Canadian Arctic.  The dispute was not settled until 1930 when Norway ceded the islands to Canada. In that year Sverdrup signed a deal with the Canadian Government, who would buy the records of Sverdrup's expeditions for $67,000 Canadian dollars. Sverdrup died just two weeks after the deal was signed, but the money secured the future of his family. The records were archived in the National Archives of Canada, but was later returned to the National Library of Norway.
  One of Sverdrup's lesser known exploits was a search-and-rescue expedition aboard ship Eklips in the Kara Sea in 1914-1915. His aim was to search for two missing Arctic expeditions, that of Captain Georgy Brusilov on the St. Anna and that of Vladimir Rusanov on the Gerkules. Sverdrup's fourth and last expedition in Arctic Siberian waters was in 1921, when, from the bridge of the Soviet Icebreaker Lenin, he commanded a convoy of five cargo ships on an experimental run through the Kara Sea to the mouths of the Ob and Yenisei. The ships reached their destinations and returned safely. This was considered an important step in the development of the Kara Sea sector of the Northern Sea Route. Sverdrup also has an unsuccessful business venture in Cuba, a plantation project in the Oriente Province in 1904.
caption: Sverdrup's explorations 1898-1902
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