Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer born on 16 July 1872 in Borge, Norway. A fine sailor, frugal and determined, during his long life of exploration, he reached the South Pole by sled, flew over the North Pole in an airship and opened the Northwest Passage by sailboat!
Roald Amundsen was born into a family of shipowners with their own fleet of 22 ships, and has had a devouring passion for polar exploration since he was a child. Lulled during his childhood by the polar stories he devours, he dreams of ice and expeditions.
On-the-job training
However, his mother wanted him to be a doctor, so he went down this path until his death in 1893. But immediately afterwards, he entered into an engagement as a deckhand on a Norwegian sealer who was hunting on the east coast of Greenland. His bourgeois education was completed when he came into contact with these rough seal fishermen.
He then rose through the ranks from first-class gabier in 1895 to captain five years later. Now he's ready to live his destiny.
Volunteered without pay on board the Belgica
Informed of the imminent departure for Antarctica of the sealer "Belgica", recently acquired by Adrien de Gerlache, a Belgian silver nobliau, Amundsen wrote to him to offer him his services free of charge for the duration of the campaign. He will serve as second lieutenant.
The objective of the expedition is to carry out a complete wintering in Antarctica, the ship stuck in the ice, then to return to port. Mission accomplished on November 5, 1899 under the cheers of the Antwerp crowd.
This expedition will be the first in a long series for Amundsen.
A new expedition en route to the North Pole... before the South Pole!
A few years later, after opening the route to the Northwest Passage in the Arctic on board the sailboat Gjoa Amundsen developed a new expedition, fulfilling his childhood dream. With the precious help of Fridtjof Nansen, the famous Norwegian explorer, who lends him the schooner Fram he decided to drift on board for five years on the Arctic Ocean in order to definitively demonstrate the existence of an east-west arctic current.
At the time, there was a strong spirit of competition between nations for the conquest of the poles. Also, after the announcements of Frédéric Cook and Robert Peary, each claiming to have trampled the North Magnetic Pole in the fall of 1909, Amundsen decided to radically change direction for the south, in order to reach the first one there, the South Pole.
To the South Pole by foot
Thus, on June 3, 1910, the Fram sailed from Oslo, heading south.
The crew, who were leaving for a 5-year drift in the Arctic Ocean, will only learn in Madeira about the "slight" change of programme that will lead them to anchor in Whale Bay, in the north of the Antarctic continent.
From there, Amundsen's immense experience in the handling of sled dogs, polar clothing and survival in these icy environments (acquired during his crossing of the Northwest Passage) would allow him to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911, a month before his unfortunate British competitor, Robert Falcon Scott, who would die there..
At the North Pole by air
Spared by the First World War, Roald Amundsen then turned his attention to the gigantic possibilities offered by the emerging aviation and aerostation industry. He conceived the idea of continuing his polar explorations aboard these new flying machines.
The proposal of the American millionaire aviator, Lincoln Ellsworth, came at the right time to allow him to land in 1925 - with a failed engine - near the North Pole with Ellsworth at the controls. By cannibalizing the two aircraft present, they were able to return to Greenland by making a runway equipped with a springboard at its terminal part (like aircraft carriers) to allow the aircraft to take off overloaded with its two crews.
After the plane, the airship
A new attempt, this time as an airship with the Norge balloon by the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile, was made when he left Milan on 11 May 1926. This flight took them over the North Pole in two days after a 5300 km flight, making the two men the first to fly over the North Pole.
A disappearance as he experienced it
Two years later, Umberto Nobile, at the head of the airship Italia, did not give any news on his new trip to the North Pole. Amundsen, although retired from "business" and now retired, took part in the airship's search aboard a French seaplane. The aircraft took off from Norway on June 18, 1928 and gave no further news, also disappeared... Umberto Nobile, for his part, returned safe and sound, spotted by a Swedish plane.
The greatest explorer of modern times had disappeared in the ice he had so loved...
