User:Mannethomas

The polar schooner Willem Barents was built by a committee of Dutchmen who wanted to relive the days of great Dutch polar exploration. On several voyages in the 1870's and 1880's it visited the Arctic to place memorial stones and do scientific research. While the Royal Dutch Navy provided personnel and rations, the rest was paid by private initiative.

Polar enthusiasm

In the 1870’s, polar enthusiasm in the Netherlands heightened. Some found it intolerable that other nations became involved in modern arctic exploration, while the Dutch, with such a great past of bold navigation in the ice, did nothing. So, a few men from higher circles took the initiative of founding a national committee for regaining Dutch polar honour. They first send Koolemans Beijnen on two Arctic voyages with the English and then prepared a Dutch expedition to place memorial stones and do scientific research. While the Royal Navy provided personnel and equipment, the ship and scientific instruments were paid for by a national subscription. The ship was called, of course, ‘Willem Barents.’

'First International Polar Year

Conception

The German-born Austrian polar explorer [Karl Weyprecht] first launched the idea for cooperated international polar research in 1875. Posing that polar expeditions to that time were more concerned with 'beating the record' than with scientific research, he proposed international cooperation instead. His words were enthusiastically received at the International Meteorological Congress in Rome of 1879 and a committee was formed to work out Weyprechts plans.

Shortly after its creation, this committee convened it's first meeting. On the first of October 1879, an International Polar Conference took place in the German port city of Hamburg.

Literature

• W.Barr, The expeditions of the First International Polar Year, 1882-83 (Calgary, 2008).
• F.W.G. Baker, 'The First International Polar Year 1882-83' in: Polar Record 21 275-285.