Ninety Degrees North

2001 · Book · Fergus Fleming

“There are five North Poles: the North Geographical Pole, the absolute, fixed cap of the globe; the North Magnetic Pole, to which our compasses point, and which is not stationary but rambles at present through the Canadian Arctic; the North Geomagnetic Pole, which centres the earth's magnetic field and sits today over north-west Greenland; the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility, a magnificently named spot in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, which represents the point farthest in all directions from land (currently, 684 statute miles from the nearest coast); and there is even a Pole in the sky, the North Celestial Pole, the astronomical extension of a line drawn through the earth's axis which nearly - but not quite - hits Polaris.”

It was once believed that the North Pole was surrounded by an open polar sea. Some of the attempts to prove this theory and to reach the pole itself once the theory was abandoned are the subject of this book. Fleming, author of the critically acclaimed Barrow's Boys, provides an entertaining history of the many failed attempts to reach the North Pole, from the hardship of the Kane expedition of 1853 through the Amundsen-Ellsworth North Pole sighting via airship in 1926. Though not all polar attempts in this time period are covered, many of the major attempts are recounted and analyzed, providing a story that is both awe-inspiring and humorous. Drawing on research from published and unpublished accounts, Fleming tells the stories of the failed land/sea attempts by such polar adventurers as Edward Nares, Fridtjof Nanson, Charles Francis Hall, August Petermann, and George Washington de Long, as well as the fatal attempt by Sweden's Salomon August Andr‚e by balloon. The controversial topic of who first stood at 90-degrees North is not answered here; only through the investigation of Frederick Cook's and Robert Peary's expeditions does the reader learn that neither can conclusively claim this achievement. by Fergus Fleming