Travel
Cruising in the Arctic
We have won our laurels after all ! We have landed in .Spitsbergen almost at its most northern extremity, and the little Pocim has sailed to within 630 miles of the Pole, that is to say, Within 100 miles as far north as any ship has succeeded in getting."—" Letters from High Latitudes," by Lord Dufferin, 1856, So wrote Lord Dufferin in the 1850's, in his delightful account of a yachting cruise to Arctic waters. It was not Until the year 1871—Sir Martin Conway mentions in No Man's Land, a History of Spitsbergen—that tourists were for the first time taken to Spitsbergen (Svalbard) by a small Hammerfest steamer.
And now, once a year, in the 1930's, at the appropriate Beason, Polar ice and weather permitting, the Royal Mail Lines send one of their cruising liners to the Arctic. The prospect of reaching a point so near to the Pole offers a new stimulus to those jaded travellers who, as a result of the increasing Popularity of cruising in the past ten years, find few fresh fields to explore. This year R.M.S. Atlantis' visited Iceland, Spitsbergen, North Cape, Hammerfest and Tromso, all (with the tip of Iceland) within the Arctic circle. Trondheim, the Norwegian Fjords, Lyngen, Merok and Bergen were included— the dessert to the Arctic feast, and possibly after Spitsbergen an anti-climax.
Iceland, the first call, seems comparatively near to the British Isles, with which it is geologically connected—rising as it does out of the same submarine mountain ridge in the North Atlantic. With its frost and fire, the grandeur of its Beerier y, and the simple frankness of its unspoiled inhabitants, Iceland is well worth a visit.
Soon after crossing the Arctic Circle, which was observed on the Atlantis' by fitting ceremonial, the awe-inspiring glaciers of Jan Mayen island were slowly passed between 9 and 11 p.m. in broad daylight. This desolate territory in the Greenland Sea, usually enveloped in fog and for many months of the Year surrounded by ice, has been the scene of many tragic happenings. Its principal attraction to seventeenth-century adventurers was its whale fishery. For blubber and whalebone men were prepared to submit to incredible hardship and danger. The blubber was rendered down to produce train-
largely for use as an illuminant. But train-oil also formed the staple constituent of the soap used in Stuart times, and the discovery of Jan Mayen Island and Spitsbergen increased greatly the supply of good soap, and gave an impetus to the growing fashion of fine laces and linen so prominent in the Picturesque costume of the period.
The most northerly point reached by the ' Atlantis ' was Magdalena Bay, in which Barents cast anchor in June, 1596, the year of the discovery of Spitsbergen. He named the land " Spitsbergen" as it "consisted only of mountains and pointed hills." Conway states that Spitsbergen is the only correct spelling. ; Spitzbergen being a relatively Modern blunder. The name is Dutch, not German, and the second " s " asserts and Commemorates the nationality of the. discoverer.
Among the icebergs, which from time to time crack with the noise, of thunder, the liner cruised in the majestic Spitsbergen Bays—Magdalena Bay, Cross Bay, King's Bay, Sassen Bay, Advent Bay and Green Harbour, names for ever associated With the early whalers and the great explorers, many of whom Were destined never to return to their bases there. The presence of a. modern liner in such surroundings seemed more than a trifle incongruous, The mountain peaks and the glaciers filling every valley create an impression of supreme desolation which rR only relieved by the appearance of certain birds, amongst which the fahriar and little auk and guillemot are prom- inent, Little flowering mosses on the shore struggle for hire in the desolate soil. In landing on a primitive structure of Planks in King's Bay, one comes upon the derelict hangar of the
Italia '—the ill-fated airship of the Nobile Expedition. Bits of tOpe and equipment lie about, and in the background is a dis- aSed coal mine once worked by Norwegians. Nearby, looking out upon the Cambridge-blue icebergs stands a rough-hewn nieinorial stone, bearing the names of Amundsen, Ellsworth and other Polar adventurers who used King's Bay as their base, and who sacrificed their lives to science and exploration.
In Advent Bay we came up with the tiny MIS ' Polar' of Tromso, which is co-operating in the work of the Oxford University Arctic Expedition 1935/30. The expedition left Ii%ngland in July to spend fourteen months on the unknown coast of the barren ice-clad North East Land. It is probably the Youngest expedition which has ever wintered in the Arctic, the average age of the members being 23, Advent Bay, formerly the scene of bitter struggles between Dutch and English Whalers, has now a primitive coal-mining settlement of 820 inhabitants, the Majority being Norwegians. There is a communal kitchen, and the village of wooden houses claims to possess the most northerly church in the world. Here forty huskies are kennelled for sledge-work in the long Arctic winter, and life is very. hard.
The extension of pleaSure cruises to the north into summer holidays on land in the Arctic was suggested as feasible by Professor Debenham, at the recent Norwich meeting of the British Association. " It was," he thought, " not too ;wild a forecast to say that in time to come there might be a Brighton of Spitsbergen," as " many, though not all, of the diseases contracted in temperate climates could be cured by residence in the Polar regions."
Attempts to, colonise Spitsbergen (Norwegian since 1925, —hence the name " Svalbard "—and formerly No Man's land) in the past have been many. In 1617 the Czar of Russia granted a licence to an English company " for certaine of his subjects called Lappes, a people lyveingc in a very cold clymatc and a barren soyle," to be sent with some Englishmen to settle in Spitsbergen. But nothing eaine of this. Large rewards were offered elsewhere to those who would accept them, but there was no response. Then between 1625 and 1630 the Company secured a number of condemned prisoners, who were promised a reprieve on condition that they should spend a whole year in Spitsbergen. They were shipped there, but when the day came for them to be left behind, they begged to be taken home and hanged " rather than stay on those desolate shores."
The first view of the Midnight Sun, the sight of an iceberg the size of a cathedral off Bear Island, the return to Europe and landing at North Cape and Hammerfest, the most northerly town in Europe, contact with groups of Lapps in their natural setting, all added interest to the journey. Those who have cruised before know how excellently well the great shipping companies accommodate their passengers, and the Royal Mail Lines are no exception to this rule. This voyage lasted nineteen days, and is well worth undertaking, at least once in a lifetime. Indeed, this was the sixth visit to Spitsbergen which one passenger had Made in cruising liners—so health- giving and full of interest had he found the experience. For about £60 one may do it any summer,—" Polar ice and
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