The British North Greenland Expedition

Abstract

The story which I have to tell concerns the activities of thirty young scientists and members of the Services during two years, from 1952 to 1954. There were twenty-five of us in Greenland during the first year. By half-time some of the scientists had completed their work and were relieved by others from home. Sixteen of us continued for the full two years in Greenland. Greenland is about the size of western Europe; it is a sub-continent, or the world's biggest island, whichever way you like to look at it. Nine-tenths of it is covered by ice; Greenland is in fact a gigantic basin of ice, 9000-10,000 feet thick in some parts, the centre of the ice sheet rising to about 10,000 feet above sea level and the floor of the basin we know to be at least 600 feet below sea level in some places. The ice overflows through the broken rim and forces its way down through gaps in the mountains to the coast in a series of great glaciers. Nearly all the native in? habitants are settled on the west coast, where a warm sea current takes the chill off the climate. The north-east coast near where we were based is much less accessible; it is guarded from the sea by a belt of pack ice which may be as much as 100 miles wide, and to force a way through the east Greenland pack is difficult and dangerous, even in the specially built ship which is necessary. It is rather a sad reflection to me, being a sailor, that the Royal Navy has no ships at the moment which are capable of penetrating that ice, and there are only two British ships in all which are able to do so. Apart from these, any British Polar expedition going north or south has to charter a foreign ship. The story of our expedition is rather a rambling one. Except during the winter we had five or six different parties in the field at once, all doing different jobs in different parts of the country, and never from start to finish were we all together under one roof. That is the nature of modern scientific expeditions. But our vary? ing activities were joined together by a common thread: we wanted to know just what the northern half of Greenland consisted of and what was the nature of its rocks; how thick was the ice sheet, what were the climatic conditions which allowed this curious relic of the Ice Age to exist, and what has happened to the land surface beneath its crushing weight. We also wanted to know how the human body adjusts itself to such climatic conditions. Another object of the expedition was to gain experience of living and travelling in the Arctic, and to learn how best aircraft and vehicles might be used for polar exploration; experience which might be of value to the armed Services. And it was also our desire to make some further contribution to polar exploration, to that continuing adventure which, during the last two centuries or more, has played its own distinctive part in our country's traditions. In the summer of 1950 I went as a guest of the Danish Expedition to Peary Land