Franklin snow goggles © NMM
Culture24's Year 10 intern, Adam Stapleton, visits North-West Passage: An Arctic Obsession, which runs at the National Maritime Museum until January 3 2010. Free admission
Arctic obsession provides a fascinating insight into the strategies and techniques used by 19th century explorers in search of a passage around the pole. The exhibition follows a chronological order - from the first explorer's attempts at finding the passage right through to up-to-date arctic explorers researching global warming.
The exhibition excellently portrays equipment and provisions used by the 19th century explorers and highlights how under-prepared they were to take on such a mammoth expedition. A pair of arctic overalls and boots belonging to Sir Francis Leopold McClintock, a famous explorer, shows how flimsy and thin their outfits were.
Arctic explorers of the 19th century wore many layers of clothing. This trapped pockets of warm air preventing the explorers from losing heat. Wool and cotton inner garments kept them warm while a linen outer layer attempted to keep the snow out and keep the wearer relatively dry although neither were completely water or windproof.
Arctic clothing belonging to Sir Francis Leopold McClintock, 1857 Courtesy of NMM
Many European explorers died from hypothermia and frostbite, which isn’t a surprise when you realise the explorers were often experiencing temperatures as low as minus 32°C.
Another reason explorers were suffering in this barren environment was because their boots were linen and leather and the soles would have been submerged in the snow for most of the time. This would have left the wearer with frostbite and gangrene.
But for these brave explorers cold related illnesses were not the only killer. The ‘A Matter of Life or Death' section of the exhibition focuses on the harshness of conditions these explorers experienced.
Here we quickly realise these explorers were not only inadequately equipped but were also very poorly fed. Examples of the disgustingly grey and dry meat and the rock-hard ship's biscuits they survived on are on show in the exhibition.
My favourite exhibit in the museum shows the contrast in clothing worn between the European explorers and the native Inuit’s. It contains a huge caribou skin suit worn by Inuit women next to Sir Francis Leopold McClintock’s flimsy linen arctic suit.
Inuits wore these huge caribou or sealskin suits because they were completely wind and waterproof and even contained a pouch on the adult's back which was perfect for carrying a child in complete comfort.
Tinned Pemmican, 1875 courtesy of NMM
Throughout the exhibition it is very clear that the native Inuits were a lot better adapted to this harsh environment.
Their huge caribou suits are far superior to those used by the Europeans and their survival techniques were much further advanced. For example they used dog-drawn sleds to conserve energy rather than manually pulling them.
By the mid-19th century a few of the Inuit survival practices had begun to be used by the Europeans.
Inuits have long worn snow goggles to prevent snow-blindness, a painful condition caused by bright sunlight reflecting off the snow and ice and this inspired the explorers to develop their own version of the goggles.
Nowadays technology has drasticly advanced, instead of using pocket quintants and marine chronometers to predict locations, as shown in the “Exploring The Arctic” section, modern explorers use GPS and satellite phones charged by solar panel, all of which are displayed in the “The North Today” section of the exhibition.
Tinned meat from the Frankiln expedition courtesy of NMM
Today explorers eat carbohydrate packed, just-add-water, meals that supply all the necessary nutrients and vitamins to keep fit and health. But modern explorers do still use some Inuit methods including wearing huge fur mittens and hats to keep out the cold. An example of a typical modern explorer's outfit is on display including a lot of the equipment a 21st century explorer would take with them.
However modern explorers face new challenges, as highlighted by the “The North Today” section global warming is seriously affecting the Arctic.
This poses new challenges to explorers as the ice is now changing and can often be extremely dangerous as Jim McNeill found out when he fell through the ice in Baffin island and was only save by the buoyancy of the natural fibres he was wearing. The full story including interview can be seen in the exhibition.
For more information go to the National Maritime Museum website
