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Review of The expeditions of the first International Polar
Year 1882–83, by William Barr (2008). Calgary: Arctic
Institute of North America. 417 pp. ISBN 978-1-894788-03-8.

It is probably safe to assume that no readers of Polar
Research are unaware that we have just come through a
fourth International Polar Year (IPY). All science is, or
should be, based on the previous achievements of others,
and thus the experiences and results of the previous three
IPYs (the latter IPY is known as the International Geo-
physical Year) are also in the forefront at this time. This
account of the first IPY expeditions reflects that the
market was ripe right now.

As the IPYs progressed, they became ever broader and
wider in scope, both geographically and scientifically. In
2007–09 more than 60 countries and 50 000 scientists
and technicians are said to have participated, to the sum
of 1.2 billion USD (Schiermeier 2009). At the other end of
the scale, the first IPY, in 1882–83, is much easier to get
to grips with. Then, 11 nations established 14 major
stations: 12 in the Arctic or near-Arctic, and two in the
Southern Hemisphere, at South Georgia and Cape Horn.
It is useful, in addition, that the author of this book,
William Barr (no relation to this reviewer!), also men-
tions several small auxiliary expeditions, as he calls them,
which were mostly one-man shows, as well as the fact
that many meteorological/magnetic observations were
taken by observatories worldwide, as a supplement to the
main IPY programme.

William Barr first published this material in 1985 in
connection with the 100th anniversary of the first IPY
(Barr 1985). The new book is a reprint of the 1985 mate-
rial, including the introduction and conclusions, but with
slight adjustments to the reference list, and with the
addition of a helpful index. One would have liked to see
the illustrations in the conclusions of the remains of three
of the station sites updated with new photographs, since
a lot might have happened to these Arctic ruins during
the past 20+ years.

One of the delights of the first IPY in a historical context
are the reports that appeared afterwards, which give us
detailed insights into not merely the scientific work,
but also the successes and tribulations—and in some
cases absolute disasters—that occurred during the various
expeditions. As William Barr points out, the reports were

published in five different languages, and no one before
him had produced a monograph concerning all of the
expeditions. He states clearly that the focus of his book
is not so much on the scientific programmes as on the
“achievements, hardships, everyday life, and weaknesses
of all the expeditions involved” (p. 9). The last sentence of
his introduction, which states that “These pages in the
history of polar expeditions have remained blank for far
too long” (p. 9) is not as appropriate now in 2008 as it was
in 1985, as the IPY expeditions and stations have been the
focus of various studies in recent years.

As VIPs and others currently take one- or two-day flying
trips to the heart of Antarctica, it is enlightening to read of
the struggle some of the first IPY expeditions had to even
reach their starting point—or to get back home again
afterwards. William Barr starts both his introduction and
his accounts with Adolphus Greely’s American expedition

Correspondence
Susan Barr Directorate for Cultural Heritage, P.O. Box 8196 Dep, NO-0034

Oslo, Norway. E-mail: susan.barr@ra.no

Polar Research 28 2009 311–312 © 2009 the author, journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 311

mailto:barr@ra.no


to Lady Franklin Bay, which was the most dramatic
and ultimately disastrous of the 12 Arctic expeditions.
Although the station was established without trouble, and
ran for two whole years with great success, the relief
expedition came nowhere near to fetching the 25 men in
the summer of 1883. The men had to attempt to make
their own way southwards through the ice-filled strait
between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. They ended up
in a dire condition in Starvation Camp on Pim Island, and
only seven of them were alive when help finally arrived at
the end of June 1884. One of these died soon after.

On the other hand, the Russian expedition to Ostrov
Sagastyr’ in the Lena Delta did not suffer such a gruesome
fate, but it took them from December 1881 to August 1882
just to reach the site of their station, travelling overland
from St. Petersburg by train, sledge, carriage, river barge
and steamer: a journey worth a book of its own.

Yet another experience of unplanned travel belongs to
the Dutch expedition, whose ship, the Varna, got locked
in the ice in the Kara Sea and spent the IPY there instead
of at their chosen site of Dickson, near the mouth of the
Yenisey. At the end of December 1882 the men moved
into a prefabricated house on the ice, as the Varna was
leaking badly, and towards the end of July she sank. The
men made their way by sledge and boat to the Russian
mainland, bringing with them all the observations and
reports they had made for the IPY programme. We are in
fact struck in several chapters by how different the ice
conditions in mid-summer were in many of these areas
compared with those of today.

Others again had a relatively uneventful IPY, but still
their reports contain a wealth of interesting facts about
their experiences, equipment, observations, extra scien-
tific work that came in addition to the IPY programme,
and connections to any local populations involved.
William Barr has, as mentioned above, concentrated his
recounts of the expeditions on these details of the expe-
riences of the men during the IPY. He has not attempted
to analyse the whys or hows, but sticks to straightforward
chronological descriptions, as related in the printed
reports. There is a multitude of examples of minute
detailing that could be considered trivial, but that despite
this add to the understanding of these expeditions of 125
years ago—and can in many cases still be experienced
today! “On the return trip they found that the spring tides
had flooded the ice in places, and hence they all got wet
feet; despite Lockwood’s ensuring that the men changed
their socks as soon as possible, Private Biederbick sus-
tained a frostbitten toe, although it did not prove serious”

(p. 25). As one party left another on the shore of the
Lena Delta, “The oarsmen gave three cheers while
Bunge answered with three rifle shots” (p. 187). It is
obvious that William Barr could not, or would not,
leave out the smallest detail from his translating and
recounting!

There are a few things to miss in this book: some of the
events that are recounted beg for an explanation or an
attempt at analysis. A serious rift developed between
Greely and the expedition surgeon Dr Octave Pavy during
spring and summer 1883 that seems to have had roots in
more than just the mentioned botanical collection that
Greely found too poor to be of any use (p. 41). Pavy was
later actually placed under arrest. He died of starvation
only three weeks before relief arrived at Starvation Camp.
An analysis of the role of any local populations involved
would also be interesting, but this is not the role of this
book. In fact, the largest passage in the book that deviates
from the straightforward reporting style of “They did this,
then they did that” is contained in the chapter about the
work at, or out from, Ostrov Sagastyr’, where the reader
is treated to a long and detailed description and explana-
tion of the geomorphology of the area (pp. 174–177,
191). The explanation is to be found in the blurb about
the author on the back cover: “He is a geomorphologist
by training”.

There are very few maps for a book that uses many
pages to describe the various journeys to and from the IPY
bases, or to describe reconnaissance trips. A final negative
remark, which reflects on the publisher rather than the
author, is that the book is bound so tightly that it will not
at any point stay open without being held that way.

There is much to commend the book. Not least, there
are very few typographical errors. The fact that these
reports are collected in one publication and in one lan-
guage is the main point. The wealth of details does ensure
that we have gathered here before us most of the infor-
mation that can be gleaned from the general reports of
the expedition, and can use this in many ways, including
for some of the analyses that William Barr has neither
intended nor produced here.

References

Barr W. 1985. The expeditions of the first International Polar Year,
1882–83. Arctic Institute of North America Technical Paper 29.
Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America.

Schiermeier Q. 2009. In from the cold. Nature 457,
1072–1077.

Book review

Polar Research 28 2009 311–312 © 2009 the author, journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd312