IN THE 47-TON SLOOP GJÖA

Roald Amundsen was a polar explorer who first reached the South Pole and was one of the first to cross the Arctic by air. Amundsen studied medicine before he sailed as first mate on a Belgian expedition (1897) that was the first to winter in the Antarctic. He next sailed the Northwest Pasage, east to west, in the 47-ton sloop "Gjöa" (1903-06).


While planning a drift across the North Pole, he learned that Robert E. Peary had reached it in 1909. Amundsen continued preparations and set sail from Norway in June 1910, but for the South Pole. Based 60 miles closer to the pole than was the English explorer Robert Falcon Scott, Amundsen set out by sledge with four companions and 52 dogs on Oct. 20, 1911, and arrived at the pole on December 14.


With funds resulting from his Antarctic adventure, Amundsen established a successful shipping business. After the failure of an Arctic voyage in 1918, he sought to reach the North Pole by air and in 1925, with the U.S. explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, flew within 170 miles of it. In 1926, with Ellsworth and the Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile, he passed over the pole in a dirigible, crossing from Spitsbergen, north of Norway, to Alaska. Disputes over the credit for the flight embittered his final years. In 1928 Amundsen lost his life in flying to rescue Nobile from a dirigible crash near Spitsbergen.


Amundsen´s books include The South Pole (1912) and, with Ellsworth, First Crossing of the Polar Sea (1927).