Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition
The Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition was largely an initiative of the geographer August Petermann, who was a proponent of a navigable northern Arctic Sea.
Petermann had previously been involved in the German North Pole expeditions of 1868–1870, which had failed to find navigable paths on the east coast of Greenland.
Petermann then advocated for probing the area between Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya, which he assumed would be less obstructed by ice due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.
To salvage the otherwise disappointing expedition, Weyprecht and Payer first conducted some exploration of the islands to the south, before sailing eastwards.
[4] The expedition's purpose was to explore the Arctic Ocean to the North of Russia and ideally to find the Northeast Passage.
The crew came from all over Austria-Hungary, especially from the Eastern Adriatic coast (present-day Croatia[14]), the primary recruiting area for the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
[17] On 20 June 1872, the Isbjørn set sail from the Norwegian port of Tromsø with the goal of laying a supply depot at Cape Nassau on Novaya Zemlya.
[16] The two ships met near the Barents Islands off Novaya Zemlya, where the emergency depot was laid, in case Tegetthoff's crew would need supplies on their way back.
At the end of August, she got locked in pack ice north of Novaya Zemlya and drifted to hitherto unknown polar regions.
[21] Tegetthoff continued to drift until the end of October, when the ship came to a halt by an island in the southeast of Franz Josef Land.
In November, several small trips were made to the newly named Wilczek Island, before having to wait out the polar night for further exploration.
[22] In February 1874, Weyprecht and Payer decided to abandon the ice-locked ship after completing sledge expeditions to explore the newly discovered lands.
[25] Scurvy had also been a problem for other crew members but they were able to cure it with canned vegetables, lemon juice, wine, and polar bear meat.
[34] Weyprecht decided to briefly go back to the ship and retrieve a fourth boat while waiting for the ice conditions to improve.
They aimed for the depot laid by Wilczek, but after accidentally rowing past it, decided to continue south and rely on the provisions they still had.
[38] On 24 August, the boats of the Austro-Hungarian expedition met with fishermen from the Russian schooner Nikolai, captained by Feodor Voronin [ru].
On the journey they were met by crowds and invited to dinners hosted by local dignitaries and geographical societies in Norway, Sweden and Germany.
The expedition yielded various results in the fields of meteorology, astronomy, geodesy, magnetism, zoology, and sightings of Aurora Borealis.
In Vienna, Graz, and Wiener Neustadt there are several streets and inns that are named after the North Pole, Payer, Weyprecht, Wilczek, and Krisch.
