Henrik Johan Bull

Henryk Johan Bull ( born October 13, 1844 in Stokke, † June 1, 1930 in Oslo) was a Norwegian polar explorer who entered one of the first people the Antarctic mainland.

Life

Henryk Johan Bull was the son of the Arctic Ocean Fisherman Cornelius Bull (1808-1860) and his wife Sibylle Bull (1806-1889) in the southern Norwegian Stokke to the world. After leaving school, he worked for several years as a businessman in Tønsberg, where he met his wife Agnes (1847-1921) also married in 1869. In 1888 the couple emigrated to Australia, where Bull in Melbourne a job at the trading company Trapp, Blair & Co. found. As in 1890 won the whaling in Antarctic waters in importance, Bull showed growing interest to develop new business in this area. He returned back to Norway in 1893 to attract investors for a discovery tour into the Ross Sea.

The whaling magnate Svend Foyn finally told him to finance an Antarctic expedition to search for right whales, which should lead Bull. The ship of the expedition was called the Antarctic and was equipped with eleven developed by Foyn harpoon guns, an arsenal of explosive devices, eight boats and thirty- man crew. On September 20, 1893, the Antarctic left under Captain Leonard Kristensen harbor of Tønsberg with South Course. Before the Kerguelen the team fell in the first summer of travel only on seal hunting before was driven to survive the winter, the Port of Melbourne. It was only on September 28, 1894 continued the Antarctic their journey with Bull and Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink the Norwegians, the Bull had persuaded to Mitfahrt to continue.

On January 17, 1895 landed a small group in the western Ross Sea on Possession Iceland, a rocky island with a length of about three kilometers off the coast of Victoria Land, on the James Clark Ross in 1841 had hoisted the Union Jack. Bull and Borchgrevink left a message in a tin can on the island to prove that they had entered the island. On January 24, 1895, the Antarctic reached Cape Adare. The landing of Bull, Borchgrevink, Captain Kristensen and several other men came to a race at the end of a dispute arose, who was the first to enter the mainland of the Antarctic continent. Presumably, however, the American whaling captain John Davis them was in 1821 pre-empted at his alleged landing on the Antarctic Peninsula.

After completion of the journey Bull took on as a consultant for the Norwegian whaling fleet. In 1906 he took part again in a ride on seal hunting on the Crozet Islands. In his last years he devoted himself to genealogical research and wrote his memoirs.