Smith Sound
Geographical location
The Smith Sound (English Smith Sound, Danish Smith Sound ) is a strait between Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island. It forms the southernmost part of Nares Strait, which connects Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea. The Smith Sound is about 50 km long and between 40 and 50 km wide. The passage is difficult because of here almost all year encountered pack ice.
Geography
In the north of Baffin Bay to 48 km apart Cape Alexander ( Greenland) and Cape Isabella ( Ellesmere Island ) mark the beginning of Smithsunds which extends toward the north-northeast and eventually expanded into Kane Basin. The north exit form Cairn Point ( Greenland) and Cape Sabine, the easternmost point of Pim Iceland, which is upstream of Ellesmere Island. Here the Smith Sound is only 40 km wide. In the fjords on both coasts of the strait to move mighty glaciers. In the west end of the Ekblaw and the Tanquarygletscher in Bairn Inlet, east of Brother John Glacier in Foulkefjord.
Are located on the coast of Greenland at Foulkefjord the now abandoned Inuit settlements Etah and Annoatok, each of which was the starting point of expeditions in the early 20th century. They were at this time the northernmost natural settlements in the world.
History
About the Smith Sound were several waves of immigration from the Canadian Arctic to Greenland. Around 2300 BC crossed the first Paleo- Eskimos of the Pre- Dorset culture Strait. The ancestors of today's Inuit arrived in the 13th century AD the area around Smith Sound.
1616 Robert Bylot and William Baffin sailed in search of a north-western sea route to China and India with the discovery by the Davis Strait into Baffin Bay. They drove to the west coast of Greenland to the north and sighted on July 5 at its northernmost position at 77 ° 45 ' N. lat the entrance to Smith Sound, which, however, was blocked by solid ice. They named the strait after Sir Thomas Smythe (1558-1625), the financier of their journey, " Sir Thomas Smith's Sound."
200 years later, in 1818, John Ross sighted the Smith Sound again, but thought it was a bay. He named Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella after his two ships. Edward Inglefield sailed the Baffin Bay in 1852 in search of the lost Franklin expedition and came first in the Smith Sound (up 78 ° 28 ' N. lat ).
With Elisha Kent Kane began 1853 U.S. attempts to penetrate through the Smith Sound to the geographic North Pole. Officially, also in search of John Franklin, he passed the first time the entire Smith Sound and wintered twice in the Rensselaerbucht in Kane Basin. After his adventurous return while abandoning the ship, he reported that he had seen in the north open water, which the adherents of the theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean gave impetus. This was followed by the expeditions of Americans Isaac Israel Hayes (1860 /61) and Charles Francis Hall ( 1871-1873 ) and the British George Nares (1875 /76), all of which followed the path through the Smith Sound to the north, where it Nares managed to drive through today named after him strait in all its length and let the north coast of Ellesmere Island explore his men.
1884 saw Pim Iceland in Smith Sound the tragic end of the American Arctic Expedition under the International Polar Year 1882 /83. The Americans had built in 1881 with Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island, the northernmost observation station of all nations, but were neither in 1882 nor in 1883 in the position to provide the crew with food and fuel. The expedition leader Adolphus Greely led the 25 men on a desperate march south to Cape Sabine, where 18 of them starved or froze to death before they could be rescued.
The second Norwegian polar expedition with the Fram, the 1898-1902 Canadian islands explored west of Ellesmere Island under the direction of Otto Sverdrup, wintered 1898/99 at Cape Sabine. Nearby was the expedition of the German American Robert Stone (1857-1917) from 1899 to 1901 their winter quarters. Frederick Cook and Robert Edwin Peary Also, the two polar explorer, in 1908 and 1909, each claimed the right to reach the North Pole, had their base camp temporarily on Smith Sound, Cook in the Inuit settlement Annoatok, Peary at Etah.