SS Vega (1872)

The Vega on a painting by Jacob Hägg

The Vega was a Auxiliarsegler the Swedish polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. With this ship, succeeded for the first time biking the Northeast Passage.

The Vega

The later Vega was built under the name Jan Mayen than 355 tons of great bark with a length of 43 m at the Wencke shipyard in Geestemünde for CB Pedersen and ran in January 1873 from the stack. It also was equipped with a 60 hp steam engine. The Vega was designed for the Arctic Ocean drive and initially served as a whaler.

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and his captain Louis Palander they chose for the first biking the Northeast Passage from 1878 to 1880. After completion of this long journey, which was the ship without serious damage, she was reinstated from the old shipping company as a vessel off Greenland. Your fate is lost in the dark. On her last trip, she was included in the Melville Bay by ice and sank on 31 May of the year 1903.

The Vega also had a sister ship, the year before built Greenland Deutsche Polar nautical society, with the under the command of the later polar explorer Eduard Dallmann, during a fishing trip in 1874 in the South Pacific, among others, the Bismarck Strait, the Neumayer Channel, and the Kaiser Wilhelm island were discovered. It also served since 1893 as the polar explorer Robert Falcon Edwin Peary as an expedition ship.

After Vega some geographical locations are named, such as the Vega Island in Antarctica and glaciers Vegafonna on Nordostland in Spitsbergen Archipelago.

The Vega Monument

The Vega monument was on April 24, 1930 ( fifty years after the return of the Vega of the Northeast Passage) before Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm, Frescativägen 40, Frescati erected. It is a work of Ivar Johnsson (1885-1970) and shows a black granite block with the copper Vega.

Quote

With 15 years of Sven Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld with the Vega after the initial biking the Northeast Passage. He describes in his book My Life as a discoverer as follows:

On April 24, 1880, Vega ran into Stockholms Ström. The whole city was illuminated. The houses around the harbor flashed in the glow of innumerable lamps and torches. In the castle shone in gas flames, the constellation of Vega. In the midst of this sea of ​​lights slid the famous ship in the harbor. With my parents and siblings, I stood on the mountains of the Södermalm, where we had a dominant view. Largest tension had captured me. All my life, I will think back to this day, he was decisive for my future path. From quays, roads, windows and roofs roared thunderous cheers. "So I one day come home ," I thought.