Zack LabeHere's a closer look at the record low sea ice conditions around #Svalbard. The ice edge is still close to the 85°N line of latitude along the Atlantic front. That's a lot of open water into the Barents Sea region! Data from AMSR2.
Images of BergenThe #submarine Nautilus left #Bergen in early August 1931, drawing crowds of locals who watched the refurbished US military submarine steam toward the open sea, on a voyage to #Svalbard with goal up going under the North pole ice to #Alaska.
The crew – twenty strong, including Australian adventurer and idea man George Hubert Wilkins and the renowned geophysicist Harald U. #Sverdrup – stocked up at Marineholmen before embarking on a perilous Arctic trek.
The voyage quickly turned chaotic: an early engine failure forced a tow to the Irish coast, a crewman drowned during the Atlantic crossing, and a second total breakdown left the sub adrift for two days until the USS Wyoming rescued it.
Even after extensive repairs in England, the Nautilus suffered further setbacks – engine trouble again, ice‑binding, and a missing depth‑gauge, likely sabotaged by a scared crewmember that had lost faith. Yet Wilkins pressed on, ultimately achieving a brief, battered breakthrough beneath the Spitsbergen ice before the vessel was purposefully sunk in Bergen fjord later that year.
Unlike its namesake from #JulesVerne stories, this Nautilus is only 0.06 leagues under the sea.
Photo via University of Bergen Library: https://marcus.uib.no/instance/photograph/ubb-bs-ok-19146.html
#Norway #Norge #NorskPix #Historical #BlackAndWhitePhotography
Zorz Studios
Carlos (Moppelkotzer) 
🔜 :firefish:
MAU
🤘 The Metal Dog 🤘
N-gated Hacker News
Hacker News
Nikolas Kozloff
MediaFaro Magazine