Major polar expeditions

For centuries, individual seafarers and entire expeditions tried to penetrate the polar regions in the north and south of the Earth. They searched for a route to China and Japan along the North American coast, just as they searched for a mythical land in the southern hemisphere south of Tierra del Fuego. Both the North and South Poles attracted them like magnets. Their journeys were accompanied by sea storms, cold gales, severe frosts and blizzards, hunger and scurvy. Their ships were often trapped in the ice, yet with the coming of spring, they set out again to fill in the blank spaces on the map. A considerable number of polar explorers and even entire expeditions disappeared, victims of their polar passion.
The book describes the fates of the most famous conquerors of the north and south: H. Hudson, John and James Ross, and J. Franklin, who attempted to navigate the freezing straits between the islands in the north of America; R. Amundsen's successful voyage; the efforts of E. Kane, F. Nansen and other polar explorers to reach the North Pole; and the struggle for primacy between F. Cook and R. Peary. It captures the tragic outcome of the race to the South Pole between Amundsen and Scott, and E. Shackleton's unfulfilled desire to cross Antarctica.
The romance of sailing ships and steamships was eventually replaced by airships and aeroplanes, and the “hero of both poles,” Amundsen, was joined by U. Nobile and R. E. Byrd. It is at this time that the life story of the most famous conqueror of the icy wastelands, Roald Amundsen, whose fate frames the book, comes to an end.