Chukchi Sea, Southern Ocean, Kara Sea: the polar voyages of Captain Eduard Dallmann, whaler, trader, explorer 1830–96

Abstract

Eduard Dallmann, of Blumenthal on the lower Weser, went to sea at the age of 15 in 1845. He took command of his first ship, the whaling vessel Planet, in 1859 on a whaling voyage to the sperm whaling grounds in the Pacific and to the Sea of Okhotsk. Over the period 1864–66 he commanded the Hawaiian vessel W.C. Talbot on trading voyages to the Alaskan and Chukotka shores of the Bering and Chukchi seas. On 17 August 1866 he sighted and landed on Ostrov Vrangelya (Wrangel Island), a year prior to its sighting by Thomas Long, credited by many with the first sighting. For the following three years he commanded the whaling ship Count Bismarck on a whaling cruise to the tropics, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Bering and Chukchi seas. In 1873–74 he made the first Antarctic whaling voyage aboard Groenland, and discovered and charted the west coasts of Anvers, Brabant, and Liège islands, as well as many smaller islands and straits including Bismarck Strait. He spent the 1875 whaling season as expert consultant, still aboard Groenland, on the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay whaling grounds. Then, to complete his career in polar waters, from 1877 to 1883 he made annual attempts to haul freight to the mouth of the Yenisey River, to be exchanged for grain cargoes brought down that river by barge. Of the seven attempts, only four were successful, the rest being foiled by ice conditions in the Kara Sea, and on the basis of this record, Baron von Knoop, the Russian entrepreneur who was financing the operation, decided to cut his losses. This ended Dallmann's career in polar waters.