| 词条 | Virgohamna |
| 释义 |
Virgohamna (English: Virgo Bay) is a small bay on the northern coast of Danes Island, an island off the northwestern coast of Spitsbergen. Spitsbergen and Danes Island are islands of the Svalbard archipelago. The bay is named after SS Virgo, the vessel of Swedish engineer and explorer Salomon August Andrée's 1896 expedition. Virgohamna is located across a small strait from Smeerenburg, a historical whaling station on Amsterdam Island about 2 km to the north. HistoryThe Dutch were the first to use Virgohamna as a whaling base as early as 1633 (perhaps earlier).[1] The Dutch overwinterers in 1633-34 referred to it as "Houcker Bay". In 1636, with no room being available along the beach at Smeerenburg, the newly added Friesland chamber of the Noordsche Compagnie established what was later called the Harlingen kokerij ("Cookery of Harlingen"). By 1662 the ships from Harlingen had found little use for the station, with the merchants of the original charter offering other Dutch whalers its use for a certain fee.[2] The German surgeon Friderich Martens visited the (by then) abandoned station in 1671, where he found four buildings still standing, "whereof two were warehouses, in the others they dwelt". There he found tools and barrels frozen up in the ice.[3] Archaeological excavations have found the remains of five buildings and two double-ovens belonging to the station. Another station was found on Æøya (named after the common eiders that reside there), a small island on the eastern side of the bay. S.A. Andrée built a balloon hangar at Virgohamna in 1896, as part of his staging area for attempts to reach the North Pole by balloon. Adverse winds forced Andrée to return home on his first attempt, and he returned to Virgohamna in the summer of 1897. He left the bay again early in July 1897 in what would be a fatal attempt to reach the pole. In 1906, American Walter Wellman built an airship hangar and base camp in the bay. The hangar wasn't completed until August, forcing Wellman to return the following summer, where he again failed in his goal to reach the North Pole by airship. Wellman returned to Virgohamna once more in 1909; he again failed to reach the pole. Notes1. ^ Conway (1904), p. 165. 2. ^ Dalgård (1962), p. 258-59. 3. ^ White (1855), p. 23. References
3 : Bays of Svalbard|Whaling stations in Norway|Former populated places in Svalbard |
| 随便看 |
|
开放百科全书收录14589846条英语、德语、日语等多语种百科知识，基本涵盖了大多数领域的百科知识，是一部内容自由、开放的电子版国际百科全书。