Up to that time, the desire to reach the pole had been coupled with that of mapping unexplored territory and collecting scientific data; after the Fram expedition there was no longer any doubt that the central part of the polar basin was an ice-covered sea and that any land still to be discovered would be peripheral. The race for the pole then degenerated into an international sporting event. Several expeditions, following in Jackson’s footsteps, tried to reach the pole from Franz Josef Land. Three were American: Walter Wellman in 1898–99, the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition in 1901–02, and the Fiala-Ziegler expedition in ...(100 of 37874 words)