From Arktika to the Next Millennium

During the last three decades since Captain William K. Earle’s pioneering deployments, 25 voyages have been made by surface ships to the North Pole.¹ Many have been with tourists on board, while others sailed with scientific exploration as a primary mission. The Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika was the first surface ship to reach the Pole on 17 August 1977.² The first non-nuclear-powered icebreakers to reach the North Pole were Sweden’s Oden and Germany’s Polarstem on 7 September 1991 as part of a joint scientific expedition.

Two icebreakers, the USCGC Polar Sea (WAGB-11) and CCGS Louis S. St.-Laurent, reached the North Pole on 22 August 1994, sailing “the long way” from Bering Strait and the Alaskan coast to the Pole. This was accomplished during the joint U.S.-Canada Arctic Ocean Section 1994 Expedition, a scientific transect across the Arctic Ocean. These two ships rendezvoused with the Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Yamal near the Pole on 23 August 1994 for a historic meeting of icebreakers.’ Another significant milestone was achieved on 29 July 1996, when the Yamal attained the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility (84°03'N, 174°51'W)—the most inaccessible location in the Arctic Ocean—when sailing from Murmansk to the North Pole and then to the Alaskan coast.⁴ The Yamal was the first surface ship to reach this location, although aircraft (since the late 1920s) and nuclear-powered submarines already had visited this remote point.

Many other icebreakers and several cruise ships have made historic and routine passages around the periphery of the Arctic Basin in recent years. Nearly all the voyages to the North Pole were accomplished at the peak of summer, the season for the minimum extent of Arctic Sea ice. Nevertheless, these voyages have proved surface ships to be capable of operating virtually anywhere in the Arctic Ocean. During the late 20th century, the central Arctic Ocean has not been, as many believe, the exclusive domain of nuclear-powered submarines and adventurers.

One future challenge will be an expanded, more systematic exploration of the Arctic Ocean by icebreakers and U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarines on data-gathering missions. In the early years of the 21st century, icebreaker voyages most probably will not be sent to assert rights of passage, but they will conduct cooperative scientific research. Defining the geological structure of the Arctic Ocean basin, studying past polar climates and monitoring recent changes in the temperature and chemistry of polar waters are three significant topics in need of study. Modem icebreakers can gather this environmental information.

The end of the Cold War is one obvious cause for a trend toward greater collaboration. Russia is today a more active participant in Arctic affairs, having also opened the Northern Sea Route across the top of Eurasia to ships of any nation, provided they have adequate ice capability. Joint German-Russian icebreaker expeditions have been conducted in the Laptev Sea. In 1997 the Environmental Working Group of a joint U.S.- Russia committee headed by Vice President A1 Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin released an atlas of Arctic winter oceanographic data. In the early 1990s, Sweden and Germany, along with the United States and Canada, pioneered joint icebreaker expeditions into the central Arctic Ocean for science. Similar international joint ventures should follow.

Imagine the new USCGC Healy (WAGB-20), working alone or in the company of a Russian icebreaker, conducting scientific operations north of the Russian and Alaskan coasts with a team of U.S. and Russian oceanographers on board. As recently as ten years ago, this would have been a highly unlikely, if not impossible, scenario. In the next millennium, it is not only highly plausible; such joint Arctic science is a key to the continuing close relations among all of the Circumpolar Nations.