Virgohamna (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

: ''Virgo Bay'') is a small bay on the northern coast of

Danes Island Danes Island ( no, Danskøya) is an island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean with an area of . It lies just off the northwest coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the archipelago, near to Magdalenefjorden. Just to the n ...

, an island off the northwestern coast of

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

. Spitsbergen and Danes Island are islands of the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

archipelago. The bay is named after SS ''Virgo'', the vessel of

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

engineer and explorer

Salomon August Andrée Salomon August Andrée (18 October 1854, in Gränna, Småland – October 1897, in Kvitøya, Arctic Norway), during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while ...

's 1896 expedition. Virgohamna is located across a small strait from

Smeerenburg Smeerenburg was a whaling settlement on Amsterdam Island in northwest Svalbard. It was founded by the Danish and Dutch in 1619 as one of Europe's northernmost outposts. With the local bowhead whale population soon decimated and whaling devel ...

, a historical whaling station on

Amsterdam Island Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban area ...

about 2 km to the north.

History

The Dutch were the first to use Virgohamna as a

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

base as early as 1633 (perhaps earlier). The Dutch overwinterers in 1633-34 referred to it as "Houcker Bay". In 1636, with no room being available along the beach at

, the newly added

Friesland Friesland (, ; official fry, Fryslân ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia, is a province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of ...

chamber of the

Noordsche Compagnie The Noordsche Compagnie ( en, Northern Company) was a Dutch cartel in the whaling trade, founded by several cities in the Netherlands in 1614 and operating until 1642. Soon after its founding, it became entangled in territorial conflicts with En ...

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. The German surgeon

Friderich Martens Friderich Martens (1635 - 1699)
, Tjärnö Marine Biological Laboratory, Göteborg University ...

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.White (1855), p. 23.

Archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

excavations have found the remains of five buildings and two double-ovens belonging to the station. Another station was found on Æøya, a small island on the eastern side of the bay named after the

common eider The common eider (pronounced ) (''Somateria mollissima''), also called St. Cuthbert's duck or Cuddy's duck, is a large ( in body length) sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and eastern Siberia. It bree ...

s that live there. S.A. Andrée built a balloon

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

at Virgohamna in 1896, as part of his staging area for attempts to reach the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Mag ...

by balloon. Adverse winds forced Andrée to return home on his first attempt. He returned to Virgohamna in the summer of 1897, and early in July made a fatal attempt to reach the pole. In 1906, American

Walter Wellman Walter E. Wellman (November 3, 1858 – January 31, 1934) was an American journalist, explorer, and aëronaut. Biographical background Walter Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858. He was the sixth son of Alonzo Wellman and the fourth by ...

built an

airship hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a s ...

and base camp in the bay for an attempt to reach the pole by

airship An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

. The hangar was not completed until August, too late for an attempt to reach the pole. Wellman returned the following summer, but again failed to reach the North Pole by airship. Wellman returned to Virgohamna in 1909, but again failed to reach the pole.

Notes

References

* * * * * Norwegian Polar Institut
Place Names of Svalbard Database
{{Coord, 79, 43, 24, N, 10, 54, 42, E, display=title Bays of Svalbard Whaling stations in Norway Former populated places in Svalbard Danskøya