Willem Barentsz
Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer (1550-1597) · Netherlands · Historical Figures · Died at 47
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Something wrong?A Dutch navigator who pushed three times into the uncharted Arctic hunting a northeast route to Asia, turned back by ice twice, then trapped for a winter on Novaya Zemlya - where the expedition became one of the earliest recorded polar survivals.
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About this person
Barentsz set out in the 1590s chasing what mapmakers dreamed of: a passage over the top of the world. His first two voyages reached Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea before pack ice closed the door. On the third attempt in 1596, his crew stumbled onto Spitsbergen and Bear Island, then got locked in ice off Novaya Zemlya's coast. They built a shelter from driftwood and survived nearly a year in conditions no European expedition had endured and recorded. When the thaw came in June 1597, they took to open boats. Barentsz died at sea a week into the escape, his body given to the water somewhere north of the Russian coast.
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