The Creation of Dr. Kane

Today is somewhat difficult to understand why, in the mid-nineteenth century, nations were so obsessed with arctic exploration. It was a vastly dangerous enterprise that yielded almost nothing of practical gain, and by the 1820s was amply clear that, even if the fabled did exist, would be impractical because of the dangers of arctic navigation. It was also clear that any arctic that could be claimed would be largely useless; no settlers were going to homestead amidst polar bears and glaciers. The arctic was and remains remarkably desolate: Why botiier to explore it? One way to understand the arctic mania of the 1840-185Os is to compare to the of the 1950-196Os and the continuing role of space flight today. According to Roger Launius, chair of the American Space History Program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), there were five reasons America began its manned space program: scientific discovery, economic possibilities, military security and applications, prestige, and survival of the species (the potential to inhabit other planets). Of these reasons, however, prestige was by far the greatest. The U.S. government created NASA in response to the Soviet Union's space program, which in 1957 rocketed to the forefront of the space race with the successful launching of the first satellite, Sputnik. Two years later they went farther, crash landing a payload on the moon. John F. Kennedy made space exploration a priority for his administration. In a 1961 speech he declared that the United States should commit itself to achieving the goal... of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth, and the Apollo space missions began soon after. They were a direct challenge to the Soviet Union, a bold promotion of American prestige, and every bit as dangerous and superfluous as any arctic adventure of the antebellum period. Launius noted that America continues its space program to this day because it raises our stature as a people, as a civilization, as a nation. That the U.S. space program is the best in the world is a sign of the nation's prestige: That's why we started flying them in 1961, and that's why, all other things being countervailing... we will not stop flying them now. He went on to note that in the twenty-first century, Nations that want to establish their credibility in the world, like China, are seeking to do this, in part, by flying astronauts.1 Prestige drove and continues to drive the exploration of space. Prestige, and to a lesser degree all the other reasons Launius listed, also fueled the drive for arctic exploration in the antebellum period and caused the United States to launch its own arctic exploring expedition in 1850. A brief history of arctic exploration is necessary to explain how a series of quixotic quests for a lost explorer and a mythical sea could create a sensation great enough to make Dr. Kane one of the foremost celebrities of his age. It is difficult to determine exactly when European exploration of the polar northwest began. Norse legend always included some notion of these lands, and archeological evidence shows that Scandinavian groups settled in Greenland and far-northern North America as early as the tenth century.2 The first modern exploration of the American arctic was by English explorer John Cabot. He traveled to present-day Newfoundland in 1496 and 1497, just four years after Columbus sailed to the New World. Cabot's son, Sebastian, capitalized on his father's discoveries by starting the Muscovy Company in Bristol, and as early as 1502, Bristol natives sailed to this new found land to catch and dry fish for export back to Europe.3 Martin Frobisher furthered arctic discovery by reaching Ellesmere Island and what is now called Frobisher Bay during a series of explorations in search of the Northwest Passage in 1576-1578. The British crown charged him to seek out gold and to his great joy he discovered and mined what seemed to be the legendary El Dorado: It was only upon his return to England that he learned that his tons of glistening cargo was fool's gold. …

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