1880 Bauman Map of the North Pole

An Encyclopedia of Arctic Exploration.

This 1879 William Bauman map of the North Pole surveys over 400 years of Arctic exploration. It was produced to accompany the posthumous report of Captain Charles F. Hall's final, fatal expedition to determine the fate of the British Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin. It includes dated notations pertinent to Franklin and Hall's journeys, as well as the accomplishments of approximately 17 explorers reaching back to the 16th century, including the explorations of the Siberian coast by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832 - 1901) in his successful search for a northeast passage.

A Closer Look

The map is a north polar projection reaching as far south as about 40° N latitude on the coast of Japan, and 50° N in Europe, thus including the entirety of the British Isles. In the Western Hemisphere, the map reaches 60° N overall, dipping farther south and into the bottom margin to reveal York Fort on Hudson's Bay in central Canada and St. John's in Newfoundland. The map thus presents the northernmost extents of North America, Europe, and Asia. Nearer the Pole, the partially charted coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land (Земля́ Фра́нца-Ио́сифа) show the nearest approaches achieved in explorers' efforts to reach the Pole. Red overprinting notes expeditions by their leaders' names, including Barents, Hudson, and Parry, and provides the years of their journeys. Dashed lines in North America trace Sir John Franklin's expeditions in Canada between 1819 and 1826 before his fatal final voyage in 1845. Several subsequent teams, including the Richardson and Rae Expedition in 1848, went out in search of Franklin, but never learned his fate. Siberian coastlines, as determined by Nordenskiöld in the late 1878 and 1879, also appear in red and are significantly different than the accepted coastlines printed here in black.

The Track of The Polaris: Charles Francis Hall's Expedition

Perhaps the most striking notation is a dashed line through the Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait to Newfoundland that reads 'Track of Ice Floe Party of U.S.S. Polaris from October 14, 1872 to April 30, 1873'. This refers to the disastrous Polaris Expedition, which was one of the first American attempts to reach the North Pole, but was also an effort to discover the fate of the fabled Franklin expedition. It was commanded by Charles Francis Hall, who had already led several prior attempts to sniff out the ill-fated Franklin. Leaving New York in June 1871, Hall's leadership was immediately challenged by the expedition's chief scientist Germans Emil Bessels, and meteorologist, Frederick Meyer. Hall died in October after returning from a scouting expedition. He accused several of the crew, including Bessels, of poisoning him before he finallty succumbed to illness. (Forensic evidence strongly supported the accusation; Bessel's motivations also may have included a romantic one, as both he and Hall appear to have been vying for the attentions of famed sculptress Lavinia 'Vinnie' Ellen Ream.)

Matters did not thereafter improve for the Polaris and its crew. Even after losing Hall, an attempt was made at the North Pole. They did not get far before returning to the ship and attempting to return home. The Polaris was caught in ice on the way south; to free the ship, stores and supplies were haphazardly thrown overboard. Not a day later, the ship was forced to run aground at Etah, having run out of fuel. The crew, compelled to spend another winter in the Arctic, survived only with the help of the Etah Inuit.

Interestingly, part of the crew did not winter at Etah. On the night when the Polaris hit the iceberg, some men camped on the ice off the ship. During the night, the ice broke apart, and when they awoke, these men found themselves ten miles from the Polaris and were unable to get the ship's attention. They spent the next six months drifting over 1,800 miles on an ice floe before being rescued off Newfoundland by a whaler.

A Map Man's Explorations

Among the most current dates included on this map pertain to the quest for a Northeast Passage to the Pacific from Europe, passing over Siberia. This was achieved in 1879 by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, whose extensive corrections to the mapping of the north coast of Asia are presented here in red. A seasoned map collector will recognize the explorer's name: an accomplished map collector, Nordenskiöld wrote some of the earliest monographs on old maps, most famously his Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn and published by William Bauman as early as 1875; that edition lacks the ice floe track of the Polaris survivors. We are aware of only one example of this c. 1875 state of the map in Harvard's collection, marked with the Polaris ice floe track in manuscript and lacking any of the Nordenskiöld data later than 1875. A second state, containing the Polaris and Nordenskiöld information and with an amended publishers' imprint, was printed by The Graphics Co. for inclusion in Charles Francis Hall and Joseph Everett Nourse's Narrative of the second Arctic expedition made by Charles F. Hall, published by the Government Printing Office. This second state and the narrative are well represented in institutional collections. The separate map appears on the market from time to time.

Cartographers

William Bauman Jr. (1866 - July 16, 1933) was an American draftsman. Born in Maryland, Bauman Jr. worked for the General Land Office from the 1890s through at least the mid-1920s. He married Cora Walker (March 15, 1868 - January 18, 1904) on September 12, 1899, with whom he had two children. After retiring from the General Land Office (the historical record does not tell us when he retired), he moved to Florida with his second wife, Rosa, and died in Tampa on July 16, 1933.   Further Details...

Graphic Company (1872 - 1890), or The Graphic Company, was a New York City based printing house in the latter half of the 19th century. The company was founded by the brothers James H. Goodsell and C. M. Goodsell. The Goodsell Brothers were born in Michigan and, for a time, ran a printing business in Chicago, which they lost during the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. They moved to New York in 1872, drawing investors and founding The Graphic Company with $500,000 USD in investment capital, much of it from Canada where it was publically traded. Among their investors were the prominent Republicans Alexander Robey 'Boss' Shepherd and Benjamin Franklin Butler. It was originally created as a newspaper, The Daily Graphic, but quickly expanded to other forms of printing. In 1873, they concocted a publicity stunt to build a giant branded balloon to send aeronauts John Wise and Washington H. Donaldson across the Atlantic in just 60 hours – an attempt that ended in disaster in a Connecticut field just 120 miles from its starting point. By 1874, The Graphic Company advertised as general lithographers, engravers, and power press printers, with specializations in commercial lithography (stock certificates, checks, notes, etc), presentation cards, chromolithography, and photo-lithography. Within a year, they had become a large and successful printing house, largely due to large government printing contracts that may have been dubiously obtained, possibly through investors Sherman and Butler. In 1878, they introduced an additional periodical, The Weekly Graphic. The Goodsells sold their shares in The Graphic Company by at least 1886. By 1888, the company changed its name to the American Graphic Company. In 1889, it was advertised as the Graphic Publishing Company. For most of its operation, the company was located at 39-41 Park Place, New York. The firm was dissolved by court order in March of 1890. The Goodsell Brothers were also, from 1872, publishers of the Financier, a successful financial journal based at 156 and 158 Broadway, and the Insurance Spectator.   Further Details...

Source

Hall, C. F. / Nourse, J. E., Narrative of the second Arctic expedition made by Charles F. Hall..., (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office) 1879.    

Condition

Very good. Dissected and mounted on linen as issued, with marbled cover papers. Old linen with few reinforced splits not impacting printed image.

References

OCLC 11600416. Rumsey 60.