Eduard Dallmann

Eduard Dallmann (born 11 March 1830 in Blumenthal, close to Bremen; died 23 December 1896 in the same place) was a German whaler, trader and Polar explorer.

Dallmann began his adventures at 15 as a young sailor. In 1866 he became captain of the Hawaiian ship "W.C. Talbot", undertaking trading trips in the Bering and Chukchi seas to locations in Alaska and Chukotka. He was the first European to set foot on Wrangel Island. From 1867 to 1870 he commanded the whaleship "Count Bismarck" on a whaling cruise to the Pacific tropics, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Bering and Chukchi seas.

In 1872/74, when the whales began to become rare in the Arctic waters, Dallmann was commissioned to explore the Antarctic seas on the sailing steamer "Grönland". The operation was moderately successful from the point of view of whaling, however, Dallmann made many important discoveries around Antarctica during this expedition, foremost of which were the Bismarck Strait and the charting of Anvers, Brabant, Liege and Kaiser-Wilhelm Islands. Still on the "Grönland", he spent the 1875 whaling season as expert on the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay whaling grounds.

Between 1877 and 1884, on behalf of Russian financier Baron von Knoop, Dallmann made annual attempts to haul freight to the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf to be exchanged for grain and other cargoes brought down those great Siberian rivers by means of barges. Owing to the ice conditions in the Kara Sea, of a total of seven attempts only four were successful. Finally von Knop stopped the difficult venture in order to cut losses. Despite the failures, Dallmann had had the rare chance of exploring many Kara Sea islands and shores that few Europeans had seen.

After leaving the Arctic waters forever, Dallmann became the Captain of steamer "Samoa" in 1884. His ship brought the "Otto Finsch Scientific Expedition to the (then little explored) northern coast of New Guinea.

Between 1887 and 1893 he kept exploring the northern coast of New Guinea on behalf of the German New Guinea Company. Many islands and straits in that area were named by him during that time.

Honors

*Mount Dallmann in Antarctica was named after this German explorer. The Alfred Wegener Institute has named a research station on King George Island in Eduard Dallmann's honor
*In Blumenthal, his native town in the Lower Weser, there is a street and a fountain in the old market that have been named after him.
*There is also a "Dallmann Harbour" in Papua New Guinea in his memory.

References

* [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Dallmann Partly translated from German Wikipedia]
*William Barr, Reinhard Krause and Peter-Michael Pawlik, "The polar voyages of Captain Eduard Dallmann, whaler, trader, explorer 1830–96".
* [http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/history/history_soviet.html Early Soviet Exploration]
* [http://www.tour-land.ru/extr/north_p/eng/hist_ark.shtml History of Russian Arctic Exploration]

External links

* [http://www.lomonossow.de/Eichler/2001_02/Dahlmann.html Maritime trade in the Northern Sea Route (in German)]