Virgohamna ( English: ''Virgo Bay'') is a small bay on the northern coast of Danes Island, an island off the northwestern coast of

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

. Spitsbergen and Danes Island are islands of the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

archipelago. The bay is named after SS ''Virgo'', the vessel of Swedish engineer and explorer Salomon August Andrée's 1896 expedition. Virgohamna is located across a small strait from Smeerenburg, a historical whaling station on Amsterdam Island about 2 km to the north.

History

The Dutch were the first to use Virgohamna as a

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

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 Smeerenburg, the newly added

Friesland Friesland ( ; ; official ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia (), named after the Frisians, is a Provinces of the Netherlands, province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen (p ...

chamber of the

Noordsche Compagnie The Noordsche Compagnie () 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 England, Denmark-Norwa ...

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 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 study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

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 breed ...

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 rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

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

airship An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying powered aircraft, under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the ...

. 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