In Step with Ed Sobey: 'The Northwest Passage–The Challenge, the Suffering, the Discovery'

By Richard Hao, Youth Director At Large

Edited by Laura Lee Bennett, Executive Vice President

On November 8th, the Redmond Historical Society welcomed Dr. Ed Sobey for his presentation, “Northwest Passage–The Challenge, the Suffering, the Discovery,” at the Old Redmond Schoolhouse. He outlined the long search for a shorter route to Asia, begun after Magellan’s impractical passage.

Thousands tried to force a northern route through Arctic ice, and Dr. Sobey traced both their struggles and the modern explorers who finally completed the passage. He also noted how the Pacific Northwest became a focus for finding a Pacific entrance, as Cook, Vancouver, and others mapped the coast before the search shifted back to the Arctic.

We caught up with Ed for a bit of Q&A.

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RHS: What do you enjoy most about history, especially the history of exploration? And who is your favorite explorer from that era?

Ed Sobey: Well, I am enamored with the history of exploration—mostly polar exploration, but also marine exploration and, to a slightly lesser degree, land exploration. I’m fascinated by the drive, the physical endurance, the perception of the explorers, especially the 18th, 19th, and 20th century explorers.

My all-time favorite explorer is Roald Amundsen, who accomplished more in his career, I think, than any other explorer did. He was the first to get to the South Pole, the first to get to the North Pole, the first person on the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic, the first person to do the Northwest Passage, and then some other slightly smaller accomplishments. Yet, at least in the United States, a lot of people have not heard of him, which is a shame, because he’s a great study in motivation and the drive to get the job done.

Gravesite of the first sailors with John Franklin's expedition, who died on his quest to find the Northwest Passage. Photo: Author’s collection

RHS: When did you first realize you wanted to be an explorer yourself?

Ed Sobey: I really didn’t start out with that notion. When I went to Oregon State for graduate school, my major professor suggested that I could go to the Arctic and do some research there. The idea had never really occurred to me, and it captured my imagination. From there I learned about the history of Fridtjof Nansen, who was the mentor for Amundsen.

I never got to the Arctic that year—I had to go into the Navy—but subsequently I had the opportunity to go to the Antarctic for research, and that pretty much sealed the deal for me. That, and then a subsequent sailing across the Pacific Ocean, allowed me to join the Explorers Club. Since then, I’ve done a bunch of expeditions: some for the Navy, some with Oregon State, and some on my own. Once that whole world opened up to me, I tried to take great advantage of it.

RHS: What does a typical day look like when you’re out on an expedition?

Ed Sobey: They’re all different. On some of our Alaska trips, we were traveling by kayak, recording whale sounds or doing a census of sea otters, and living on shore. You’d spend a lot of the day just surviving, searching for a place where you could pull the boats out and set up a tent because the trees come right down to the water; setting up the tent; trying to find a stream with fresh water; maybe doing some fishing so you could have dinner; cooking, all those mundane things. Then whatever time you had left in the day you spent on the actual research. It’s a high-energy, very busy sort of environment.

Life on a ship is a little more comfortable. You’ve got a dry berth to sleep in and somebody else is cooking the meals, and you’re working more reasonable hours to do whatever you have to do. But shipborne work is very meticulously planned because ships are so bloody expensive; you have to make good use of every minute of the day.

Some of my expeditions have also been in search of exhibitions for museums. Those are more like travel people are familiar with—staying, hopefully, in a comfortable place and working with local hosts to figure out whether you can put together an exhibit from artifacts they have.

RHS: After you’ve worked everywhere from Antarctica to El Niño expeditions and traveled to over 140 countries, what do you think people most misunderstand about exploration?

Ed Sobey: A lot of people don’t think much about what exploration involves or why someone would put themselves in uncomfortable situations to achieve a goal. Many people go for the comfort and shun going into someplace unexpected.

But the thrill, the excitement, the joy of seeing new things and being someplace where few—or maybe nobody—has been before is a very powerful stimulus. When you set a goal for yourself and then achieve that goal, it’s a great reward, even if other people don’t appreciate it to the same level you do.

 RHS: What is one of your favorite stories of exploration from history?

Ed Sobey: Certainly, I think Nansen’s Farthest North, which was my first exposure to Arctic exploration. Nansen is such a cool dude. He won the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize. He’s a geophysicist, an oceanographer, he has a PhD, and he was the first guy to ski across Greenland.

Later he got the idea that he could get to the North Pole because he realized the ocean surface isn’t fixed—it moves. He looked at how it moves based on the sinking of the USS Jeannette. He saw that pieces of that wreck landed thousands of miles away, and he figured out, well, the Arctic Ocean must have a circulation pattern, and if he could get a ship stuck in the ice, the ice would move him toward the North Pole. He wouldn’t have to fight to get there; he’d just have to take along enough supplies and sit in the ship.

That worked to a degree. He set a new record for farthest north, but clearly he could see from the way the ship was moving that he’d never actually reach the Pole. So he and another guy, Johansen, hopped off the ship where they were fairly comfortable and started sledging to the North Pole. They made some progress, but eventually they found the ice was moving south faster than they could go north. So they had to give that up, ski back, find an island, and spend a winter there living in an ice cave.

The only food they had was polar bears. Every once in a while a polar bear would discover their ice cave, stick its nose in, and they’d blast the thing and eat it. The next summer, as they were trying to figure out how they were going to get back home, another explorer named Jackson wandered up and found them. Jackson had applied to be with Nansen on that expedition, and Nansen had turned him down. So Jackson later did his own expedition and brought Nansen back to Norway.

The whole idea of just jumping off a ship onto the ice floe and heading to the North Pole is totally crazy. These are not normal human beings; these are supermen undertaking an arduous task and surviving.

RHS: Of all your own journeys, what has been your personal favorite expedition?

Ed Sobey: One of my first ones, my winter in Antarctica. It opened my mind to understanding myself—to realizing I could survive and function at 60 degrees below zero, that I could manage life living on a flow of ice out in McMurdo Sound with three other people, and that I could do research in that sort of environment. It had never dawned on me that all of that was possible. That experience opened up the world of exploration for me and made me want to do more.

In the Antarctic, in winter, it’s mostly barren landscape. If you go in summer and you’re in the right place, you can be overwhelmed with whales and penguins and other birds on land and seals. There’s a ton of wildlife down there, but you can’t get to it in winter; you’ve got to go in the austral summer when a ship can get you in.