Mikkelsen, Ejnar

He served several years at sea as a mate and master.

He served in the Georg Carl Amdrup expedition to Christian IX Land, East Greenland (1900), and in the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition to Franz Joseph Land (1900–02).

He was the leader of an Arctic expedition in 1907 to try to find the land reported to exist in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.

He purchased the sailing vessel Duchess of Bedford and sailed from Victoria BC in the last expedition to search for new lands in the Arctic Ocean. With Ernest de Koven Leffingwell he organized the Anglo-American polar expedition which wintered off Flaxman Island, Alaska, in 1906-07.

They lost their ship, but in a sledge journey over the ice they located the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, 65 miles (105 km) offshore, where in 2 miles (3 km) the sea increased from 50 meters (164 ft) to more than 690 meters (2264 ft) in depth. Organizing an expedition to map out the northeast coast of Greenland, to recover the bodies of Mylius-Erichsen and Lieutenant Höeg-Hagen and their records, Mikkelsen wintered 1909-10 at Shannon Island, East Greenland.

He led an expedition to the northeast of Greenland in 1909-12 and spent two years waiting for a rescue after having been abandoned by his crew and his vessel crushed in the ice.

He was Inspector General for East Greenland 1934-50.

Mikkelsen Bay (AK); Mikkelsen Islands (NT); Cape Ejnar Mikkelsen (NT).

In 2009 the Royal Danish Navy named the second Knud Rasmussen class patrol vessel the HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen.

The Anglo-American Polar Expedition of 1906-08 in the words of Mikkelsen "had ascertained the extent of the Continental Shelf, and even if we had not found land we had so imp-licitly believed in, it was a consolation for us tjo know that to prove the absence of land was of as much scientific value as to find it."