Many routes to the North Pole had now been tried and found wanting. Expeditions had started out by Behring Strait, through Smith Sound, up the eastern coast of Greenland and from Spitzbergen, but they had one and all been frustrated by those great Arctic currents, which, rushing down from the Polar basin, carried with them such quantities of ice that real progress towards the Pole was practically impossible. There still remained one route, however, which had scarcely been tried at all, namely that which lay round the north-east shores of Nova Zembla. Many noted geographers held that the Gulf Stream did not disappear at the North Cape, and that by following its warmer waters it might be possible to avoid the Arctic currents and the difficulties which followed in their train. It was with a view to testing this theory that the Austrian expedition of 1872-74 set out in the Tegetthoff, under the joint command of Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, to whom was entrusted all matters connected with navigation, and Lieutenant Julius Payer, who was to be responsible for the conduct of the sledging operations.

In June 1871 Weyprecht and Payer sailed in the Isbjörn on a preliminary excursion to spy out the land, or rather, perhaps, the sea, and, the result of their observations being entirely satisfactory, it was definitely decided that they should adventure in that direction in the following year. The Tegetthoff, a steamer of 220 tons burden, was accordingly put in a state of thorough repair and fitted out for two years and a half. Her crew numbered twenty-two, so that, with her commanders, she carried twenty-four souls, as well as eight dogs.

The expedition sailed from Tromsö on July 14, and eleven days later ice was sighted. At first it afforded them no serious difficulties, for the Tegetthoff was enabled by her steam power to charge the floes and so to force her way through those round which she could not sail. On August 20, however, she was brought to a dead stop by a barrier of ice in lat. 76° 22´ N., long. 63° 3´ E. “Ominous were the events of that day,” says Payer, “for immediately after we had made the Tegetthoff fast to that floe, the ice closed in upon us from all sides, and we became close prisoners in its grasp. No water was to be seen around us, and never again were we destined to see our vessel in water.... We were, in fact, no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will on the ice. From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then daily, then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and changes of the weather, then in the chances of new years! But that hour never came.”

The Tegetthoff, firmly fixed on her floe, now became the sport of the winds, for in that sea it is the wind that controls the ice-movements. By October 12 she had travelled so far northward that Nova Zembla had completely disappeared from view. On the next day a great excitement took place, for the floe burst right under the ship. “Rushing on deck,” says Payer, “we discovered that we were surrounded and squeezed by the ice; the after-part of the ship was already nipped and pressed, and the rudder, which was the first to encounter its assault, shook and groaned; but as its great weight did not admit of its being shipped, we were content to lash it firmly. We next sprang on the ice, the tossing, tremulous motion of which literally filled the air with noises, as of shrieks and howls, and we quickly got on board all the materials which were lying on the floe, and bound the fissures of the ice hastily together by ice-anchors and cables.... But, just as in the risings of a people, the wave of revolt spreads on every side, so now the ice uprose against us. Mountains threateningly reared themselves from out the level fields of ice, and the low groans which issued from its depths grew into a deep rumbling sound, and at last rose into a furious howl as of myriads of voices. Noise and confusion reigned supreme, and step by step destruction drew nigh in the crashing together of the fields of ice. Our floe was now crushed, and its blocks, piled up into mountains, drove hither and thither. Here they towered fathoms high above the ship, and forced the projecting timbers of massive oak, as if in mockery of their purpose, against the hull of the vessel; there masses of ice fell down as into an abyss under the ship, to be engulfed in the rushing waters, so that the quantity of ice beneath the ship was continually increased, and at last it began to raise her quite above the level of the sea. About 11.30 in the forenoon, according to our usual custom, a portion of the Bible was read on deck, and this day, quite accidentally, the portion read was the history of Joshua; but if in his day the sun stood still, it was more than the ice showed any inclination to do.... In all haste we began to make ready to abandon the ship, in case it should be crushed, a fate which seemed inevitable, if she were not sufficiently raised through the pressure of the ice. At 12.30 the pressure reached a frightful height, every part of the vessel strained and groaned; the crew, who had been sent down to dine, rushed on deck. The Tegetthoff had heeled over on her side, and huge pillars of ice threatened to precipitate themselves upon her. But the pressure abated, and the ship righted herself; and about one o’clock, when the danger was in some degree over, the crew went below to dine. But again a strain was felt through the vessel, everything which hung freely began to oscillate violently, and all hastened on deck, some with the unfinished dinner in their hands, others stuffing it into their pockets.”

Instantly the last preparations were made for leaving the ship—“whither no one pretended to know: for not a fragment of the ice around us had remained whole; nowhere could the eye discover a still perfect and uninjured floe, to serve as a place of refuge, as a vast floe had before been to the crew of the Hansa. Nay, not a block, not a table of ice was at rest, all shapes and sizes of it were in active motion, some turning and twisting, none on the level. A sledge would at once have been swallowed up.”

The party on the Tegetthoff remained for the whole of the winter on the brink of death. When summer came round it brought with it hopes of release, but day after day passed by and still the floe on which the ship was fixed showed no signs of freeing her from its grasp. In July 1873 an attempt was made to measure the thickness of the ice by means of a borer; after twenty-seven feet had been penetrated the attempt had to be abandoned. In August the chances of release began to lessen considerably, and the bitter thought was beginning to assail the officers and crew that they would be obliged to return home without making a single discovery when, on the 30th of the month, a sudden and unexpected sight infused new life into them. “About midday,” says Payer, “as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us afar off in the north-west the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst into shouts of joy, ‘Land, land, land, at last!’ There was now not a sick man on board the Tegetthoff. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Everyone rushed on deck to convince himself, with his own eyes, that the expedition was not, after all, a failure—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it; but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left the floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land.”

With all due pomp and circumstance they named their new discovery Franz Josef Land, drinking the health of their Emperor as they did so. Their jubilation, however, was destined to be short-lived, for almost immediately a northerly wind arose which drove their floe many miles to the south, and Franz Josef Land, though still very dear to memory, was completely lost to sight. When next they found themselves in its neighbourhood, moreover, an event which occurred towards the end of September, their sensations were less pleasurable, for storms were churning up the ice in a most terrifying manner, and they were in imminent danger of being wrecked upon a shore which, though they viewed it with eyes of pride, looked, as they had to admit, distinctly inhospitable. By the 1st of November, however, the ice had quietened down, and Payer came to the conclusion that he might safely attempt to effect a landing. The way was difficult, lying as it did over masses of broken ice which included a rampart fifty feet high, but the men made light of such obstacles, and it was a proud moment for them when they were able to set foot on land which had probably never been trodden by a human being before.

They found that the new country consisted of two main masses. That on which they had landed they called Wilczek Land, and the other they named Zichy Land, while the sound which separated them they christened Austria Sound. It was a bleak and desolate land enough, clothed for the most part in perpetual snow, and absolutely devoid of any signs of habitation. The vegetation was so scanty that musk-oxen or reindeer could not have supported life there, and the place seemed to be given over entirely to Polar bears, foxes, and a few migratory birds. Everything, however, depends on the point of view, and it certainly seemed Paradise to the crew of the Tegetthoff. Fortunately for them the ice soon became firmer, and they were able to explore the new land with less fear of their line of retreat being cut off. During the early spring Payer mapped out several of the islands of which he found Franz Josef Land to consist, and succeeded in penetrating as far north as Cape Fligely, the highest point attained in the old world up till then. He also added several new lands to the chart, which have been subsequently shown to be non-existent, among them being King Oscar and Petermann Lands.

It was, of course, perfectly obvious that the ship must be abandoned, and during the winter preparations were made for taking that step as soon as spring came round. The objective was Nova Zembla, where a depot of provisions had been established for them to meet eventualities. They had no need to make use of that depot, however, for while passing Cape Britwin, they fell in with a Russian schooner, the Nikolai, which took them on board and brought them safely back to Europe in September 1874.