The final frontier? As of Sept. 15, there have been 376 human spaceflight launches. Compare that to only 167 manned vessels that have made it to the North Pole.

Granted, most of those polar journeys brought more passengers per visit, but a trip to 90 degrees north puts one in a relatively small circle of people.

And that circle is primarily filled with explorers and researchers. True, some tourists have paid more than $40,000 to board the 1990s-era, nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker 50 Years of Victory, which has been chartered by both Quark Expeditions and Poseidon Expeditions. That ship has a fitness center, restaurant, swimming pool and massage facility but, powerful as it is, its main similarity to a modern cruise ship is that it floats.

The French cruise line Ponant saw an opening to bring a modern, luxury icebreaker into the market, one with a restaurant by Alain Ducasse (21 Michelin stars, the most of any living chef) and balconies on every cabin and suite.

It was named Le Commandant Charcot after a French explorer who called his own ship Pourquoi-Pas, which translates as “Why not?”

Why not? Well …

In March 2020, when Ponant was ready to launch the ship, there appeared both short- and long-term worries. Of immediate concern, the pandemic was declared the same month. But prior to that, legitimate questions had been raised about the environmental cost of luxury leisure trips to remote areas, both because of the fragility of the destinations and the carbon emissions resulting from what could be viewed as a vanity journey.

There wasn’t much Ponant could do about the pandemic, but leaning into their corporate ethos to be environmentally responsible, they countered the potentially troubling perception of Le Commandant Charcot as a toy of the rich by, on one hand, incorporating environmentally advanced fuel technology into its design and on the other by providing space and equipment for scientists to conduct serious Arctic research, mostly related to climate change and funded by passenger receipts.

Le Commandant Charcot is not the only expedition cruise ship that carries out scientific research, but Ponant paired its capabilities as a Class-2 icebreaker with wet and dry science labs; a moon pool that enables researchers to place instruments into the water directly from the labs; water monitoring equipment provided by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; an international weather station; and a call for six researchers to join each expedition cruise to the Arctic and Antarctic, the candidates selected by an independent scientific body. These bona fides were recently bolstered by an arrangement with the Explorers Club to host 12 of their members as lecturers.

On a departure that I joined in August, the scientists onboard presented their projects and goals. One aimed to answer the very question that had given me pause before boarding: What is the impact of icebreakers on Arctic sea ice and marine life? 

In another project, a pair of researchers from a Finnish university were surveying passengers at three points on the trip to discover whether the lectures that addressed global warming, coupled with exposure to the Arctic environment, made them more sensitive to the impacts of climate change over the course of one cruise. 

Other scientists were likewise making observations directly related to how the sea ice ecosystem was changing. All the researchers I spoke with were very grateful to have their otherwise very expensive research underwritten by the fares passengers were paying. (Fares run from $49,000 for two people in one of the 75 prestige staterooms to $157,000 for six in the owners suite.)

Sea days

A visit to the North Pole is in almost every sense the opposite of a trip to Antarctica. Antarctica is a continent, with a mountainous topography; it teems with penguins, seals, whales and avian life.

On the other hand, the North Pole is just a dot in a frozen ocean at the intersection of the Earth’s longitudinal lines. Even if you stuck a sign in the snow directly on that dot, it would immediately drift from the pole — the sign would have been stuck on an ice floe that is moving at about 0.2 nautical miles per hour.

And although the ocean below the Arctic ice also teems with life, viewing large creatures — whales, seals and polar bears — from onboard the ship is purely serendipitous. None stays in one place for long.

Which arguably makes an Arctic trip more, not less, exciting. Whether you’ll even get to the North Pole is an open question, dependent on sea ice conditions and weather. Still, although we were warned there were no guarantees, we arrived at the pole two days before the pre-departure itinerary predicted.

We embarked from Longyearbyen, a city above the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. We wouldn’t reach the pole until the sixth day, but there was truly never a dull moment before then. Even prior to reaching the sea ice, bird life seemed ever-present. We saw a blue whale and its calf spouting off the port side. The carcass of a dead sperm whale, presenting a feast for dozens of birds, floated by.

Tours of the labs were offered, scientists gave presentations on their research, naturalists spoke about the unique qualities of the region. Two world-class photographers, Sue Flood and Ian Dawson, gave workshops and presentations.

Things changed when we hit the compacted sea ice. The ship trembled and quaked as it cut through the floes. Watching the ice fracture, flip and churn from the promenade deck was mesmerizing, an ever-changing show that brought to life much of what the naturalist team and scientists had talked about during lectures.

And everyone was on the lookout for polar bears. The captain, Patrick Marchesseau, whose dry wit and understated manner would crack up passengers during theater presentations, promised a bottle of Champagne to the first passenger who spotted a bear. “Of course,” he added, “it’s an open bar, so not such a big deal.”

We were still in the season of the midnight sun, and he asked at the introductory meeting whether he should wake us, even at three in the morning, if someone on the bridge saw a bear. The audience shouted its approval. He paused and then, with a sly smile, said, “With pleasure.”

Walking on water

The day before we crossed the pole, and on two occasions on the following days, the ship parked alongside a large floe for passengers to disembark. A perimeter was established where we could wander about, bordered by armed naturalists doing duty as polar bear guards.

Within the perimeter, passengers frolicked like children. There was no native culture to explore, but the ship’s culture was an interesting mash of Chinese, Russians, Europeans (primarily French), Taiwanese, South Asians, Australians and North Americans. Some appeared never to have seen snow before. No snowball fights broke out — the Arctic snow is uniformly dry and powdery — but people lay in, rolled and otherwise luxuriated in the snow.

Treks outside the perimeters were led by naturalists carrying bear spray, rifles and long poles to test the solidity of the ice. These walks were, to me, one of the highlights of the trip. Arctic sea ice, by and large, is flat with occasional blue melt ponds, but on the treks, we walked among pressure ridges where two floes had collided and saw ice formations that resembled nothing so much as sculpted modern art. When the ever-present sun was low, long shadows added a sense of dimension to the otherwise uniform white and blue.

On the day we crossed the North Pole, a group of 11 marathoners ran the perimeter 86 times in a sanctioned race. A volleyball net was set up. A guided meditation session was held. Santa made a brief appearance. Two Russians stripped down to the briefest of swimwear. A postal box accepted cards and letters, mailed from the North Pole. A table of macarons was set up, and hot chocolate was served.

And, of course, a polar plunge into the Arctic Sea was offered. (An electrocardiogram printout was required to participate.)

Crossing the Pole

As mentioned above, the North Pole itself is but a dot; the scenery at 90 degrees north looks pretty much like the scenery at 89 degrees north. The “event” of reaching the pole was largely man-made, and Ponant orchestrated it beautifully.

As we approached the pole, the bridge was open, and Capt. Marchesseau, seemingly joined by half the passengers, began a countdown over the PA when we were 5 nautical miles away. Those who weren’t on the bridge were on the forward heliport, taking photos alongside a portable sign reading “North Pole,” with a downward arrow below the lettering.

When the ship crossed the pole itself, cheers went up on the bridge, and everyone was invited to the heliport, where three officers stood waving giant French flags. (Le Commandant Charcot is the first French ship to have reached the North Pole.) Guests were kept clear of one area, and suddenly the floor of that portion slid away and, rising from the hold below — shrouded in smoke-machine fog — a long table with caviar on spoons and Champagne glasses arranged to spell out “90 degrees north,” appeared. A musician played “What a Wonderful World” on the sax.

The captain made a short speech and opened a magnum of Champagne with a saber, and guests mingled, took photos and generally celebrated with bottomless Champagne and caviar before being let out onto the ice, less than a degree-minute from the pole.

And at dinner that night, Capt. Marchesseau came on the PA to tell us that, while we were dining, we would also be traveling around the world — the ship was circling the pole.

Icebreaker rendezvous

There were two other icebreakers in the area during this voyage, and we encountered both. En route to the pole, we came alongside the German research vessel Polarstern. Some of the scientists onboard Le Commandant Charcot had previously worked on it, and some of their researchers had worked on Le Commandant Charcot. A delegation of their scientists arrived by helicopter and made presentations about their projects. 

On the return voyage from the pole, we met up with 50 Years of Victory, which was on its way to the North Pole with schoolchildren who had earned the trip as a reward for good grades. Le Commandant Charcot is not small — it holds 270 passengers and a crew of 190 — but 50 Years of Victory appeared hulking as it steamed toward us, the ice seemingly rushing out of its way as it approached.

Among Le Commandant Charcot passengers were 13 Russian speakers who had joined a tour organized by a firm in Dubai. All were expatriates, living in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Abu Dhabi, Ukraine and the U.S. The two ships came close enough that people in that group were able to AirDrop photos back and forth with the schoolchildren crowding the forward deck of 50 Years of Victory.

To cause less disruption to sea ice, that icebreaker continued northward within the path we had just cleared, and we followed southward along the northbound route it had traced. It wasn’t long before I began to miss the quaking and thundering that shook the ship as we moved through the ice.

Bear country

It finally happened. At 5 o’clock one morning during the return voyage, the speaker in my cabin came alive and announced that two bears, a mother and cub, had been spotted off the port side. I grabbed my camera and coat and ran outside.

Once on the deck, everyone was asking exactly where these bears were. Off in the distance were two specks; with the help of my 300 mm lens, I could see they were bears. The mother and child took turns standing and sitting; neither seemed to want to look our way at the same time. We had, technically speaking, seen polar bears, but it stopped short of expectations.

The following day more than made up for it. A bear was seen and the announcement made; this bear, too, was initially a speck, but the speck grew larger and larger as it moved toward us. Ponant policy is not to break ice to get to an animal, so we parked along a floe. Bears can be curious, and this one took a meandering path toward the ship, leaping over gaps in the ice. He stopped about 100 yards away, watched us for a few minutes and then wandered away, looking — if I may anthropomorphize — a bit lonely and forlorn in the vast wasteland he tread.

Not long after, another polar bear sighting was announced. This bear put on even more of a show, coming right up to the ship and, as he was leaving, jumping into a stretch of water and swimming some distance between floes. Getting out, he dried himself by rolling down pressure ridges.

And finally, that same day, a mother and cub came along. They didn’t get as close as the two males we had seen but were well within camera range as they wandered among blue melt ponds, the sun low in the sky behind them.

Life onboard

There were several activities organized in the Svalbard archipelago during the return trip. In addition to stops to see abandoned trappers’ cabins and Zodiac rides up to glaciers, I kayaked in a fjord and took a somewhat challenging hike up a rise. We went ashore to view a small huddle of walruses on a beach and stopped at Ny Alesund, the northernmost permanent human settlement, where explorer Roald Amundsen prepared for his flight over the North Pole.

The public spaces onboard Le Commandant Charcot were uniformly pleasant. In addition to a lounge and an observatory lounge-cum-library-cum-game room, there was a cigar room, fitness center and a detox bar and indoor pool. The spa was first-rate.

My standard cabin was certainly comfortable, but, all told, I’m fairly certain I’m not alone in saying that as nice as the rest of the ship’s interior spaces are, my favorite room was the Ducasse restaurant, Nuna. There was also a very nice buffet restaurant, Sila, which offered indoor or outdoor dining on heated seats alongside a heated pool (both are warmed by recycled heat from the ship’s engine), but I was nonetheless loyal to Nuna.

At Nuna, one could arrange to have meals with the scientists, lecturers or photographers, an opportunity I took advantage of. And, portions being French-size rather than American, I could eat three courses each meal — and dessert — and when I got home, discover I had lost weight.

What’s next?

In the end, were my feelings still mixed after taking a two-week luxury cruise in an environmentally sensitive region?

I was pleased to see that the research was serious, and the scientists’ needs even took precedence over the “cruise” aspect. We stopped several times “for research”; a drone would take off or an instrument dropped through the moon pool. The gratitude of the scientists was genuine; Arctic research is expensive. Some of the scientists said they would be returning to the ship annually to continue their projects.

And the more I learned about Le Commandant Charcot, the better I felt. It has a Prius-like hybrid propulsion system that uses liquefied natural gas when breaking ice, which in turn charges batteries that are used for navigating open seas. It has routing software to find the “newest” ice (it won’t proceed if it would mean smashing through old or thick ice). As a result, it went more than 160 miles farther to get to the pole than if it had it gone in a straight line, an environmental trade-off that burned more fuel but preserved old ice. In the final analysis, I felt the positives of the trip — the research, the education, the reduction of carbon emissions — more than offset the negatives.

Upon returning home, I spoke with Ponant’s director of new construction, Mathieu Petiteau, about the details of the next ship that Ponant is designing, to be launched between 2027 and 2030. It takes environmental standards to new heights, operating on wind, sun and hydrogen with no waste discharge — everything will be recycled or reused. It will not be an icebreaker.

In the past, exploration was often done in the name of exploitation. In many instances, it still is. But within the travel industry, increasingly, exploration is paired with conservation, and ships like Le Commandant Charcot provide a model for how to go forward.