In 1982, the 52,000-mile “Transglobe” expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the world's polar axis. Beginning in 1979, British explorer Ranulph Fiennes with Charles Burton had travelled for three years around the Earth via the Poles circling the earth on longitude 0, the Greenwich Meridian. They had reached the North Pole on 11 Apr 1982, and the South Pole sixteen months before that. Their journey across Antarctica took 67 days, despite the advantages of motorised skidoos. The ocean voyage was undertaken in a craft named Benjamin Bowring. The expedition cost an estimated $18 million. (source)