Antarctica

III

Exploration

Long before Antarctica was discovered, medieval world maps showed a huge continent, Terra Australis, occupying more than half of the Southern Hemisphere. From the late 15th century several voyages dispelled beliefs about the continent’s vastness and its attachment to Africa, South America, and Australia. Over the next two centuries explorers came upon many of the islands within the present-day Antarctic region, including the South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia, and the Kerguelen Islands. In 1773 British navigator Captain James Cook traveled farther south than anyone before him, reaching latitude 71°10’ south. He explored the edge of the pack ice and was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. Cook saw no land, but judged correctly that the massive icebergs around him could have accumulated only on land nearby.

In July 1819 a Russian naval expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen complemented and enhanced Cook’s findings. Bellingshausen charted South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, then edged eastward along the pack ice, twice crossing the Antarctic Circle, until he was stopped by ice cliffs. In the following year he returned south to the ice’s edge, continuing eastward and pressing through pack ice very close to the continental coast. Later he discovered Peter I Island and Alexander Island. Like Cook, Bellingshausen sailed to within sight of Antarctica without the satisfaction of positive discovery.

British naval officer Edward Bransfield sighted part of the present-day Antarctic Peninsula in 1820. Sealers of many nations, who had been exploring Antarctic and subantarctic (lying just north of the Antarctic Convergence) islands and waters since Cook’s voyage, had sighted the South Shetland Islands, other parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, and the South Orkney Islands by the early 1820s. In 1823 British navigator James Weddell explored the present-day Weddell Sea, setting a new farthest-south record of latitude 74° south. Within the next 20 years sealers and whalers explored present-day Enderby Land on the eastern continental coast, Graham Land (now the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula) and Adelaide Island off its coast, and the Sabrina Coast of East Antarctica and the neighboring Balleny Islands.

Between 1838 and 1843 three naval scientific expeditions added substantially to knowledge about Antarctica’s coastline. French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville discovered a part of the Antarctic Peninsula, which he named Terre Louis Philippe. He also discovered neighboring islands, now known as D’Urville and Joinville islands, and part of the East Antarctica coast, which he named Terre Adélie (Adélie Coast). American explorer Charles Wilkes penetrated the pack ice to explore the ice coast of present-day Wilkes Land. British explorer Sir James Clark Ross discovered the Ross Sea, reaching a new record latitude of 78° south. Ross charted the volcanic island and the massive ice shelf that now bear his name; he also discovered present-day Victoria Land and located the south magnetic pole, which at that time was positioned among Victoria Land’s mountains.

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From the 1870s to the 1890s German, Scottish, and Norwegian whalers explored the Antarctic Peninsula, discovering Bismarck Strait and several other new channels and islands. On January 24, 1895, Norwegian whaler Henryk John Bull made the first recorded landing on the continent outside the Antarctic Peninsula, at Cape Adare near the Ross Sea. In 1904 Norwegian whaler Carl Anton Larsen established the first Antarctic whaling station, on South Georgia.

In 1895 delegates to the Sixth International Geographical Congress in London, England, declared that exploration of the Antarctic region was the greatest geographical exploration still to be undertaken, and urged that scientific discovery of Antarctica begin before the close of the century. Within the next few years expeditions from six European nations took the field. From 1897 to 1899 a Belgian expedition explored the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula by ship. The vessel became trapped for more than 13 months in the pack ice of Bellingshausen Sea, involuntarily becoming the first expedition to winter south of the Antarctic Circle. In 1899 members of a small British expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink became the first people to spend the winter on the continent, at Cape Adare. The larger and more successful British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904), led by naval officer Robert Falcon Scott, spent two winters in McMurdo Sound in the southern Ross Sea, exploring inland, discovering the polar plateau, and making the first attempt to reach the South Pole. Although Scott failed to reach the pole, he achieved a new farthest-south record of 82°17’ south.

Several other European expeditions traveled to Antarctica during this period. The German South Polar Expedition, which lasted from 1901 to 1903, became caught in pack ice 80 km (50 mi) from the shore of East Antarctica, wintering on board and freeing themselves the following summer. The Swedish National Expedition from 1901 to 1904 set up a base on Snow Hill Island on the eastern flank of the Antarctic Peninsula; despite losing their ship in the pack ice, the crew explored the area north and south of the island. The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition of 1902 to 1904 wintered on the South Orkney Islands and explored the unknown east coast on the Weddell Sea. The expedition’s meteorological observatory on Laurie Island, taken over by the Argentine navy upon Scottish departure, has since provided Antarctica's longest unbroken climatic record. Two French expeditions led by physician Jean-Baptiste Charcot wintered in the peninsula area in 1903 and 1908, discovering the Loubet Coast north of Adelaide Island and exploring south into Marguerite Bay and the Bellingshausen Sea.

A

Race to the South Pole

In 1908 British explorer Ernest Shackleton, who had accompanied Scott on his earlier expedition, led a British expedition expressly to reach the South Pole. Pioneering a route from McMurdo Sound across the Ross Ice Shelf, and through the Transantarctic Mountains by way of the Beardmore Glacier, he and three colleagues reached the polar plateau. Lack of food forced the party to turn back within 179 km (111 mi) of the pole. In addition to attaining a new farthest-south point, they returned from the mountains with samples of coal. Due to the type of vegetation necessary for the formation of coal, this finding confirmed that Antarctica had once been semitropical. Other members of the same expedition, under William Edgeworth David, reached the south magnetic pole in 1909.

In 1910 Scott returned to McMurdo Sound, again to seek the pole. In October 1911 he and four companions left their base on Ross Island and began traveling along Shackleton's route, hauling their supplies on sleds. Scott’s party reached the pole on January 17, 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer with experience on both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, had reached the pole almost five weeks earlier. Scott and his party died on the return journey. Two of the men were injured along the route, and the rest died from starvation and exposure at a camp just short of their supply station.

Amundsen originally sought the North Pole, but when that was conquered in 1909 he set his sights on the South Pole. He and his companions set out from the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf near Roosevelt Island just four days before Scott’s team began their journey. Outmatching Scott's group in experience and technique and using efficient dog teams, Amundsen’s group climbed a steeper, shorter glacier (now Amundsen Glacier) to the plateau. They arrived at the pole on December 14, 1911, and arrived safely back at their base the following month.

With the pole conquered, explorers began to take on new challenges. In 1912 Australian scientist Douglas Mawson led the Australian Antarctic Expedition to explore the coast of East Antarctica directly south of Australia. An overland party explored the area now known as George V Land, although two of Mawson’s companions died and Mawson returned to his base barely alive. Shackleton returned in 1915, intending to cross the continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea by way of the pole. But his ship never reached the continent; it became trapped by the ice and sank ten months later. Shackleton reached South Georgia in a lifeboat, and returned to rescue his stranded men three months later.

B

Aerial Exploration

Despite these numerous land and sea expeditions, by 1920 explorers had surveyed only 5 percent of Antarctica. Advances in aviation and aerial photography rapidly increased the rate of exploration, and by 1940 most of the coast and several inland areas had been sighted and named. Australian aviator Sir George Hubert Wilkins made the first Antarctic flight in 1928, traveling 1,000 km (600 mi) from Deception Island along the Antarctic Peninsula.

In 1929 American aviator Richard Evelyn Byrd flew from the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf to the South Pole and back, taking aerial photographs of many square kilometers of Antarctica’s interior. Byrd returned to the same area to conduct more aerial photographic surveys between 1933 and 1935. Scientific sledging parties gathered scientific data and astronomical fixes that supplemented Byrd’s aerial photography. Byrd’s expeditions established that mountains and high plateau lay in every direction behind the Ross Ice Shelf and that Antarctica was beyond doubt a single continent.

Between 1929 and 1931 the British, Australian, and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) used floatplanes to explore and photograph many kilometers of East Antarctica’s coast. Between 1929 and 1934 Norwegian whaler Lars Christensen equipped his expeditions with seaplanes, which flew over and photographed the remote island of Bouvetoya and stretches of the Antarctic coast from Enderby Land to Coats Land. In 1936 American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth crossed Antarctica by air, flying from Dundee Island at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula to the Bay of Whales. In 1938 a German expedition flew over and photographed an extensive area of East Antarctica now known as Queen Maud Land (Dronning Maud Land).

C

Land Claims

In 1908 Britain revived long-standing territorial claims, based on discovery, to South Georgia, the South Shetland, South Orkney, and South Sandwich islands, as well as Graham Land, to justify the control and taxation of whaling in those areas. In 1923 Britain claimed the Ross Ice Shelf and adjacent coasts (now Ross Dependency) for similar reasons. In 1924 France claimed Adélie Land, a narrow sector of East Antarctica where Dumont d'Urville had landed in 1840. In 1933 Britain claimed the sectors of East Antarctica that BANZARE had explored as an Australian territory; this area was formally declared the Australian Antarctic Territory in 1936. Spurred by the possibility of a German claim, Norway in 1939 claimed the sector of East Antarctica later called Queen Maud Land, along with Peter I Island and Bouvetoya. When Britain set up wartime stations in the peninsular region in 1943, Argentina and Chile lodged rival claims to the sector. Because U.S. policy for Antarctica states that all nations should have free access for peaceful pursuits, the U.S. government did not support claims made by American explorers and does not recognize any foreign territorial claims.

IV

Management and Conservation

During the exploratory period of Antarctic history, scientific research was less important than discovery. In 1939 the U.S. Antarctic Service Expedition under Richard Byrd introduced the concept of permanent stations with science as a major objective. Two stations, at Bay of Whales and Stonington Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, opened in 1941, but closed after a year when the United States entered World War II. In 1943 Britain set up several permanent stations. Although the British stations were set up primarily to assert sovereignty against Argentine and Chilean claims in the maritime Antarctic, they were staffed by scientists.

Establishment of these early bases began the era of scientific research that was closely coupled with political rivalry. During this period Argentina, Australia, Chile, and France established permanent national expeditions, both to maintain territorial claims and to conduct scientific research. In 1946 the United States conducted Operation Highjump, the largest Antarctic expedition to date, involving massive exploration by means of ships, aircraft, and temporary land stations. This operation also gave U.S. military forces experience in polar conditions, seen as a necessity should a confrontation with Soviet troops occur in the Arctic region of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Against the backdrop of the Cold War, a period of political tension between the Soviet Union and its associated nations and Western countries allied with the United States, the USSR declared its right to make an Antarctic territorial claim in 1950.

The International Geophysical Year (IGY), a period of worldwide coordinated geophysical research from July 1957 to December 1958, proved a useful step toward resolving political disputes in Antarctica. Twelve nations (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the United States, and the USSR) agreed to cooperate on scientific research in Antarctica. Starting a year beforehand, survey parties established research stations on an unprecedented scale. During the IGY more than 5,000 scientists and support staff served at 49 Antarctic stations. Projects included studies of a wide range of geophysical topics such as upper atmosphere physics, meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, seismology, and geology. The IGY led to the establishment in 1958 of the Special (later Scientific) Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), a group designed to coordinate additional research; SCAR continues in that same function today.

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