ANTARCTICA, EXPLORED
Marking the bicentenary of our relationship with the great ice continent.
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK is credited with many discoveries, but Antarctica is not among them. Although Cook, on his 1772–75 voyage, was the first navigator inside the Antarctic Circle and to circumnavigate Terra Australis Incognita, the mythical and unconfirmed great southern land, he never laid eyes on the icy continent.
Cook’s published journal of 1777 predicted Antarctica’s existence based on the extensive sea ice he’d encountered. But he concluded that future explorers would likely never venture further south than he had. “Thick fogs, snow storms, intense cold and every other thing that can render navigation dangerous must be encountered; and these difficulties are greatly heightened by the inexpressibly horrid aspect of the country,” he wrote. For years, the matter of the frozen southern land was closed.
By 1819 discovery of the southern continent was again deemed necessary. Russian Captain Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, a great admirer of Cook, was deployed by his emperor, Alexander I, on a mission to proceed as far south as possible. Armed with a copy of Cook’s records, Bellingshausen helmed an expedition comprising two ships, the 40m-long Vostok and the smaller Mirny. The two ships proceeded south and crossed the Antarctic Circle on 26 January 1820, the first expedition to do so since Cook’s 47 years earlier. On 27 January, Bellingshausen recorded seeing great ice cliffs and mountains of ice about 32km from what is now Queen Maud Land. In the coming days, their path neared continental land twice more. After horrific storms, the expedition retreated to Sydney, returning to complete its Antarctic circumnavigation the next summer. On 30 January 1820, three days after Bellingshausen’s journal entry, Irish-born navigator Edward Bransfield, on a British expedition, sighted Trinity Land (now the Antarctic Peninsula). Importantly, he knew he’d gazed upon the fabled Terra Australis Incognita.
Throw into the mix American Nathaniel Palmer, who found the Antarctic Peninsula on 18 November 1820, and the battle for who discovered the Antarctic mainland is still contentious today. While it’s likely Bellingshausen was the first to clamp eyes on the continent, he’d not realised his discovery. The journey’s official log was lost, and his story faded into obscurity. It was not until 1902 that Bellingshausen’s personal account was translated from Russian into German, and finally in 1945, to English, prompting many to declare him Antarctica’s unwitting discoverer.
BY 1820, WHEN the Antarctic mainland was discovered, fur seals were already being hunted. The death knell had sounded when Cook published records of his journey in 1777, recounting the huge seal resources in the southern oceans.
Sealers came from Britain, Europe and North America, harvesting pelts for fashionable clothing and hats. They arrived on South Georgia in 1788 and by the early 1900s Antarctic fur seals had all but disappeared from the island.
In 1819 British mariner William Smith discovered the Antarctic islands of South Shetland, and the sealers, seeking new colonies, rushed south. Smith himself, along with some 90 other sealing ships, operated in the South Shetlands in the 1820–21 season. When Bellingshausen visited him there in early 1821, Smith boasted his operation had harvested 60,000 skins. By the end of 1821, fur seal populations on the South Shetlands were almost destroyed.
Nathaniel Palmer was searching for new sealing grounds when he found continental Antarctica in November 1820, and in February 1821, English-born American sailor John Davis, also seeking seals, claimed to be the first to set foot on the Antarctic continent. With fur seals dwindling, elephant seals and some species of penguin were targeted for oil, and operations continued intermittently during the 19th century.
Whaling in Antarctic waters began in earnest in 1904 when a whale-oil processing station was established on South Georgia. As whales stocks dwindled catchers were forced to venture further afield. In the summer of 1929, some 29,000 blue whales were harvested, and, as they too declined, whalers targeted other species. By 1960 1.4 million whales had been removed from Antarctic waters.
WITH THE PRESENCE OF Antarctica firmly established, the stage was set for the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration from the late 19th century to 1917. During this time, some 17 major expeditions were launched. The famous race to the South Pole ended with Norwegian Roald Amundsen being the first on 14 December 1911. He was followed to the pole 34 days later by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, whose entire party perished on their return journey.
Australian geologist Douglas Mawson eschewed Antarctic races. Despite the tragic loss of team members Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz (see page 16), and his own near death, Mawson and his team explored more than 6000km of Antarctic territory during their Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911–14. They recorded discoveries in the fields of geology, geography, oceanography, meteorology, and magnetism; documented the Aurora Australis; and were first to use radio in the Antarctic.
Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17 earned him a reputation for unshakeable leadership. Following the destruction of its ship, the Endurance, in sea ice, the expedition made it to inhospitable Elephant Island. Shackleton and a skeleton crew continued some 1300km to South Georgia in a lifeboat, and returned to rescue all the rest of the men.
FOLLOWING THE HEROIC AGE, scientific exploration continued at a less frenetic rate. Several countries laid claim to land in Antarctica during and after World War II, for strategic military purposes and to investigate potential resources. Following years of minor conflict, 12 countries with scientific interests in the southernmost continent came together in 1959, signing the Antarctic Treaty – the overarching instrument that controls the uses of Antarctica today. A total of 54 nations are now parties to the agreement.
The treaty declares that Antarctica should be used for peaceful purposes and that scientific investigations can be conducted freely and shared. Under the treaty, the status of land claims cannot be advanced or altered. Although any party can call for a review of the treaty, to date none have done so.
In 1991, led by then Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and French prime minister Michel Rocard, the parties adopted the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (known as the Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, or the
Douglas Mawson eschewed Antarctic races, recording discoveries in geology, geography and documenting the Aurora Australis.