Sea Gull was lost off Chile with all hands. But sealers considered their discoveries proprietary and kept the information to themselves (although drunken sailors were not always able to restrain from boasting about newfound sealing grounds). The 10 men left behind were some of the most solitary in history, having the entire Antarctic continent to themselves. A jealous Navy Department, meanwhile, did all it could to exclude civilian scientists from the expedition, though Wilkes did manage to take with him artist Titian Ramsey Peale. Sealing was an extremely hard life. Following a year-long ethnological voyage in the Pacific, during which 23 men died of dysentery and fever, Dumont d’Urville and his crews headed south again in January 1840. In the 18th century, British naval officer James Cook and others explored the sub-Antarctic region; Cook circumnavigated the globe in high southern latitudes between 1772 and 1775, proving that Terra Australis, if it existed at all, lay somewhere beyond the ice packs that he discovered between about 60° and 70° S. Who first saw the continent is controversial. Shackleton especially was suffering badly from scurvy – but accounts of the trip that say he had to be carried on the sledge are incorrect. In February 1775, during his second voyage, Captain Cook called the existence of such a polar continent "probable" and in another copy of his journal he wrote: "[I] firmly believe it and it's more than probable that we have seen a part of it". ‘It seemed so incredible, ’ Mawson wrote later, ‘that we half expected, on turning round, to find him standing there.’. During the first two decades of the 20th century, commonly called the “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration, great advances were made in not only geographic but also scientific knowledge of the continent. Some now speculate that this tardy departure was a deliberate attempt by de Gerlache to ensure that Belgica would be beset in pack ice and thus forced to remain in the Antarctic for the winter. But the meticulous Bellingshausen never noted this alleged act in his diaries or charts; the story appears to be fantasy. The expedition tested Antarctica’s first motorcar, an Arrol-Johnston, at Cape Royds. January 1773: Captain James Cook becomes the first recorded navigator to cross the Antarctic Circle. Later, he sailed in Jason on the same voyage that carried Fridtjof Nansen to Greenland for his famous east–west crossing in 1888. Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville’s French expedition of 1837–40 discovered Adélie Land and later claimed it for France. Actually, Scott and Wilson reached that point, Shackleton having been ordered to remain at camp that morning to look after the dogs. © The world is mad.’ That night a whaler was dispatched to pick up the three men left behind at King Haakon Bay. Borchgrevink’s expedition produced many positive results, including excellent maps of the Ross Sea area drawn by the expedition’s English surveyor and magnetician, William Colbeck of the Royal Navy, which would prove invaluable to later explorers. From there, it was a four-hour drone to the Pole, praying that Floyd Bennett’s engines would keep beating out their powerful rhythm. Unable to land, it returned to winter in Sydney, where Shirase and his countrymen set up camp in the garden of a well-to-do resident of suburban Vaucluse. Biologists study Antarctica’s unique biosphere with little to no signs of human interference. He went on to captain Nordenskjöld’s Antarctic in 1901, and to establish South Georgia’s Grytviken whaling station, Antarctica’s first, in 1904. Four years later, Charcot returned to Antarctica, this time leading an expedition sponsored by the French government, which granted him 600, 000 francs. After calculating on January 22, 1841 that he had surpassed Weddell’s furthest south, Ross turned for Hobart. The South Pole is near the middle of Antarctica. A delirious Evans died on February 17. Henry Bowers was added only the night before, a tactical error, since the food, tent and skis had been planned for a four-man team. In 1943 Britain began the permanent occupation of Antarctica, establishing Base A at Port Lockroy. Now a dangerous new threat had arisen. It was a useful shakedown – and made history as the first powered flight in Antarctica. Subsequent investigations have proven the accuracy of most of Wilkes’ delineation of the Antarctic coastline he followed. While the polar party was out, Douglas Mawson and Alistair Mackay, with Professor David again leading, hiked nearly 1600km to the South Magnetic Pole, reaching it on January 16, 1909, the first time it had been visited. After Ross’ important discoveries, Antarctica was once again ignored by the rest of the world, which was distracted by things such as the slave trade and the Crimean War. Among the fossil evidence found in Antarctica that clearly supports the supercontinent theory is a deciduous conifer (Glossopteris), a fern (Dicroidium) and a terrestrial reptile (Lystrosaurus). By mid-February 1902, Scott’s men had established winter quarters at Hut Point on Ross Island. The Antarctic winter closed in before Deutschland could escape to lower latitudes and the ship was beset and drifted for nine months. The next day, Ross sighted land, an unexpected development. Antarctica was to be just one area of its endeavor, and a minor one at that: Wilkes was also directed to explore the whole of the Pacific, from Chile to Australia to the northwest coast of North America. When Southern Cross returned on January 28, 1900, to pick up the expedition, it had proven a critical fact: humans could survive Antarctica’s winter ashore, using a wooden hut as a base for exploration. According to scientific theory, some 200 million years ago Antarctica was joined to South America, Africa, India, and Australia in a single large continent called Gondwana. Upon his death in 1921, his ashes were carried south and poured into the Southern Ocean. Sailing from New Zealand on November 29, 1910, in Terra Nova, the old Scottish whaler that had been one of the two relief ships sent at the end of the Discovery expedition, Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition got off to a rough start. At Cape Denison on Commonwealth Bay, he set up his base, unaware that the roaring katabatics make the spot one of the windiest places on earth. Ten million years later, Gondwana began the enormously slow process of breaking into the pieces we recognize today, and the continents, subcontinent and islands began moving into their present positions. Rising on an enormous wave, Terror landed on Erebus, breaking away Erebus’ bowsprit, foretopmast, booms, yards and stays. In 1901 he declined the offer of a position on Scott’s expedition because he was in the midst of planning his own Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. Finding a note the three had left at their hut, Larsen decided he would have to follow by sea the route that the Hope Bay men were taking to Snow Hill Island. In March the expedition suffered Antarctica’s first plane crash, but luckily no one was in The Virginian. The remaining dogs by now were nearly worthless, and soon were hitched behind the sledge, which the men pulled themselves. A growing interest in the earth and atmospheric sciences during the late 1940s prompted the declaration of the International Geophysical Year. He spent three winters in the Arctic, learning from the native Inuit much about polar clothing, travel and dog-handling that would later prove invaluable. Drygalski named the territory Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. History. If there were any remaining doubt how Cook felt about the prospects of a still-undiscovered Antarctica, he later underscored this opinion: ...whoever has resolution and perseverance to clear up this point by proceeding farther than I have done, I shall not envy him the honour of discovery, but I will be bold to say that the world will not be benefited by it. 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