South Pole

by Elizabeth Leane

  1823 British sealing captain James Weddell achieves a new farthest south of 74°15´

  1841 James Clark Ross, leading a British naval expedition, locates the position of the Magnetic South Pole

  1842 Ross’s expedition achieves new farthest south of 78°10´

  1899 Norwegian-born Carsten Borchgrevink leads the first expedition to spend a winter on the Antarctic continent, makes a brief overland journey and betters Ross’s farthest south by a small margin

  1902 A three-man party led by Robert F. Scott makes the first substantial sledging journey towards the South Pole, achieving a farthest south of 82°17´

  1909 A four-man party led by Ernest Shackleton comes within 100 nautical miles of the South Pole, achieving a farthest south of 88°23´

  1909 Three members of Shackleton’s expedition reach the vicinity of the Magnetic South Pole

  1911 A five-man Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen reaches the South Pole on 14 December

  1912 A five-man team led by Scott also reaches the Pole, on 17 January; all members die on the return journey

  1929 An American expedition led by naval aviator Richard E. Byrd makes first flight over the Pole

  1956 A U.S. Navy aircraft lands at the South Pole; Rear Admiral George J. Dufek and companions become first people to set foot at the South Pole since Scott’s men

  1957 First station at the South Pole begins operation

  1957–8 International Geophysical Year: as part of this coordinated scientific effort, twelve nations establish over 50 stations in the Antarctic.

  1958 New Zealander Edmund Hillary, as part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, leads tractor journey to the South Pole – the first overland traverse since Scott

  1959 Antarctic Treaty signed (enters into force in 1961)

  1965 First flight over the South Pole by a private plane, The Pole Cat

  1968 First tourist flight over the South Pole

  1969 First time women stand at the South Pole

  1970 First civilian flight arrives at the South Pole

  1975 New National Science Foundation ‘Dome’ Station at the South Pole begins operation

  1988 First tourist flight arrives at the South Pole

  1989 First guided tourist traversing group arrives at the South Pole

  1991 Madrid Protocol signed (enters into force in 1998)

  1993 Norwegian Erling Kagge makes first unassisted, unsupported solo journey to the Pole

  2002–6 Construction of ‘South Pole Traverse’ – compacted snow route between McMurdo and the Pole

  2008 Third South Pole station officially opened

  2011–12 Amundsen/Scott centenary expeditions and ceremonies

  2048 Madrid Protocol prohibiting mining in Antarctica will be open for review

  REFERENCES

  1 Where is the South Pole?

  1 Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the ‘Fram’, 1910–1912 (London, 2001), vol. II, p. 121.

  2 Ibid, pp. 132–3.

  3 Robert Falcon Scott, Journals: Captain Scott’s Last Expedition, ed. Max Jones (Oxford, 2006), 18 January 1912, p. 377.

  4 Olav Orheim, ‘The Present Location of the Tent that Roald Amundsen Left Behind at the South Pole in December 1911’, Polar Record, XLVII (2011), p. 269.

  5 Peter Rejcek, ‘A Good Point’, Antarctic Sun, 1 January 2010, available at http://antarcticsun.usap.gov.

  6 Jeremy D. Stilwell and John A. Long, Frozen in Time: Prehistoric Life in Antarctica (Collingwood, Vic, 2011), pp. 13–15.

  7 J. L. Chen et al., ‘Rapid Ice Melting Drives Earth’s Pole to the East’, Geophysical Research Letters, XL/11 (16 June 2013), pp. 2625–30.

  8 The empirical data available for the North Pole is missing for its more remote cousin. See Giancarlo Scalera, ‘TPW and Polar Motion as Due to an Asymmetrical Earth Expansion’, Annals of Geophysics, Supplement to XLIX/1 (2006), pp. 496–7.

  9 Chen et al., ‘Rapid Ice’.

  10 Aristotle, On the Heavens, 285b8ff; Meteorologica, 362a32ff.

  11 This summary of ancient Greek and medieval conceptions of the South Pole is drawn from Dirk L. Couprie, Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology: From Thales to Heraclides Ponticus (New York and London, 2011), and personal communication (email, 17 April 2013).

  12 Gillian Turner, North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism (New York, 2011), pp. 9, 14–17, 23.

  13 Ibid., pp. 23, 34–44.

  14 Ibid., pp. 53–4.

  15 James Ross, in John Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage, and of a Residence in the Arctic Regions during the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833: Including the Reports of Commander, now Captain, James Clark Ross (London, 1835), p. 558.

  16 Coordinates for the magnetic poles at five-year intervals from 1900 to 2015 can be found at ‘Magnetic Poles’, British Geological Survey, available at www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk.

  17 Nicola Jones, ‘Tracking the Magnetic South Pole’, Nature News, 28 December 2011, available at www.nature.com.

  18 Letter to Arthur Swindells, 17 November 1911, Andrew Inglis Clark papers C4/M90. Rare and Special Collections, University of Tasmania Library.

  19 See Bernadette Hince, The Antarctic Dictionary: A Complete Guide to Antarctic English (Collingwood, Vic, 2000), p. 338.

  20 T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ in Four Quartets, in Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (London and Boston, MA, 1974), p. 191.

  2 Maps and Mythologies

  1 Bernadette Hince, ‘Something’s Missing Down There’, programme transcript, Ockham’s Razor, Radio National, 10 October 2004, available at www.abc.net.au.

  2 Aristotle, On the Heavens, 285b8ff, and Meteorologica, 362a32ff.

  3 Gillian Turner, North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism (New York, 2011), p. 10.

  4 Nathaniel Harris, Mapping the World: Maps and their History (London, 2002), p. 62.

  5 Jorge Guzmán-Gutiérrez, ‘Imaging and Mapping Antarctica and the Southern Ocean’, Imago Mundi, LXII/2 (2010), p. 264.

  6 Robert Clancy, The Mapping of Terra Australis (Macquarie Park, NSW, 1995), p. 122.

  7 Gregory C. McIntosh, The Piri Reis Map of 1513 (Athens, GA, and London, 2000), p. 63.

  8 Corneille Wytfliet, ‘Chica sive Patagonica et Avstralis Terra’ from Histoire universelle des Indes occidentales et orientales (1597). The map can be viewed online at the State Library of New South Wales ‘Finding Antarctica’ exhibition website – see ‘Associations and Websites’ at the end of this book.

  9 Andrew Gosling, ‘Unexpected Treasures from Asia’, National Library Magazine [Australia] (June 2011), p. 5.

  10 Chet Van Duzer, ‘Cartographic Invention: The Southern Continent on Vatican MS Urb. Lat. 274, Folios 73v–74r (c. 1530)’, Imago Mundi, XXIX/2 (2007), p. 202.

  11 Christopher Wortham, ‘Meanings of the South: From the Mappaemundi to Shakespeare’s Othello’, in European Perceptions of ‘Terra Australis’, ed. Anne Scott et al. (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT, 2011), p. 65; Dirk L. Courpie, personal communication (email, 20 June 2013).

  12 Sanjay Chaturvedi, Dawning of Antarctica: A Geopolitical Analysis (New Delhi, 1990), p. 17.

  13 McIntosh, The Piri Reis Map, chapter 6.

  14 Roslynn D. Haynes, ‘Astronomy and the Dreaming: The Astronomy of the Aboriginal Australians’, Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Astronomy, ed. Helaine Selin (Boston, MA, and London, 2000) p. 59; and personal communication (email, 18 April 2013).

  15 Johannes Wilbert, ed., Folk Literature of the Selknam Indians: Martin Gusinde’s Collection of Selknam Narratives (Los Angeles, CA, 1975), p. 141.

  16 Turi McFarlane, ‘Maori Associations with the Antarctic / Tiro o te Moana ki re Tonga’, Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch (2007), p. 5, available at www.anta.canterbury.ac.nz.

  17 Chet Van Duzer,
‘The Mythic Geography of the Northern Polar Regions: Inventio fortunata and Buddhist Cosmology’, Culturas Populares: Revista Electrónica, II (2006), p. 8; Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the New World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472–1700 (London, 1987), p. 26.

  18 Van Duzer, ‘Mythic Geography’, p. 9.

  19 Chet Van Duzer, ‘The Cartography, Geography, and Hydrography of the Southern Ring Continent, 1515–1763’, Orbis Terrarum, VIII (2002), p. 137.

  20 James Ross, in John Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage, and of a Residence in the Arctic Regions during the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833: Including the Reports of Commander, now Captain, James Clark Ross (London, 1835), p. 555.

  21 Quoted in Bill Leadbetter, ‘The Roman South’, in European Perceptions of ‘Terra Australis’, p. 47.

  22 Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ‘An Eighteenth-century Cosmographic Globe from India’, Cartographica, XXX (1993), p. 83.

  23 Ibid., p. 75; Chaturvedi, Dawning of Antarctica, p. 17.

  24 Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival (Kempton, IL, 1996), pp. 125, 134.

  25 Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 139, 145, 148.

  26 Carpenter’s film is based on the novella ‘Who Goes There?’ (1938) by John W. Campbell Jr, set at the Magnetic South Pole.

  27 It seems to have derived from a letter Shackleton wrote to a friend in 1917, in which he referred to ‘my own White South’. See Margery Fisher and James Fisher, Shackleton (London, 1957), p. 330.

  28 Ranulph Fiennes, ‘Introduction: This Endless Horizon’, in Kari Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones, In Search of the South Pole (London, 2011), p. 17.

  29 Quoted in Herbert and Lewis-Jones, In Search of the South Pole, p. 168.

  30 Thomas Pynchon, V (Philadelphia, PA, and New York, 1963), pp. 241, 204–6.

  31 Elena Glasberg, Antarctica as Cultural Critique: The Gendered Politics of Scientific Exploration and Climate Change (New York, 2012), p. 9.

  32 Laura Kurgan, Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (New York, 2013), p. 9.

  33 Ben Cosgrove, ‘Home, Sweet Home: In Praise of the “Blue Marble”’, life.com, available at http://life.time.com, accessed 15 April 2015.

  3 Polar Imaginations

  1 Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, trans. William Butcher (Oxford, 1998), p. 312.

  2 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. H. R. Huse (San Francisco, CA, 1954), Inferno, Canto 26, lines 127–8.

  3 Relation d’un voyage du Pole Arctique, au Pole Antarctique, par le centre du monde … (Amsterdam, 1721). Quotations are from translated excerpts in Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology, ed. Peter Fitting (Middletown, CT, 2004), pp. 27–8.

  4 A common assumption about the South Polar regions in early fiction was that they were shrouded in continual darkness. See Fitting, ed., Subterranean Worlds, p. 199.

  5 Joseph Hall, Another World and Yet the Same: Bishop Joseph Hall’s ‘Mundus alter et idem’ (New Haven, CT, 1981), pp. 79–84.

  6 Daniel Defoe, A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed Before (London, 1725 [1724]), p. 189.

  7 Christopher Spotswood, Voyage of Will Rogers to the South Pole (Launceston, Tasmania, 1888), p. 30.

  8 George McIver, Neuroomia: A New Continent. A Manuscript Delivered from the Deep (London, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, 1894), p. 136.

  9 W. E. Johns, Biggles Breaks the Silence (London, 1949), p. 31.

  10 Quoted in David Fausett, Images of the Antipodes in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Stereotyping (Amsterdam, 1995), p. 155.

  11 James De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (Ottawa, 1986), pp. 179–80.

  12 Frank Cowan, Revi-Lona: A Romance of Love in a Marvellous Land (New York, 1978), p. 3.

  13 Ibid., Revi-Lona, p. 68.

  14 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘MS Found in a Bottle’, in Selected Tales (Oxford and New York, 1980), pp. 15–16.

  15 Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (New York, 1999), pp. 216–17.

  16 James Fenimore Cooper, The Monikins [1835] (Albany, NY, 1990), p. 117.

  17 Thomas Erskine, Armata [1817], in Modern British Utopias, ed. Gregory Claeys (London, 1997), vol. VI, p. 7.

  4 Pole-hunting

  1 W. B. Maxwell, Spinster of this Parish (New York, 1922), pp. 116–17.

  2 John Watson Cummins, ‘Himself and Mr Maxwell: The Life and Works of W. B. Maxwell (1866–1938)’, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1964), p. 164.

  3 Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the ‘Fram’, 1910–1912, trans. A. G. Chater [1912] (London, 2002), vol. I, p. 3.

  4 Ibid.

  5 James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World (Adelaide, 1970), vol. I, pp. xvii, 3, 267–8.

  6 James Weddell, A Voyage Towards the South Pole Performed in the Years 1822–24, Containing an Examination of the Antarctic Sea (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1970), pp. 37, 281.

  7 Jules S.-C. Dumont d’Urville, Two Voyages to the South Seas, trans. Helen Rosenman (Collingwood, Vic, 1987), vol. II, p. 318.

  8 Granville Allen Mawer, South by Northwest: The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica (Kent Town, SA, 2006), p. 28.

  9 Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition. During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 (London, 1845), vol. I, p. xxvi.

  10 James Clark Ross, A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions During the Years 1839–43 (Cambridge, 2011), vol. I, p. xxiv.

  11 Ibid., p. 246.

  12 H. J. Bull, The Cruise of the ‘Antarctic’ to the South Polar Regions (London and New York, 1896), p. 233.

  13 Carsten Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent: Being an Account of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1898–1900 (London and Canberra, 1980), p. 1.

  14 Michael H. Rosove, Let Heroes Speak: Antarctic Explorers, 1772–1922 (New York, 2002), p. 76.

  15 Mawer, South by Northwest, p. 165.

  16 William S. Bruce, quoted in Innes M. Keighren, ‘Of Poles, Pressmen and the Newspaper Public: Reporting the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-1904’, Scottish Geographical Journal, CXXI/2 (2005), p. 211.

  17 Robert F. Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’, vol. I (Stroud, 2005), p. 32.

  18 Clements Markham, Lands of Silence: A History of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration (Cambridge, 1912), p. 453.

  19 Edward Wilson, Diary of the ‘Discovery’ Expedition to the Antarctic, 1901–1904 (London, 1966), 12 June 1902, p. 151.

  20 Scott, Voyage of the ‘Discovery’, vol. II, p. 71.

  21 Edgeworth David, in E. H. Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–1909 (Philadelphia, PA, 1909), vol. II, p. 179.

  22 M. E. David, Professor David: The Life of Edgeworth David (London, 1937), pp. 164–5.

  23 Edgeworth David, in Shackleton, Heart of the Antarctic, vol. II, p. 181.

  24 Douglas Mawson, Mawson’s Antarctic Diaries, ed. Fred Jacka and Eleanor Jacka (Crows Nest, NSW, 2008), p. 46.

  25 Philip Ayres, Mawson: A Life (Carlton, Vic, 1999), p. 70.

  26 Quoted in Margery Fisher and James Fisher, Shackleton (London, 1957), p. 219.

  27 Amundsen, South Pole, vol. I, p. 42; vol. II, p. 121.

  28 Ibid., vol. I, p. 45.

  29 Ibid., p. 52.

  30 Ibid., vol. II, p. 133.

  31 Shirase Antarctic Expedition Supporters’ Association, The Japanese South Polar Expedition, 1910–12, trans. Lara Dagnell and Hilary Shibata (Norwich and Huntingdon, 2011), p. 88.

  32 ‘Shirase’, Scott Polar Research Institute website, available at www.spri.cam.ac.uk, accessed 15 April 2015.

  33 Robert Falcon Scott, Journals: Scott’s Last Expedition (Oxford, 2006), 17 January 1912, p. 376.

  34 Ibid., 16 January 1912, p. 376.

&
nbsp; 35 Ibid., October 1911, p. 302.

  36 Theodore K. Mason, The South Pole Ponies: The Forgotten Heroes of Antarctic Exploration (Glasgow, KY, 2007), p. 94.

  37 Scott, Journals, 3 January 1912, p. 365.

  38 Ibid., 17 January 1912, p. 376; and ibid., 18 January 1912, p. 377.

  39 Ibid., 19 January 1912, p. 380.

  40 Ibid., 7 February 1912, p. 391.

  41 Ibid., 16 February 1912, p. 396.

  42 Ibid., 19 February 1912, p. 399.

  43 Ibid., 6 March 1912, p. 407.

  44 Ibid., 16 or 17 March 1912, p. 410.

  45 Ibid., 29 March 1912, p. 412.

  46 Amundsen, South Pole, vol. I, pp. 237–8.

  47 Simon Nasht, The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Australia’s Unknown Hero (Sydney, 2005), pp. 177–8.

  48 Quoted in David Burke, Moments of Terror: The Story of Antarctic Aviation (Kensington, NSW, 1994), p. 53.

  49 Richard E. Byrd, Little America: Aerial Exploration in the Antarctic and the Flight to the South Pole (London, 1931), p. 240.

  50 Edmund Hillary, View from the Summit: The Remarkable Memoir by the First Person to Conquer Everest (New York, 2000), p. 180.

  5 Settling in at ‘Ninety South’

  1 Quoted in Paul Siple, 90° South: The Story of the American South Pole Conquest (New York, 1959), p. 20.

  2 Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica [1997] (London, 1998), pp. 224, 227.

  3 Jerri Nielsen, with Maryanne Vollers, Ice Bound: One Woman’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole (London, 2001), p. 67.

  4 William L. Fox, Terra Incognita: Looking into the Emptiest Continent (San Antonio, TX, 2005), p. 107.

  5 Nicholas Johnson, Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica (Los Angeles, CA, 2005), p. 90.

  6 Siple, 90° South, p. 170.

  7 Ibid., p. 228.

  8 Ibid., p. 176.

  9 Paul Siple, ‘We are Living at the South Pole’, National Geographic Magazine, CXII/1 (1957), p. 14.

  10 Ibid., p. 20.

  11 Siple, 90° South, pp. 238, 219, 221, 270–71; ‘We are Living at the South Pole’, p. 29.

  12 Siple, 90° South, pp. 205, 263, 268–74.

  13 Ibid., pp. 208–9.