Pioneers of Antarctica

[Anatol]

Many nations were involved in the discovery and early exploration of Antarctica. About 650 CE, however, long before European geographers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were to conjecture about Terra Australis Incognita, a mythical land to the far south, Rarotongan oral tradition tells of Ui-te-Rangiora, who sailed south of Aotearoa (New Zealand) to a frozen region. Tamarereti, a Polynesian explorer, also saw the icy south, according to oral tradition. -European explorers first approached Antarctica in 1520, when Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan rounded South America during his journey to circumnavigate the world.
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. See more: viewtopic.php?t=7408.

During the Russian expedition of 1819-21, on the sloops Vostok and Mirny, Bellingshausen and Lazarev became the first explorers to see the land of Antarctica on 27 January 1820. They circumnavigated the continent twice and never lost each other from view. The expedition discovered and named Peter I Island, Zavodovski, Leskov and Visokoi Islands, the Antarctic Peninsula and Alexander Coast.

Europeans started exploring Earth’s far southern reaches in the late 18th century for two main reasons: commercial gain and charting cartographic and magnetic contours.
Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville’s French expedition of 1837–40 discovered Adélie Land and later claimed it for France. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 7810.

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. At the turn of the century, expeditions scrambled to explore Antarctica. They proved the feasibility of Antarctic overwintering and introduced new technologies.

The first French expedition was in 1903 under pressure from Jean-Baptiste Charcot. Originally conceived as an expedition to assist the stranded Nordenskiöld group, the main task of this expedition was to map and chart the islands and the western coast of Graeman's Land in the Antarctic Peninsula. Part of the study was explored and named Loubev's Land in honor of the President of France. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 6001

National and personal prestige in attaining the Earth’s poles, as well as territorial acquisition and scientific inquiry, provided strong motivation for polar exploration in the early 1900s.
One of the most famous polar explorers in history, Norwegian Amundsen was the first to reach both the North and South Pole in his lifetime. In the race to reach the South Pole, Amundsen was competing against Robert Falcon Scott (see below), but compared with Scott’s difficult mission, the Norwegian’s expedition ran relatively smoothly; Whereas Amundsen’s party of skiers and dog teams, using the Axel Heiberg Glacier route, arrived back at Framheim Station at the Bay of Whales with little difficulty. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 6226.
One month later, on January 17, 1912, Scott of the British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–13 also reached the South Pole. Scott set off with five men on a quest to reach the South Pole first, but upon arrival discovered that Amundsen’s expedition had beaten him to it by a mere four weeks. On the return journey, the crew hit a blinding blizzard, resulting in scurvy, dehydration and hypotherm .The group dies on the Ross Ice Shelf. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 9159.
Australian Mawson was another pioneer during the age of Antarctic exploration. He joined Shackleton’s 1907 Nimrod expedition, where he also met his mentor, Edgeworth David.
Mawson turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed Terra Nova Expedition, instead opting to lead his own mission in 1911 to the sector of Antarctica south of Australia, which at that time was completely unexplored.
He was also the first explorer to bring a plane to Antarctica, with the idea of doing aerial exploration of the region. However, the plane was damaged en route and the engine did not operate well in the Antarctic climate. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 7776.

Shackleton organized the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition (1914–1917). Disaster struck in 1915 when his ship, the Endurance, was caught and later crushed by the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. The crew's final escape to South Georgia via Elephant Island is one of the enduring stories of polar heroism. See more: viewtopic.php?t= 8164.
TAAF 2022; 10,50e carnet.
Sources: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/hi ... -explorers.
https://bellingshausenvodka.com/post/27 ... ngshausen/, and : various web-sites.