HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEYS IN ADELIE LAND

[aukepalmhof]

The mint sheet depict a hydrographic map of the area between Cape André Prudhomme and l’Ile du Gouverneur in Adelie Land, Antarctic.

The craft depict is a small survey craft used I believe by the French Navy to survey the coast in shallow waters and in bays and inlets. Till so far the craft has not been identified.

By the mint sheet is given by the TAAF Post:

When nearing an unknown coast for the first time the primary concern of the captain of a ship is to obtain so much as possible information from charts and pilot books on the stretch of coast he is nearing and to avoid that the ship is running aground on reefs of shoals, and to ensure the safety of crew, passengers and cargo.

This is exactly what happened when Captain Max Douguet the commander of the polar ship COMMANDANT CHARCOT arrived with his ship off the coast of Adelie Land in January 1949 with on board the first French overwintering expedition.
It is true that in 1840 already Dumont d’Urville with two frigates the ASTROLABE and ZÈLÈE had discovered this coast south of Tasmania.
On board was a hydrographer Vincent Dumoulin to we owe the first sea-chart of this coast which was named Térre Adéle (Adelie Land) after the surname of the wife of Commander Dumont d’Urville.
Curiously for such a discovery sailing a few miles off the coast in the midst of broken pack ice that Dumont d’Uville met one of the ships of the American expedition of Charles Wilkes the schooner PORPOISE which was underway to Sydney in Australia?
Since these heroic times successive expedition took place to the Antarctic region especially after 1949 when every year a (French) mission winters on the coast of Adélie Land.
Despite some unfavourable ice conditions, several French hydrographic charts were published and included in the international maritime atlas.
Currently many nations have done the same in the areas they recognize, but in 2003, the date this is written the survey of the Antarctic coast is far from over and could take several decades more.

Written by Bertrand Imbert.

French Southern and Antarctic Territories 2004 4.90 Euro, sg?, scott?