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"Who can bear everything can risk everything." - Vauvenargues
In 350 BC it was the Greeks who 'invented' Antarctica, thereby enabling it to be discovered almost 2,000 years later.
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1519
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In the Christian Middle Ages, the imaginary sphere-shaped world was not developed further. In 1519 Magellan discovered the through way to the Pacific, and reported that he had
sighted mountains in the south, which he named Tierra del Fuego.
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1769/75
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Almost two centuries passed until the British Captain James Cook appeared to be successful at last.
He circumnavigated the last unknown continent of the world. He was the first to cross the southern polar circle and sail along the border of the pack ice.
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In 1820 William Smith had to share the fame with Captain N.B. Palmer (USA) and with Baron von Bellingshausen (USSR), who saw the Antarctic
peninsula through their telescopes at the same time. From
then on, only one group of people was to interest itself in Antarctica - whalers and seal hunters.
The animal population of the northern hemisphere had been exhausted; they were looking for fresh fields.
The explorers took a back seat.
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1838/43
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The first American Antarctic expedition was lead by Charles Wilkes.
James Ross, air experienced Arctic captain, navigated his way along the limit of the pack ice.
The thirst for knowledge was for the time being quenched: the whalers picked up rich harvests.
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1898
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On 24 January 1895, modern man set foot on the soil of Antarctica for the first time: the
Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink. Whether South American Indians had been there
already remains controversial: arrow heads found later on the peninsula would suggest this.
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The coastline of Antarctica was known, by and large, as a result of the foregoing expeditions. Now
it was all about exploring the interior. At the same time about taking possession of the last
ownerless continent. There began the Antarctic career of the man who was to become the 'hero of the ice continent':Robert Falcon Scott.
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1901/04
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Scott was the chosen leader of the Royal Geographic Society Antarctic expedition.
He was the right man for the job, ambitious, strong and a British officer.
In 1902 he set a new southern record by covering less than half the distance to the Pole.
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1908/09
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On 20 October 1908 Ernest Henry Shackleton departed with half a dozen ponies and three companions.
Over the Ross Shelf Ice to the Beardmore Glacier Shackleton hoped to reach the polar plateau and press on towards the South Pole.
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In 1911, three and a half years later came the final race for the South Pole which was to result in two
successes and one tragedy. The two principals were Scott the Norwegian Roald Amundsen,
a man who was just as much at home in the Arctic as Antarctic, the first one to master the North-west Passage.
Amundsen, an experienced adventurer, was to become the most successful ice traveler of all time.
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1912/13
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Wilhelm Filchner formulated the next Antarctic challenge: to cross the ice waste from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea.
A crazy idea, whereby it was to be established whether the continent was a single land mass or split by a channel of ice.
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1914/17
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Sir E. H. Shackleton took up Filchner's idea. Under his command Endurance was to overwinter on the edge of the Filcliner Shelf
Ice. At the start of the Antarctic summer, Shackleton, accompanied by six men would then cross the continent.
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The 1920s saw in the Antarctic the stormy development of a new transport technique, flying.
George Hubert Wilkins, air Australian adventurer, was the first to put it to the test in
Antarctica. In 1928 he succeeded in winning the American newspaper tycoon,
Randolph Hearst, as sponsor for his Antarctic plans and realizing his dream. With two Lockheed
monoplanes he undertook, from Deception Island, the first flights over the Antarctic peninsula.
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1928/29
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On 24 December 1928, Richard Byrd, a highly decorated flying officer in the
WWI, lead the best equipped expedition to ever set foot in Antarctica.
He had at his disposal three aircraft, ninety-five dogs and fifty men.
His proposal: to fly to the South Pole.
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1934/35
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Lincoln Ellsworth Ellsworth proposed to combine Shackleton's idea and Byrd's technique in a crossing of Antarctica by aircraft; 'The last great adventure!'
Flying from Bay of Whales to the Weddell Sea and back again he would traverse 5,500 km.
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In later years Antarctica became more and more the playground of 'games of conquest'. Technical
know-how and political influences determined the journeys. Different nations carved themselves out
on the map various large pieces of the continent and defended their rights; they maintained that with
the claim they also held sovereignty. Previously, Goering had sent Dornier flying-boats to the
Antarctic and had had market poles with swastikas thrown out, to demonstrate the claims of the
Third Reich.
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1955/58
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In 1956 Captain George Dufek, landed his aircraft at the South Pole.
He was the first person to set foot on this point since Scott.
The year 1957 was declared International Geophysical Year: sixty research stations were set up in the Antarctic.
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Twenty-two years passed before another Antarctic crossing was attempted. British explorers
Ranulph Fiennes, Charles Burton and Oliver Shepard set to circle the
earth on longitude 0, the Greenwich Meridian. Their so-called 'Trans-Globe' expedition took them
to the region of the South Pole. In the same year, 1981, Robert Swan (b. 1956) from Britain, made the decision to march to the
South Pole 'in the footsteps of Scott'. The age of historical adventure games had begun.
(Antarctic Exploration Map, 54K). |
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1984/86
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Robert Swan, Roger Mear and Gareth Wood gained 500 sponsors to contribute. Departing October 1984, the intention was to follow
Scott's old route to the Pole in the style of the turn of the century: on foot, without radio, without air support, totally self-reliant.
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1986/87
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At about the same time, Norway's Monica Kristensen had the idea of repeating Amundsen's
march to the Pole with the same means as he had used. With her ship Aurora, likewise a reminder of Shackleton, the expedition left Oslo harbour in 1986.
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1989/90
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In 1990 an expedition was planned to serve world peace and ecology;
it was a public relations spectacular. That year Reinhold Messner and Arved Fuchs
took up the old Filchner/Shackleton plan for an Antarctic crossing in its original form.
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