650: A BITTER PLACE OF COLD
Ui-te-Rangiora (a 7th Century Maori navigator from the island of Rarotonga) is believed to have first encountered the Ross Ice Shelf. According to disputed legend, Uti-te-Rangiora lead a fleet of Waka Tiwai’s south until they reached “a place of bitter cold where rock-like structures rose from a solid sea”.
1 JANUARY 1739: HAPPY NEW YEAR
Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier discovers Bouvet Island, an uninhabited Antarctic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is still the most remote island in the world.
12 FEBURARY 1772: DESOLATION ROW
Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec sets sail in seach of the fabled Terra Australis Incognita (Latin for “the unknown land of the South) and uncovers the Antarctic. He discovers the Kerguelen Islands instead, also known as the Desolation Islands.
17 JANUARY 1773: THE SHIP OF CHOICE
HMS Resolution (dubbed “the ship of my choice” by Captain James Cook) becomes the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle.
3 FEBRUARY 1774: THIRD CROSSING
Cook’s HMS Resolution reaches 71° 10’ S, coming within 75 miles of the Antarctic without actually seeing it.
19 FEBRUARY 1819: CATCHING THE WIND
In an attempt to catch the right winds, English captain William Smith (while sailing cargo from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso) sailed further south and spotted new land. The South Shetland Islands -as they were later called - are a group of Antarctic islands lying 120km north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
28 JANUARY 1820: SPOTTING THE MAINLAND
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovers Antarctic mainland at Princess Martha Coast and spots ice-fields there.
17 NOVEMBER 1820: HEROES
Nathaniel Palmer become the first Americans to discovery the Antarctic Peninsula – in a demure sloop named the Hero (the boat was only 14 metres in length).
7 FEBRUARY 1821: ALL ABOARD THE CECILIA
Captain John Davis (aboard the Cecilia) claimed he and his men landed on Hughes Bay in Antarctica for less than an hour, looking for seals. Though his claim has since been disputed, they are the first recorded humans to claim to have set foot on the continent.
APRIL 1832: THE THIRD MAN
John Biscoe becomes the third man (after James Cook and Fabian von Bellingshausen) to circumnavigate the Antarctic continent.
FEBRUARY 1839: THE BALLENY CORRIDOR
The Balleny squadron logged a break in the pack ice, discovering the Balleny Islands. The Balleny corridor would be used by future explorers such as Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton – and is even used to this day by surface vessels.
28 JANUARY 1941: THE CLIFFS OF DOVER
The Ross Ice Shelf is discovered. Sir James Clark Ross, finding his way into open water and hoping for a clear passage to determine the position of the South Magnetic Pole, discovers an enormous mass of ice. Ross exclaimed: “Well, there’s no more chance of sailing through that than through the cliffs of Dover.”
28 FEBRUARY 1896: AN ENDLESS SEA OF ICE
Adrien de Gerlache and his crew sail deep into the ice of the Bellinghausen Sea, trapping the vessel for the winter. The expedition’s doctor wrote: ‘We are imprisoned in an endless sea of ice…time weighs heavily upon us as the darkness slowly advances.’
1901-1904: VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
The first official British exploration of the Antarctic since Ross in 1841. The new expedition was considered a landmark in British Antarctic exploration history, its scientific results diversely covering biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism.
1907-1909: JOURNEY SOUTH
The Nimrod Expedition was the first of three led by Ernest Shackleton. Though it failed to achieve its main objective (the South Pole) it was by far the longest southern polar journey at the time.
14 DECEMBER 1911: AMUNDSEN CLAIMS THE SOUTH POLE
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team become the first to reach the South Pole.
17 JANUARY 1912: PIPPED TO THE POST
Scott and his four companions reach the South Pole only to discover that Roald’s Norwegian team preceded them by 33 days.
12 NOVEMBER 1912: SEARCH PARTY
Remaining expedition members find the tent containing the frozen bodies of three of the Terra Nova explorers: Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Robertson Bowers.
21 FEBRUARY 1915: DRIFTING ENDURANCE
Shackleton’s Endurance routine is abandoned after the ship finds itself stuck in the Weddell Sea ice. Eventually the ship crushed and sunk stranding the 28 men on the ice – after months spent in makeshift tents, the party took lifeboats to reach Elephant Island. The Endurance Expedition is considered the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
1921-1922: THE DIVIDING LINE
Shackleton biographer Margery Fisher described the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition as illustrating “the dividing line between what has become known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration and the Mechanical Age’. The quest was Shackleton’s last (he died while his ship, Quest, was moored in South Georgia) and marked the last Antarctic project.
1955-1956: OPERATION DEEP FREEZE
A series of US missions to Antarctica introduces a constant and continuing American presence in Antarctica hereafter.
30 NOVEMBER 1955: BACK IN THE USSR
The 1st Soviet Antarctic Expedition set sail under the leadership of Mikhail Somov – it fuelled a further 36 visits to the Antarctic, ending in 1992.
14 NOVEMBER 2004: TANGRA
Undertaken by the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute, the Tangra team covered a distance of 200 km, gathering extensive geodetic and geographic information – including coordinates, elevation data, ice-free zones configuration and detailed photography.
12 DECEMBER 2005: RECORD BREAKERS
The Ice Challengers arrive at the South Pole, travelling in a specially designed six-wheel drive vehicle. The expedition hoped to raise awareness about global warming.
JANUARY 2012: IN THE SPIRIT OF SCOTT
Marking the 100th anniversary of Scott’s Antarctic mission, his endeavours are commemorated by the British Services Antarctic Expedition 2012, who have travelled to the Peninsula Arm of Antarctica “in the spirit of Scott”.