Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
4
The maps drawn after Cook's voyages showed an “Antarctic Icy Sea” encircling the globe
to the north of 70° S, but from there to the South Pole they charted only emptiness.
During the early nineteenth century, Antarctica continued to lure explorers to its icy
fringes. The motivations of those who sailed south varied, but they all shared the risks
that awaited them. In a passage that applied to the explorers of 1830 as well as it did to
those of 1930, Laurence Gould concluded in answering the question of why the members
of Byrd's first expedition had come south,
Some came for the sheer love of adventure and wanted no reward beyond that;
some wanted fame or its counterfeit, publicity; some were mercenary and thought
primarily in terms of what they were going to get out of it; and lastly there was
that small group, the like of which gives character to any expedition of merit—not
necessarily scientists at all, but men who could understand the lure, if not the love, of
knowledge for its own sake; men who came not for position or money but who found
full reward for their eVort in the pursuit of an ideal.
Thaddeus von Bellingshausen led a Russian national expedition of discovery in 1819-
1821. Taking an approach similar to Cook's, he circumnavigated the ice margin, sailing
into it where conditions were favorable. On January 16, 1820, with minimal visibility
because of a snow storm, he reported a solid stretch of ice (probably an ice shelf) at the
coastline of present day Dronning Maud Land (a few degrees west of the Prime Merid-
ian) (Fig. 1.2). On February 5 he made a clearer sighting of fast ice with high vertical cliVs
20° to the east. These were the first marks to be placed on a map at the edge of East Ant-
Figure 1.2. By the austral
summer of 1840-1841 the
outline of the Antarctic
continent was beginning
to take shape. The broad-
est margin that remained
unknown was from Alexan-
der Island to 165° E.
