Discovering the unknown continent - Antarctica: Global Science from a Frozen Continent - page 15

Figure 1.13 The hut at Cape Royds, Ross Island, was built in 1908 by Ernest Shackleton's British

Antarctic Expedition 1907-09. This photo shows how it appeared in 1956. Today it is under
the management of New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust. (Credit: Dick Prescott, NSF)

In fact, the State Department continued to secretly amass evidence on which to
make an American claim right up until the mid-1950s whilst all the time
suggesting that the claims of the UK, France, Norway, Argentina, Chile,
Australia and New Zealand were unacceptable.
Argentina had disputed British title to the Falkland Islands and to South Georgia
from the late nineteenth century. During World War II both Chile and Argentina
decided to pursue rival claims to the area covered by the Falkland Islands
Dependencies and thus initiated a long-running dispute with military overtones.
Argentina s creation of a National Antarctic Commission in 1939 was prompted by

the Norwegian claim to a sector. They despatched expeditions to Grahamland and
the South Shetland Islands in 1942 and 1943, hoisting an Argentine

'

ag over
Deception Island. Their formal claim in 1943 was announced on the basis that
the Argentine Antarctic sector had been an integral part of Argentina since
independence in 1810 and this was now reinforced by polar activities as well as
geological continuity. Chile ' s earlier 1940 claim was also based on a combination of