_Landing the stores while the ship was nipped by the ice._]
In 1839-1841 occurred the important voyage of Sir James Ross. Ross a
few years before had located the North Magnetic Pole. He was now in
command of the Erebus and Terror, two ships that a few years later
were to bear the Franklin expedition to its fate near the same North
Magnetic Pole. Ross discovered South Victoria Land, directly south of
New Zealand, with its long stretch of southerly trending savage coast
line from Cape Adare to 78° 10´ south latitude, where he found an
active volcano, Mt. Erebus. From here Ross followed the edge of the
great ice barrier some three hundred miles to the eastward. The great
indentation in the Antarctic continent thus discovered and navigated
by Ross, and named after him Ross Sea, has since been the base of
operations from which the South Pole was twice attained.
[Illustration: AT THE NORTH POLE
_Photograph taken at the “Top of the World.”_]
“FARTHEST SOUTH”
After Ross came various minor expeditions contributing to the knowledge
of the Antarctic regions, and in the 1890’s began a renaissance of
Antarctic interest and exploration. In 1892, 1893, 1894 Scottish,
German, and Norwegian whalers reconnoitered the Antarctic seas of Ross
and Weddell in search of new whaling grounds, and in 1894 the first
landing was made upon the Antarctic continent by some members of Bull’s
Norwegian crew; in 1895 Newmayer introduced in the sixth Geographical
Congress in London a resolution upon the importance of Antarctic
exploration; and in the years following there was an international
attack upon the problem by Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Scotland,
Sweden, and France. In 1898, for the first time in the history of
Antarctic exploration, an expedition (the Belgian under Commander de
Gerlache), passed a winter within the Antarctic Circle beset in the
ice; and a year later, in 1899, a British expedition under Borchgrevink
passed a winter on the Antarctic continent itself, and made at Cape
Adare, in Ross Sea, the first attempt at land exploration.
[Illustration: REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT E. PEARY]
In 1901-1902 a German expedition under Drygalski determined a new part
of the coast of the Antarctic continent south of Africa, and three
others, under Bruce of Scotland, Nordenskjöld of Sweden, and Charcot
of France, made valuable discoveries in Weddell Sea, and the regions
southeast, south, and southwest of Cape Horn. In 1901-1903 Scott of
Great Britain, selecting the Ross Sea region discovered by Ross sixty
years before as his base, effected the first serious land exploration
of the Antarctic continent. In a magnificent sledge journey he covered
three hundred and eighty miles due south, reaching a point within four
hundred and thirty-seven miles of the South Pole. Following Scott, his
lieutenant, Shackleton, in 1908-09, using essentially the same base
and route as Scott, made an even more brilliant journey, and reached a
point within ninety-seven miles of the Pole, January 9, 1909. At that
time this was the “farthest south” record.
[Illustration: Reproduced from “The Heart of the Antarctic,” by Sir
Ernest H. Shackleton. Copyright, J. B. Lippincott Co.