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Researching the Poles His Winter’S Recent “Bomb Cyclone,” Last Several Years, in Canadian Waters

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Researching the Poles His Winter’S Recent “Bomb Cyclone,” Last Several Years, in Canadian Waters MARITIME HISTORY ON THE INTERNET by Peter McCracken Researching the Poles his winter’s recent “bomb cyclone,” last several years, in Canadian waters. That Twhich froze much of the continental exhibit is now at the Canadian Museum United States, makes this seem as good a of History through September 2018 time as any to look at sources for doing (http://www.historymuseum.ca/event/ polar research. Polar research could, of the-franklin-expedition/), and then will course, include a wide range of topics—all be at Mystic Seaport after November 2018. of which would likely have some maritime A fairly basic site at http://www. connection—but here we’ll look at a few south-pole.com/ describes many aspects that seem more emphatically maritime, of Antarctic exploration, with a particular such as scientific research and exploration. focus on letters, telegrams, documents, and Given the manner in which polar re- especially stamps, to tell these stories. Rus- gions bring nations’ borders together in sell Potter maintains an overview of many often-confusing ways, it’s not surprising Arctic expeditions and explorers at http:// that many different countries sponsor po- visionsnorth.blogspot.com/p/arctic- lar research programs. The Norwegian exploration-brief-history-of.html, and Polar Institute, at http://www.npolar.no/ has a variety of interesting additional con- en/, for instance, focuses on both poles; tent about Arctic exploration and literature. this is not a surprise, given the proximity Myriad pages honor the memory of of the North Pole, and their history of ex- Sir Ernest Shackleton, particularly sur- find the most recent literature, they do have ploration of the South Pole by Roald rounding the epic struggle and eventual earlier content and they are still available Amundsen and others. Norwegian polar rescue of the crew of his ship Endurance. online. The databases are bibliographies, exploration continues today, with a brand- The Scott Polar Research Institute (men- so they just provide citations to existing new purpose-built icebreaker and research tioned above), has a set of pages called articles; the articles and books are gener- ship, RV Kronprins Haakon, that will serve “Virtual Shackleton” at https://www.spri. ally not available through this interface. as a valuable tool for continued access and cam.ac.uk/archives/shackleton/ that A major challenge in these regions is research in the Antarctic and Arctic. highlight each of his voyages. The same law and jurisdiction. Iceland’s University Like the Norwegians, the British have department also hosts a collection of near- of Akureyri offers a masters and law degree spent a good deal of time exploring both ly 25,000 polar images at https://www. in the subject, and has been sponsoring the poles. The UK’s National Maritime Mu- spri.cam.ac.uk/picturelibrary/, in sev- Polar Law Symposia for the last decade seum has actively collected records and eral different formats and interfaces. The (http://www.polarlaw.is/en/previous- artifacts from many polar explorers, and Dundee-built Royal Research Ship Dis- symposiums). Jurisdiction has been a con- most are recorded at http://www.rmg. covery, now on display in Dundee, Scot- cern since a 1970 case (“the T-3 case”) in co.uk/discover/explore/exploration-en- land, carried both Robert Scott and Shack- which an American citizen killed another deavour/polar-exploration. Cambridge leton to the Antarctic, and the website at American on a large iceberg that was float- University’s Scott Polar Research Insti- https://www.rrsdiscovery.com/ records ing in the Arctic—if the victim or perpetra- tute (https://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/li- a bit about them and the ship itself. tor had been of another nationality, deter- brary/), part of the university’s Department Most of the people who travel to the mining appropriate jurisdiction would have of Geography, contains extensive collections poles today do so for scientific research. been a very difficult question. In the Ant- on polar research, from artifacts to manu- The Arctic Institute of North America, arctic, the situation is a bit different, since scripts to online resources. Finally, the Brit- based at the University of Calgary (http:// there’s actual ground under the pole. The ish government maintains two sites about arctic.ucalgary.ca/), publishes the Arctic Antarctic Treaty Secretariat provides polar discovery: Discovering the Arctic Science and Technology Information extensive information about the legal as- (http://www.discoveringthearctic.org. System database (http://www.aina.ucal- pects of the continent, at http://www.ats. uk/) and Discovering Antarctica (http:// gary.ca/astis/), containing extensive re- aq/index_e.htm, including a database of discoveringantarctica.org.uk/), each with search on Arctic science. information about the Antarctic Treaty, a interesting public-facing information about The Scientific Committee on Ant- database of protected and historic sites, and the very different—but equally harsh—en- arctic Research coordinates numerous plenty of other information about how the vironments. scientific research projects taking place in land is managed. The National Maritime Museum re- Antarctica at https://www.scar.org. The Suggestions for other sites worth men- cently hosted an impressive exhibit titled American Geosciences Institute contin- tioning are welcome at peter@shipindex. “Death in the Ice” about Sir John Franklin’s ues to make two bibliographic databases org. See https://www.shipindex.org for explorations of the Arctic in the 1840s, and about polar regions available at http:// a free compilation of over 150,000 ship the loss of his two ships, HMS Erebus and www.coldregions.org/. The databases names from indexes to dozens of books and HMS Terror. Both were rediscovered in the cover 1950 to 2011, so while you will not journals. 50 SEA HISTORY 162, SPRING 2018.
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