History of Antarctica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 13 Coordinates: 67°15′S 39°35′E History of Antarctica From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the natural history of the Antarctic continent, see Antarctica. The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in the 15th and 16th centuries proved that Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land"), if it existed, was a continent in its own right. In 1773 James Cook and his crew crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time but although they discovered nearby islands, they did not catch sight of Antarctica itself. It is believed he was as close as 150 miles from the mainland. In 1820, several expeditions claimed to have been the first to have sighted the ice shelf or the continent. A Russian expedition was led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev, a British expedition was captained by Edward Bransfield and an American sealer Nathaniel Palmer participated. The first landing was probably just over a year later when American Captain John Davis, a sealer, set foot on the ice. Several expeditions attempted to reach the South Pole in the early 20th century, during the 'Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration'. Many resulted in injury and death. Norwegian Roald Amundsen finally reached the Pole on December 14, 1911, following a dramatic race with the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Contents ◾ 1 Early exploration ◾ 1.1 The search for Terra Australis Incognita ◾ 1.2 South of the Antarctic Convergence ◾ 1.3 The Antarctic Circle ◾ 1.4 First sighting ◾ 1.5 Exploration ◾ 2 Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration ◾ 2.1 Origins ◾ 2.2 Early British expeditions ◾ 2.3 Expeditions from other countries ◾ 2.4 Race to the Pole ◾ 2.5 Further expeditions ◾ 3 Further exploration ◾ 3.1 By air ◾ 3.2 Overland crossing ◾ 4 Political history ◾ 4.1 British claims ◾ 4.2 Other European claims ◾ 4.3 South American involvement ◾ 4.4 Post war developments ◾ 4.5 Towards an international treaty ◾ 5 Recent history ◾ 6 See also ◾ 7 References ◾ 8 Further reading ◾ 9 External links Early exploration The search for Terra Australis Incognita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Antarctica 3/28/2016 History of Antarctica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 2 of 13 In the Western world, belief in a Cold Land—a vast continent located in the far south of the globe to "balance" out the northern lands of Europe, Asia and North Africa—had existed for centuries. Aristotle had postulated a symmetry of the earth, which meant that there would be equally habitable lands south of the known world. The Greeks suggested that these two hemispheres, north and south, were divided by a "belt of fire", due to the general observation that the climate got warmer and warmer the further south someone travelled, and no Europeans had gone past the equator to see that this was not the case. It was not until Prince Henry the Navigator began in 1418 to encourage the penetration of the torrid zone in the effort to reach India by circumnavigating Africa that European exploration of the southern hemisphere began. In 1473 Portuguese navigator Lopes Gonçalves proved that the In 1570 a map by Ortelius showed the equator could be crossed, and cartographers and sailors began to assume the existence of imagined link between the proposed another, temperate continent to the south of the known world. continent of Antarctica and South America. Note also the proposed The doubling of the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 by Bartolomeu Dias first brought explorers landmasses surrounding the North Pole. within touch of the Antarctic cold, and proved that there was an ocean separating Africa from any Antarctic land that might exist. Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the Straits of Magellan in 1520, assumed that the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the south were an extension of this unknown southern land, and it appeared as such on a map by Ortelius: Terra australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita ("Southern land recently discovered but not yet fully known"). European geographers connected the coast of Tierra del Fuego with the coast of New Guinea on their globes, and allowing their imaginations to run riot in the vast unknown spaces of the south Atlantic, south Indian and Pacific oceans they sketched the outlines of the Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land"), a vast continent stretching in parts into the tropics. The search for this great south land or Third World was a leading motive of explorers in the 16th and the early part of the 17th centuries. In 1599, according to the account of Jacob le Maire, the Dutch Dirck Gerritsz Pomp observed mountainous land at latitude (64°). If so, these were the South Shetland Islands, and possibly the first European sighting of Antarctica (or offshore- Map from 1771, showing "Terres lying islands belonging to it). Other accounts, however, do not note this observation, casting Australes" label without any charted doubt on their accuracy. It has been argued that the Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla claimed to landmass. have sighted "snow-covered mountains" beyond the 64° S in 1603, but this claim is not generally recognized. Quirós in 1606 took possession for the king of Spain all of the lands he had discovered in Australia del Espiritu Santo (the New Hebrides) and those he would discover "even to the Pole". Francis Drake like Spanish explorers before him had speculated that there might be an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego. Indeed, when Schouten and Le Maire discovered the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego and named it Cape Horn in 1615, they proved that the Tierra del Fuego archipelago was of small extent and not connected to the southern land. Finally, in 1642 Tasman showed that even New Holland (Australia) was separated by sea from any continuous southern continent. Voyagers round the Horn frequently met with contrary winds and were driven southward into snowy skies and ice-encumbered seas; but so far as can be ascertained none of them before 1770 reached the Antarctic Circle, or knew it, if they did. South of the Antarctic Convergence The visit to South Georgia by the English merchant Anthony de la Roché in 1675 was the first ever discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence .[1][2] Soon after the voyage cartographers started to depict ‘Roché Island’, honouring the discoverer. James Cook was aware of la Roché's discovery when surveying and mapping the island in 1775.[3] Edmond Halley's voyage in HMS Paramour for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic met the pack ice in 52° S in January 1700, but that latitude (he reached 140 mi off the north coast of South Georgia) was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier to discover the "South Land" – described by a half legendary "sieur de Gonneyville" – resulted in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54°10′ S, and in the navigation of 48° of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55° S in 1730 . In 1771, Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of "a very large continent." He lighted upon a land in 50° S which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed the Isle of Desolation, but which was ultimately named after him.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Antarctica 3/28/2016 History of Antarctica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 3 of 13 The Antarctic Circle The obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, the brilliant and erratic hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769. The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook. Sailing in 1772 with the Resolution, a vessel of 462 tons under his own command and the Adventure of 336 tons under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58° S, and then 30° eastward for the most part south of 60° S, a higher southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel. On 17 January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached 67° 15' S by 39° 35' E, where their course was stopped by ice. Cook then turned northward to look for French Southern and Antarctic Lands, of the James Cook's 1777 South-Up map of South Georgia discovery of which he had received news at Cape Town, but from the rough within the Antarctic Circle. determination of his longitude by Kerguelen, Cook reached the assigned latitude 10° too far east and did not see it. He turned south again and was stopped by ice in 61° 52′ S by 95° E and continued eastward nearly on the parallel of 60° S to 147° E. On 16 March, the approaching winter drove him northward for rest to New Zealand and the tropical islands of the Pacific.