this land must be very big, mightily hard of access â and populated.
From the sixteenth century on, at least until Cookâs second voyage, cartographers were kept busy lopping off bits of Antarctica which didnât exist, like pruning an unruly tree. One cartographer, Oronce Fine, gave the continent the snappy name Terra australis nuper inventa sed non plene examinata (the lately discovered but not completely explored southern land). This failed to catch on. The ghostly image of a fertile, wealthy Shangri-La was finally laid to rest by Cook in the latter part of the eighteenth century. His second voyage made all the Antarctic exploration which had gone before him look insignificant. He discovered that there could be no people there after all; it was too cold. The myth died. They were hoping for fertility and riches, the land of their dreams, and all they got was an interminable icescape.
â
We landed again shortly after leaving the two beards. The Kiwis refuelled the Squirrel from a drum line, eyed beadily by a line of skuas, the ugly brown migratory gulls ubiquitous around the coast of Antarctica in summer. The fuel cache was located on the edge of the continent itself, a hundred miles along the Sound from McMurdo. In the background the faces of the Transantarctic mountains zigzagged downwards in gradations of creamy blue. The sky was mottled with cirro-stratus like fishscales, and shafts of sunlight fell on the creased surface of an ice tongue, a massive projection fed by two glaciers. Beyond it ink-dark seals lay around their holes. On one side mountains sank into glacier snouts, and on the other the sea ice had melted into a berg-studded occean which rippled lightly, like a wheatfield touched by the wind.
âLook,â said Ben, disengaging the fuel pump and pointing at a field of crevasses on the side of a mountain. Each rift was miles long, and no doubt miles deep. So often it is the landscapes most inimical to life that are the most seductive. In this respect they are like boyfriends. It doesnât seem fair.
Before the Resolution sailed out of Sheerness on 21 June 1772 under Captain Cook, more than half the crew deserted. Cook was under Admiralty instructions to find the great southern land. He had always suspected that there was no such thing, despite the fact that the weight of the scientific establishment at home pressed upon its existence. Joseph Banks, the brilliant naturalist who sailed with Cook, recounts in his logbook that on the Endeavour , Cookâs other ship on the 1772 voyage, the men were divided into two camps according to their opinion on the existence of Antarctica. They called themselves âwe Continentsâ and âno Continentsâ. In 1770 the ânoâs thought they had sailed around what constituted definitive proof â but they were still footling about off New Zealand.
Cook was a Yorkshireman without formal education, and he worked on the Whitby coal-carriers before signing up with the Navy and applying himself to the cutting edge of eighteenth-century science. He was measured and, like Shackleton, always had his finger on the pulse of his men, who were frequently drunk. Cook took care to learn from those who had gone before him, and unlike the crews battling around Antarctica over a century later, Cookâs men never got scurvy.
In the end the pack ice stopped him. He wrote that the sea was so âpesteredâ with ice that land was inaccessible. In the Resolution he crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first man to do so, and discovered the circumpolarity of the Southern Ocean. In January 1775 he claimed South Georgia, though he wasnât impressed with the island, writing in his journal that the land he had seen was âa country doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sunâs rays, but to lie buried under everlasting snow and ice, whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describeâ. As he sailed away he
From the sixteenth century on, at least until Cookâs second voyage, cartographers were kept busy lopping off bits of Antarctica which didnât exist, like pruning an unruly tree. One cartographer, Oronce Fine, gave the continent the snappy name Terra australis nuper inventa sed non plene examinata (the lately discovered but not completely explored southern land). This failed to catch on. The ghostly image of a fertile, wealthy Shangri-La was finally laid to rest by Cook in the latter part of the eighteenth century. His second voyage made all the Antarctic exploration which had gone before him look insignificant. He discovered that there could be no people there after all; it was too cold. The myth died. They were hoping for fertility and riches, the land of their dreams, and all they got was an interminable icescape.
â
We landed again shortly after leaving the two beards. The Kiwis refuelled the Squirrel from a drum line, eyed beadily by a line of skuas, the ugly brown migratory gulls ubiquitous around the coast of Antarctica in summer. The fuel cache was located on the edge of the continent itself, a hundred miles along the Sound from McMurdo. In the background the faces of the Transantarctic mountains zigzagged downwards in gradations of creamy blue. The sky was mottled with cirro-stratus like fishscales, and shafts of sunlight fell on the creased surface of an ice tongue, a massive projection fed by two glaciers. Beyond it ink-dark seals lay around their holes. On one side mountains sank into glacier snouts, and on the other the sea ice had melted into a berg-studded occean which rippled lightly, like a wheatfield touched by the wind.
âLook,â said Ben, disengaging the fuel pump and pointing at a field of crevasses on the side of a mountain. Each rift was miles long, and no doubt miles deep. So often it is the landscapes most inimical to life that are the most seductive. In this respect they are like boyfriends. It doesnât seem fair.
Before the Resolution sailed out of Sheerness on 21 June 1772 under Captain Cook, more than half the crew deserted. Cook was under Admiralty instructions to find the great southern land. He had always suspected that there was no such thing, despite the fact that the weight of the scientific establishment at home pressed upon its existence. Joseph Banks, the brilliant naturalist who sailed with Cook, recounts in his logbook that on the Endeavour , Cookâs other ship on the 1772 voyage, the men were divided into two camps according to their opinion on the existence of Antarctica. They called themselves âwe Continentsâ and âno Continentsâ. In 1770 the ânoâs thought they had sailed around what constituted definitive proof â but they were still footling about off New Zealand.
Cook was a Yorkshireman without formal education, and he worked on the Whitby coal-carriers before signing up with the Navy and applying himself to the cutting edge of eighteenth-century science. He was measured and, like Shackleton, always had his finger on the pulse of his men, who were frequently drunk. Cook took care to learn from those who had gone before him, and unlike the crews battling around Antarctica over a century later, Cookâs men never got scurvy.
In the end the pack ice stopped him. He wrote that the sea was so âpesteredâ with ice that land was inaccessible. In the Resolution he crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first man to do so, and discovered the circumpolarity of the Southern Ocean. In January 1775 he claimed South Georgia, though he wasnât impressed with the island, writing in his journal that the land he had seen was âa country doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sunâs rays, but to lie buried under everlasting snow and ice, whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describeâ. As he sailed away he
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