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Is Exploration In The Arctic Over?
Author : Richard Reinhardt
Long ago, off the volcanic coast of this wind-eroded shore, the whaling ship Antarctic dropped anchor, and sent a longboat to make it's way to shore, struggling through the churning Ross Sea. The leader of this party was Captain Leonard Kristensen and they were the first people to set foot on Antarctica. This historic event happened on January 24, 1895 while on a mission to kill whales in waters that remained unclaimed.
Blood was soon spilled across Antarctica. While seals were being slaughtered for their fur, whales and penguins were being killed for their oil which was then used to grease the machinery developed during the Industrial Revolution. It was on Macquarie Island that countless penguins were rounded up, herded up planks, and forced to drop into boiling pots of oil so that their oil would combine with the rest.
However, after 100 years of journeys to this Frozen Continent, humans have decided to stop using it to make a quick buck by killing the animals and have chosen to make Antarctica into a preserve of nature and science. There are discussions currently underway to establish Antarctica as a world park. Antarctica serves as a window for scientists to understanding the potential danger of several global threats such as our ozone depletion as well as greenhouse effect. Considering how brief a time we have inhabited our planet, the discoveries that we have made in Antarctica since its discover are truly remarkable. Until the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958) there were only small regions of the coastline, islands, and a couple of paths to the South Pole that were even explored.
The presence of people in Antarctica has been a wild story; a story of ferocious tenacity, nationalist, idealism, and unrestrained butchery of nature, with the occasional scientific discovery peppered in for good measure. The artillery shells of World War One required oil from whales to operate, so whaling increased during this period. Whale oil continued to be a commodity after World War II, as the Soviet Union and the United States began to require more of the substance for use as a jet engine lubricant. It was not until the International Geophysical Year that Antarctica was referred to as anything but "Terra Australia Incognita," a term used by medieval mapmakers to describe this undiscovered southern continent.
It may be surprising to note that the first person born in Antarctica was born there out of patriotic pretentiousness. Emilio Marcus Palmer's birth was highly calculated as Argentina flew his mother to Argentina's Esperanza Base to give birth, with the sole goal of securing Argentina's right to much of Antarctica's territory.
To put this into perspective, this was nine years after the prodigious event when American astronauts planted their nation's flag to symbolize American pre-eminence. A similar exploit took place in 1911 when Roald Amundsen raced to be the first to the South Pole to show nobility to Norway's King Haakon VII. This same journey was made by Robert F. Scott of England, though his team took the time to amass fossil and rock samples along the way, carrying these things all on sleds.
Unfortunately, Scott arrived at the South Pole only to find that Amundsen had already been there the month before, and thanks to the depression over this realization, their poor diet, the effort of dragging those rocks, and some bad luck, Scott's party never made it back, and became the first to give their lives for the sake of Antarctic science. America staked their claim to the South Pole when Richard Byrd took a flight over it in 1929 using a Ford Trimotor. It was back in 1821 that the Soviets laid claim to the Antarctica with the journey made by Russian Admiral Thaddeus Bellingshausen past the Antarctic Peninsula.
Author's Resource Box
To get a closer look on Cruises to Antarctica visit this site. Here is further info on great antarctic cruise.
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Tags: Antarctica Travel, Antarctica Vacation, Antarctica Cruise, Antarctica, Travel
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Submitted : 2010-01-15 Word Count : 687 Popularity: 167 Times Viewed: 15
