1819 : British mariner William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands.
1819-1823 : James Wendell captained two sealing expeditions where he discovered a new species of seal and reached a record latitude of 74 15’ S.
1820 : The Antarctic continent was first seen by human eyes. Historians have disagreed on who those eyes belong to; at least one possible claimant is believed to have seen land but mistaken it for ice at the time. Credit for being the first man to see the continent has been divided between three men who made separate voyages to Antarctica that year : * Fabian von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; * Edward Bransfield, a captain in the British navy; * Nathaniel Brown Palmer, an American sealer.
1840 : Frenchman Jules –Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d’Urville became the first person to set foot on Antarctica. (Some historians believe that john Davis, an American sealer, may have set foot on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1821, but even he was unsure if he landed on the continent itself or a nearby island.
1841 James Clark Ross discovered what is now known as Ross Island. He also sailed along a huge wall of ice that was later named the Ross Ice Shelf.
1897 : A ship headed by Adrien Victor J0oseph de Gerlache de Gomery was stuck in the Antarctic ice and was forced to stay the entire winter. De Gerlache also brought back the first photographs of the continent.
1898 : A British-funded expeition headed by Carsten Egeberg Borchgre vin k was the first to set up a base in Antarctica.
1901-1904 : The Britain Capt. Robert Falcon Scott led the national Antarctic Expedition, often referred to as the “Discovery expedition”. Many important geographical and scientific discoveries were made on this trip.
1907-1909 : Ernest H. Shackleton led an expedition that set up camp on Cape Royds. Shackleton and members of his crew were the first to reach the south magnetic pole.
1911 : Norwegian Roald Gravning Amundsen and his party reached the South Pole.
1912 : Capt. Scott and members of his crew died on a trip to the South Pole.
1914 : Shackleton attempted to cross the “South Polar continent from sea to sea.” Although the attempt failed after his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and crushed in the Sea, no lives lost.
1928 : The first airplane flight was made by Sir George Hubert Wilkins.
1929 : Richard E. Byrd made the first flights over the South Pole.
1945-1957 : The U.S. Navy conducted Operation Highjump, the largest expedition ever sent to Antarctica.
1956 : The first winter was spent at McMurdo station.
1957-1958 : The International Geophysical Year (IGY) brought together scientific activities of 67 countries.
1959 : The Antarctic Treaty was signed on December 1, establishing the leg al framework for the management of Antactica.
1963 : The Antarctic Treaty was entered into force on June 23.
1991 : Twenty-four countries signed an agreement that barred exploration of Antarctica for oil or mineral deposits for 50 years.
WHERE IS ANTARCTICA / HOW BIG IS IT
Antarctica is the fifth largest of the seven continents. It is situated over the South Pole almost entirely south of latitude 66 30’ south (the Antarctic Circle). It is a very rough circular shape with the long arm of the Antarctic Peninsula stretching towards South America. There are two large indentations, the Ross and Weddell seas and their ice shelves.
The nearest other land masses are Sought America 600 mls / 1000 km away across the roughest stretch of water in the world – the Drake passage, Australia is 1550 mls / 2500 km away, and South Africa 2500 mls / 4000 km away.
The total surface area is about 14.2 million sq. km (about 5.5 million sq.mls) in summer. Approximately twice the size of Australia, half as big again as the USA and fifty times the size of the UK.
In the winter Antarctica doubles in size due to the sea ice that forms around the coasts. The true boundary of Antarctica is not the coastline of the continent itself or the outlying islands, but the Antarctic Convergence.
WHO OWNS ANTARCTICA ?
In the early decades of the 20th century seven nations, Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Norway announced territorial claims to parts of Antarctica. In 1961 the Antarctic Treaty was signed by these nations and others and these territorial claims put aide in the interests of international cooperation in scientific research.
Systematic exploration and scientific investigation of Antarctica properly began with the International Geophysical Year (IGY). July 12st 1957 to December 31st 1958. 35 scientific stations were established on the Antarctic continent with another 15 on sub Antarctic islands by 12 different nations during the IGY.
EARLY HISTORY
About six centuries PC, Pythagoras had hypothesized that the earth is round and this view was accepted by Greek thinkers. Aristotle (4th Century BC) was the first to visualize that since the earth is round, there must be a symmetrical continental structure in the south to balance the known congregation of continents in the northern half of the globe. He called it `Antarktikos’ or `Anti-Arctic’, giving birth to the term `Antarctica’. For many centuries, the southern continent remained a highly debated conjecture among the philosophers, geographers and sailors.
Captain Drake from England, in 1578, saialed around the southern tip of the (then unknown) South American peninsula, finding the link between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and demonstrated that `the imagined land’ did not exist even till 57 South Latitude. His voyage records the first description of southern penguins. Between 1590 and 1670, many sub-Antarctic islands near the American peninsula were discovered by different sailors, but `the promised land’ still remained elusive.
In 1738, French Captain Bouvet sailed specifically to find the Terra Incognita. He penetrated upto ~55 South Latitude, sighted some islands, lots of icebergs and penguins, b ut was beaten back by the persistent pack ice. Between 1771-1774, another French e xplorer, Captain Kerguelen, sailed in the southern water and discovered some sub-Antarctic islands. At the same time, between 1768-1776, British explorer, Captain James Cook, extensively combed the southern seas. He discovered New Zealand, Australia and many sub-Antarctic islands. For three years he sailed within the Southern Ocean, criss-crossed the Antarctic circle many times. Unknowingly circumnavigating Antarctica, he was always beaten back by the pack ice and he never saw even a glimpse of the far off southern lands. Thus, in his own words, he “proved” that either the Terra Incognita was only a “fiction” or “unlikely to be of much use to anybody”.
On 27th January 1820, for the first time Russian Captain Bellingshausen sailed up to 69 53’ South Latitude and sighted bills of Antarctica. In the following decades, many national expeditions circumnavigated Antarctica and finally established that the different islands sighed were actually interconnected and they all formed part of a huge continent. Notable among these great sailors are Captain Dumont from France, Captain Wilkes from USA and Captain Ross from Britain. These were the pioneers who actually confirmed the existence of the imagined southern landmass.
Ironically, for seventy-five long years after the first sighting of Antarctic landmass no one could actually land on the continent. In 1895, Borchgrevink and six other team members from Norway, Australia and New Zealand became the first humans to land on the continent. In December 1911, Roald Amundsen of Norway became the first man to reach the South Pole, along with our team members. They were closely followed by Captain Scott of Britain and his four colleagues, who reached the South Pole in January 1912. Scott and his team perished in the snowstorms while returning to their based camp, thus recording the first major tragedy in the history of polar exploration.
