It was just over a hundred years ago that a whaling ship named Antarctic anchored itself and then launched a longboat toward a wind-swept shore through the dangerous waters of the Ross Sea. The party with their Captain, Leonard Kristensen, leading them landed and left the very first set of human footprints on the shores of Antarctica. January 24,1895 was the date of their historic landing, and was only one part of their endeavor to hunt whales in unexplored waters.
In other words, Antarctica was first christened in the search of whales and the discovery of numerous other money producing animals. 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. Submissive penguins by the hundreds of thousands, were paraded up planks only to plunge off the edge of cauldrons filled with boiling oil, so that their own oil could be relinquished.
Now, after having explored this incredible frozen continent, mankind is starting to ignore these quick-kill, quick-buck methods of making money, and instead deciding to recreate this winter wonderland as a nature and science reserve. There may even be a world park established on this great land. For science, Antarctica provides an opportunity to study the effects of global pollutants like the depletion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect. When you consider mankind's rather brief presence on this continent, this turn around had happened rather quickly. The degree of exploration was limited to a small fraction of coastline and islands, and included only a few routes to the South Pole up until the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year.
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. Whaling around Antarctica occurred with more intensity during World War I, because the oil from them was refined into glycerin used in artillery shells. Then, after World War II, America and the Soviet Union began slaughtering sperm whales in this area in order to use their extra-fine oil as a lubricant for jet engines. It was not until the International Geophysical Year that Antarctica was referred to as anything but "Terra 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.
This was similar to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon nine years earlier and placing the American flag on the moon as a symbol of its dominance. In one of the most ambitious attempt to show dominance was when Roald Amundsen rushed to the South Pole in 1911 to honor Norway's King Haakon VII. The same sort of trip was done for the glory of Great Britain's empire by Robert F. Scott and team, however they also gathered up fossils and rock samples and hauled them back on their sledges.
It is believed that between the discouragement felt when they found out that Amundsen reached the Pole a month sooner, eating a poor diet, having to haul the rocks and fossils, and utter bad luck caused Scott and his team to perish on the return trip, making them the first people to die in Antarctica for the sake of science. America's claim to the South Pole was entrenched when Richard Byrd flew a Ford Trimotor over the Pole in 1929. 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.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.a1-articles.net/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites