Early Expeditions to Antarctica
Although there was for centuries a tradition that another land lay south of the known world, attempts to find it were defeated by the ice. Antarctica’s frigid nature was revealed by the second voyage of the English explorer Captain James Cook, which took place from 1772 to 1775. He did not see the continent as he circumnavigated the world, but he was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. In 1819 the British mariner William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands. Returning in 1820, he and James Bransfield of the British Navy explored and roughly mapped the Shetlands and part of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sealers then explored the Antarctic Peninsula. Most notable was John Davis who made the first landing on the Antarctic continent in 1821 at Hughes Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. After 1822, fur sealing declined, but in 1829 Palmer and Pendleton led a sealing and exploring expedition that included Dr. James Eights, the first U.S. scientist to visit Antarctica. John Biscoe, a British navigator, circumnavigated Antarctica from 1830 to 1832, sighting Enderby Land in 1831 and exploring the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Admiral Dumont d'Urville led a French expedition to the Pacific Ocean that made two visits to Antarctica. He explored the Antarctic Peninsula in 1838 and in 1840 discovered Clarie Coast in east Antarctica. In 1841 British Captain James C. Ross commanded two vessels on an expedition that discovered Victoria Land in east Antarctica, the Ross Sea, and the Ross Ice Shelf and explored and mapped the western approaches of the Weddell Sea.
February 5, 2006
Scenic Cruising Antarctica
Antarctica consists of two major regions: west Antarctica (approximately 2,500,000 square miles, 6,475,000 square kilometers), a mountainous archipelago that includes the Antarctic Peninsula, and east Antarctica (approximately 3,000,000 square miles, 7,770,000 square kilometers), geologically a continental shield. They are joined into a single continental mass by an ice sheet thousands of feet thick. At the seaward margins of the ice sheet masses of ice break off and float away as icebergs, leaving ice cliffs. Where the outward creep of the ice is channeled into ice streams (zones of more rapid flow), great floating ice tongues project into the sea; where mountains retard outward movement, the flow is channeled into great valley glaciers. Less than 5% of Antarctica is free of ice; these areas include mountain peaks, arid and dry valleys, small coastal areas and islands. Except for mountain ranges (some buried beneath the ice), much of east Antarctica's rock surface is near sea level; however, the continent's domed, snow-covered glacial surface rises to about 13,000 feet, 4,000 meters. In west Antarctica there is great variation in the sub-glacial relief, suggesting mountainous islands or submerged ranges separated by deep sounds beneath the ice cover. Since the 1970s lakes of liquid water have been found underneath the continental ice; the largest known of these is Lake Vostok 174 by 36 miles, 280 by 60 kilometers; 1600 feet, 500 meters, deep. After departing Cape Horn yesterday, we proceeded sailing to Antarctica on a southerly course throughout the night this morning and will have landfall just north of Anvers Island at approximately 9:30 am
February 4, 2006
Explorations Speaker Captain Pat Toomey
Born in Sussex, England, Patrick Toomey started his sea career as a cadet in the British Merchant Navy in 1949. He has sailed worldwide as a navigating officer aboard cargo ships, attaining his master-mariner foreign-going certificate in 1960. Patrick reached the rank of Chief Officer before immigrating to Canada in 1954 to join the Canadian Coast Guard in Halifax, Nova Scotia and later in Quebec. He lived in Quebec city for twenty-four years, and is considered to be fully bi-lingual in French and English by the Government of Canada. He served as a navigating officer aboard ice- breakers in eastern Canadian waters and in the Canadian artic from 1964 to 1970. From 1970 to 1991, Patrick commanded nine different coast guard icebreakers in the Great Lakes, Eastern Canada and the Canadian Artic. Patrick retired from the Canadian Coast Guard in 1991 and is now an ice pilot for Holland America Line and for expedition cruises to the Siberian Artic, the North Pole, the Canadian Artic and all around Antarctica aboard Russian ice-breakers. He presently lives in Kingston, Ontario with his wife. He has six children, and two of his daughters also work for the Canadian Coast Guard. The Tierra del Fuego archipelago (Land of Fire) marks the southernmost point of South America and extends into Drake Passage connecting the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans. Storms, strong currents, and icebergs make passage around the Cape extremely hazardous, during the Southern Hemisphere autumn and winter (March – August). Cape Horn south Chile at 1,391 feet (424 meters) high. The Cape was first rounded on January 26, 1616, by the Dutch expedition of Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire who named it Kaap Hoorn after the city of Hoorn, Schouten's birthplace. The Spanish name of the place is derived from the Dutch: Cabo de Hornos. Cape Horn is notorious because of the poor weather conditions that made it difficult to round in sailing ships. The open waters of the Drake Passage, south of the Cape, offer ample sea room for maneuvering, while the narrow Strait of Magellan through the Tierra del Fuego islands can offer a slow and difficult passage. Rounding Cape Horn is considered the sailing-equivalent of climbing Mount Everest.
posted by Hills @ 2:07 PM
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