Three names dominate the public consciousness when it comes to famous Antarctic explorers, more than a century after they first stepped foot on the White Continent. ‘For scientific discovery give me Scott,’ wrote the old polar hand Raymond Priestely. ‘For speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’ Priestley had travelled south with both Scott and Shackleton, so was in a good position to judge.
But beyond this triumvirate, who are the other figures that deserve to be better remembered today. We take a look at the Antarctic explorers whose names should also be written in polar lights.
James Cook
Captain James Cook (1728-1779), the British Royal Navy captain famed for his Pacific voyages of exploration to Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii never actually Antarctica. But he deserves first place on any list of famous explorers of Antarctica for having made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle, which he did with his ships Resolution and Adventure on 17 January 1773.
At the time, it was still believed there was a fertile continent called Terra Australis south of Australia, but Cook’s encounters with pack ice and subsequent circumnavigation of the Antarctic region put paid to that idea. Exactly one year to the day after crossing the Circle, Cook made the first ever landing on South Georgia, which he took possession of in the name of King George III – with a display of the flag and gunfire to an assembled crowd of penguins and seals.
James Clark Ross
The British Royal Navy captain James Clark Ross (1800-1862) might not be one of the most famous explorers in Antarctica today, but he was the pioneer in whose footsteps everyone had to follow.
In 1830, Ross set sail on a mission to reach the Magnetic South Pole. Although he was not to be successful in this, he was the first to penetrate the pack ice and pass through it to reach the open water beyond it – an act of no small bravery, as there was no way of knowing if he could return safely. The Ross Sea, which he discovered as a result, is named in his honour, along with Ross Island (the future starting point for Scott and Shackleton’s expeditions to the South Pole) and the mighty Ross Ice Shelf, which he simply dubbed ‘The Barrier’. The achievements of his two brave little ships are also commemorated in the names of Ross Island’s two imposing volcanoes: Erebus and Terror.
Adrien de Gerlache
Give thought to the Belgica Expedition should you find yourself sailing through the beautiful Gerlache Strait along the Antarctic Peninsula, and its leader, the Belgian Antarctic explorer Adrien de Gerlache (1866-1934).
De Gerlache and the Belgica kicked off the so-called ‘Heroic Era’ of Antarctic Exploration, and it’s safe to say that he didn’t know quite what to expect. His crew were ill-prepared to have their ship frozen in and become the first people to overwinter in Antarctica. Most came down with scurvy, and were only saved by their doctor, the Arctic explorer Frederick Cook, who had lived with the Inuit, ably helped by a certain Roald Amundsen, who has joined the expedition to get some polar experience.
While the expedition did map parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, it’s now better known for its desperate escape from the long polar night, as brilliantly retold in Julian Sancton’s recent book Madhouse at the End of the Earth.
William Speirs Bruce
Although frequently overlooked today, William Speirs Bruce (1867-1921) was very much an explorer’s explorer, and one of the most proficient polar scientists of his day. He first visited Antarctica in 1892 as part of a Scottish whaling expedition and made several successful expeditions to the Arctic before leading his Scottish National Antarctic Expedition from 1902-1904.
While many Antarctic explorers were keen flag wavers for their countries, Bruce’s preoccupation was quietly getting on with the science. At this, he was brilliantly successful, carrying out the first survey of the Weddell Sea and discovering the Scotia Arc – the geological proving a long-held theory that the Antarctic Peninsula was geologically connected to South America.
When Bruce died, his ashes were sent on a whaling ship to be scattered on South Georgia, though sadly there’s no permanent memorial to him on the island.
Ernest Shackleton
No one looms larger over today’s roll call of Antarctic explorers than Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922).
He joined Captain Scott’s Discovery Expedition in 1901 to win himself a name, then launched his own Nimrod Expedition six years later. He pioneered the route to the South Pole, only to be forced to turn back less than a hundred miles from his prize when his party’s food supplies ran low (‘better a live donkey than a dead lion,’ he told his wife).
His attempt to cross the entire continent on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1916 failed in even more spectacular fashion when his ship Endurance was famously sunk by the Weddell Sea ice, but from this disaster came his greatest moment – saving the lives of all 27 men with their dash to Elephant Island and his epic voyage to South Georgia in the tiny James Caird.
Shackleton is buried on South Georgia where he died of a heart attack on his final Quest Expedition in 1922, and his grave is a site of pilgrimage for polar travellers to this day.
Jean-Baptiste Charcot
Although the French might not feature highly in any list of the most famous explorers in Antarctica, they may well top the list of the most stylish. Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867-1936) led two expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula, in 1903-1905 and then again in 1908-1910. He carried out extensive surveys of the coastline and discovered many locations popular with modern Antarctica expedition cruises such as Marguerite Bay, which is named for his wife.
Charcot was born to be a sailor, and named the ship on his second expedition, the Pourquoi-Pas? (‘Why not?’) for the soap box he turned into a boat for childhood explorations. Keen planning made everything on his journeys look easy – summed up perfectly by the publicity photos he took of his men in lounge chairs, sipping champagne amid the pack ice, seemingly without a care in the world.
Otto Nordenskjöld
It’s sometimes said that polar exploration is the best way of having a bad time ever discovered, and few people exemplify this better than the Antarctic explorer Otto Nordenskjöld (1869-1928).
Already an accomplished explorer by the time his Swedish Antarctic Expedition headed for the edge of the Weddell Sea in 1901, Nordenskjöld and his party overwintered in a hut on Snow Hill island, today best known for its emperor penguin colony. But come spring, their relief ship Antarctic never arrived, having been crushed to matchsticks in the pack ice. Its crew had been forced to overwinter themselves in a hut they made of rocks on Paulet Island. Not only that, but a third party who had hoped to travel overland to reach Snow Hill found themselves cut off and barely survived the winter, huddling together in a tent and surviving on penguins.
Incredibly, all the men save one lived to tell the tale, when they were rescued by the Argentinian ship Uruguay – part of an unlikely story of Antarctic survival that even Shackleton might have shuddered at.
Roald Amundsen
Was any Antarctic explorer ever as accomplished as the Norwegian Roald Amundsen (1872-1928)? On 14 December 1911, he and his party of four men became the first people to reach the South Pole, using sledge dogs to easily outpace his British competitor Captain Scott.
The apparent ease of Amundsen’s success was born of deep experience. As a Norwegian, he was a natural-born skier, and by the time he made his dash to the pole, he already had one Antarctic trip under his belt as part of Adrian de Gerlache’s Belgica Expedition, as well as leading a tram that had been the first to traverse Canada’s Northwest Passage in 1903–1905, by the simple but patient approach of sailing a ship Gjøa that was designed to safely be frozen into the Arctic ice.
After the South Pole, Amundsen then sailed the Northeast Passage through Siberia, and in 1925 made the first crossing of the Arctic by airship, via the North Pole. In 1928 he set out on a rescue mission to save fellow aeronaut Umberto Nobile lost in the Arctic – and was never seen again.
Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) led two expeditions to Antarctica, but is mainly remembered today for being one of two things: a noble failure or an incompetent amateur. This is the man, after all, who died in a blizzard with his men a few miles from safety having been beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen.
Neither caricature is correct. Scott’s Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904 was the first to explore Antarctica’s interior in any detail, with a series of major sledging expeditions. His attempt on the Pole on the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910-1912 was only turned into a race by the unexpected arrival of Amundsen, and while Scott perhaps unwisely mistrusted the capacity of sledge dogs, his party would likely have made it back if not for the onset of one of the worst Antarctic winters on record. Dying frozen in his tent, he penned his own epitaph – and people have been arguing about it ever since.
Douglas Mawson
Australian geologist Sir Douglas Mawson (1882-1958) is Australia’s most famous Antarctic explorer, and proof that there doesn’t have to be any contradiction between scientific achievements and acts of superhuman polar survival. Mawson did them both.
Mawson cut his Antarctic teeth on Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition, where he was part of the team that first reached the Magnetic South Pole as well as climbing Mount Erebus. In 1911, he launched his own Australian expedition, to survey King George V Land and Queen Mary Land. On a sledging survey trip, he survived the death of his two companions and the loss of his tent to make a month-long solo trek through crevasse-ridden terrain to safety – one of the most astonishing acts in polar exploration.
In 1929, Mawson returned south one last time at the head of the BANZARE expedition, which discovered more of Antarctica’s hidden coastline – this time through the new method of aerial surveys.
Jackie Ronne
For decades, women were barred from travelling to Antarctica, but Edith “Jackie” Ronne (1919-2009) more than made up for the opportunities lost to institutional sexism.
Ronne was married to the Norwegian explorer Finn Ronne, who had taken part in Amundsen’s South Pole expedition. She ran the admin for the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition in 1947, and ended up not only joining the trip, but convinced Jenny Darlington, wife of the expedition pilot to come along too. Together, they became the first women to step foot on Antarctica and the first women to overwinter there.
Jackie Ronne made scientific observations while her husband and the other team members were out in the field, as well as writing articles for newspapers at home.
In 1959, Jackie and Finn were guest lecturers on one of the first Antarctic expedition cruises, and was later awarded a special Congressional Medal for American Antarctic Exploration – all of which is described in her memoir Antarctica’s First Lady. The Ronne Ice Shelf on the edge of the Weddell Sea is named for her and her husband.
Felicity Aston
Of the modern generation of Antarctic explorers, few are more accomplished than Felicity Aston (1978–present). She first overwintered in Antarctica while working as a senior meteorologist at the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station, and has since chalked up an amazing series of polar achievements.
After competing in an all-women team in a race to the North Magnetic Pole in 2005, she led a team of seven women skiing to the South Pole in 2009. Three years later, she became the first person to ski solo across the entire Antarctic continent, covering a staggering 1084 miles (1744 km) in just 59 days.
A strong advocate for the climate, she has led numerous other expeditions in the Arctic and in 2015 was awarded the Polar Medal for services to polar exploration.
While women were belated explorers to Antarctica, in the 21st century the continent is now thankfully open to all travellers, and can be visited in a lot more comfort than that endured by the earliest generations of adventurers. But while the mode of transport and the food is a lot better, the wild beauty of the Antarctic remains a true constant – and continues to inspire those looking for an experience of a lifetime.
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