Ice Coffee: The History Of Human Activity In Antarctica

William Spiers Bruce showed the world what a team could achieve if they ignored the south pole and got on with some science.  Under his guidance the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition established the longest continually occupied meteorological station and discovered large numbers of Antarctic marine species but what I like most about the Scot is how much he got on Sir Clements Markhams' nerves.

Never heard of Nordenskjold? You have now, and he's pretty darn spiffy. Likely the reason Nordenskjold isn't better known is that Shackleton and Mawson's later tales of survival against stacked odds drew attention away from the challenges faced and bettered by the Swedes who sailed to the Antarctic aboard the Antarctic.  Carl Anton Larsen makes a repeat appearance, reprising his role as competent Norwegian ice pilot. I'm all outta coffee and counting down the minutes until resupp.

Germans winter in fast pack ice, make some geographic discoveries, fly, sledge, and science as much as they can, but it's the diving that sets the voyage of the Gauss apart, in my eyes.  Willy Heinrich - die Achtung!

Carsten Borchgrevink adds to his track record as a git and gets on everyone's nerves in the first winter spent ashore in Antarctica.

British pride is a'stirring and Germany hankers for some long, hard sciencing but it's the Belgians out in front, showing everyone how it's done if getting trapped in the pack and going mad is the goal. Some notes about navigation notes presage some future episodes about spurious claims on fruitless firsts but the real appeal of episode 023 is the interview with Peter Cleary, who discusses leopard seals and dog teams. The interview is another outing from the non-event that was Radio Tuna.  Recorded in 2004, not 2005 as noted in the episode.  I can tell, because it features Dr Paul Brewin in the Scott Base ambience. Again the Minidisc recorder adds its clicks and whirs but je ne regrette rien, only with better French pronunciation than I can bring to the table.

More Norwegians head south seeking whales.  A kerfuffle over who's on first marks the start of the Heroic Age. In 2005 I recorded an interview with Rob Robbins, head of the USAP diving programme.  This was slated for a New Zealand radio programme that never came about, itself a rip off of RRR's "Radio Marinara" in Australia, and was captured using a badly battered Mini-Disc unit.  It's not the best audio but I could have been using sticky tape and iron filings as a recording medium, for all I cared.  Rob Robbins is legend among my circle and I was stoked to have his time and attention. With "Radio Tuna" failing to launch, this is the material's first outing.

Little Antarctic exploration occurred in the decades immediately after the French, American and British race south that rounded out the 1830s.  American, German, British, Scottish and Norwegian visitors did turn up looking for whales and in the course of the invention of oceanography.  This episode takes the series up to the 1890s and sets the scene for the voyage that would kick off the Heroic Age of antarctic exploration in all its capitalised glory. 

With many Arctic winters and more Arctic summers under their belts, Ross and Crozier got a lot done and brought their crews home safely.  Gongs all round.

It's just a word sometimes employed by people pretending to be pirates to most modern ears but until recently scurvy stood as a perplexing and deadly problem for mariners and polar explorers.  In this episode I discuss how sailors and scientists solved the scurvy riddle, screw up an attempt to say "very low levels," and make myself sad. 

For my money, Charles Wilkes is the first of the Antarctic matinets.  Drawn south by the opportunity to lead a large expedition and little else, his attempts to coordinate six poorly fitted out and ill matched ships crewed by people who largely thought little of him went every bit as well as that sentence presages.

First out of the blocks in the three way race south, Dumont d'Urville does a fair job with the resources France can throw at the project after much war and revolution and war and blockades and war.  Often described as a nineteenth century analogue to the Space Race, I think of this period in Antarctic history as the nineteenth century race southward, of which the Space Race was a twentieth century analogue, because causality.

Reynolds returns to the narrative but his efforts at getting the US a toehold in the cold see him get an even colder shoulder than his last outing.Ross earns his ice chops in the north.Dumont d'Urville, after wowing the crowds with an armless display of Greek marbility, languishes in Cholera riddled Toulon, until his big chance beckons.Balleny fulfills Enderby funded duties and adds information to the growing polynya of knowledge.I came here to podcast and to drink coffee, and I'm all out of coffee.  The shakes are setting in.

Peter Kemp isn't well recorded, so there's little to tell about him other than he sailed on the Magnet and saw a coast that's now named after him.Jason Kimberley traveled to Antarctica in 2005 and did the hauling and the crevasse fields that make up much of my nightmare material.  On his return, in addition to writing one of the most accessible recent books about life on the ice, Jason established "Cool Australia," an online science education resource for school children.  Finally, I give a brief account of getting toasty, which is, in addition to snaws, a thing.

The last gasps of British sealing efforts in the South and a brief profile of a dynasty of ship owners who paid for a lot of the exploitation of marine resources in the sealing and whaling boom times. 

Morrell was a liar, Symmes was a looper and Reynolds was a bona-fide genuine slick talker.  Running to catch up in the claims stakes, US politics gets in the way and Morrell adds confusion.  More on Reynolds later.Sue Haliwell, Antarcticartican makes what is hope will be the first of many appearances between her northern exposures.After switching to a new hosting plan to free up money for a second podcast series, this, the longest episode to date, ate up the space allocation for this month.  An episode about Biscoe and the Enderby's is recorded but won't reach the feed for some weeks. 

Hear me mix and match pronunciations as my brain fights it out between what it knows is correct and what it's accustomed to.James Weddell - the explorer who went sealing in an age of sealers going exploring.  New record holders for southernmost expedition, the Beaufoy and the Jane sail into what we now know as the Weddell Sea and find vast expanses of no ice, leading to incredulity and ridicule.  James Weddell didn't sign up for the standard early death in poverty deal, but that's what he got.

Powell sets a new benchmark for "Who?"Sealer, navigator, measurer and cartographer, that's who.

Connnecticut sealer sails a tiny tender, finds fame.

Smith - the competent, dutiful sealer who got the job done and got no reward, plaudits or even much of a mention in the history books.  He should have taken the money and ran, but hindsight's not a lot of use without a time machine.

An overview of the state of the art in maritime extraction industries at the start of the ice rush.