Southern Cross Expedition
Born in Oslo in 1864 to a Norwegian father and an English mother, Carsten Borchgrevink emigrated to Australia in 1888, where he worked as a land surveyor in the interior before accepting a provincial schoolteaching appointment in New South Wales.
[1] Having a taste for adventure, in 1894 he joined a commercial whaling expedition, led by Henryk Bull, which penetrated Antarctic waters and reached Cape Adare, the western portal to the Ross Sea.
[4] Borchgrevink was convinced that the Cape Adare location, with its huge penguin rookery providing a ready supply of fresh food and blubber, could serve as a base at which a future expedition could overwinter and subsequently explore the Antarctic interior.
[6] Borchgrevink persuaded the publisher Sir George Newnes (whose business rival Alfred Harmsworth was backing the RGS venture) to meet the full cost of his expedition, some £40,000.
[10] This annoyed Markham all the more,[11] and he subsequently rebuked the RGS librarian Hugh Robert Mill for attending the Southern Cross Expedition launch.
[14][15] For his expedition's ship, Borchgrevink purchased in 1897 a steam whaler, Pollux, that had been built in 1886 in Arendal on the south east coast of Norway, to the design of renowned shipbuilder Colin Archer.
[20] The ten-man shore party who were to winter at Cape Adare consisted of Borchgrevink, five scientists, a medical officer, a cook who also served as a general assistant, and two dog drivers.
[23] Another of Borchgrevink's men who later served Scott's expedition, as commander of the relief ship Morning, was William Colbeck,[24] who held a lieutenant's commission in the Royal Naval Reserve.
[21] Borchgrevink's assistant zoologist was Hugh Blackwell Evans, a vicar's son from Bristol, who had spent three years on a cattle ranch in Canada and had also been on a sealing voyage to the Kerguelen Islands.
She crossed the Antarctic Circle on 23 January 1899, and after a three-week delay in pack ice sighted Cape Adare on 16 February, before anchoring close to the shore on the following day.
[9] Cape Adare, discovered by Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross during his 1839–43 expedition, lies at the end of a long promontory, below which is the large triangular shingle foreshore where Bull and Borchgrevink had made their brief landing in 1895.
This foreshore held one of the largest Adelie penguin rookeries on the entire continent and had ample room, as Borchgrevink had remarked in 1895, "for houses, tents and provisions".
[27] As accommodation for ten men the "living hut" was small and cramped, and seemingly precarious—Bernacchi later described it as "fifteen feet square, lashed down by cables to the rocky shore".
[30] By 2 March the base, christened "Camp Ridley" after Borchgrevink's English mother's maiden name,[9] was fully established, and the Duke of York's flag raised.
[30] During the few remaining weeks of Antarctic summer, members of the party practised travel with dogs and sledges on the sea ice in nearby Robertson Bay, surveyed the coastline, collected specimens of birds and fish, and slaughtered seals and penguins for food and fuel.
[9] Winter proved to be a difficult time; Bernacchi wrote of rising boredom and irritation: "Officers and men, ten of us in all, found tempers wearing thin".
[4] The party was well-supplied with a variety of basic foodstuffs—butter, tea and coffee, herrings, sardines, cheeses, soup, tinned tripe, plum pudding, dry potatoes and vegetables.
[34] There were nevertheless complaints about the lack of luxuries, Colbeck noting that "all the tinned fruits supplied for the land party were either eaten on the passage or left on board for the [ship's] crew".
[33] Evidence of a hasty and disorderly departure from Cape Adare was noted two years later by members of the Discovery Expedition, when Edward Wilson wrote; "... heaps of refuse all around, and a mountain of provision boxes, dead birds, seals, dogs, sledging gear ... and heaven knows what else".
[4] They then proceeded southwards, following the Victoria Land coast and discovering further islands, one of which Borchgrevink named after Sir Clements Markham, whose hostility towards the expedition was evidently unchanged by this honour.
[42] On its passage northward, Southern Cross halted at Franklin Island, off the Victoria Land coast, and made a series of magnetic calculations.
[43] Southern Cross returned to England in June 1900,[44] to a cool welcome; public attention was distracted by the preparations for the upcoming Discovery Expedition, due to sail the following year.
[4] Borchgrevink meanwhile pronounced his voyage a great success, stating: "The Antarctic regions might be another Klondyke"—in terms of the prospects for fishing, sealing, and mineral extraction.
[25] The survey of the Victoria Land coast had revealed the "important geographical discovery ... of the Southern Cross Fjord, as well as the excellent camping place at the foot of Mount Melbourne".
[25] Borchgrevink's account of the expedition, First on the Antarctic Continent, was published the following year; the English edition, much of which may have been embroidered by Newnes's staff, was criticised for its "journalistic" style and for its bragging tone.
[4] Despite the unexplained disappearance of many of Hanson's notes, Hugh Robert Mill described the expedition as "interesting as a dashing piece of scientific work".
The Royal Geographical Society gave Borchgrevink a fellowship, and other medals and honours eventually followed from Norway, Denmark and the United States,[1] but the expedition's achievements were not widely recognised.
