Bay of Whales
The privately revised expedition schedule required "Fram" to leave Norway in August 1910 and sail to Madeira in the Atlantic, its only port of call. From there the ship would proceed directly to the Ross Sea in Antarctica, heading for the Bay of Whales, an inlet on the Ross Ice Shelf (then known as the "Great Ice Barrier") where Amundsen intended to make his base camp. The Bay of Whales was the southernmost point in the Ross Sea to which a ship could penetrate, closer to the Pole than Scott's intended base at McMurdo Sound. In 1907–09 Shackleton had considered the ice in the Bay of Whales to be unstable, but from his studies of Shackleton's records Amundsen decided that the Barrier here was grounded on shoals or skerries, and would support a safe and secure base. After landing the shore party, "Fram" was to carry out oceanographic work in the Atlantic before picking up the shore party early in the following year.