page_title: Carsten Borchgrevink
section_title: Retirement
hierarchical_section_title: Carsten Borchgrevink / Post-expedition life / Retirement
caption_attribution_description: English: Crop of Robert Falcon Scott in full regalia: this was reproduced as a frontispiece for Scott's The Voyage of the Discovery (London 1905)
context_page_description: Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink was an Anglo-Norwegian polar explorer and a pioneer of modern Antarctic travel. He was the precursor of Sir Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and others associated with the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. From 1898 to 1900, he led the British-financed Southern Cross expedition, which established a new Farthest South record at 78° 50'S.
  Borchgrevink began his exploring career in 1894, by joining a Norwegian whaling expedition, during which he became one of the first persons to set foot on the Antarctic mainland. This achievement helped him to obtain backing for his Southern Cross expedition, which became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland, and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Clark Ross nearly 60 years previously.
  However, the expedition's successes, including the Farthest South, were received with only moderate interest by the public and by the British geographical establishment, whose attention was by then focused on Scott's upcoming Discovery expedition.
context_section_description: On his return from Washington, Borchgrevink virtually retired into private life. On 7 September 1896, he had married an English bride, Constance Prior Standen, with whom he settled in Slemdal, in Oslo, where two sons and two daughters were born. Borchgrevink devoted himself mainly to sporting and literary activities, producing a book entitled The Game of Norway. On two occasions he apparently considered returning to the Antarctic; in August 1902 he stated his intention to lead a new Antarctic expedition for the NGS, but nothing came of this, and a later venture, announced in Berlin in 1909, was likewise stillborn.
  Although he remained out of the limelight, Borchgrevink retained his interest in Antarctic matters, visiting Scott shortly before the Terra Nova sailed on Scott's last expedition in June 1910. When news of Scott's fate reached the outside world, Borchgrevink paid tribute: "He was the first in the field with a finely organised expedition and the first who did systematic work on the great south polar continent". In a letter of condolence to John Scott Keltie, the Royal Geographical Society's secretary, Borchgrevink said of Scott: "He was a man!"
  In Norway differing assessments of Borchgrevink were made by the country's polar elite: Roald Amundsen was a long-time friend and supporter, whereas Fridtjof Nansen, according to Scott, spoke of him as a "tremendous fraud". When Amundsen returned from his South Pole conquest in 1912, he paid full tribute to Borchgrevink's pioneering work: "We must acknowledge that in ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened the way to the south and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed".
  During his later years Borchgrevink lived quietly. In 1929, the Parliament of Norway awarded him a pension of 3,000 Norwegian kroner. In 1930, came belated recognition from London—the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Patron's Medal, proclaiming that the magnitude of the difficulties overcome by Borchgrevink had initially been underestimated: "It was only after the work of Scott's Northern Party ... that we were able to realise the improbability that any explorer could do more in the Cape Adare district than Mr Borchgrevink had accomplished. It appeared, then, that justice had not been done at the time to the pioneer work of the Southern Cross expedition, which had been carried out under the British flag and at the expense of a British benefactor."
caption: Borchgrevink paid tribute to Robert Falcon Scott following his tragic death
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