page_title: Southern Cross Expedition
section_title: Cape Adare
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Cross Expedition / Voyage / Cape Adare
caption_attribution_description: English: Scene from a hut at Camp Ridley
context_page_description: The Southern Cross Expedition, otherwise known as the British Antarctic Expedition, 1898–1900, was the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and the forerunner of the more celebrated journeys of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. The brainchild of the Anglo-Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink, it was the first expedition to over-winter on the Antarctic mainland, the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier—later known as the Ross Ice Shelf—since Sir James Clark Ross's groundbreaking expedition of 1839 to 1843, and the first to effect a landing on the Barrier's surface. It also pioneered the use of dogs and sledges in Antarctic travel.
  The expedition was privately financed by the British magazine publisher Sir George Newnes. Borchgrevink's party sailed in the Southern Cross, and spent the southern winter of 1899 at Cape Adare, the northwest extremity of the Ross Sea coastline. Here they carried out an extensive programme of scientific observations, although opportunities for inland exploration were restricted by the mountainous and glaciated terrain surrounding the base.
context_section_description: Southern Cross left London on 23 August 1898, after inspection by the Duke of York (the future King George V), who presented a Union Flag.  The ship was carrying 90 Siberian sledge dogs, the first to be taken on an Antarctic expedition. After final provisioning in Hobart, Tasmania, Southern Cross sailed for the Antarctic on 19 December. 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.
  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". The abundance of penguins would provide both a winter larder and a fuel source.
  Unloading began on 17 February. First ashore were the  dogs, with their two Sami handlers, who remained with them and thus became the first men to spend a night on the Antarctic continent. During the next twelve days the rest of the equipment and supplies were landed, and two prefabricated huts were erected, one as living quarters and the other for storage. These were the first buildings erected on the continent. A third structure was contrived from spare materials, to serve as a magnetic observation hut.  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". The dogs were housed in kennels fashioned from packing cases. By 2 March the base, christened "Camp Ridley" after Borchgrevink's English mother's maiden name, was fully established, and the Duke of York's flag raised. That day, Southern Cross departed to winter in Australia.
  The living hut contained a small ante-room used as a photographic darkroom, and another for taxidermy. Daylight was admitted to the hut via a double-glazed,  shuttered window, and through a small square pane high on the northern wall. Bunks were fitted around the outer walls, and a table and stove dominated the centre. 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. Outside activities were largely curtailed in mid-May, with the onset of winter.
caption: Scene from a hut at Camp Ridley, with Fougner, Evan, and Colbeck.
exif: {}