page_title: Southern Cross Expedition
section_title: Ship
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Cross Expedition / Organisation / Ship
caption_attribution_description: Expedition ship SS Southern Cross in the Derwent, Tasmania, used at The British Antarctic Expedition 1898–1900. She was built in Norway in 1886 as whaling ship Pollux.
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: 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. Archer had designed and built Fridtjof Nansen's ship, Fram, which in 1896 had returned unscathed from its long drift in the northern polar ocean during Nansen's Fram expedition. Pollux, which Borchgrevink renamed Southern Cross, was barque-rigged, 520 gross register tons, and 146 feet (45 m) overall length.
  The ship was taken to Archer's yard in Larvik to be fitted out with engines  designed to Borchgrevink's specification. Although Markham continued to question the ship's seaworthiness, she was able to fulfil all that was required of her in Antarctic waters. Like several of the historic polar ships her post-expedition life was relatively short. She was sold to the Newfoundland Sealing Company, and in April 1914, was lost with her entire complement of 173, in the 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster.
caption: SS Southern Cross
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