Autor: Mark Aitchison | Publicado: 2012-05-10T14:40:00-07:00



Great Places, Great Explorers (cont.)









The 19th and 20th
centuries are full of stories of Geographers and Adventurers traveling round
the earth seeking to understand our planet and discover her secrets. As the sciences
of geology and geography were developed the more developed countries of the
world wished to know things like what were the highest mountains and longest
rivers in the world. Nations competed to reach these faraway places first, for
national glory and economic advantage too. The most powerful nation on earth
for most of the 19th century and part of the 20th century
was Great Britain and they believed
it to be their god-given right to reach these destinations before all others.









At the beginning of the 20th
century the British set their sights on being first to reach the South Pole situated in the middle of
the newest continent discovered, Antarctica.
But being first wasn’t all that mattered. The British also wished to understand
the lands they traveled through, and the people they might meet. British
expeditions were usually operated by the Royal
Navy and their crew members were naval officers but there was always a
scientific group alongside including biologists, botanists and artists. Probably
the most famous scientific-expedition of all time was the Voyage of the Beagle from 1831-1836 and the development of the
theory of natural selection (or evolution) by Charles Darwin, then a young scientist.











At the end of the 19th
century Robert Falcon Scott was
Britain’s most decorated sea commander and he led a series of expeditions to Antarctica between 1900
and 1912. Bit by bit be made his preparations to cross the frozen landscape and
claim the South Pole for his country. 











But little did Scott know but the
explorer Roald Amundsen had also set
his sights on reaching the South Pole first. Amundsen sought the pole only for
the glory of the conquest. To him it was to be a race to the pole. And Amundsen
was actually a more experienced and prepared explorer than Scott. On previous
expeditions to Greenland and his native Norway he had learned how to service
like the Inuit peoples who lived in these regions. He wore bear and seal skin
clothing like these people. He also knew how to ski and use dogs to help him travel. Scott, on the other hand,
endeavored to do everything the most modern way possible. Instead of dogs and
sleds Scott planned to use horses and
tractors. His clothing was produced by fashionable outfitters in London
such as Burberry.











In the end Amundsen breezed over the
Antarctic continent in his dogsleds, reached the pole first on December 14, 1911 and hurried back. Scott’s team suffered
problem after problem. The horses died. The tractors broke. And the weather was
awful. They finally reached the pole on January 12, 1912 five weeks after Amundsen and were heartbroken to find the spot marked
by the Norwegian flag. On the way back Scott’s team was trapped by weather in
camp and they died there from the cold and starvation in late March 1912. 









After his death Scott became a
national hero in Great Britain. Statues
were erected everywhere. His only son Peter took his middle name from Clements
Markham, president of the Royal Geographic Society who had sponsored Scott’s
career and Antarctic expeditions. Peter
Markham Scott founded the World Wildlife Fund and gave scientific backing
to the Loch Ness Monster.&nbsp; 







Roald Amundsen was also involved in
the race for the North Pole, though only for a short time. On his way to the
North Pole he learned another explorer had already been there. That’s when he
decided to change the direction of his ship and sail for Antarctica, catching
Scott by surprise there.







The North Pole was discovered on April 6, 1909 by one of America’s
greatest explorers, Robert Peary,
and his partner Matthew Henson. Peary
had also attempted to reach the North Pole many times before finally
succeeding. And like Amundsen he also learned from the local people of the Arctic
how to dress, travel and survive in the polar regions. As well he too almost
had the triumph of victory taken from them by a rival explorer who said he had
reached the pole first. To this day there is still some controversy whether or
not Peary truly reached the geographical North Pole. Travel to the poles is
affected by something called the magnetic north and south poles. These are
points on the earth that compasses naturally point too but are not the true
geographic poles of the earth. &nbsp;











Now the North Pole is quite different from the South Pole. Firstly it is
not a continent. It is a frozen sea which can only be approached in summer when
channels for ship passage open up and allow access to the region. As well the
Arctic is inhabited by people, the Inuit and other cultures. No one lives or
has ever lived on Antarctica. In the Arctic
there is a great amount of wildlife
including Polar Bears, Seals, Whales and Fox. On Antarctica there are only Penguins, birds and some seal species.
Think of it this way…the Arctic is a frozen sea surrounded by land; Antarctica
is a frozen continent surrounded by sea. &nbsp;&nbsp;











&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;You
may be interested to know that you can visit the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College in
Brunswick, ME. 

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;







&nbsp;Robert Peary’s summer home in Casco, ME is a tourist attraction called the&nbsp;Eagle Island Historic Site.








And MacMIllan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts is named after one of Peary’s fellow arctic explorers, Donald&nbsp;MacMillan,&nbsp;who had a home on Cape Cod for many years.








Next week I will have a blog for you called Cold Cases…stories about explorers that in most cases
disappeared while on expedition. We’ll talk about the race to reach the highest
mountain in the world, Mount Everest, sometimes referred to as the 3rd
pole. And we’ll talk about such famous explorers as George Mallory, John
Franklin, Percy Fawcett and Amelia Earhart