Beau Riffenburgh | |
---|---|
Born | 1955 (age 68–69) |
Pen name | Simon Beaufort |
Occupation |
|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Spouse | Liz Cruwys |
Beau Riffenburgh (born 1955) is an American author and historian specializing in polar exploration. He is also an American football coach and author of books on football history.
A native of California, Riffenburgh was the Senior Writer and Director of Research for National Football League Properties in the eighties and early nineties. While there, he wrote or edited seven books, including the NFL's official encyclopedia. He served briefly as Editor-in-Chief for Total Sports Publishing.
Riffenburgh earned his doctorate degree at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. He has written or edited numerous books on polar exploration, including The Myth of the Explorer, a scholarly examination of the relationship of the popular press with exploration; Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition, the story of Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, which almost attained both the South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole; and Racing with Death, the story of Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expeditions. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, a two-volume work that is the most comprehensive reference work ever produced about the Antarctic.
From 1992 to 2005, Riffenburgh served as the editor of Polar Record , the world's oldest journal of polar research. He has served as the head of the Polar History Group at the Scott Polar Research Institute and as a lecturer in the history faculty of the University of Cambridge.
While at Cambridge he put his expertise in American football to use as the head coach of Cambridge's team in the British Collegiate American Football League. He was named National Coach of the Year twice in his five seasons (1991–1996). After Cambridge dropped their team, Riffenburgh spent one season as head coach of the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes. The team went undefeated and won the National Championship during the 1997–1998 season, and he was again named National Coach of the Year.
Riffenburgh was the first head coach of the Great Britain Bulldogs, the national university American football team, which won the first two European Championships in 1994 and 1996.
He was inducted into the BCAFL's Hall of Fame in 2000 as part of the Hall's founding class. [1]
Riffenburgh writes detective novels with his wife, Liz Cruwys, under the pseudonym Simon Beaufort. [2]
Captain Robert Falcon Scott was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13.
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD.
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Nimrod was a wooden-hulled, three-masted sailing ship with auxiliary steam engine that was built in Scotland in 1867 as a whaler. She was the ship with which Ernest Shackleton made his Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica in 1908–09. After the expedition she returned to commercial service, and in 1919 she was wrecked in the North Sea with the loss of ten members of her crew.
The British Graham Land expedition (BGLE) was a geophysical and exploration expedition to Graham Land in Antarctica between 1934 and 1937. Under the leadership of John Rymill, the expedition spent two years in the Antarctic. The expedition determined that Graham Land was a peninsula. The expedition used a combination of traditional and modern practices in Antarctic exploration, using both dog teams and motor sledges as well as a single-engine de Havilland Fox Moth aircraft for exploration. Transportation to the Antarctic was in an elderly three-masted sailing ship christened the Penola, which had an unreliable auxiliary engine. Additional supplies were brought on the ship Discovery II.
The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south of Cambridge.
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition was a 1911–1914 expedition headed by Douglas Mawson that explored the largely uncharted Antarctic coast due south of Australia. Mawson had been inspired to lead his own venture by his experiences on Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition in 1907–1909. During its time in Antarctica, the expedition's sledging parties covered around 4,180 kilometres (2,600 mi) of unexplored territory, while its ship, SY Aurora, navigated 2,900 kilometres (1,800 mi) of unmapped coastline. Scientific activities included meteorological measurements, magnetic observations, an expansive oceanographic program, and the collection of many biological and geological samples, including the discovery of the first meteorite found in Antarctica. The expedition was the first to establish and maintain wireless contact between Antarctica and Australia. Another planned innovation – the use of an aircraft – was thwarted by an accident before the expedition sailed. The plane's fuselage was adapted to form a motorised sledge or "air-tractor", but it proved to be of very limited usefulness.
The DiscoveryExpedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–1843). Organized on a large scale under a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the new expedition carried out scientific research and geographical exploration in what was then largely an untouched continent. It launched the Antarctic careers of many who would become leading figures in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott who led the expedition, Ernest Shackleton, Edward Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean and William Lashly.
The NimrodExpedition of 1907–1909, otherwise known as the British Antarctic Expedition, was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton and his second time to the Continent. Its main target, among a range of geographical and scientific objectives, was to be first to reach the South Pole. This was not attained, but the expedition's southern march reached a Farthest South latitude of 88° 23' S, just 97.5 nautical miles from the pole. This was by far the longest southern polar journey to that date and a record convergence on either Pole. A separate group led by Welsh Australian geology professor Edgeworth David reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole, and the expedition also achieved the first ascent of Mount Erebus, Antarctica's second highest volcano.
The Shackleton–Rowett Expedition (1921–22) was Sir Ernest Shackleton's last Antarctic project, and the final episode in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
The Terra NovaExpedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition, was an expedition to Antarctica which took place between 1910 and 1913. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition had various scientific and geographical objectives. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition from 1901 to 1904, and wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole.
The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was an era in the exploration of the continent of Antarctica which began at the end of the 19th century, and ended after the First World War; the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition of 1921–1922 is often cited by historians as the dividing line between the "Heroic" and "Mechanical" ages.
Aeneas Lionel Acton Mackintosh was a British Merchant Navy officer and Antarctic explorer who commanded the Ross Sea party as part of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1917. The Ross Sea party's mission was to support Shackleton's proposed transcontinental march by laying supply depots along the latter stages of the march's intended route. In the face of persistent setbacks and practical difficulties, Mackintosh's party fulfilled its task, although he and two others died in the course of their duties. Mackintosh's first Antarctic experience was as second officer on Shackleton's Nimrod expedition, 1907–1909. Shortly after his arrival in the Antarctic, a shipboard accident destroyed his right eye, and he was sent back to New Zealand. He returned in 1909 to participate in the later stages of the expedition; his will and determination in adversity impressed Shackleton, and led to his Ross Sea party appointment in 1914.
Ernest Edward Mills Joyce AM was a Royal Naval seaman and explorer who participated in four Antarctic expeditions during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, in the early 20th century. He served under both Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. As a member of the Ross Sea party in Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Joyce earned an Albert Medal for his actions in bringing the stricken party to safety, after a traumatic journey on the Great Ice Barrier. He was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other being his contemporary, Frank Wild.
Farthest South refers to the most southerly latitude reached by explorers before the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911.
James "Scotty" Paton (1869–1917) was a Scottish seaman who sailed to the Antarctic in several major expeditions between 1902 and 1917.
George Edward Marston was an English artist who twice accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on expeditions to Antarctic, first from 1907 to 1909 on the Nimrod expedition, and then later from 1914 to 1917 on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which ended with the crew being marooned on Elephant Island.
Felix König was an Austrian scientist, alpinist and Antarctic explorer. He was a member of Wilhelm Filchner's Second German Antarctic Expedition, 1911–13, which failed in its attempt to determine the nature of the link, if any, between the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea, and thereby resolve the question as to whether the continent was a single landmass or a group of several elements. In the course of the expedition König, along with Filchner, was part of the group, that disproved the existence of the land known as New South Greenland, or "Morrell's Land", supposedly discovered in 1823 by the American sealer captain, Benjamin Morrell.