This list includes all the main Antarctic exploration ships that were employed in the seventeen expeditions that took place in the era between 1897 and 1922, known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration . A subsidiary list gives details of support and relief vessels that played significant roles in the expeditions they were commissioned to support.
The tables do not include the regular whaling voyages that took place during this period, or expeditions such as that of Carl Chun in 1898–1899 in the German vessel Valdiva, which did not penetrate the Antarctic Circle. [1] The abortive Cope Expedition of 1920–1922, which collapsed through lack of funding without finding an expedition ship, is likewise excluded, though two men were landed from a Norwegian whaler and spent a year on the Antarctic Peninsula. [2]
Of the ships listed, three survived into the 21st century and are serving as museums: Discovery in Dundee, Fram in Oslo, and Uruguay in Buenos Aires. Two ships – Antarctic and Endurance – were lost in the course of their expeditions; two more – Gauss and Yelcho – were scrapped when their useful lives were over. The fate of the Japanese Kainan Maru is unknown. The others, twelve ships in all, continued their maritime duties and were wrecked or sunk in the years between 1907 and 1962.
Ship/country | GRT | Image | Expedition | Leader | Subsequent history and fate |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Belgica (formerly Patria) Belgium | 263 [3] | Belgian Antarctic Expedition 1897–1899 | Adrien de Gerlache | After her Antarctic voyage, Belgica was employed by a succession of owners in various capacities. Following several years as a research vessel in the Kara and Greenland Seas [4] in 1916 she was renamed Isjford and became a coal freighter. [5] Subsequently, she was converted into a floating fish factory. After the outbreak of the Second World War she was seized by the British and used as an ammunition depot, before being sunk by the Germans during an air raid on 19 May 1940. The wreck was rediscovered in 1990. [6] | |
Southern Cross (formerly Pollux) UK | 521 [7] | British Antarctic Expedition (Southern Cross Expedition) 1898–1900 | Carsten Borchgrevink | In 1901 Southern Cross was sold, and became a seal hunter. She worked in this capacity until late March or early April 1914. Then, while returning to Newfoundland from the Gulf of St Lawrence, she was lost with her entire complement of 173, in the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster. The precise details of the loss of Southern Cross are unclear; one theory is that its overloaded cargo of seal pelts shifted during a storm and caused the ship to capsize. The loss of life was the heaviest in Newfoundland and Labrador sealing history. [8] | |
Discovery UK | 736 [9] | National Antarctic Expedition (Discovery Expedition) 1901–1904 | Robert Falcon Scott | In 1905 Discovery was bought by the Hudson's Bay Company, and used as a cargo vessel until 1911. [10] After some years' inactivity in London, Discovery was used as a supply ship during the First World War. [11] In 1916 she was briefly involved in the search for Shackleton in the aftermath of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. [12] After the war she was acquired by Crown Agents and converted for oceanographic research. [13] In 1929 she returned to the Antarctic with Douglas Mawson and the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, [14] before being laid up in London where, moored on the Thames Embankment, she served as a training centre for Scouts and Sea Scouts. [15] In 1953 she was bought by the RNVR and used as a drill ship until 1979, when she was sold to the Maritime Trust and became a museum ship. [16] After a spell in London's St Katherine Docks, in 1986 she was taken to Dundee, her home port, where, having been sold to Dundee Industrial Heritage, she became part of a permanent exhibition there. [17] | |
Gauss Germany | 728 [18] | First German Antarctic Expedition (Gauss Expedition) 1901–1903 | Erich von Drygalski | After its acquisition by the Canadian government in 1905, Gauss was renamed CGS Arctic and enjoyed a long career as a survey vessel in the Canadian Arctic regions, under the command of Joseph-Elzéar Bernier. [19] Following a break in activities during the First World War, in which Arctic saw service as a floating lighthouse, Bernier returned in 1922 to command the ship in further Arctic journeys, until his retirement in 1925. Arctic, by then in poor condition, was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company, which dismantled the ship, the hull of which was abandoned on a sandbank. [20] | |
Antarctic (formerly Kap Nor) Sweden | 346 [21] | Swedish Antarctic Expedition 1901–1903 | Otto Nordenskiöld | Antarctic did not survive the expedition. After being trapped in pack ice off the Antarctic Peninsula in early 1903, she suffered severe damage and sank off Paulet Island on 12 February 1903. Her complement was rescued without loss of life. [22] | |
Scotia (formerly Hekla) UK Scotland | 375 [23] | Scottish National Antarctic Expedition 1902–1904 | William Speirs Bruce | Scotia was sold, and resumed her role as a sealer off the Greenland coast. In 1913 she served as an ice patrol vessel in the North Atlantic. During the First World War she was chartered to the French government and saw service as a freighter. On 18 January 1916 she caught fire, and was burned out on Sully Island in the Bristol Channel. [24] [25] | |
Français France | 250 [26] | Third French Antarctic Expedition 1903–1905 | Jean-Baptiste Charcot | After the expedition, Français was sold to the Argentine government and renamed Austral. In December 1907 the ship was wrecked on a sandbank in the Río de la Plata (River Plate). [27] [28] | |
Nimrod UK | 458 [29] | British Antarctic Expedition 1907 (Nimrod Expedition) 1907–1909 | Ernest Shackleton | On his return to England in 1909, Shackleton used Nimrod as a floating museum of the expedition, before selling her to help meet the expedition's debts. She worked as a coal carrier for the next few years. On 31 January 1919, Nimrod was wrecked and destroyed on the Barber Sands in the North Sea off the Norfolk coast. Ten of her twelve crew were lost with her. [30] | |
Pourquoi-Pas? IV France | 445 [31] | Fourth French Expedition 1908–1910 | Jean-Baptiste Charcot | Pourquoi-pas? was used by the French Navy as a training ship during the First World War, after which Charcot resumed command, and during the following years led many scientific and exploratory missions. In 1928 the ship participated in the search for Roald Amundsen, who disappeared in the Arctic while himself involved in a search for the missing Italian explorer Umberto Nobile. [32] On 16 September 1936, en route to St Malo from Reykjavík, Pourquoi-pas? was wrecked when caught in a cyclone off the coast of Iceland. Only one crew member survived; Charcot was among the victims. [33] [34] | |
Kainan Maru (formerly Hoko Maru) Japan | 204 [35] | Japanese Antarctic Expedition 1910–1912 | Nobu Shirase | After the return of the expedition, Kainan Maru was sold back to its former owners, and resumed its work as a fishing vessel. [36] Shirase devoted many years to raising funds to cover the expedition's debts and the costs of publishing its results. He died in poverty in 1946. [37] The ship may have been sunk in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1944 by a USAAF attack, but this is not conclusively known. [38] | |
Fram Norway | 402 [39] | Amundsen's South Pole expedition 1910–1912 | Roald Amundsen | Amundsen had planned to use Fram as the basis of his intended Arctic drift, but delays, followed by the outbreak of war in 1914, negated his plans. Fram was left for many years to deteriorate at her berth in Horten. In 1925 a committee for the ship's preservation was formed, under Otto Sverdrup; in 1929 restoration work began in the shipyard at Sandefjord. Finally, in 1935, the restored Fram was brought to Oslo under the charge of Oscar Wisting, and placed in specially-erected housing. King Haakon formally opened the Fram House on 20 May 1936, where Fram remains. [40] | |
Terra Nova UK | 744 [41] | British Antarctic Expedition 1910 (Terra Nova Expedition) 1910–1913 | Robert Falcon Scott | After its return from the Antarctic in 1913, Terra Nova was repurchased by its former owners and operated as a sealer between 1913 and 1942. During the Second World War she was employed as a supply ship between Newfoundland and Greenland. On 12 September 1943 the ship suffered damage and began to leak badly. Her crew and certain artifacts were transferred to another vessel, after which the hulk was set alight and sunk by gunfire the next day. [42] [43] In August 2012 the wreck of Terra Nova was discovered by a team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute. [44] [45] | |
Deutschland (formerly Bjørn) Germany | 598 [46] | Second German Antarctic Expedition 1911–1914 | Wilhelm Filchner | After Deutschland returned to Germany she was sold to Felix König, who was intending to organise and lead an Austrian Antarctic Expedition. The ship's name was changed to Osterreich. [47] This expedition was cancelled following the outbreak of the First World War. [48] The ship was requisitioned by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and served as a minesweeper until torpedoed in the Adriatic Sea in 1917. [49] | |
Aurora Australia New Zealand | 386 [50] | Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911–1914 | Douglas Mawson | At the end of the expedition Aurora was left in Tasmania, and was sold to Sir Ernest Shackleton for £3,200, for use in the Ross Sea party component of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. [51] | |
Endurance (formerly Polaris) UK | 350 [52] | Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914–1917 | Ernest Shackleton | Endurance was trapped by ice in the Weddell Sea, crushed and abandoned on 27 October 1915, and later sank. [53] Her crew made their way over the ice and by small boats to Elephant Island, [54] from where they were eventually rescued. [55] The wreck was discovered on 5 March 2022. [56] | |
Aurora UK | Ross Sea party 1914–1917 (in support of Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition) | Aeneas Mackintosh | After completing the rescue mission of the Ross Sea party, Aurora was sold by Shackleton to W.R. Grace & Co of New York, for £10,000. In her new role, on 17 June 1917 she departed for Iquique in Chile, with a cargo of coal. She was never heard of again, although on 5 December 1917 a lifebelt bearing Aurora's name was recovered off the New South Wales coast. The ship was posted as missing by Lloyd's of London on 2 January 1918. Several theories to explain the disappearance have been raised, including severe weather and possible enemy action, but the cause of the loss remains a matter of conjecture. [57] [58] | ||
Quest (formerly Foca I) UK | 205 [59] | Shackleton–Rowett Expedition | Ernest Shackleton | After the expedition Quest was sold, and operated by Norwegian owners as a sealer and Arctic research ship until 1940. In 1928 she participated in the search for Umberto Nobile, missing in the Arctic with the airship Italia, and in 1930 was chartered by the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, investigating the possibility of air routes to Canada via Greenland. During the Second World War Quest was loaned to the allied navies; in 1946 she was returned to her owners, and continued to work as a sealer until 5 May 1962, when she was trapped by ice and sank off the coast of Labrador. [60] [61] |
Ship | Captain | Image | Expedition | History and subsequent fate |
---|---|---|---|---|
Morning UK | William Colbeck | National Antarctic Expedition (Discovery Expedition) 1901–1904 | The auxiliary barque Morning (originally Morgenen) was built in 1871 as an Arctic whaler. [62] She made two Antarctic voyages in support of the Discovery Expedition. In January–February 1903 she delivered fresh supplies, but was unable to break through to help free Discovery from the ice which had held her since March 1902. [63] [64] She returned in January 1904 when, with the assistance of a second relief vessel, Scott's future expedition ship Terra Nova , Discovery was finally freed and able to return home. [64] [65] After her Antarctic missions, Morning returned to her whaling duties. She was lost during a storm in the North Atlantic on 24 December 1915. [62] [66] | |
Uruguay Argentina | Julián Irízar | Swedish Antarctic Expedition 1901–1903 | British-built in Birkenhead in 1874, Uruguay saw many years of service with the Argentine Navy before undertaking the work of an Antarctic relief and rescue ship. [67] Her success, under the captaincy of Julián Irízar, [68] in effecting the rescue of Otto Nordenskjöld's expedition from Snow Hill Island and Paulet Island created much interest. [67] [69] Between 1903 and 1922 Uruguay made 13 further relief voyages to the Antarctic. [70] After her retirement she was used by the Argentine Navy as a depot ship. In the 1980s, restored and rebuilt, she became a museum ship, permanently moored at Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. [71] | |
Koonya New Zealand | Frederick Pryce Evans | Nimrod Expedition 1907–1909 | Koonya was a steam cargo ship, 1,091 gross register tonnage, built in 1898 at Grangemouth. [72] Under her captain, Frederick Evans, between 1 and 14 January 1908 she towed Nimrod from New Zealand to the Antarctic Circle, a distance of about 1,500 miles (2,400 km), so that the latter vessel could conserve coal. [73] In doing so, according to Shackleton, she became the first steel-built ship to cross the Antarctic Circle. [74] On 3 June 1919 Koonya ran aground at Sandy Cape in Tasmania, and was wrecked. All her crew escaped. [72] | |
Yelcho Chile | Luis Pardo | Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914–1917 | Shackleton made three unsuccessful attempts to rescue the Endurance crew stranded on Elephant Island. For a fourth attempt he was given use of the Chilean naval tug Yelcho , under its captain Luis Pardo. Yelcho sailed from Puntas Arenas on 25 August 1916 and, helped by unexpectedly calm seas, reached Elephant Island on 30 August, when the rescue was duly effected. [75] After the return, to massive celebrations in Puntas Arenas on 3 September, Yelcho took Shackleton and his crew to Valparaiso and Santiago, where the welcomes were equally vociferous. [76] Yelcho then returned to her naval duties, and served until 1945, when she was withdrawn from regular duty but continued to be used as a tender at the Petty Officer School until 1958. [77] She was finally scrapped in 1962. In recognition of her Antarctic rescue, the ship's prow was incorporated into a permanent monument, which stands in Puerto Williams, Chile's southernmost coastal town. [78] |
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.
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.
Edward Adrian Wilson was an English polar explorer, ornithologist, natural historian, physician and artist.
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.
Terra Nova was a whaler and polar expedition ship. The ship is best known for carrying the 1910 British Antarctic Expedition, Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition.
Endurance was the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The ship, originally named Polaris, was built at Framnæs shipyard and launched in 1912 from Sandefjord in Norway. When one of her commissioners, the Belgian Gerlache, went bankrupt, the remaining one sold the ship for less than the shipyard had charged – but as Lars Christensen was the owner of Polaris, there was no hardship involved. The ship was bought by Shackleton in January 1914 for the expedition, which would be her first voyage. A year later, she became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915. All of the crew survived her sinking and were eventually rescued in 1916 after using the ship's boats to travel to Elephant Island and Shackleton, the ship's captain Frank Worsley, and four others made a voyage to seek help.
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 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 Second German Antarctic Expedition of 1911–1913 was led by Wilhelm Filchner in the exploration ship Deutschland. Its principal objective was to determine whether the Antarctic continent comprised a single landmass rather than separated elements, and in particular whether the Weddell Sea and Ross Sea were connected by a strait. In addition, an extensive programme of scientific research was undertaken. The expedition failed to establish a land base, and the ship became beset in the Weddell Sea ice, drifting north for eight months before reaching open water. The expedition was marred by considerable disagreement and animosity among its participants, and broke up in disarray.
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.
The first ever expedition to reach the Geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four other crew members made it to the geographical south pole on 14 December 1911, which would prove to be five weeks ahead of the competitive British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and about a year later heard that Scott and his four companions had perished on their return journey.
Farthest South refers to the most southerly latitudes reached by explorers before the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911.
The Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1910–12, in the ship Kainan Maru, was the first such expedition by a non-European nation. It was concurrent with two major Antarctic endeavours led respectively by Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, and has been relatively overlooked in polar history. After failing to land in its first season, the Japanese expedition's original aim of reaching the South Pole was replaced by less ambitious objectives, and after a more successful second season it returned safely to Japan, without injury or loss of life.
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.
Deutschland, known as Bjørn between 1905 and 1909, and Osterreich between 1914 and 1917, was a Norwegian whaling and sealing ship, built in 1905. She is best known for her role as the expedition ship in the Second German Antarctic Expedition of 1911–13. During this expedition she was taken further south in the Weddell Sea than any previous vessel in those waters, but became trapped, surviving an eight-months long drift in heavy ice before being freed. After the expedition she was sold to Austria as the basis for another planned Antarctic expedition, but this was cancelled on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. The ship served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as a minesweeper until 1917, when she was sunk in a torpedo attack.
Kainan Maru (開南丸) was a converted fishing boat that was used as the expedition vessel during the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1910 to 1912. Substantially smaller than other expedition ships of the era, and with seriously underpowered auxiliary engines, she nevertheless completed a journey of some 50,000 km. After a false start in the southern summer of 1910–11, she entered the Ross Sea in January 1912 and landed a party on the Great Ice Barrier. While this party engaged in a southern march, Kainan Maru went to King Edward VII Land, where another party carried out survey and scientific work. The expedition returned to Japan with great acclaim in June 1912. However, it was quickly forgotten; Kainan Maru reverted to work as a fishing boat, and its subsequent career and fate remain unknown.