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.
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]
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]
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 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 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]
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]
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? 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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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 WarQuest 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]
The auxiliary barqueMorning (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]
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 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 (2,400km), 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]
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]
Riffenburgh, Beau (2005). Nimrod: Ernest Shackleton and the Extraordinary Story of the 1907–09 British Antarctic Expedition. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN978-0-7475-7253-4.
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.
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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.
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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.
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