Chapter 19.

The heroic era of the conquest of Antarctica ended when Ernest Shackleton died. In 1921 he travelled for the fourth time to the Antarctic. He also wanted to circumnavigate the Antarctic Continent with the Quest to discover the still unknown islands. He also wanted to map the coasts of the Weddell Sea better. Underway Shackleton was constantly sick. On 4 January 1922 the Quest reached South Georgia, but the next morning Shackleton had a heart attack and he died. His body was sent back to England, but his wife insisted that Shackleton be buried on South Georgia.

Up until then, motorised vehicles had not been used that often, but it didn’t stay that way. From the beginning of the 1920’s, researches gratefully made use of snow mobiles and planes. The first man to admire Antarctica from sky was the Australian Hubert Wilkins. On 16 November 1928 he and Ben Eielson took off from the base on Deception Island. They made a historical flight that lasted for twenty minutes. One month later (20 December) Wilkins and Eielson flew over the Antarctic Peninsula, taking them around eleven hours. During this expedition, 200.000 km² new land was discovered. It became obvious that planes were important for mapping Antarctica.

The Americans rediscovered Antarctica. Ninety years after Charles Wilkes, Richard Byrd organised an expedition to the Antarctic. More than fifty men and 95 dogs were living in the station he set up in the Bay of Whales, Little America. Byrd also took three planes with him. In early 1929 Byrd made some exploration flights during which he discovered the Rockefeller Mountains. The ultimate goal of the expedition was attained on 28 November: he flew over the geographic South Pole with the Floyd Bennett Byrd, Harold June, Bernt Balchen and Ashley McKinley. It took Amundsen three months to reach the South Pole, whereas Byrd needed only sixteen hours (and he was obviously much more comfortable).

Despite his precarious adventure in 1912, Douglas Mawson came back to Antarctica. In 1929 he commanded the first international expedition, jointly organised by Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. The expedition was named BANZARE (British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition). The coastlines were mapped with planes, but the British flag was also planted everywhere. The regions were therefore part of the Commonwealth.


Richard Byrd

In 1934 Richard Byrd turned back to Little America with 56 men, 153 dogs, six snowmobiles and three planes. Byrd wanted to prove that there was land between the Weddell Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf and not only frozen water. 200 kilometres away from Little America, Byrd constructed a weather station, naming it Advance Base, and staying there on his own for the winter. The hut gradually became buried under the ice and was heated by a gas stove. The stove emitted carbon monoxide (CO), a very poisonous, odourless gas, by which Byrd slowly suffocated. Byrd, who was getting more and more ill, didn't talk about his problems when he transmitted his data three times per week by radio, but the men in Little America noticed that he wasn’t his normal self. After two unsuccessful efforts a rescue team reached Advance Base on 10 August 1934. Byrd was too weak to make the trip back to Little America, and for three months, three men stayed with him.

The first to cross the Antarctic continent by plane was the American multimillionaire Lincoln Ellsworth. On 23 November 1935 the Polar Star left Dundee Island on the Antarctic Peninsula. He wanted to fly with the pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon to the Bay of Whales, but because of the bad weather they had to land three times. They were forced to stay in a tent for eight days, for a blizzard made it impossible to fly. After two weeks (the flight would normally take only 14 hours), they reached the Ross Ice Shelf, but at 25 kilometres from the Bay of Whales they had to land again - the plane had run out of petrol. Therefore, they had to cover the last kilometres by foot.

In 1946 the US Navy directed the greatest operation ever on Antarctica: Operation High Jump, of which Richard Byrd was in command. The Americans sent 4700 soldiers, 13 ships (including a carrier and a submarine), 50 helicopters and 23 planes to Little America. The goal of the expedition was scientific research and to map the topography of the region. Ten thousands aerial photos were made, and sixty percent of the coastal lands was mapped.

In February 1954 the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE), commanded by Phillip Garth Law, set up the Mawson Station in East Antarctica. It was the first scientific station on the continent that was active all year long.

The year 1957 was declared the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Scientific research was important and had to continue. The IGY resulted in the Antarctic Treaty.