Antarctica may be chilly, but the passions it stokes in the hearts of explorers and their champions are fiery indeed.Remnants of the crashed DC-10 on Mt Erebus have emerged from the Antarctic ice as New Zealand remembers its worst peacetime tragedy. Larson, attendees cheered for the explorer’s dogs, but not for him. Yet when Amundsen spoke to the Royal Geographic Society in a ceremony honoring his achievement, writes historian Edward J. Scott’s entire party perished, and the expedition is still regarded as a failure. Just over a month later, Robert Falcon Scott found it, too. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen found it on December 14, 1911. The race to find Antarctica sparked competition to locate the South Pole-and stoked another rivalry.

Americans weren’t far behind: John Davis, a sealer and explorer, was the first person to step foot on Antarctic land in 1821. Though von Bellingshausen was technically the first to see the unknown continent, writes historian David Day, his accomplishment was hidden for decades by an incorrect translation of his journal that led historians to assume he hadn’t actually seen land. ( See Antarctic explorers' huts frozen in time.) Unbeknownst to him, he had company: Three days later, British naval officer Edward Bransfield spotted the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. On January 27, 1820, he looked toward solid ice that was likely an ice shelf attached to Antarctic land now known as Queen Maud Land. In 1819, Russia tasked Fabian von Bellingshausen with going further south than Cook. Global competition for territory and economic dominance prompted explorers from Russia, England, and the United States toward Antarctica.

Then, the search for Antarctica heated up again thanks to international rivalries and the potential profits from seal skins hunted in frigid waters. ( Discover the deadly disease that haunted sailors during the Age of Discovery.)Ĭook’s travels spurred on other explorers, but none succeeded and the quest for the “unknown southern land” was considered impossible. “I firmly believe that there is a tract of land near the Pole, which is the Source of most of the ice which is spread over this vast Southern Ocean,” he wrote at the expedition’s end, but “The risk one runs in exploring a coast in these unknown and Icy Seas, is so very great, that I can be bold to say, that no man will ever venture farther than I have done and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored.” As it turned out, Cook had been just 80 miles from the continent’s coast at one point in his journey. The expedition took Cook and his men into the Antarctic Circle, but the explorer eventually called it quits after failing to find the continent.Ĭook was convinced there was more to the story, though. Captain James Cook had spent three years looking for it during his second voyage from 1772-1775. But early attempts to find the continent had flopped. This vast landmass, it was thought, would “balance out” the land in the Northern Hemisphere. Unauthorized use is prohibited.īy the early 19th century, explorers had been on the hunt for a massive southern continent they called Terra Australis Incognita (“unknown southern land”).

Waters near mount erebus