Word: shackleton
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Britain's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1915 was as foolish in conception as it was heroic in outcome. Both ends of the scale were weighted by heavy-jawed Sir Ernest ("The Boss'') Shackleton, who in 1909 had gone to within 97 miles of the South Pole. Shackleton had one trouble: he was a towering egotist. As an apprentice in the British merchant navy, he was termed "the most pigheaded, obstinate boy I have ever come across" by his first skipper. Born a middle-class Irishman, he burned to force his way to the top of Britain...
Though knighted and lionized at 35 for his 1909 journey to Antarctica, Shackleton in 1914 was frantic because the great goals were disappearing. The North Pole had fallen to U.S. Explorer Robert E. Peary in 1909, the South Pole to Norway's Roald Amundsen in 1911. Shackleton conceived a scheme of sailing to the Atlantic coast of Antarctica and sledging across the continent via the Pole to the Pacific. He called it "the largest and most striking of all journeys." The Royal Geographical Society was cool to the idea-as well it might be. The feat was not achieved...
Died. Sir Douglas Mawson, 76, Australian explorer of the Antarctic, longtime (1920-52) professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Adelaide; in Adelaide. Born in Yorkshire, Douglas Mawson went to Australia as a child, made his first journey to Antarctica in 1907 under Ernest Shackleton, was one of three men to reach the south magnetic pole. Leading his own expedition in 1911, he discovered George V Coast; and on one of the most legendary Antarctic journeys, he was the only survivor among three men, at one point had to stew his sledge dogs to stay alive...
...Fuchs and eleven men driving Sno-Cats and Weasels left Shackleton Station on the Weddell Sea south of South America. The 900-mile trip through unknown territory to the air-supplied U.S. base at the South Pole was a stubborn battle against blizzards and crevasses. Fuchs reached the Pole three weeks late, got a solemn warning from New Zealand's Sir Edmund Hillary, who had come up from Scott Station after laying down supply depots. Hillary warned that the season was already too late, and that Fuchs had better fly out while flying was possible...
...twelve-man Fuchs expedition is doing much more than here-to-there exploring. It is a well-equipped group of scientists who are making the first careful, detailed study of the interior of Antarctica. Starting from Shackleton Base on the Weddell Sea, south of South America, on Nov. 24, it headed for South Ice, an advance base 250 miles inland that was established by Fuchs during the Antarctic spring (Oct.-Nov.). This is fearfully difficult country, with two high, parallel mountain ranges, the Theron Range and the Shackleton Range, looming blackly above the snow. The ice between them is torn...