The Age of Historic Antarctic Exploration: Hope Bay and Admiralty Bay

After viewing Elephant Island, we enjoyed some great entertainment before getting a good night's sleep, as Coral Princess continued steadily onward to Antarctica.

Julie and I arose early the next morning and staked out some chairs on the second floor of the solarium pool, where we could take in the views and have easy access to open decks on either side of the ship.  This turned out to be so ideal that we repeated it several times in Antarctica and on scenic-cruising days later in the trip.

As we entered the Antarctic Sound, huge icebergs floated past our ships.  Some later turned out to be carrying penguin colonies apparently taking sight-seeing cruises of their own.  We had brought the binoculars my Dad used to take with him to the horse races, and they provided a magnified view.

Dad's binoculars reminded me of his love for animals as we looked at whales, penguins, seals and albatross.

Dad would have been out there with his binoculars among the birders who gathered on the Promenade Deck each morning, watching albatross and other sea birds.  As a subscriber to National Geographic, he'd also have loved Antarctica's scenery, but he would not have appreciated the cold weather.

Temperatures hovered around the freezing point as we cruised along Antarctica's coast.

Perhaps you remember seeing a newspaper story about the warmest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica a few weeks ago on February 6, 2020.

Argentina's Esperanza Base on the Trinity Peninsula in Hope Bay took that reading of 64.9 degrees, but as we cherished our views of this remote weather station, the freezing temperature we experienced there would not have been nearly warm enough for Dad.  He swore after leaving North Dakota when he joined the Army that he'd never intentionally go anywhere as cold as his boyhood state.

Trade winds can moderate temperatures at Esperanza Base, but "warmest ever," especially in Antarctica which is perceived to be a bellwether for the climate, always will perk up ears of people interested in global warming theory.

You certainly wouldn't mistake Antarctica for Curacao, even if that desert isle is also arid.  Naturalists on board said Antarctica is the driest continent on earth.  It hasn't rained in 2 million years in its "Dry Valleys."  In any case, it is frigid down there!

"Captain Scott you were so bold, now you're looking rather cold out there in the snow."  Those words memorialize one of the most famous explorers of the Age of Antarctic Exploration, Robert Falcon Scott, in a Moody Blues written and sang by the late Ray Thomas.

Never mind that the lyrics go on to have Scott claim to have seen polar bears, which are only found in the Northern Hemisphere; the ditty still came to mind with the mention of his name as the leader of the first expedition to Antarctica for Sir Ernest Shackleton, who returned twice more, including his hero's journey through disastrous circumstances.

Scott was actually a Commander, not a Captain, when in 1901 he headed the "Discovery Expedition" to Antarctica, on which Shackleton was third officer.

Acclaimed a hero upon his return to the United Kingdom three years later, Scott decided to lead a new expedition to Antarctica for more glory in 1906, only to learn that his former third officer Shackleton was planning to essentially jump his claim, starting at the McMurdo Sound base that Discovery Expedition had established.

After correspondence back and forth, Shackleton begrudgingly said he would use a different base camp and approach.

Once in Antarctica, however, Shackleton could not find an adequate alternative landing spot.  He was forced to set up camp in Cape Royds, near the old Discovery base, rather than return home without continuing his quest.

Shackleton's "Nimrod Expedition" of 1907 to 1909, which like Discovery was named after its ship, made it within 180 kilometers of the South Pole, retreating when they reached Latitude 88 Degrees South.

Esperanza Station: 65 degree record temperature recorded there 9 days later.

Scott's earlier Discovery team, which included Shackleton and Edward Wilson for the march from the ship to the southernmost point of that effort, had made it to Latitude 82 Degrees South previously.  90 degrees South is the location of the South Pole, so the Nimrod Expedition made it 6 degrees closer to the goal.

Having been bested by his protégé, the ball was in Scott's court.  He determined to set out to be the first to reach the South Pole on the "Terra Nova Expedition" in 1910.

Unexpectedly, that turned out to be a race with Roald Amundsen of Norway.

Interestingly for me having been a Moody Blues fan for fifty years, Amundsen actually had seen polar bears like in that Ray Thomas song about explorers, but not in the Southern Hemisphere.

From 1903 to 1906, he was the first explorer to traverse the Northwest Passage in the North Arctic region, which incidentally is a new frontier for cruising.

Amundsen had secretly abandoned his quest to go the North Pole, which was supposed to be his next claim to fame, when he learned Americans Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, on two different expeditions, had reached the North Pole before Amundsen embarked, though the Americans' claims have since been disputed (mostly by Brits).

In 1926, Amundsen led the first team "proven" to reach the North Pole by air, flying over it in a dirigible.  Once again, another American explorer, Richard Byrd, beat Amundsen there by a few days, arriving by airplane, but that claim that was also disputed (spearheaded by Norwegians and Brits).  Do you sense a theme here?

Before sailing from Madeira on his "Fram Expedition," Amundsen revealed his intention to lead the first party to the South Pole in a telegram to Commander Scott, who in that era before smart phones received it well after he was underway.  Scott and his men considered this a betrayal of some kind of gentlemanly explorer's code of honor.  Regardless, Scott pushed forward, confident in using their carefully prepared plan.

Unfortunately, his ship had unanticipated delays en route to the base camp, including getting impacted in ice for twenty days at one point.



Preparation to reach the pole would take months after setting up camp, so every delay decreased the probability of success in the short Antarctic summer.

On the other side, Amundsen started with a different game plan.  He made his base camp 111 kilometers closer to the South Pole, whereas Scott's plan called for him to build on the tried and true route that he knew from experience.


Scott planned to use modern technology --- motorized tractors --- to haul the supplies and gear required for such a daunting journey, but the tractors were untested in the freezing conditions of Antarctica.  Team Discovery soon learned it was easier to push the tractor than rely on the motor and traction, so they turned to their trusty horses to make the trek.

Amundsen went with teams of sled dogs, which are more cold-tolerant than horses.  That meant Amundsen could begin heading deeper into Antarctica earlier in the season than  Scott's horses.


When starting from their respective base camps to the South Pole, both teams had large contingents that gradually thinned out with each phase returning some support staff back to camp, like stages of Apollo rockets breaking free after serving their purposes to allow the astronauts in the capsule to continue into space.

Both dogs and horses served as food when their utility as nutrition exceeded their utility as pulling power.

Amundsen and his Norwegian team of four men won the race to the South Pole, planting the Norwegian flag on December 14, 1911, more than a month before Scott arrived with his team on January 17, 1912.

Like most explorers, Amundsen had spent months raising money from investors to finance his trip to the North Pole, so when he secretly changed plans without telling his investors, it made many subsequently question his integrity.  I suppose that might be why he seems to be lauded less than Scott and Shackleton, at least among our enrichment speakers on Coral Princess.

Another rationalization I heard is that Scott and Shackleton had done the truly adventurous, groundbreaking work, while Amundsen rode in on their shirt tails, though I would question that theory on the basis that Amundsen took a different route.

I think the easiest explanation is that Brits controlled the historic narrative, because they were the leaders of the free world until World War II.

Back to the approaching winter of 1912, Scott hoped to salvage some benefit of reaching the South Pole by bringing collected rock samples on the arduous journey of almost 1,400 kilometers back to base camp.

The winter relentlessly kept approaching as they pushed on with what I would call in retrospect a fool's errand of collecting heavy rocks that burdened their load considerably.

Each day found them covering less of the distance required to have any chance of beating the killer winter weather, falling further behind schedule.

After days of misery in deteriorating conditions, they froze to death just 20 kilometers short of safety.

Along those lines, one day we rented padded lounge chairs in the Sanctuary, a private open space on the fantail of the ship for passengers willing to pay $25 each.


There were plenty of blankets furnished, but it was nonetheless on the chilly side, almost to the point of making tea time moderately uncomfortable when our servers delivered plates full of sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, and assorted pastries along with our steaming cups of coffee, cocoa or tea..

In the sanctuary, if we braved getting out from under our blankies, we were able to move freely from side to side to see the glaciers and wildlife all around us.  The views and experience were awesome.