#Mawson’s Antarctica

[kreuzfahrttester]

Mit Scenic antarktische Höhenluft schnuppern: Exklusive Helikopter-Ausflüge zur Snow Hill Island und in die Trockentäler der Ost-Antarktis

Erleben Sie die Antarktis aus einer neuen Perspektive mit Scenic, dem Pionier für Luxus-Expeditionsreisen. Pünktlich zur Saison 2024/2025 bietet Scenic unvergleichliche Erlebnisse in den entlegensten Polarregionen der Welt. Mit exklusiven Helikopter-Ausflügen auf den Discovery-Yachten Scenic Eclipse und Scenic Eclipse II gelangen Reisende an Orte, die nur wenige Menschen je betreten haben. Vom…

[bluebacchus]

Maybe you sickos will appreciate my mid corporate TikTok skills on here

[slidesworthseeing]

Found slide: Getting the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) Volkswagen Beetle ready for glaciologist Gunter Weller (kneeling, left) to set out to get ice core samples, Mawson Base, Antarctica, 1965. The ANARE member standing at right is probably electrical engineer Don Allison (photographer unknown)

[areyougonnabe]

I know nothing about polar exploration! Or Shackleton! But you seem excited about it!

Have a favourite fact you'd like to share?!?

well my two favorite facts have already been shared which are the cautionary tale of the toxic polar polycule and the story of the antarctic lovebirds !!!

but here is a contender for #3... the tale of jessamine.

let's start with our homies Deb (left) and Griff (right), aka Frank Debenham and T. Griffith Taylor, the geologists of terra nova's cape evans shore party:

they would both later go onto impressive careers in academia, start families, basically be well-liked hard-working guys (also participants in 20th century imperialism but let's take that as given based on our starting point of this expedition lol)

BUT we are meeting them here, in antarctica, aged 27 and 30, "Early Career Researchers" as we might call them now. trying to keep busy with SCIENCE during the long antarctic winter night of 1911!!!!!

these guys go way back btw. Deb was born and raised in Australia and and Griff moved to Australia when he was a kid, and they both attended the fancy-schmancy King's School near Sydney, the Australian equivalent of british public school (e.g. Eton). according to griff they were family friends at that time although they would have been a few years apart at school.

later around 1908 they both studied at the University of Sydney under leading geologist Sir Edgeworth David, who had been on Shackleton's Nimrod expedition and reached the South Magnetic Pole with Mawson. They both ended up being hired onto Scott's expedition through university connections, Deb via Professor David and Griff through a scholarship to Cambridge where he met Wilson.

okay. backstory established. now one thing you need to know about Griff is that he was a total freak. like Racovitza, he was a Poster before there were online platforms to Post on. if you had that kind of brain back then, and no access to adderall, you had to just sit around inventing new kinds of science instead of deep-frying spongebob screencaps. he was a consummate edwardian memelord who would read a novel per day and still have time to write 20 pages of diary in which he would floridly record the silliest things that happened since the morning, the various quirks and quotes of expedition members, and then complain about captain scott in shorthand.

to say nothing of his passion for CREATIVE WRITING! vitally, Griff was one of the main contributors to the Cape Evans hut magazine, the South Polar Times edited by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. there were 3 issues of this during the winter of 1911 and 1 issue during the winter of 1912, the latter of which included much material written/submitted during 1911 before the polar party met with tragedy.

Griff was a versatile writer, and his pieces (which would sometimes cumulatively make up nearly half an issue of the SPT by page count) ran the gamut from expository nonfiction to speculative poetry to comedic epistolary to magazine pastiche. he had certain motifs that he frequently returned to—none as compelling, in my opinion, as that of Jessamine. or Jasmine, or Jessie, or Jessica, as the case may be...

it all began, according to Griff's diary, early in the austral winter of 1911, when Deb was "christened Jasmine by Titus [Oates]."

where this nickname came from is unclear—many of the men had picked up female nicknames on the voyage down (see "Jane" Atkinson, "Marie" Nelson, "Penelope" Pennell) but Deb had not been on the voyage down because he had gotten picked up in Australia, so this may have been a belated attempt to correct that omission. Griff wrote in his book about the expedition, "We were short of female society—which lack also accounts for Jessie Debenham as an alternative to Deb."

in any case, the name clearly caught on: on midwinter day, a little under two months after the nickname's debut, Griff recorded that during the gift exchange after dinner "Every second present or so was a necklace or earrings for Miss Jessie Debenham."

(deb and titus at midwinter dinner)

THIS GOT REALLY LONG SO CLICK READ MORE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED!!

in the second SPT issue of 1911, Griff's 17-page narrative "The Bipes" describes the inhabitants of the Cape Evans hut from the perspective of a rabbit who lives in the stables. you can read the whole thing here and please do!!! (you'll need a VPN outside the US) BUT here is the relevant bit dealing with Deb:

U. PULCHERRIMA. This Bipe inhabits a strongly defended Bungkh in the Ubdug burrow. It is supported by mighty baulks of timber and can only be reached by means of a dangerous ladder. The Bungkh is supplied with heavy hammers, piles of stones and other offensive weapons. These precautions are, I believe, necessary in the Bipe courtship, for she is often called upon to repel members of other burrows who approach her balcony with blandishments. Her time is chiefly occupied with a primitive quern or handmill, and at this she grinds for long hours every day. I judge that this merely satisfies some primitive habit, for no flour seems to be produced. But it is pleasant to see how strong is the feminine instinct.

the species name "Pulcherrima" is also the species name of the pointsetta flower, and can be translated to "beautiful woman" (i think??)

here's the illustration produced by Bill Wilson (based on Griff's sketch) to accompany the above - yes that's a portrait of Griff in her bunk and Birdie below attempting to woo her:

it must be noted that Meares, nicknamed "Mother," also gets cast in a female role in the Bipes piece, but does not receive the privilege of being drawn in a skirt, rip.

anyway, the next issue of the SPT, vol 3 issue III, is the last one to be produced before the end of winter. Griff decided to one-up himself and write a piece in which Jessamine takes center stage. The Ladies Letter is a pitch-perfect parody of the "Ladies Column" sections that appeared in many periodicals of the era—full of french fashion terms and simpering style suggestions. Griff brilliantly adapts the format for a pastiche on the subject of Antarctic fashion; not free, naturally, from general whiffs of period-typical misogyny, but as those being mocked in specific are fellow expedition members and not any actual women i forgive him.

written in the form of a letter from Jessamine to her absent friend Cynthia (whose identity i'm unsure of BUT i'm tempted to say is supposed to be Priestley, away at Cape Adare), the piece again features multiple expedition members in female roles, including Silas as "American" Sally Wright, Cherry as "Madame Chérie - that dear delightful person - who builds her beautiful creations on strictly scientific principles of hygiene and aesthetics" and Birdie as Madame Berdé, who "finds that for well developed figures it is most distinctive to use a cross-gartering well above the ankle. She herself is naturally a consistent exponent of this latter fashion."

and then of course there is Jessamine's star turn. she is wearing the newest fashion, "a modification of last year's 'tube skirt' [which] even more closely swathes the lower limbs, and it is necessary that the wearer should be rolled along by her maid."

Jessamine reveals that she is planning to induce Titus Oates to bring her a proposal of marriage through the clever use of themed charms on her chatelaine.

All the smartest girls have wreathed chains of mascots around the skirt, and a pretty idea, which I commend to you, is to have silver model made of those articles which interest THE ONLY MAN WHO COUNTS. Breathe this to no one! But Mappin & Webb are making me such a choice set. The cutest little pony; a horse snowshoe (this is very lucky); a dead rabbit; a popgun; and a silver blazon PER MARE PER TERRAM PRO TITO; this will be attached to my 'tube', and then I really do expect to bring him to a proposal.

this scenario was illustrated hilariously by Bill, complete with Jessamine being rolled along, and Titus ignoring her as could be expected, in favor of a pony (Christopher?):

now, Deb is on record saying that Titus was his best friend on the expedition, but it may well be a classic case of "you are not your best friend's best friend," because per other accounts Oates was much closer to Meares and Atch than he was to Deb. that's just an observation to add a little flavor to Jessamine's desperate pursuit as portrayed here...

and not to look a gift horse (ha) in the mouth, but i do feel that Bill's illustrations don't quiiiiiite do the genderfuckery of Griff's text justice—Jessamine describes herself as wearing a frock inspired by the aurora, but Bill instead draws Deb in normal sledging gear plus some non-dress-shaped colorful streamers. a missed opportunity...

also, lest you think that Griff was the only one partaking in the Jessamine joke in the SPT, there is also a sneaky reference in the anonymous feature "My Favorite Book":

(J-SS-- [JESSIE]: "Not like other girls")

BUT WAIT. THERE'S EVEN MORE.

viewing the handwritten drafts of the SPT held at the SPRI (because all of this is going to be an actual academic paper someday hopefully lol), i learned that there were a fair handful of references omitted from the final version, presumably thanks to Cherry's editorial oversight.

one "answer to correspondents" written by "Marie" Nelson went as follows:

Jessica: A single lady cannot be too careful about the respectability of her lodgings or the character of her companions.

(referencing Deb bunking with Griff and Gran, two of the more annoying/messy people in the hut)

and an unused entry in "Songs And Their Singers" by Teddy Evans was:

Oh What’s Womans Duty - Jasmin

lastly, and most importantly, the drafts contained the one instance i could find of deb firing back about this whole thing.

vol IV of the SPT consisted of one issue released during winter 1912, when a lot of people had gone home (including Griff), and everyone left behind knew the polar party was dead and they'd have to go look for their bodies in the spring. it was not a fun time. vol IV contained a lot of material written the previous year but not included, since for obvious reasons folks weren't really up to being silly. one of those pieces was "A Day's Doings, Told By Our Diarist," written during winter 1911 by Deb as a parody of Griff. it's pretty funny in published form (p. 72 of this pdf)—Deb is on-point mocking Griff's dislike of eating ("Breakfast is an unintellectual meal, so gave it a miss. Better a bit more bunk than a bite more breakfast.") and his never-ending theorizing ("Thought out a new theory as to the origin of debris cones: yesterday’s wasn’t good enough").

however, the draft is exponentially more hilarious. Cherry, damn him, cut the absolute BEST BIT:

Made a genre sketch of Jasmine brushing her (his) hair – it’s a fool nickname anyways, mixes up the genders. 

knowing Deb—quiet, patient, chronically non-confrontational—that's about as explicit as he was willing to get, as far as revealing how he felt about the nickname. writing Griff realizing that it's a bit silly, he reveals to some degree his own discomfort. now, was it a "protest too much" situation or had he genuinely gotten fed up with being the Designated Girl Of The Hut? we shall never know!!!!!!!!

however the draft of the piece ends thusly: "[I] got paralysed at chess by the wily Jasmine, it’s a mud game, if ever there was one. Hinc illae lacrimae!"

so despite all the aspersions cast on her honor, and the failure of Titus Oates to accept her proposal, Jessie still triumphs in the end :)))

[loopspoop]

Lupin fans, welcome to a little AU I like to call the Snowmon AU!

Based off a current fixation on ice elementals and everyone’s favorite samurai >:3 I present the first chapter!

TWs: hypothermia, drowning, near death experience, descriptions of CPR, emetophobia

Trudging through the polar snow, Goemon had to admit the amount of white out here was getting vaguely annoying to look at. Lupin’s latest set of shenanigans had brought them to the Shackleton Ice Shelf, over 13,000 square miles of barren white snow and ice making up a rather small portion of Antarctica. They generally tried to avoid places this cold, except that one time with the penguins. Despite that general avoidance, here they were.

“Remind me why the fuck we’re out here again? I’m freezin’ my ass off!” Jigen huffed, pulling his thick coat firmly around himself.

“I told you already!” Lupin called back, smiling as he looked the tattered piece of paper in his gloved hands over for the umpteenth time.

Goemon remembered the exact conversation they had had pertaining to this expedition from several weeks ago.

“Who-?” Jigen looked out at the thief from under his hat, pausing stirring their dinner.

“Douglas Mawson. He was a geologist. Helped with the Antarctic explorations? Seriously?” Lupin raised an eyebrow as he pouted. “Damn, okay. Basically-“

“Yeah, yeah, discovered Antarctica or whatever, your point?” Jigen waved his hand, turning back to the food.

“Rude.” Lupin huffed, flipping down beside the samurai on the sofa. “He didn’t discover it. He explored it. What he actually discovered is loads better!”

“So what did he discover?”

“I’m so glad you asked, Goemon!” Lupin smiled broadly, tossing a tattered paper onto the coffee table. “The worlds largest diamond to date!”

“Diamond? This isn’t for Fujiko, is it?” Jigen frowned, turning the burner off as he walked over skeptically. “If it is, I’m out.”

“No, no, no. This is for us.” Lupin shook his head. “A diamond this big? I could chip a piece off for her and keep the rest for us and we would barely notice it’s absence! It’s huge!”

“How big exactly?”

“Supposedly, it’s over six inches and over 7,000 carats.” Lupin smirked, looking the map over carefully. “About halfway into the Shackleton Ice Shelf in a crevasse.”

“And why exactly did this Mawson guy just leave a find like that sitting in the ice for any petty thief with a plane to come take?” Jigen cocked an eyebrow and crossed his arms.

“It was the early 1900s. They didn’t bring enough necessary technology to get to it since it was pretty deep down and Mawson never made it back to retrieve it. He marked it on this map which I managed to snatch from a successor.” Lupin snickered. “So now all we have to do is get to Antarctica and we’ll be the proud owners of an extremely valuable diamond.”

“Here! I found the crevasse!” Lupin called, waving them over frantically. “Goemon, think you can reach it?”

“Step back.” Goemon waved them back, taking stance before unsheathing Zantetsuken.

In one fluid motion, metal against ice sung through the air as the samurai traveled about seven foot down into the crevasse. Landing at the bottom, he sheathed his sword once again before looking around. It seemed that the crevasse was an opening to a smaller cavern. He could see the diamond sticking out of the ice, deep blue in hue and, indeed, extremely large. Stepping up to the stone, Goemon glanced back at the light pouring in from above.

“You’ve got it, Goemon! Just grab it and jump back out, okay?” Lupin called down cheerily. Goemon could practically feel the excitement in his tone.

“Okay!” He called back, turning back as he grabbed onto the gem.

A blinding flash of light and a large crash met the samurai before everything went black.

~~~~~~~

Lupin stumbled and fell back as the ice below him shook and powered snow was blown out of the crevasse. Glancing over at Jigen who was flat on his ass and just as shocked, Lupin could feel the blood drain from his face.

Something had just exploded.

Body moving before he even thought about it, Lupin flung himself to the edge of the crevasse and looked in frantically. Was Goemon injured? Had the crevasse caved in on him? What the hell had even exploded???

Goemon wasn’t there. The ice at the bottom had shattered and broken through to the ocean below.

He heard himself screaming before he realized he was actually the one screaming, sliding down as quickly as he could as he tried to find any trace of the samurai, any signal he was there and okay. Zantetsuken was lodged between two rough pieces of ice, it’s master now where to be seen. It made Lupin more panicked than anything else.

“Lupin-!” Jigen shouted, sliding down beside him quickly as he looked around frantically. “Where is he?!”

“I don’t know, I don’t-! Goemon?! GOEMON?!” Lupin screamed, searching the clear water for any sort of sign.

Blue. It was his kimono. Under the surface of the water.

“NO-!” Lupin screamed, voice cracking as he lunged for the water.

“No, don’t-!” Jigen yelped, grabbing him around the middle as he slipped down the ice a bit. “You can’t help him if you’re in shock from the cold!”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Lupin cried, hands shaking as he shot the clip from his watch and latched it around the samurais ankle before he pulled him in quickly.

“Come on, come on!” Jigen grabbed the back of Lupin’s jacket and Zantetsuken, hauling both back out of the crevasse.

Lupin pulled Goemon up, laying the soaked samurai on the snow as his hands shook. His lips were blue. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. God, he wasn’t breathing!

“Lupin! Lupin, do somethin’!” Jigen looked at him anxiously, unsure of what to do.

“I-I-“ Lupin fumbled, hands shaking before he put them on the samurais chest.

Pump. He had to pump his chest. Make his heart beat.

Pumping his chest, Lupin could feel, could hear, Goemon’s ribs crack and crunch under his hands. Blowing air into his lungs before he pressed his ear to the samurais freezing chest, Lupin prayed for a heartbeat, a sound, anything. And then he began again. Counting the compressions, listening for breaths or a heartbeat, going all over again. He didn’t know how long he went for, frantically begging Goemon to open his eyes in between.

And suddenly the samurais body jerked and water gushed from his mouth as he tried to draw in a breath. Lupin rolled him onto his side as he gagged and choked, retching onto the ice as the thief held his hair back and nearly cried from relief.

“Goemon! Oh, thank god!” Lupin rubbed his back, frowning at the large amounts of water he was spitting up. “Easy, bud.”

“Christ…” Jigen frowned, body relaxing slightly. “I thought…”

“I know.” Lupin frowned. He didn’t want to finish that thought. “Goemon..?” He looked him over anxiously.

Goemon slumped against him, eyes lidded as he panted and shivered. Frost was gathering on his hair and on his clothes as they began to freeze over from the cold. Lupin could hear the residual fluid rattling in his lungs as he breathed. He pulled the samurai close to his body as he looked back at Jigen anxiously.

“We need to get back to the plane.” Lupin looked back at Jigen quickly. “Help me with him.”

“Fuck, on it.” Jigen quickly wrapped an arm around Goemon’s torso as he helped Lupin get him up. “Shit, he’s freezin’!”

“Just hurry!” Lupin urged anxiously, going at a half run with Jigen toward the plane.

Jigen threw the door open, helping Lupin bring Goemon inside. Leaving the thief to handle things, he jumped into the pilots seat. He needed to be able to get them to their hideout in Perth as quickly as he could make the plane go. He had to cut a nine hour flight down to as soon as possible for Goemon’s sake.

“Easy, bud, easy. I’m right here.” Lupin assured, helping Goemon out of his soaked coat and kimono until he was completely undressed.

“L-Lu-“ Goemon choked out, clinging onto his arm as he doubled over and retched up more water.

“I’m right here.” Lupin frowned, sitting him down on the bench as he grabbed some blankets as he wrapped them around him. “I’m right here.”

Undressing down to his underwear, Lupin pulled Goemon in close to his chest as he wrapped all the blankets around them tightly. Taking Goemon’s freezing hands in his own, Lupin tried his best to keep them warm. He knew he couldn’t massage him…making him too warm too fast would be dangerous, but he had to stave off frostbite. He could feel the samurais breathing, slow, wheezy, rattling. He was shaking so badly..teeth chattering as he shook. His body was devoid of any warmth, and Lupin was worried his heart would stop again.

“D-Di-Diam-mond-“ Goemon wheezed through shivers, hazily gazing toward Lupin.

The thief could feel his heart clench in guilt. Goemon just nearly left them for good and he was worrying about that damn diamond? Biting his lip hard, Lupin pulled him in closer as he shook his head. Diamonds could be replaced..Goemon couldn’t be. He spent so much time seeing Goemon as an unstoppable force…but he wasn’t. He was just a guy who was way too hard on himself and maybe they were just as hard on him too.

“It’s okay, Goe. Don’t worry about the diamond.” Lupin carefully tried to dry him off with the blankets. “Just save your energy.”

[spacecoffeeandcartoons]

I just took your uquiz (got Madhouse at the End of the World) and I'm obsessed - I think I might have found a new special interest!!! Please talk polar expeditions to me, I'm foaming at the mouth, absolutely feral. Just infodump like crazy please, I'm on my knees and begging

I'm so glad you liked the quiz!!

Apologies for turning this post into a larger primer!

I hope you enjoy Madhouse--secretly I think it's the best result on the quiz (though it's not my own result; that's A First-Rate Tragedy). Madhouse has a bit of everything & if you're looking for truly insane anecdotes to regale your friends with, it's your best bet. A smattering of what you'll find in Madhouse: an army of rats, toxic gases sickening the expedition leader, scientists drawing cartoons about poop and butts, a man being mistaken for a seal at the worst possible time, brutal disregard for cats by a man who would go on to co-found the International Astronomical Union, the invention of light therapy, really bad uses of petroleum jelly....& that's just scratching the surface! And it all takes place during the first overwintering in Antarctica. thisisfine.gif

The one downside (not a downside depending on your perspective) for Madhouse as a starter book is it has nothing to do with Shackleton or Scott, and you'll soon find the majority of the English-language books on the Heroic Age, for better or worse, relate to those two. Madhouse DOES have a young Roald Amundsen (later the first man to the South Pole), who is a FASCINATING figure, and his first trip to Antarctica was often overlooked before this book afaik.

So I chose my three books for the starter quiz very carefully. Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton, A First-Rate Tragedy by Diana Preston, and Endurance by Alfred Lansing are all accessible secondary sources. They are readable (not overly academic) & don't require background info, doing a good job introducing people and terms (polar exploration has a whole associated vocabulary). Just as importantly, they're all exciting & well-paced & gripping! Once you've found your bearings, there's a whole specialist literature of polar history for polar scholars and enthusiasts. Broadly, I break it down thusly:

- Primary source expedition narratives: firsthand accounts of expeditions by people who were there. Within this there are a few subcategories: books always intended to be written by explorers when they returned home (this was a significant source of income for expeditions), like Scott's The Voyage of the Discovery, Mawson's Home of the Blizzard, or Shackleton's The Heart of the Antarctic. There's books not-originally-intended but the author decided to write them years later (The Worst Journey in the World by Cherry-Garrard, Saga of the Discovery by Bernacchi). And then there's diaries that were never intended to be published--often, they were written for the explorer's family, or perhaps to help the expedition leader write the narrative. But they weren't meant to be published verbatim. Time, fame, tragedy, and general interest sometimes led to them eventually seeing publication--this is especially the case for a lot of the Terra Nova diaries, & was most famously done for Scott's own diary, which he had intended to edit into a book, but not to publish in raw form. Providence, of course, had different ideas.

- Secondary source expedition narratives: Madhouse and Endurance from my quiz both fit this category, for the Belgica and Imperial Trans-Antarctic (better known as the 'Endurance') expeditions, respectively. (First-Rate Tragedy I'd moreso call a Scott biography). These are accounts of expeditions written by authors/historians who were not on the expeditions in question. There's a LOT of these, and they vary widely in quality. Some offer new scholarship or cover something that hasn't been covered before; others are...less rigorous. Have a browse at your local thrift store/charity shop/secondhand bookstore. If you're lucky they'll have some polar books. Flip through and see if there's a robust citations section, or footnotes, and ideally in-text citations for quote attributions. This can give you some sense of the quality as you're wading into the sea of books!

- Biographies: Exactly what it says on the tin! Instead of picking an expedition to focus on, these books are about one explorer and his life (almost always "his", though there are a few exceptions like Ada Blackjack). There are, once again, a lot of these! Scott and Shackleton in particular have a lot of biographies. I personally didn't read many biographies before this obsession, and I find them a really interesting format in which the biographer is important too, not just the subject. I'm developing opinions about when and how biographers should include relevant cultural context, the amount of the author inserting their opinion that I prefer and how it should be indicated in the text, etc. Similarly for the secondary sources above, check the indices and citations. I'm constantly flipping back to check sources while reading, one of the reasons I prefer physical to e-books!

- Other: There's always another category, isn't there? There's tons more! Cultural histories like Spufford's I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (I recommend you get a few books under your belt before reading that to get the most out of it), travelogues mixed with history like Sarah Wheeler's Terra Incognita, Bea Uusma's The Expedition which flips back and forth between time periods, & more!

Like any taxonomy, there's flaws with the above, and things that don't fit, but that's broadly how I see the landscape!

Tips, tricks, & things to know:

- Polar books are most often found in the "Travel" or "Travel Literature" section. Sometimes you can find stuff in "History" "Biography" or even "Sports" lol. A parallel interest is Mountaineering, so if a place has Mountaineering books, they may well also have polar.

- It can be very helpful to familiarise yourself with the Edwardian era in general -- it's a fascinating cultural history in and of itself, and its the most modern era before the great global "end-of-innocence" of the First World War. Sometimes the things these guys are up to really ARE crazy, sometimes it's just that they're Edwardians and something is lost in the translation.

- Like many subjects historians have been writing about for over a century, polar exploration history authors have their biases. The most common one is whether or not the author likes Robert Falcon Scott. This goes back to a controversial book called Scott and Amundsen, published in 1979 by Roland Huntford. (It's also found under the title The Last Place on Earth, based on its TV show adaptation.) Huntford retells the "race to the South Pole" elevating Amundsen and in the process doing a very good job of destroying Scott's reputation by debunking him as an incompetent bungler. From what I've heard from others (I haven't read it yet, though will eventually for its historiographical value) it's a good source on Amundsen but everything he says on Scott should be ignored due to highly selective quotations and...well, active malice toward the guy. Basically, it's a callout-post/bombshell of a book that has had almost every subsequent historian touching on the topic going to great lengths to debunk in turn. Fwiw, I've also heard people say Huntford's Shackleton biography is good. Just. Don't listen to him about Scott.

- Imperialism motivated a lot of these expeditions, and frankly in my opinion this is something more of the literature NEEDS to talk about! A few that do a good job are Spufford mentioned above, & Larson's An Empire of Ice.

- I'd actually recommend don't start with diaries, bc they usually need some context to understand. Exception? Scott's final entries.

There you go! Happy reading! Also check out @areyougonnabe, she's got some great polar posts!!

[gulfportofficial]

It's no surprise to anyone, I'm sure, but god it's insane how like all of Antarctica is just named after the same guys and their boats.

Your Ross Dependency, your Ross Ice Shelf, your McMurdo Sound, your mcfuckin' Cape Crozier - the most easterly point of Ross Island. Mountains named after their ships, Ancient Greek Concept of the Personification of Darkness and Howling Dread.

Either that or monarchs. It's just insane. I kept thinking that, watching The Terror, how have these people already fucking named everything? They don't even know what's an Island yet, and it's still all Prince Edward This and King William That. It's the same in Antarctica, of course.

Anyway: Back when I was doing my ESCI paper on Antarctic fieldwork* I didn't think much of it while I was doing my map memorizing and recreations (a requirement of the course), but I DID finally kind of crack and write this mammoth essay about the expedition of Sir Douglas Mawson, who was engaged in mapping the uncharted Antarctic South Coast. He did not, of course, manage it and the two guys with him died, one of them named Ninnis has the glacier he died on named after him.

The thesis of this essay was that Mawson had no business being there besides imperialism and that it was ridiculous to regard people as heroes for willingly putting themselves in situations extremely likely to kill them for the sole purpose of claiming land. Doing this in Antarctica is not as egregious as doing it in the Arctic, of course, as there is no indigenous population to steal from down there especially, but it's still goddamned bonkers. And yet Mawson was so resoundingly lauded simply for not dying that he was at one time on the Australian $100 note.

One point of interest is that while Mawson was criticized for not having his party wear snow shoes (which would have distributed their weight more evenly and made them less prone to falling in crevasses) he absolutely did beat the cannibalism allegations. He was simply too pious a man for anybody to believe he'd've done that. Mertz, the third man in the party**, died either of eating dog livers (concentration of vitamin A will kill you if not careful), or of a broken heart from the loss of Ninnis (listen, I have read the diaries, okay. It was a very detailed and exquisitely researched essay.)*** Like, exploration is so romantic, romanticized, it's so easy to do it, and yet it's like bonkers stupid that there was literally no reason for them to be there but to claim the land. To make the "discovery". To manifest destiny. I've got no point here, I was just remembering how wild it was to remember all the different things named Ross all the way back in my Antarctic Fieldwork 101 paper. And how The Terror was basically made for me in a lab lol. *The school I went to had a really close relationship with Scott Base, and while I'd never be allowed to work down there - people who work down there have multiple graduate degrees, not just undergrad with field assistant training, but I was interested as hell and I learned a lot. Like for example how to put up a Scott - there's that name again - tent in a snowstorm. Remember Scott's expedition? That was the one that had Cpt. Oates on it. Of "I am just going outside and may be some time" fame. **No relation to Shackleton's third man. Another time. *** Also I wrote a song for the banjo about it. This was a long time ago and no records of the song survive.

[bertilakslady]

Typically, there’s no mention of Antarctica in any of the above, even though it’s probably the most hostile environment on the planet. Go read about Sir Douglas Mawson (who, as it happened, spent most of his life in Australia).

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

[gays4vulo]

Sometimes like tonight I think about that Australian guy Mawson who’s three party Antarctica traveling group lost the guy with all the supplies to a crevasse and then the second guy eventually died too so it was just the one, just mawson, and then I go well the retail job that’s putting me into an early grave will be survivable until I can get employed elsewhere but also. If I were mawson I would’ve given up guy one

[slidesworthseeing]

An Emperor penguin and three Adélie penguins, near Mawson Base, Antarctica, 1965. Photo by Don Allison

[phonemantra-blog]

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[gay-jesus-probably]

JOKES ON YOU MOTHERFUCKER, I HAVE SOURCES. Rations were mainly butter, chocolate, and pemmican, which is about 50% fat and 50% meat, sometimes with dried berries mixed in. Also, it's Antarctica, dude. They stored their food outside, frozen stuff isnt gonna go bad.

Source is Alone On The Ice by David Roberts, covering the Australasian Expedition of 1911-1914, which infamously resulted in expedition leader Douglas Mawson's three man sledging team losing one man (Belgrave Ninnis) down a crevasse, along with the sledge carrying their vital supplies, namely their tent and most of their food, leaving Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz stranded almost 200 km from help. Mertz died of starvation almost a month later, but Mawson survived and made it back.

BITCH.

As a general rule, if you're having food cravings, you should probably pay attention to that, because it's usually a sign that your body needs something. Like, if you've just finished a workout and are suddenly desperately craving fries? Maybe you're low on salt, you did just sweat a whole bunch. Period cravings for junk food? Your body's under some stress and working hard, you need energy, and foods with a lot of fat and/or sugar are an easy way to get that.

Back in the early 1900's when exploring Antarctica was all the rage, y'know what was a major part of everyones daily rations? Butter. Just butter. The men out on the sledging teams would have cravings to eat entire sticks of butter with nothing else, so that was included in their rations. And that happened because under those extreme circumstances, their bodies desperately needed as many calories as possible, so their diet consisted mainly of butter, chocolate, and animal fat. Eating entire sticks of butter was the healthiest possible diet for them.

That's an extreme example of course, but my point is, there's no such thing as inherently Good or Bad food. Anything that's edible can be healthy under the right circumstances, just like anything can be an unhealthy choice under the wrong circumstances. Your body knows what it needs. Listen to it. Unless you're actively going through a serious medical situation, you do not need a tightly restricted diet. Diet culture is a scam, body fat is natural and healthy, food is good for you, and calories are the fuel your body needs to power its continued survival.

[news2024news]

Defence completes C-17 Globemaster airdrop to resupply Mawson Station in Antarctica http://dlvr.it/T7kBCn

[petermorse]

Envisioning Antarctica: Mawson's Huts, Cape Denison from Peter Morse Studio on Vimeo.

[rithebard]

On Thursday;  #ChattingWithSherri welcomes back the #awardwinningauthor; #KatherineKovacic on 10/1 9/23 at 7pm pt; http://tobtr.com/12271330 #interview