Report on the Collections of Natural History Made in the Antarctic Regions during the Voyage of the ‘Southern Cross’

1902

Expeditions (Special Collections) Q115 S685 1898

London: Printed by Order of the Trustees [British Museum]

Leptonychotes weddelli[i] - Weddell Seal

The Voyage of the Southern Cross, 1898-1900; (also known as British Antarctic Expedition) - Privately-funded by Sir George Newnes, a British publishing magnate, and led by Anglo-Norwegian explorer, Carsten Borchgrevink (1864-1934), Southern Cross sailed for Antarctica on 22nd August, 1898. It was an expedition of ‘firsts’: the first to use dogs on the ice; the first to erect buildings on the frozen continent; the first expedition party to ‘overwinter’ on the continental mainland; and unfortunately (after the death, supposedly from intestinal problems, of Norwegian zoologist Nicolai Hanson (1870-99)), the first to bury a body on Antarctica. On its return to England in June of 1900, despite its ‘ground-breaking achievements in Antarctic survival and travel’ and a number of ‘firsts’, the Southern Cross expedition did not receive the same accolades as subsequent British Antarctic expeditions in 1901-04, 1907-09 and 1910-13. Physicist and astronomer of the expedition, Louis Charles Bernacchi (1876-1942) wrote an account of his time aboard Southern Cross and subsequently joined as physicist Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition to Antarctica in 1901-04.