Carsten Borchgrevink

Carsten Borchgrevink was born in Christiania on 1 December 1864, the son of a Norwegian lawyer, Henrik Christian Borchgrevink, and an English-born mother Annie, née Ridley. The family lived in the Uranienborg neighbourhood, where Roald Amundsen, an occasional childhood playmate, also grew up. Borchgrevink was educated at Gjertsen College, Oslo, and later (1885–1888) at the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry at Tharandt, Saxony, in Germany. According to the historian Roland Huntford, Borchgrevink had a restless nature, with a passion for adventure which took him, after his forestry training, to Australia. For four years he worked with government surveying teams in Queensland and New South Wales before settling in the small town of Bowenfels, where he became a teacher in languages and natural sciences at Cooerwull Academy. == Whaling voyage ==

The expedition that Borchgrevink joined was organised by Henryk Bull, a Norwegian businessman and entrepreneur who, like Borchgrevink, had settled in Australia in the late 1880s. Bull planned to make a sealing and whaling voyage into Antarctic waters; after failing to interest Melbourne's learned societies in a cost-sharing venture of a commercial–scientific nature, he returned to Norway to organise his expedition there. He met Svend Foyn, the 84-year-old "father of modern whaling" and inventor of the harpoon gun. With Foyn's help he acquired the whaler Kap Nor ("North Cape"), which he renamed Antarctic. A Mr Sanne was appointed captain initially but was quickly replaced by Leonard Kristensen. The ship sailed left Norway in September 1893. When Borchgrevink learned that Antarctic was due to visit Melbourne in September 1894, he hurried there hoping to find a vacancy. He was fortunate; William Speirs Bruce, later an Antarctic expedition leader in his own right, had intended to join Bull's expedition as a natural scientist but could not reach the ship before it left Norway. This created an opening for Borchgrevink, who met Bull in Melbourne and persuaded him to take him on as a deck-hand and part-time scientist. The ship penetrated a belt of pack ice and sailed into the Ross Sea, but whales were still elusive. On 17 January 1895, a landing was made at Possession Island, where Sir James Clark Ross had planted the British flag in 1841. Bull and Borchgrevink left a message in a canister to prove their presence there. On the island Borchgrevink found a lichen, the first plant life discovered south of the Antarctic Circle. While ashore at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink collected further specimens of rocks and lichens, the latter of which were of great interest to the scientific community, which had doubted the ability of vegetation to survive so far south. He also made a careful study of the foreshore, assessing its potential as a site where a future expedition might land and establish winter quarters. When Antarctic reached Melbourne, Bull and Borchgrevink left the ship. Each hoped to raise funds for a further Antarctic expedition, but their efforts were unsuccessful. == Making plans ==

International Geographical Congress 1895 To promote his developing ideas for an expedition that would overwinter on the Antarctic continent at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink hurried to London, where the Royal Geographical Society was hosting the Sixth International Geographical Congress. On 1 August 1895 he addressed the conference, giving an account of the Cape Adare foreshore as a place where a scientific expedition might establish itself for the Antarctic winter. Seeking support , the Royal Geographical Society president who opposed Borchgrevink's Antarctic plans For the next two years Borchgrevink travelled in Europe and in Australia, seeking support and backing for his expedition ideas without success. This vision would eventually develop into the National Antarctic Expedition with the , under Robert Falcon Scott, and it was this that attracted the interest of the learned societies rather than Borchgrevink's more modest proposals. Markham was fiercely opposed to private ventures that might divert financial support from his project, and Borchgrevink found himself starved of practical help: "It was up a steep hill," he wrote, "that I had to roll my Antarctic boulder." It was not unusual for publishers to support explorationNewnes's great rival Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) had recently financed Frederick Jackson's expedition to Franz Josef Land, and had pledged financial backing to the National Antarctic Expedition. Newnes was sufficiently impressed by Borchgrevink to offer the full costs of his proposed expeditionaround £40,000 This generosity infuriated Sir Clements Markham and the geographical establishment, who saw Borchgrevink as a penniless Norwegian nobody who had secured British money which they believed ought to have been theirs. Markham maintained an attitude of hostility and contempt towards Borchgrevink, Newnes stipulated that the expedition should sail under a British flag, and should be styled the "British Antarctic Expedition". In the end, of the total party of 29, only two were British, with one Australian and the rest Norwegian. == Southern Cross Expedition ==

Winter in Antarctica With funding assured, Borchgrevink purchased the whaling ship Pollux, renamed her , and had her fitted out for Antarctic service. On 2 March, the ship departed for New Zealand to winter there, leaving a shore party of ten men with their provisions, equipment and seventy dogs. These were the first dogs brought to the Antarctic; likewise, the expedition pioneered the use of the Primus stove, invented in Sweden six years earlier. Louis Bernacchi, the party's Australian physicist, was later to write: "In many respects, Borchgrevink was not a good leader". Borchgrevink was evidently no autocrat but, Bernacchi said, without the framework of an accepted hierarchy a state of "democratic anarchy" prevailed, with "dirt, disorder and inactivity the order of the day". Furthermore, as winter developed, Borchgrevink's hopes that Cape Adare would escape the worst Antarctic weather proved false; he had chosen a site which was particularly exposed to the freezing winds blown northwards from the inland ice. As time progressed, tempers wore thin; the party became irritable and boredom set in. There were accidents: a candle left burning caused extensive fire damage, and on another occasion several members of the party were almost asphyxiated by fumes from the stove. When the southern winter ended and sledging activity became possible, Borchgrevink's assumptions about an easy route to the interior were shattered; the glaciated mountain ranges adjoining Cape Adare precluded any travel inland, restricting exploration to the immediate area around the cape. Instead of returning home directly, Southern Cross sailed south until it reached the Great Ice Barrier, discovered by Sir James Clark Ross during his 1839–1843 voyage and later renamed the Ross Ice Shelf in his honour. Southern Cross visited other Ross Sea islands before turning for home, reaching New Zealand on 1 April 1900. Borchgrevink then took a steamer to England, arriving early in June. Return and reception The reception afforded to the expedition on its return to England was lukewarm. Public interest and attention was fixed on the forthcoming national expedition of which Robert Falcon Scott had just been appointed commander, rather than on a venture which was considered British only in name. In his book, he listed the expedition's main achievements: proof that an expedition could live on Victoria Land over winter; a year's continuous magnetic and meteorological observations; an estimate of the current position of the south magnetic pole; discoveries of new species of insects and shallow-water fauna; coastal mapping and the discovery of new islands; the first landing on Ross Island and, finally, scaling the Great Ice Barrier and sledging to "the furthest south ever reached by man". Other commentators have observed that the choice of the winter site at Cape Adare had ruled out any serious geographical exploration of the Antarctic interior. He was later involved in a dispute with Hanson's former employers, Natural History Museum, London, over these missing notes and other specimens collected by Hanson. The historian David Crane suggests that if Borchgrevink had been a British naval officer, England would have taken his achievements more seriously. == Post-expedition life ==

Mount Pelée disaster In 1902, Borchgrevink was one of three geographers invited by the National Geographic Society (NGS) to report on the after-effects of the catastrophic eruptions of Mount Pelée, on the French-Caribbean island of Martinique. These eruptions, in May 1902, had destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre, with enormous loss of life. Borchgrevink visited the island in June, when the main volcanic activity had subsided, and found the mountain "perfectly quiet", and the islanders recovered from their panic. He did not think that Saint-Pierre would ever be inhabited again. drew sharp criticism in the Science journal from expert Edmund Otis Hovey. Retirement On his return from Washington, Borchgrevink retired into private life. On 7 September 1896, he had married an English woman, Constance Prior Standen, with whom he settled in Slemdal, in Oslo, where two sons and two daughters were born. Borchgrevink devoted himself mainly to sporting and literary activities, producing a book entitled The Game of Norway. Although he remained out of the limelight, Borchgrevink retained his interest in Antarctic matters, visiting Scott shortly before the sailed on Scott's last expedition in June 1910. When news of Scott's death reached the outside world, Borchgrevink paid tribute: "He was the first in the field with a finely organised expedition and the first who did systematic work on the great south polar continent." In a letter of condolence to John Scott Keltie, the Royal Geographical Society's secretary, Borchgrevink said of Scott: "He was a man!" In Norway differing assessments of Borchgrevink were made by the country's polar elite: Roald Amundsen was a long-time friend and supporter, When Amundsen returned from his South Pole conquest in 1912, he paid full tribute to Borchgrevink's pioneering work: "We must acknowledge that in ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened the way to the south and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed." During his later years Borchgrevink lived quietly. In 1929 the Parliament of Norway awarded him a pension of three thousand Norwegian kroner. == Death and commemoration ==

. The accommodation hut is on the left. Carsten Borchgrevink died in Oslo on 21 April 1934. Despite what one biographer describes as his obsessive desire to be first, and his limited formal scientific training, he has been acknowledged as a pioneer in Antarctic work and as a forerunner of later, more elaborate expeditions. and by the extinct arthropod Borchgrevinkium taimyrensis. His expedition's accommodation hut remains at Cape Adare, under the care of The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust which acts as guardian to this hut and to those of Scott and Shackleton elsewhere on the continent. The Borchgrevink hut was designated by the Trust as Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) No. 159 in 2002. In June 2005 the Trust adopted a management plan for its future maintenance and accessibility. == References ==