Swedish Antarctic Expedition
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The expedition (1901-1904) was led by Otto Nordenskjöld and Carl Anton Larsen (the captain of the ship Antarctic).
Two key Antarctic islands are associated with the expedition. The first is Snow Hill Island (64º 27' S, 57º 12' W), where Otto Nordenskjöld and five of his colleagues spent two winters (one of them planned and the second forced by the sinking of the relief ship Antarctic). On his way to Snow Hill Island in 1901, Nordenskjöld had passed through Buenos Aires, where the Argentine government gave him supplies and other assistance on the condition that he include in his wintering-over party a young Argentine naval officer, Lieutenant José Sobral. Sobral spent the two years with Nordenskjöld at Snow Hill Island, becoming the first Argentine to spend time in Antarctica. The presence of this officer was also a factor which probably influenced the Argentine government to mount a rescue effort in 1903 with the corvette Uruguay, which successfully brought back all the surviving members of the Nordenskjöld party.
The second is Paulet Island (63°35' S , 55°47' W). This is where the crew of the Antarctic were stranded from February 1903 until November 1903. After their ship sank, crushed by the ice about 25 miles away, the twenty men from the Antarctic landed here in their lifeboat and built a sturdy double-walled stone hut whose remains are clearly visible today. Apart from the limited supplies they brought from the Antarctic, they survived on the thousand or so penguins they killed, as well as the birds' eggs.
[edit] References
- Antarctica. Sydney: Reader's Digest, 1985, pp. 152-159.
- Child, Jack. Antarctica and South American Geopolitics: Frozen Lebensraum. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988, pp. 69, 72.
- Lonely Planet, Antarctica: a Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit, Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet Publications, 1996, p. 302.
- Stewart, Andrew, Antarctica: An Encyclopedia. London: McFarland and Co., 1990 (2 volumes).
- U.S. National Science Foundation, Geographic Names of the Antarctic, Fred G. Alberts, ed. Washington: NSF, 1980.
- south-pole.com's article on Nordenskjöld's antarctic expedition
- Map of the area explored by the expedition
