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Antarctica

3 stories set here.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica

The Australian Geologist Who Walked 160 Kilometres Back to Base Alone in 1913 After His Two Companions Died and Most of His Skin Fell Off

Douglas Mawson and two companions were 480 km from base on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition when one fell into a crevasse on 14 December 1912 with the dogs and most of the supplies. The second died of probable hypervitaminosis A on 8 January 1913. Mawson walked back alone for thirty days. By the time he reached base on 8 February 1913, the soles of his feet had detached and he had eaten his remaining sled dogs.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · One Ton Depot, Ross Ice Shelf

The British Polar Party of Five Who Reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 to Find Amundsen's Norwegian Flag Already There and Died in the Snow on the Return

Captain Robert Falcon Scott and four companions reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, thirty-three days after Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had got there first. All five died of exhaustion, frostbite, and starvation on the return march. Scott's body and his journal were found by a search party eight months later, eleven miles from the One Ton Depot they had been trying to reach.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Endurance wreck, Weddell Sea

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition That Never Reached Antarctica Because the Ship Was Crushed in the Ice and Whose Twenty-Eight Men All Survived

Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was beset in the Weddell Sea pack ice on 19 January 1915 and was crushed and sank on 21 November 1915. The twenty-eight men reached uninhabited Elephant Island in April 1916; Shackleton then crossed 800 miles of the southern ocean in an open lifeboat to South Georgia. All twenty-eight survived. The wreck was located on the Weddell Sea floor in 2022.

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