20th November, 2024 in Natural World, Society & Culture

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects

By Anne Strathie

Author Anne Strathie is a writer and researcher, whose three biographies of members of Robert Scott’s 1910-13 Terra Nova Antarctic expedition are published by The History Press. Her new book, A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects: From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age, is now available and sees her, for the first time, write about Arctic as well as Antarctic exploration history.

What inspired you to write this book?

I knew from researching and writing about members of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition that several also participated in expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton and Douglas Mawson. The fact that Scott consulted Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen about Arctic clothing and equipment (including that adopted from Inuit precedents) also emphasised links between exploration techniques in the two polar regions. And as James Cook, Roald Amundsen and others had explored both polar regions – something Nansen, Shackleton and Robert Peary also planned to do – it struck me that a history of exploration covering both polar regions would tell a more integrated story.

Why ‘50 Objects’ rather than biography this time?

In 2010, as I embarked on my first polar book, Birdie Bowers; Captain Scott’s Marvel, Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects was broadcast on BBC radio and published as a book. MacGregor’s ground-breaking work showed how objects, whether generic or personal, can reveal history in a fresh, engaging way. Since then I’ve enjoyed other ‘50/100 Objects’ books either as gateways to new subject areas or a means of shedding fresh light on more familiar ones. So, happily for me, as The History Press had already published several object-s based books, they agreed that polar exploration history was an appropriate subject for new one.

What kind of research have you done for your books, including this one?

Like most authors, I start with desk research for each new book. But this book was also informed by previous site research visits, starting in 2011, when I first went to Antarctica and visited Scott’s Terra Nova hut (ice blocked us from the Discovery hut) and Shackleton’s Nimrod and Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross huts. One of my outstanding memories (alongside encountering penguins in their natural habitat) is of seeing the bunks once occupied by Bowers and his companions. As part of that first trip to Antarctica, I visited archives, museums and relevant local sites in Australia and New Zealand – a pattern I continued during research visits to Spitsbergen, the South Atlantic and Antarctic Peninsula area and, most recently, the Northwest Passage. But while site research is important and allows me to add my own ‘angle’ to subjects, the length of my bibliographies and acknowledgements pages attests to the bedrock of reading and archival research in Britain on which all my books depend.

Was there anything especially surprising that you found in your research?

I’ve always enjoyed discovering unexpected encounters and interconnections during my research and this book was no exception. One object recalls the unplanned meeting on a remote Arctic island of Nansen and British explorer Frederick Jackson – a meeting which resulted in a famous Illustrated London News front page. I also noticed how scientists regularly shared the results of their work and that Joseph Hooker, who saw Antarctica’s Great Ice Barrier in 1841 from the decks of Erebus, lived until 1911 so met to compare notes with Edward Wilson, his Discovery and Terra Nova expedition counterpart. French explorer-scientist Jean-Baptiste Charcot, a prototype of today’s ‘networkers’, regularly collaborated with Scott and other expedition leaders, fellow-scientists and Deception Island whalers and others he encountered during his travels. Ports were also nodes of interconnection – while I knew circumnavigator James Cook lived in Whitby and used Whitby-built vessels, I had not previously encountered two Whitby master-whalers, William Scoresby senior and junior, whose achievements are recognised with objects in my book.

Unusually for a polar history covering this period, several chapters focus on women. Can you explain how that came about?

From the outset I realised the timespan of this book – from the late 1700s to early 1930s – precluded featuring women who stood on the Antarctic continent or led official expeditions. But while researching James Cook’s family life, I found details of Elizabeth Cook’s little ‘ditty box’, now in the Library of New South Wales, Sydney. This became the second object in my book and allowed me to describe Cook’s third circumnavigation from a different standpoint. I then found suitable objects associated with Jane Franklin (Franklin’s second wife), Eleanor Gell (Franklin’s daughter by his first marriage), Kathleen Scott (who worked as sculptor while Scott was in Antarctica) and with Dorothy Russell Gregg (later Irving-Bell), whose album of Shackleton and other memorabilia suggests that ‘super-fandom’ is not a new phenomenon!

What is your favourite object or chapter in the book? Why?

That’s probably the hardest question so far – so I’ll shortlist three candidates!

• The beautifully cased daguerreotype of a young Scottish doctor Harry Goodsir, which was taken in May 1845, just before Franklin’s ships left for the Northwest passage. Although Harry looks relaxed in the image, his letters reveal him as full of energy and enthusiasm for the challenges ahead.
• Discovery, Scott’s custom-built expedition ship, which came close to being abandoned in Antarctica on her maiden voyage, but can be visited in Dundee, over 120 years after being launched there.
• Elizabeth Cook’s ‘ditty box’, made by her husband’s shipmates and shedding a light on a remarkable woman.

Any final thoughts …

As suggested in the introduction to my book and by the title, this is only one history of polar exploration. I’ve cast my net wide and, in addition to objects associated with famous ‘Polar Stars’, included ones owned or used by women, people of colour and lesser-known participants in expeditions. But there are still polar exploration histories to be told – some of which are already being researched or written.

One of my reasons for highlighting collaborations and interconnections is that I believe that, if we are to protect the polar regions and their history, these are more important than national rivalries or competition. The finding of the wreck of Franklin’s Erebus in 2014 resulted from collaborative working between the Canadian government and Inuit people, whose oral history indicated the wreck-site. I’ve also highlighted the 1903-5 voyages of ARA Uruguay, during which explorers and scientists from Sweden, Norway, Argentina, Scotland and France were rescued and assisted. As it happens, emergency stores were cached for future mariners in distress – stores which, a decade later, gave Shackleton (who knew of them) a glimmer of hope that he could save his men after Endurance sank.

Last, but not least, I hope that readers – whether experienced polar travellers and historians or those who have learned recently about the finding of the Endurance wreck or at-risk penguin colonies – enjoy A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.