1912 Read Free Page A

perversely, the next notable revelation had little to do with land.
    In 1823 the British sealer James Weddell was commanding two ‘small, insignificant’ ships, the Jane and Beaufoy , in the search for seals to the immediate east of William Smith’s route to the south. Others who had been in the region had complained bitterly of impregnable, ice-covered ocean. Like Cook, Weddell was way ahead of his time. Keen to mix science with business, he reported a series of observations while exploring, including the temperature of the ocean, the geology of the islands he visited en route and the wildlife he saw—all with accurate geographical fixes. Pushing as far as his supplies would allow, Weddell reached a latitude of 74°15’S and declared this the Sea of George the Fourth.
    Not only was this the furthest south achieved in the South Atlantic—a feat that remained unsurpassed until 1912—it was the furthest south reached anywhere. Most importantly, Weddell had found no land. Realising his discovery might provoke controversy back home, on his return Weddell had his chief officer and seamen swear to the accuracy of the log before naval officials. He believed that sea ice was only formed in the vicinity of land and, as none had been found within 20° of his furthest south, there was most probably an open ocean all the way to the South Geographic Pole. His discovery and its implications constituted a case against an ice-covered Terra Australis Incognita . But, with later explorers finding the Sea of George the Fourth choked with ice, and reports of coastline in other parts—albeit not so far south—Weddell’s claims were openly questioned. The British captain had been extremely lucky: itwas not until the 1960s that the sea he found would be so clear of ice again.
    Unfortunately for Weddell, his trip was not as lucrative as his employers had hoped, and once home he was cited for a debt of £245, lent by the Commercial Bank in Edinburgh. This was probably the cost associated with Weddell’s scientific equipment, and his ship owners washed their hands of him. He fled just before he was due to collect a prestigious fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from the illustrious Sir Walter Scott. The British authorities remained sceptical of the explorer, and it was only in 1904 that a German geographer suggested the body of water be named the Weddell Sea in honour of the great pioneer.

    James Weddell championed the idea of sailing directly to the bottom of the world, but it was the search for a different pole that had piqued the interest of most scientists and the public during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although the geographic poles mark the location on the surface of the Earth around which the axis of our planet rotates, there are many others. There is a pole for the greatest distance from a coast (the Pole of Inaccessibility), one for the most frigid place (Cold) and even one for the spot with the greatest range in atmospheric pressure (Variability). In Weddell’s time it was the magnetic version that fascinated. Spurred on by the British Royal Navy’s desire to understand how the world’s compasses might be better used, science gained equal footing with exploration, and became less dependent on enthusiastic amateurs and haughty employers.
    The eleventh-century Chinese discovery that the mineral lodestone would naturally point north–south if freely suspended had led to the development of compasses that enabled navigators to plan and explore routes around the world with increasedconfidence and safety. But navigating by compass was not foolproof. Over time compasses subtly changed the direction in which they pointed; and the further you went polewards, the more erratic they seemed to become. For a country such as Britain, dependent on ships for trade and military muscle, the situation was serious: a drifting pole could become a hazard for ships.
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