Product Description

This is the story of the early British, American and Russian expeditions to Antarctica, from the astronomer Halley's voyage in the Paramore in 1699 to the sealer John balleny's 1839 voyage in Eliza Scott, all in search of land, fur or elephant seals and all undertaken in terrible conditions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #751314 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 315 pages

Review
Throughout history, geographers were haunted by the thought of a huge green southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita, thought necessarily to exist in order to balance the continents in the northern extremities of the world. But not until James Cook's second great voyage in 1773 was the myth of this continent's existence finally laid to rest. Alan Gurney writes vividly of the arduous journeys undertaken by British, Russian and American expeditions to solve the mysteries of the southern continent, beginning with Edmond Halley's astronomical expedition in 1699 (when the astronomer spent as much time dealing with a recalcitrant crew as he did making observations) to John Balleny's voyage in 1839, hunting for fur seals. Many vessels sailed for profit as much as for exploration and Gurney describes the virtual extinction of the whales and fur seals, and the constant competition between various nations for the best claims. His is a remarkable account of heroic sailors, the irony being that all too often they had little notion of what it was they had discovered. Their collective story makes compelling reading. (Kirkus UK)

In this comprehensive account - written with sufficient wit and historical asides to offset the tedium of names, dates, and geographic minutiae - yacht designer and photographer Gurney shows how the discovery of the icebound continent became one of the great goals of explorers beginning in the late 17th century. The history of Antarctic exploration begins not with Captain James Cook, whom many readers will at once recognize as the first to plunge south of the Antarctic Circle, but with haunting tales dating back to the Greeks, legends of a temperate, populated southern continent. It was not until the last year of the 17th century and the voyage of Edmond Halley that the idea of a fertile land presumed to lie between the Straits of Magellan and the Cape of Good Hope began to erode. Between 1773 and 1775, Cook's famous expedition led him south of the Antarctic convergence (the oceanic zone where the warm Atlantic meets the frigid high-latitude waters); circumnavigating the Antarctic icepack, he found no continent but did discover new lands, including the South Sandwich Islands. Other explorers were to make their marks in Antarctic exploration, but as the 18th century gave way to the 19th, it was the lure of easy fortune, not science, that increasingly drew expeditions to the rich Antarctic seas. It was, appropriately enough, the crew of a New Haven sealer that finally stepped ashore on Antarctica in 1820. Although Gurney's narrative tends to loop back on itself circuitously at times, it is unfailingly informative and surprising in its scope: One learns about such diverse matters as penguin life, the China fur trade, the experiences of Charles Darwin, and tsarist geopolitics. Beyond the harrowing adventures one would expect to read about in any narrative of Antarctic discovery, Gurney's articulate story is a welcome portrait of an age driven by great mysteries and simpler technologies than those of today. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

why aren't school book written like this!
Wonderfully dramatic tales of courage and despair cleverly wovern into the timeline. Alan Gurney has managed to keep the impetus of one hundred and forty years worth of increadible hard ship alive with interspersed facts, tales of joy and of tragedy and loss. We can all learn both from the history and the spirit of the men he writes about.

Clearest 5 star possible
This is the story of the early discoveries of Antarctica, from the earliest sightings to the first landing. Covering the "professional explorers like Cook, and the sealers and whalers who followed in their wake.

The entire book is very easy to read, in unputdownable style. Tales of the utmost courage and adventur wonderfully told in enthalling prose. It would have been easy for this book to be a disjointed seres of essays, but Alan Gurney keeps it going in great sea-dog story-telling style.