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: #921819 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 315 pages

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.