New story. This topic involves the expansion of empire-rivalries, military objectives and also scientific endeavours. Let’s start with a basic question – why didn’t Captain Cook, who was certainly a capable naval officer, fail to discover Antarctica? He definitely tried, circumnavigating that continent in 1773-74, coming within 130 kilometres of the continental mainland. However, confronting harsh icy conditions, he turned back.

So who did discover Antarctica? And why was this question relevant to the spread of scientific knowledge and research missions?

To answer those questions, we need to delve into the nineteenth century world of rival navigational explorations and imperial science. Make no mistake – Captain Cook was on a military mission, sailing into the Pacific. Yes, he had scientists on his voyages as well, and they achieved monumentally important accomplishments for the scientific community. Back in 1766, the Royal Society, the premier scientific organisation in the UK, proposed journeying into the southern oceans and lands.

Keen to discover any southern lands before their European competitors, the British navy provided the ships and provisions for Cook’s Pacific voyages. The Cold War-like rivalry between England and France was fought out on the American continent in the Seven Years war, (1756 – 63) with England the eventual winner. Europeans had mapped different parts of the Australian landmass, including Dutch and French navigators.

Cook did not discover Australia – he was expecting to find the east coast of New Holland, as the continent was known then. Of course, the indigenous nations had been in Australia for hundreds of thousands of years. His orders were to find a great terra nulius incognita, the much hypothesised icy continent now known as Antarctica. Throughout 1773 and the beginning of 1774, Cook tried multiple times to find Antarctica, but failed. Terrible cold conditions, coupled with the loss of two ships, and heavy sea ice, convinced him to turn back. This was Cook’s second Pacific voyage.

It was during his first voyage, as a lieutenant, that Cook and his colleagues observed the transit of Venus from Tahiti. All the while, Cook never stopped taking military reconnaissance notes. Cook’s voyages were all undertaken with secret military objectives. Britain intended on expanding its colonial power into the Pacific. London was wary of its rivals, France, Holland and Tsarist Russia. Competition for the domination of the maritime traffic in the southern oceans was on.

He admitted, after his second journey to the Pacific, that he never actually found the great southern land. He sailed within the Antarctic circle, the first to do so, but otherwise, his journeys were very much a case of connecting the dots charted by other navigators.

So who discovered Antarctica? It was the Russian navigator, Fabian von Bellingshausen (1778 – 1852). A Baltic German, his voyage was the first definitive journey to the Antarctic continent which proved that an uninhabited great southern landmass existed – and not just a conjecture among maritime navigators. In 1820, Anglo-Russian competition was fierce, even though London and Moscow found themselves temporarily allies against the Napoleonic Empire.

The two Russian warships, docking in Rio de Janeiro, made their way to Antarctica, finding land in January 1820. Returning to Russia in 1821, Bellingshausen and his colleagues were awarded medals and imperial titles. The Russians would not set foot on Antarctica until 1956, when the Soviet government renewed territorial ambitions and scientific missions to the southern continent.

The first Russian Antarctic Expedition remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Occurring during what has become known as the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration, the discovery of Antarctica, and Roald Amundsen’s triumphal land journey to the South Pole in 1911, are subjected to an Anglophone preoccupation with ‘great explorers.’

To be sure, scientific goals, particularly in the fields of geology and palaeontology, were and are motivations for exploring Antarctica. The nineteenth century witnessed a number of scientific paradigmatic revolutions; studying the Earth’s strata, fossils and geological features were no longer constrained by creationism. Massive change in the Earth’s continental history, including changes in life forms, was just beginning to be understood.

Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832), the preeminent naturalist of his time, established extinctions as a recurring event in geologic history, opening up the field of fossil collecting as evidence of changes in the natural world over time. Roderick Murchison (1792 – 1871), extending Cuvier’s work, elaborated the geologic timescale. The Earth’s natural history was no longer considered an immutable product of god’s creation, but an ever-changing product of biological and geologic forces. Antarctica, the unexplored continent, opened up new possibilities.

The heroic yet ultimately unsuccessful expeditions to the South Pole led by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton have entered the Anglocentric lore of ‘great explorers’. The equally heroic and triumphant expedition of Norwegian Roald Amundsen – he arrived at the South Pole by overland journey in December 1911 – received a lukewarm reception in England and the commonwealth nations.

Scott, who died in Antarctica in 1912, has become something of a martyr – overshadowing Amundsen’s victory in the race to the South Pole. News of Amundsen’s triumph was greeted in moderate, measured tones in the British media. Scott, in posterity, was portrayed as the consummate gentleman, playing by the rules.

Amundsen, by contrast, had unfair advantages, according to the English media establishment. Amundsen used dogs for haulage, unlike Scott who relied on ponies. Dogs do not have sweat glands, making them more resilient in the harsh cold weather, it was opined. In the case of Shackleton, his courage and endurance is emphasised – and his personality is humanised with descriptions of his ‘heartbreak’ at seeing his beloved ship, Endurance, sink into the icy waters.

It is time to enforce international treaty obligations in protecting the Antarctic environment. As for Captain Cook – his statue belongs in a museum.