Can You Describe The Discovery Of Antarctica?

In the mid-eighteenth century, man started to turn his exploratory interests southward. Only a few years previously much of the southern hemisphere was a vast unknown area. Because of the tremendous distances involved, no one could answer such fundamental questions as whether it consisted principally of land or water.

In 1772 the British explorer Captain James Cook set out on a three-year voyage to latitudes far to the south. Ice blocked him from a close approach and, although he circled the continent, he never saw the land of Antarctica itself. Between 1800 and 1821, seal hunters and explorers sighted islands and parts of the peninsula, and perhaps part of the main body of the continent. Later, the American Navy officer Charles Wilkes and the British explorer James Ross contributed much to the interest and knowledge of Antarctica, thus paving the way for land exploration. Robert F. Scott, a British explorer, pushed to within 575 miles (925 kilometers) of the South Pole in 1903. It was actually reached by Norwegian Roald Amundsen on December 14, 1911. About a month later Scott and his party of four others arrived at the Pole, but perished on the Ross Ice Shelf on the return trip. The difficulties encountered in reaching the Pole are borne out by the fact that no other ground party did so until 1957-1958.