The Colonisation of Antarctica

David Day is an Australian historian and author who has written extensively on Australian history, particularly focusing on World War Two. Among his works of note are the biographies of Australian prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley, Claiming a Continent (winner of the non-fiction prize in the 1998 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature) and, most recently, Antarctica – A Biography. To speak on his most recent book, David Day addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 14 August. 

THE COLONISATION OF ANTARCTICA

DAVID DAY

 Historians usually divide the history of Antarctic into the so-called “heroic period”, which ends with Ernest Shackleton’s failed expedition in 1914, and the so-called “modern period”. The latter stretches from the end of the First World War to the present day, as aircraft and other technological innovations brought radical changes to Antarctic exploration.

But there is a more important turning point in regard to the history of Antarctica. That is the time when nations realised that Antarctica could host permanent settlements. And that crucial turning point came in 1939, when President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the American colonisation of the continent. Antarctica would never be the same again.

The race to claim possession of the Antarctic only really began in 1908, as whaling expanded into Antarctic waters. It was then that Britain claimed various sub-Antarctic islands and the Antarctic Peninsula.

After the First World War, Britain went further and decided to claim the entire continent in a surreptitious step-by-step process. It took the first step in 1923 by declaring that the Ross Sea sector was to be a dependency of New Zealand. The move prompted France and Norway to assert claims of their own, which effectively ended Britain’s hopes of controlling all the continent.

Those hopes dissipated still further when American explorers joined the race in the late 1920s, using aircraft to claim all that they could see for hundreds of miles around. Much of this aerial exploring was done by private expeditions led by Richard E. Byrd, the American aviator who claimed to have been the first to fly over the North Pole.

Although Byrd and other American explorers claimed land on behalf of the United States, the American government remained aloof from it all. Washington was content to sit back and say that it did not recognise the territorial claims of other nations, nor did it make any claims of its own. America’s long-held position on claiming territory was that it could only be done by actual occupation.

In contrast, Britain argued that it was sufficient just to show the flag occasionally in the Antarctic in order to possess those parts of it that British explorers had discovered. But that tenuous legal argument was increasingly challenged by activities in Antarctic, as American explorers and Norwegian whalers began to explore the continent much more extensively than the British.

The escalating activity was one of the factors that finally impelled the United States to trump its Antarctic rivals by establishing permanent settlements there.

A sense of American ownership had been developed by the three expeditions of Richard Byrd, who had dropped the Stars and Stripes on the South Pole and called his bases “Little America”. Each time Byrd returned with news of the territory he had claimed, there was political pressure from Congress, right-wing political groups and sections of the press for an official claim to be made.

American interest was also excited by the discovery during the 1930s of log books by American sealers and whalers from the 1820s, which were said to show that Americans were the real discoverers of Antarctica.

As well, the US government could not ignore the increased Antarctic whaling activities of Japan and Germany. Whales were taking on a new importance, both to feed consumers and to fuel growing military machines with a vital raw material for explosives. By 1938, there were more than 30 factory ships and nearly 300 whale-catching ships working in Antarctic waters. Five of the factory ships and more than fifty of the whale catchers were German. Aviation also played a part in the American interest, with Washington looking to Antarctica as a possible landing place on an air route to Asia by way of Australia.

The final factor was the news that the German air force chief Herman Goering had sent an expedition to Antarctica in December 1938. The United States also had secret intelligence that Australia was going to establish a permanent base there.

The German expedition would be using a ship, Schwabenland, that was capable of catapulting seaplanes into the air. When used in the Antarctic, it was hoped that the catapult would allow aircraft to be launched where ice conditions or heavy seas would otherwise prevent it, thereby increasing the area that could be flown over, photographed, mapped and claimed by Germany.

In his official report, the expedition commander Alfred Ritscher claimed that Germany had used “the most modern methods of science”, particularly the use of aircraft. The supposed superiority of German methods was meant to give Germany a greater claim than the Norwegians to that part of the Antarctic that they had both explored, named and claimed.

As a further sign of their superiority, the Germans had left permanent marks of their presence with specially designed aluminium shafts with steel points on one end and three stabilising planes on the other, one of which was decorated with the Nazi swastika. There was symbolism in this. Instead of letting their flag fall onto the ice, as the Americans, British and Norwegians had done, the Germans would be effectively raising the swastika across a large area of Antarctica.

At the time, the German expedition was setting out in late 1938, Byrd had been planning to lead another private expedition of his own. When he learnt that the American government was thinking of sending an official expedition to Antarctica, the first such expedition for a hundred years, Byrd offered to abandon his own plans and lead the official expedition. As an old moose-hunting mate of Roosevelt, his offer was quickly accepted.

In February 1939, Byrd presided over a week-long meeting of government officials in his Washington hotel suite. The meeting agreed that Byrd should “consolidate” America’s existing territorial claims by establishing the first permanent settlements in Antarctica. The secret aim of the expedition was the “United States Government colonisation in the Antarctic”.

American scientists would be the settlers. Geographers would be in the lead, drawing upon physiography, surveying, cartography and aerial reconnaissance to compile detailed maps of the continent. Then there would be the geologists, who would compile their own surveys and investigate the possible oil, mineral and other resources that would help to justify the expense. Then there would be the meteorologists, physicists and biologists. It was designed to allow the Americans to know the continent better than any other nation.

But none of this could happen without the approval of a sceptical Congress. It was fortunate for Roosevelt that his effort to obtain approval in March 1939 coincided with press reports of the German intention to claim part of Antarctica.

Any doubts in Washington about the need for the expedition were dissipated by the return to Germany in April 1939 of the Schwabenland. While amusing newsreel footage showed several penguins cautiously waddling their way down the gangway, newspapers reported that Germany had taken “possession of about 230,000 square miles of Antarctic territory” and implied that Germany was planning to return to “seriously utilise” the territory.

In the face of this threat, a meeting at the State Department agreed that the American expedition should plan to establish up to three bases on the continent and one on Australian-owned Heard Island. At the last minute, Washington agreed to include a mobile base that could potentially bring the whole continent under American control. The base would be a triumph of American ingenuity that would over-shadow the supposed superiority of the German expedition.

The mobile base was known as a “snow cruiser” and was based on the dimensions of a train carriage. On top of the vehicle would be an aircraft that could be easily off-loaded onto a ramp of snow.

Just as the Schwabenland’s catapult mechanism had given the Germans greater mobility, the snow cruiser would do that much and more for the United States. It would allow the Americans to travel at will across the continent and even park the cruiser at the South Pole, giving the United States its fifth and most politically important base in terms of claiming the entire continent.

It was only now that the press was informed of the scale of the expedition. It was all being done, the press was told, to prevent Germany from extending its claims into that part of the Antarctic lying within the Western Hemisphere. Byrd said that he would “establish three permanent bases that would put the American claims ‘beyond any question of international law”. Occupation would do what flags and maps and names could not do.

The American expedition was about laying the groundwork for a much greater claim. The key to such a claim lay in the capabilities of the snow cruiser. Congress was told that the combined cruiser and aircraft could “explore about 5,000,000 square miles of unknown territory during a single Antarctic Summer”. That was an extraordinary assertion, since it would mean that the cruiser and its aircraft would have travelled over the entire continent.

The ambition for the snow cruiser was shown by the thousands of first day covers that it carried, which were embossed with the words: “The Snow Cruiser Reaches the South Pole”. If the snow cruiser was able to cover the entire continent, if permanent American bases could be established around the coastline, and if Byrd was able to fly across the continent, they could lay the basis for an American claim to the entire continent.

With Congressional approval finally achieved, Roosevelt appointed Byrd to “command the first American Expedition for the actual occupation of a portion of the Antarctic Continent”. The purpose, wrote Roosevelt, was to “prove that human beings can permanently occupy a portion of the Continent winter and summer”.

It was only after appointing Byrd that Roosevelt turned his attention to devising a name for the expedition. He instructed that it be called “The U.S. Antarctic Service”, because it has “an annotation [sic] of permanency”. The colonisation of Antarctica could now begin.

As Byrd readied the expedition for an October 1939 departure, the ostensible reasons for sending it began to disappear. The likelihood of the German government sending another expedition became less with each passing day, while the Australian government also decided on 3 August to abandon plans for an Antarctic expedition.

To add to Byrd’s troubles, the expedition sparked domestic criticism in the United States, with one critic calling for the government “to keep Byrd home and let Hitler have Antarctica in the devout hope that he would go there to cool off”.

It was not until late November 1939 that the two expedition ships left the United States. Establishing a territorial claim was paramount. The expedition was to make territorial claims by “dropping written claims from airplanes, depositing such writings in cairns, et cetera, which might assist in supporting a sovereignty claim by the United States Government”. The American claims were to be done in secret, with notes being made “of the circumstances surrounding each such”.

Such was the haste of the expedition’s departure that the ships sailed for Antarctica before the State Department had provided Byrd with the official form of wording to be used. A copy had to be cabled to the American embassy in Panama and handed to Byrd as his ship passed through the canal. Multiple copies which were then given to the leaders of the expedition bases and snow cruiser, who were told of the “necessity for secrecy” and reminded that “a record should be kept on duplicate sheets each time a form is deposited in a cairn or dropped from an airplane”.

The expedition was hampered from the time its two ships arrived in the Ross Sea in January 1940. The unloading of the snow cruiser almost ended in disaster when it began to slip off the ramp leading to the ice shelf. Worse was to come. There had been no time to test the vehicle, other than on sand dunes, before it had been sent south. It was meant to have a maximum speed of thirty miles per hour, a range of 5,000 miles, be able to climb slopes up to 37 degrees, and to have sufficient supplies to keep its four man crew in the field for up to a year. However, Byrd found that the snow cruiser was practically immovable even after two additional ten foot tyres were fitted to the rear.

Now nicknamed “Bouncing Betty”, the ungainly vehicle was simply too heavy, even when unloaded, to provide traction on the snow. It was only when it was driven in reverse that any distance could be covered, and then at such a slow speed as to be practically useless. After much experimentation, the cruiser was consigned to a stationary existence at Little America.

The expedition was forced to rely on more traditional means of transport – dog sleds – as well as on two tanks and two artillery tractors that had been lent by the army. There were also two small aircraft with skis that would have to play the major role in surveying and mapping the Pacific sector, that would now be the only focus of the expedition’s attention.

With the Ross Sea base established, a second base was established at an island off the Antarctic Peninsula that had been recently used by a British expedition. Although the British had named it Barry Island, Byrd called it Stonington Island, after the home port of the American sealer, Nathaniel Palmer, the American who had supposedly been first to discover Antarctica in 1820. The names of Palmer’s crew were attached to geographical features in the vicinity.

With its limited means, the expedition would concentrate on trying to survey the largely unclaimed area between the two bases. American hopes of laying the groundwork to claim the entire continent had been dashed.

The Congress was also creating new impediments by refusing to authorise funds for another year. Although Byrd advised Roosevelt that the United States Antarctic Service should be wound up because of the war, the president remained committed to colonising the continent. But Congress refused Roosevelt’s request for funds. And there was little public support, or even interest in the expedition. So the bases were hastily closed and the men evacuated in early 1941.

While the results of the American expedition had been disappointing, its creation by Roosevelt alerted the world to America’s territorial ambitions. And the world responded in kind. Argentina asserted its own territorial claim by establishing bases in the Antarctic, while Britain, despite the war, established secret bases on the Antarctic Peninsula.

At the end of the war, the United States returned with the largest expedition the Antarctic had ever seen, complete with aircraft carriers and a submarine, to establish the sort of presence that Roosevelt had aimed for in 1939. The race accelerated as nations such as the Soviet Union began to make their own claims on the ice.

Despite the Antarctic Treaty of 1961, that race continues. Although the United States now has several permanent bases around the continent’s coastline and another at the South Pole, its objective of exclusive possession of the continent has been impossible to attain. While Roosevelt’s decision in 1939 certainly led to Antarctica being colonised, it was by the world at large. The continent remains the only land mass on earth without recognised owners.