Carsten Borchgrevink

Who was Carsten Borchgrevink?

Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink was an Anglo-Norwegian polar explorer and a pioneer of modern Antarctic travel. He was the precursor of Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen and other more famous names associated with the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He began his exploring career in 1894 by joining a Norwegian whaling expedition, from which he brought back a collection of the first specimens of vegetable life within the Antarctic Circle.

In 1898–1900 Borchgrevink led the British-financed Southern Cross Expedition, which in 1899 became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Ross nearly sixty years previously. Borchgrevink landed on the Barrier with two companions and made the first sledge journey on its surface, setting a new Farthest South record at 78°50'S. On its return to England, notwithstanding its array of "firsts", the expedition was received with only moderate interest by the public and by the British geographical establishment, whose attention was fixed on Scott's upcoming National Antarctic Expedition. Borchgrevink's colleagues were critical of his leadership, and his own accounts of the expedition were regarded as journalistic and unreliable.