Graham Land and the Problem of Stefansson Strait

Abstract

Meeting of the Society, 27 May I940 T HE solution of the problem of Stefansson Strait was not one of the original objects of the British Graham Land Expedition when it left England in 1934. In the early days of the Expedition the existence of Stefansson Strait was thought to be a fairly well established fact, but at the close of the Expedition it was equally well established that there was no Stefansson Strait on the western side of Graham Land. This simple state of affairs was complicated by the various reports and publications in connection with Lincoln Ellsworth's two long antarctic flights in November 1936. It was in an endeavour to correlate the various descriptions and maps of southern Graham Land that the problem of Stefansson Strait arose; a problem which can be better appreciated if we make a short summary of the sequence of events in this part of the Antarctic. When in January I82I Bellingshausen discovered Alexander the First Land, he assumed that the land east of it was part of an Antarctic continent. Ten years later when Biscoe discovered the Biscoe Islands, he called the high land to the east of them Graham Land after Sir James Graham, then First Lord of the Admiralty. And so for nearly a hundred years from the time of Biscoe the charts represented Graham Land as a peninsula of the Antarctic continent. During this period the country was visited by De Gerlache, Charcot, and numerous whalers, but still there was nothing to suggest that Graham Land was not a peninsula. In December 1928 Sir Hubert Wilkins arrived at Deception Island with the Wilkins-Hearst Antarctic Expedition, and although his major plans never materialized he made one very successful flight down the east coast of Graham Land to a point some 60o miles south of Deception Island. Previous explorers of the east coast had outlined it to about latitude 67? 30' S., or approximately as far as Adelaide Island on the west coast. Beyond this point it was assumed that Graham Land continued until it joined the mainland. Wilkins however claimed to have discovered channels, filled with sea-ice, which broke up southern Graham Land into a series of islands, and on December 20, at I2.50 p.m., he wrote, We are now quite certain that Graham Land is not connected with the mainland continent. Felt sure before, but at this point it could be clearly shown on a photograph. Three such channels were reported by Wilkins, and in the map which was published to accompany his report they were named from north to south Casey and Lurabee Channels, and Stefansson Strait. To the south of the last lay Hearst Land, and east of it, for the Strait curved round from an east-west to a north-south direction, the land terminated in a point called Cape Eielson. All this was shown in detail on a map called The Antarctic Archipelago, in which the newly discovered channels ran from the Weddell Sea to Marguerite Bay.