Sir Ernest Shackleton's New Expedition

Abstract

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON announces in the Times and Daily Mail a new Antarctic expedition to start under his leadership in August. The region to be explored is that missing part of the Antarctic coastline which lies between Drygalski's. Wilhelm Land and Bruce's Coats Land. In this stretch the only land known with certainty is the bold headland of Cape Ann, or Enderby Land, discovered by J. BIscoe in 1831, but never visited. Cape Ann probably marks the edge of the continent. Kemp Land, a little further east and also on the Antarctic Circle, was reported in 1833, but its existence needs verification. Cook (1773), Biscoe (1831), Bellingshausen (1820), and Moore (1845) were each thwarted by pack in their attempts to push southwards to the west of Cape Ann. In lat. 68° 5′ S., long. 16° 37′ E., Bellingshausen was probably not far from land, but these early navigators took no deep soundings. A large bight in the coastline in this region is improbable, but glacier tongues may occur, and, by obstructing the free movements of the pack along the coast, make approach and landing difficult. Sir E. Shackleton hopes to avoid wintering in the south, and plans to sail northwards from Coats Land through the more open eastern part of the Wedde.ll Sea to the South Sandwich group and South Georgia. After refitting he proposes to sail eastward via Bouvet and Heard Islands to New Zealand, taking deep-sea soundings on the way. It will prove no easy matter to sound in the stormiest seas j in the world, but it is to be hoped he will be successful and so amplify the work of the Valdivia and Scotia, and further east that of the Challenger and Gauss. On the way home soundings are to be taken in high latitudes in the south-eastern Pacific.