The creation of the United States Antarctic Service in 1939 marked one of the most significant milestones in Antarctic history. For the first time, the continent was to have permanent settlements. However, the developing war in Europe, and the prospect of war with Japan, prompted the US Congress to force the closure of the two American bases. It brought to a sudden end President Roosevelt’s ambitious attempt to colonise the continent.
The war also saw the whalers largely leave the Southern Ocean, as a result of their capture or sinking by enemy action, or because it had become too hazardous to make the long voyage. Without explorers or whalers, and with the war largely restricted to north of the equator, it might have been expected that the Antarctic would become once again a sanctuary for its wildlife. However, Roosevelt’s dispatch of the Byrd expedition, and the talk of establishing permanent bases, had ignited concerns among America’s Antarctic rivals. Rather than abating, the competition for territory was about to intensify and take on a dangerous new edge.
The order to close the two American bases did not mean the end of the United States Antarctic Service. There was an assumption among officials in Washington that it was merely a hiatus, after which there would be a return to the Antarctic and a reoccupation of the bases.1 Roosevelt remained as committed as ever to the United States claiming as much of the continent as possible. He was also personally attracted by the appeal of exploration. He relished the idea when the Explorers Club offered to make him an associate life member in recognition of his support for the Byrd expedition, noting that he was ‘glad to be numbered’ as one of the modern equivalents of ‘those tireless travelers who used to be romantically called “gentleman adventurers”’.2
Knowing Roosevelt’s views, Byrd wanted to leave much of the food and equipment in the Antarctic, confident that there would be a ‘resumption of the expedition upon the passing of the existing national emergency’. He convinced the US Navy to leave the two aircraft that it had loaned to the expedition, while the Armour Institute of Technology agreed that the ill-fated snow cruiser could also remain, provided that it was returned whenever another expedition was sent south. Instructions to remove as much food and other supplies as possible were only issued after it was realised that there might be political problems if material was left on the assumption that the expedition would be resumed, when Congress had given no such authorisation.3
For the Americans in the Antarctic, there was still the summer of 1940–41 during which they could complete their scientific observations and lay claim to as much territory as possible. By dog sledge and aircraft, they spread out from the two bases, photographing the landscape and calculating ground control points for the maps that would be made from their efforts. The seriousness of this part of the expedition was shown by the presence of cadastral engineer Leonard Berlin of the Interior Department’s General Land Office, who led a party from West Base across 340 kilometres of ice and snow to the slopes of Mt Grace McKinley, a peak that had been sighted from the air by Byrd on one of his earlier expeditions and which would now be precisely located for mapping purposes.
Using the regulation brass cap that the Land Office employed to mark boundaries and locations in the United States, Berlin informed its commissioner by radiogram that he would set the cap in a prominent position at the ‘exact time that I claim this area on behalf of the Antarctic Service for the United States’. As with other modern claiming ceremonies, photographs recorded the event for posterity and possible legal purposes. Berlin realised he was making history and sent off a press release to announce his claim to the world. He was quickly reminded of Roosevelt’s instruction that no publicity was to be issued without the prior authority of the secretary of state.4 While the claiming was to be done surreptitiously, the claims had to be scrupulously recorded on the mimeographed forms that Black had produced on board the North Star.
The blanket of secrecy that was thrown over the expedition’s claiming activities was due to the continuing uncertainty in Washington as to whether to proceed with the formal annexation of Antarctic territory. Despite all the talk of potential coal and oil deposits, the value of the Antarctic remained a matter of debate. American annexation would also threaten Washington’s relationships with countries such as Britain and Argentina.
Britain had already expressed its concern in August 1940 at the raising of the American flag by Black over East Base. Its ambassador told the State Department that he hoped the flag-raising ‘had no political significance’.5 The State Department made no reply, and the ambassador did not press for one. Britain was content to have its communication remain as a matter of record, in the hope that it might somehow deter the Americans from claiming territory within the Falkland Islands Dependencies. As for the Argentinians, their government reacted to the American activities by asserting their own territorial claims, and by preparing to expand their own presence in the Antarctic from their long-time meteorological base on Laurie Island. This went ahead despite the American withdrawal from the Antarctic in March 1941.
The evacuation was not straightforward. The Bear and the North Star first went to fetch the men from West Base – known as ‘Little America III’ – in January 1941. It was done in such a hurry that most of the food was left ashore, which left the North Star dangerously low on supplies for its now increased complement. The ships still had much to do. However, when they arrived off Marguerite Bay in mid-February to pick up Richard Black and the other twenty-five men from East Base, they found that the bay was still blocked by ice. They waited a month for an easterly wind to break up the ice sufficiently for them to push their way in. But the right winds never came, and it looked as if the men might have to remain at East Base for another year. Even if the ships could get into the bay, there was a real risk that the vessels might be trapped by the ice. The only possibility of escape was in the Curtiss Condor aircraft, and at least two perilous and crowded flights would be required.6
On 20 March 1941, with the Antarctic winter approaching, Byrd met with the executive committee at the Navy Building in Washington. He was concerned that using the obsolete Condor in the deteriorating weather conditions might end in disaster, yet he was desperate that the men be evacuated. Congress had not authorised any money for them to remain another year, and the two expedition ships were required by their respective departments for war purposes. Byrd decided to lead the rescue himself. He told the committee that it was ‘his duty’ to fly by Pan American Airways to Punta Arenas, Chile, where two US Navy seaplanes from Panama should meet him. Byrd and the planes would then be taken aboard the North Star, which would steam as far south as the ice would allow. The seaplanes then would be launched to relieve the base.
This was Byrd at his heroic best, and the committee was not going to deny him another of his moments in the headlines. However, the committee also left the captain of the Bear, Lieutenant Commander Richard Cruzen, free to act in any way he thought necessary prior to Byrd’s arrival – which he did. Cruzen took the Bear to an anchorage off Mikkelsen Island, about 180 kilometres from East Base. Black and half the marooned men were packed into the Condor and flown to the island, from where they were taken by whaleboat to the waiting Bear. The process was repeated for the rest of the party. By 25 March the small ship was heading for Punta Arenas to meet up with the North Star.7 So ended, for the time being, the American colonisation of Antarctica. It finished not with a fanfare but a flurry of desperate activity that was hardly noticed by a world at war.
The withdrawal of the American expedition from its two bases left the abandoned huts to the mercy of the Antarctic winds and the weight of the winter snow. But it did not end America’s efforts to proceed with its Antarctic claims. When he had clambered aboard the Condor aircraft, Black had to leave all his personal possessions behind. Yet he was careful to take with him the claim forms that had been dutifully filled in by the pilots and leaders of the land parties, recording the locations where they had conducted claiming ceremonies, the dimensions of the areas they had claimed and, in the case of land parties, where they had deposited the records so that they might later be retrieved.
As the North Star and the Bear steamed their way back to the United States in April 1941, Black gathered together the forms – eighteen in all – which he would present to his superiors in the Department of the Interior. They would later be sent to the State Department for safekeeping.8 If the United States decided to annex territory based upon the work of its short-lived Antarctic Service, these forms might be vital in establishing the legitimacy of the American title. Although Byrd told journalists that the United States could now annex more than two million square kilometres of the continent, there was no move to do so.9 For the time being, the eighteen forms remained in a State Department filing cabinet, while Black and several of his companions worked at other ways of reinforcing America’s territorial title.
Publicising the achievements of the expedition was one way they could do this. But it had been difficult to get publicity for a peaceful expedition when the world was being wracked by war. It was not helped by the press releases being issued by government bureaucrats, rather than by Byrd or his publicity-minded assistants, who had always ensured widespread exposure for his previous expeditions.10 And when the expedition was over, there was no popular account published about the expedition, nor were there lecture tours by Byrd and his companions. As a government expedition, no one could make a personal profit from it.
An official narrative of the expedition was meant to be published, but it was dogged by delays and disputes between the participants. In the interim, the secretary of the executive committee, Commander Robert English, wrote a brief outline of its main activities, based upon radio reports received in Washington. Published in the Geographical Review in July 1941, it was a matter-of-fact report devoid of drama or personalities – and it was careful to conceal from the world the territorial claiming that had been so central to the expedition.11
Recognition of the American title would be more likely if the United States could show that it knew the areas better than its rival claimants. As other nations had done, the Americans needed to compile their scientific observations and publish the results. However, the refusal by Congress to provide additional funding for the Antarctic Service left it unable to pay the scientists to prepare their results for publication. The Bureau of the Budget refused to commit any new funds until after 30 June 1941, when the Antarctic Service’s present funding was set to expire and it would be clear whether there was any unspent money. With Congress looking unlikely to approve any additional funding, the Department of the Interior was asked to place seven of the expedition staff on its payroll to ensure that there would be ‘a permanent record of the accomplishments of the expedition’. Three of the seven proposed staff were cartographers, while others were scientists or base leaders writing narratives of the expedition. Without such a commitment, the department was warned, the $521,000 spent on the expedition ‘might be largely wasted’.12
The preponderance of cartographers, under the leadership of Dr Paul Siple, reflected the expedition’s concentration on exploration and mapping. The mapmakers had to make sense of all the aerial photographs and convert them into maps that would serve America’s territorial interests. That meant splattering the frozen landscape with American names.
Some names, such as Stonington Island, created associations between the territory and the Connecticut port from which American sealers had sailed in the early decades of the nineteenth century. While the port was memorialised as the name for the island, which in fact had an existing English name, lesser geographical features were named after various crew members of the early sealing boats. As Black noted in a radiogram from East Base in December 1940, it was all done at the behest of Colonel Martin and the US Board of Geographical Names.13
Other names acknowledged particular supporters of the expedition, including the crusading geographer William Hobbs, who would have an extensive coastline north-east of Little America named after him. In a letter to Hobbs, Byrd explained that he had shifted the name of brewery owner Jacob Ruppert, a generous and recently deceased supporter, in order to accommodate Hobbs. Ruppert’s name would be applied to a cape instead. Byrd told Hobbs that he had thought of using his name for one of ‘two beautiful glaciers coming down from your coastline’, but ‘thought it was a much bigger honor to have the coast line with your name on it’.14
The United States was keen to outdo the 1939 Australian map of Antarctica, the most recent and most comprehensive map of the continent, which had incorporated the latest discoveries and privileged British names. It had been distributed around the world in an attempt to have it and its names accepted internationally. Fifty copies of the map, along with an accompanying handbook and index, were sent to Australia House in London, where the Australian representative was instructed to bring it to ‘the notice of the English press and the English teaching profession’, as it ‘has greatly strengthened Australia’s claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory’. Copies were also distributed to relevant institutions in the United States and to other claimant nations.15
Realising the political danger of this, there was a rush in Washington to produce an American equivalent that would serve the practical needs of navigators in Antarctic seas and the political needs of the State Department in claiming territory for the United States. It would not be easy. The charts prepared under Black’s supervision at East Base were judged by an assistant of Byrd’s to be ‘totally inadequate’ as the basis upon which to compile a map, while the charts done by Ronne were regarded as ‘the best of the lot’.16 By August 1942, the Antarctic Service still had ten staff, with Siple being the most senior and Wade acting as assistant field representative. There were three cartographers and a cartographic assistant. However, the demands of the war were making it difficult to hold onto them, with even Siple, now a US Army captain, being diverted into work for the War Department while promising to continue the Antarctic Service’s cartographic work.17
It was not only Australia’s map that the United States wanted to overshadow. There was also the British Antarctic Pilot, which had been first published in 1930 and was required reading for navigators heading for Antarctic waters. There would have been copies aboard the Bear and the North Star, but it was humiliating for an official American expedition to be dependent on the navigational aids of its principal Antarctic rival. As soon as the expedition had returned with its charts of newly discovered coasts, there was an urgent push to produce an American equivalent.
Commander English took charge of the task, guided by advice from Hobbs, Martin, Boggs and Joerg. Known as Sailing Directions for Antarctica, 1943, the guide was issued by the US Navy’s Hydrographic Office in May 1943. Still, it would be a brave navigator who relied on the publication for finding a safe passage to an anchorage on the Antarctic coast. As its compiler, English was careful to warn potential users that they must exercise ‘great care’, since little of the coastline had been properly surveyed. Providing navigational advice was only one part of the publication’s purpose. Like the Antarctic Pilot, it was concerned with putting forward a particular view of Antarctic history. Not surprisingly, it was a view that favoured American activities over those of British and other explorers, with Palmer and Wilkes lauded as the continent’s discoverers. It also enshrined American names on its geography.18
In 1930, the Antarctic Pilot had eschewed explicit mention of sovereignty for fear that it would upset the Americans and Norwegians, in particular. The British government had wanted to wait until Mawson’s voyages of 1929–31 had completed their survey of the Australian sector’s coastline, after which it had intended to publish an updated edition with the additional coastline marked in, along with a statement about the sovereignty of the three Antarctic sectors claimed by Britain and its dominions. However, this new edition had not appeared by the time that Sailing Directions for Antarctica was published. Not surprisingly, the American publication raised the hackles of officials when it reached the Foreign Office.
The former polar scientist and now head of the Foreign Office’s Antarctic research section, Brian Roberts, dismissed it as being ‘obviously inspired by political motives’, saying it was ‘highly inaccurate, especially in matters relating to priority of discovery and exploration’. He also noted how the Americans had made ‘numerous changes in place-names within British territory’. Roberts would have been concerned that replacing British names with American ones was intended to lay the basis for a future American territorial claim. As such, he warned, there was now an ‘urgent need for a new edition of the Antarctic Pilot’, along with an ‘up-to-date large-scale map of the Falkland Islands Dependencies’ and the ‘publication of official lists of accepted place-names in British Antarctic Territories’. The latter was important, wrote Roberts, since ‘many Antarctic place-names are of political significance as well as of historical and practical interest’.19 Together, the three publications would go far to establish the case for British sovereignty in the Antarctic.
Meanwhile, the Americans were struggling to produce the official narrative of the 1939–40 expedition. Byrd had convinced the executive committee to appoint a journalist, Roger Hawthorne, as expedition historian. Hawthorne had accompanied Byrd on one of the Antarctic flights and had a mountain named after him. However, Black and Siple demanded that, as commanders of East Base and West Base respectively, they be allowed to write the narratives of their separate bases. Byrd eventually agreed, as long as Hawthorne could ‘correlate the two base narratives and write the story of the voyages and other activities’. Byrd knew that if the overall narrative was restricted to the activities of the bases, he would hardly make an appearance since he had spent little time ashore. With Hawthorne’s input he might ensure the usual starring role for himself.
However, Siple’s work with the War Department and his supervision of the cartography left him little time to write his narrative, while Black was sent off to Honolulu by the navy before he had started his. Although Black was permitted to take copies of the base records with him, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour soon put paid to his good intentions. Even had the narratives been written, no money had been appropriated for their publication.20 In April 1945, an inquirer was informed that ‘the history and narrative of the Antarctic Expedition will be completed and published by the Government after the war’.21 It remains unwritten.
There were also problems with the films and paintings that were supposed to be produced by expedition members. The artist Leland Curtis had promised to produce two oil paintings for the Department of the Interior, with its secretary, Howard Ickes, to decide where they would be displayed. However, there were repeated delays in their production, and their political impact would have been slight. As for the films, the photographer, Ennis Helm, who had provided his own cameras and film, unsurprisingly felt a sense of ownership of the resulting production. The executive committee had instructed that the film was to be handed over by 15 March 1941, only to learn that Helm was incarcerated in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and the film had been hidden away. From his prison cell, Helm offered to sell the film for a substantial sum. Byrd refused to negotiate, confident that Helm would be forced to drop his price.22 However, delay meant death at the box office. In any case, the film that Helm had put together lacked a compelling story and would have to compete with dramatic newsreel footage from the war.
The publication of the scientific results faced similar problems. The tetchy Wade was in charge of getting the scientists to complete their reports but had proved himself to be incompetent. He had not drawn up a scientific program for the expedition before it went south, while his relationship with the executive committee had become vexed when he was in the Antarctic. At the end of the expedition, the frustrated committee had pursued the scientists for their reports, only to find that several had been drawn into the war effort before they had written up their results.23
With no funds from Congress to finance their publication, the National Academy of Sciences passed responsibility for the publication to the American Philosophical Society, which had a long association with Antarctic exploration. The society had already organised a symposium on the expedition in November 1941, at which twelve scientific papers were presented detailing some preliminary results. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour just two weeks later caused delays in their publication in the society’s journal. It would also have been just a partial record of the expedition’s results, which encompassed much more than the twelve papers.
Rather than having the papers appear in piecemeal fashion, the opportunity was taken to collect another fifteen papers and additional reports and publish them in one volume. This was finally done in a special 400-page edition of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society in July 1945.24 Compared with other expeditions, the publication of these results was relatively expeditious. However, although there were important papers by Siple, Black and Ronne on the expedition’s geographical discoveries, their publication did little to lift the expedition from its position of obscurity. The expedition continues to have the distinction of being one of the most important expeditions in the history of Antarctica and one of the least known.
While the United States Antarctic Service had been putting American furred boots on the snow, Antarctic enthusiasts back home continued to prosecute the case for American priority in discovery. As ever, William Hobbs was the loudest and most vituperative of those arguing for the primacy of American discovery. And the centenary of the Wilkes expedition gave him an ideal platform. The American Philosophical Society held a two-day symposium in Philadelphia on 23–24 February 1940, during which Hobbs presented a paper on the discovery of Wilkes Land. He was particularly concerned to have Wilkes acknowledged as the first explorer to confirm that Antarctica was a continent.25
This was a considerable exaggeration. Wilkes had certainly suggested the name ‘Antarctica’, but his brief voyage along a small part of the Antarctic coastline had hardly proved the existence of a continent. He could suggest that the existence of a continent was likely, and he could propose a name for it, but he could not claim to be its discoverer.
No matter. While Hobbs argued that Wilkes was the first to discover Antarctica, Colonel Martin was concerned with having Palmer similarly acknowledged. He repeated his now familiar argument about Palmer in an article for the Geographical Review in October 1940, in which he declared that Palmer ‘recorded the first sighting of Antarctica’ on an unspecified day in November 1820. Martin drew on sealers’ logbooks and other records in the Library of Congress, together with a contentious article by Hobbs, to make a seemingly conclusive argument about Palmer’s discovery of Antarctica.26 The advocacy by Martin and Hobbs seems to have been designed to invest the concomitant American push into Antarctica with a greater sense of moral legitimacy.
Hobbs and Martin were joined by the familiar coterie of political geographers. They included State Department geographer Samuel Boggs, National Archives cartographer Dr W. L. G. Joerg, and John Hopkins University president Isaiah Bowman. While some of these men might have flinched at the more extreme statements that Hobbs was prone to make, they were united in wanting to highlight the historical roots and recent achievements of American contact with Antarctica in order to strengthen any territorial claims that the United States might decide to make.
Another participant was the US Navy’s Captain Harold Saunders, who presented a paper on Byrd’s flight to the South Pole and the exploration of Marie Byrd Land. Saunders had been a geographer on Byrd’s first two Antarctic expeditions and was involved in the subsequent compilation of the expedition maps. He would come to have an even more crucial role in America’s claiming and naming activities after the war.27
Britain could not afford to let Hobbs and Martin go unanswered. The American articles provoked a strong rejoinder from the leading British geographer – and long-time secretary of the Royal Geographical Society – Arthur Hinks, who was then working closely with the Admiralty and other British departments.28 Hobbs and Hinks were both angry old men. Hinks was handicapped in his response by not having access to Palmer’s logbook so that he could check the accuracy of the claims made by Hobbs and Martin. He was also frustrated by Martin’s tardy publication of the papers that he presented to various conferences. For instance, it was only as Hinks was going into print with an article in the British Geographical Journal of October 1940 that Martin sent him photographs of some pages of the Palmer logbook.
Although Hinks questioned some of Martin’s conclusions, and wondered whether the Palmer logbook was really the original or perhaps a later transcription, he conceded that the book was ‘fair evidence’ that Palmer had seen the Antarctic continent on 18 November 1820. But that did not make Palmer the first to have done so, he argued, since Bransfield and Smith ‘had already seen the same land on 30 January 1820’. This assertion had already been rejected by Hobbs, who had accused the Admiralty of falsifying the maps to give Bransfield primacy over Palmer. More importantly, Martin had implicitly supported Hobbs’ inflammatory accusation. It was one thing for a retired professor to make such an accusation, but it was quite another thing for a senior official at the Library of Congress to do so. Hinks was so outraged that he demanded Martin justify his rejection of the British evidence.29
In case Martin chose to ignore the British article, Hinks wrote another article along similar lines for the American Geographical Review, of which Martin was a contributing editor. Picking apart Martin’s argument, Hinks revealed for an American audience the several grievous errors in Martin’s evidence, and the gaps in the historical record that Martin tried to cover with unsupported assertions. At the end of the article, Martin was given an opportunity to reply to the points raised by Hinks, but he claimed that there was insufficient space in which to do so.
Instead, Martin promised that a full reply would be provided in a book that he was completing. It would not be fair to Bransfield, Palmer or Hinks, he argued, to reply other than at such length.30 But the promised book never appeared during the eleven years that remained of Martin’s life. Nor has it appeared since. In 1955 there appeared instead an extensive American study by a scholar of the Stonington sealers, Edouard Stackpole, who acknowledged Bransfield’s voyage as being the first recorded sighting of the continent. At the same time, Stackpole concluded than an unnamed American sealer on a ship captained by John Davis was the first to step ashore onto the continent.31
Apparently undaunted by Hinks’ apparent victory, Martin made a new attempt to enhance the moral legitimacy of America’s Antarctic claims. In 1943, he told the American Scientific Congress in Washington that America’s scientific engagement with the Antarctic stretched back to the 1820s. He particularly lauded the work of the largely forgotten James Eights on the Reynolds expedition of 1828–30. Martin noted that Eights had discovered boulders in icebergs around the South Shetlands, which he had suggested must have originated from lands further west. Although Eights had reasoned that they probably came from a chain of undiscovered islands, Martin argued that the nonexistence of such an island chain meant that Eights had actually ‘forecast the existence of an important portion of the Antarctic coast’.
To cement Eights’ place in Antarctic history, and to strengthen America’s claim on a strategically important part of the continent that Eights had probably never seen, the US Board on Geographical Names agreed in 1943 to call what was thought to be part of the Antarctic Peninsula the ‘Eights Peninsula’. It was later found that it had already been named by Byrd as ‘Thurston Peninsula’. When Thurston Peninsula was subsequently found to be an island, and renamed as such, Eights’ name was shifted to part of the adjacent Antarctic Peninsula, which was called the ‘Eights Coast’.32
While British and American geographers continued their debates, other nations had their own claims to prosecute, and were just as concerned as the British by the surge in American activity. In the late 1930s, the Argentinians and Chileans, not having pressed their Antarctic claims much over the previous three decades, became determined to do so. Washington’s citation of the Monroe Doctrine as justification for its expedition particularly alarmed the South Americans. They realised it might be used to justify the United States’ ousting of Britain from Antarctica and its annexation of what Americans called the Palmer Peninsula for themselves. There was also an expectation that the international polar conference planned for Norway in October 1940 would lead to the carve-up of the Antarctic between its several existing claimants. Neither Argentina, Chile nor the United States was widely acknowledged as being a claimant. This had helped to prompt the creation of the United States Antarctic Service, and it similarly inspired the Argentinians and Chileans to reassert their own claims to the Antarctic and its nearby islands.
In the wake of Byrd’s expedition being formally approved by Congress in mid-1939, the Argentine government established an interdepartmental commission tasked with preparing evidence for the Norwegian conference. Its duty was to show the strength of Argentina’s claim to the sector of the Antarctic lying between 20° W and 68° W.33 The Buenos Aires Herald described the American expedition as ‘a political challenge to all nations claiming territory in the Antarctic region’.34 Argentina was convinced it had a strong case, pointing to international legal opinion that stipulated a requirement for occupation before a legal title to territory could be recognised. Argentina had had a permanent meteorological base on Laurie Island in the South Orkneys since 1904, making it the only nation that had been in continual occupation of what could be described as an Antarctic territory.35
Although the German invasion of Norway ended plans for the polar conference, Argentina was not diverted from pressing ahead with its territorial claim. Nor did the evacuation of the American bases in 1940 lead Buenos Aires to reconsider its stance. Indeed, the work of the interdepartmental commission and the trend of events in the Antarctic convinced Argentina to push ahead with a permanent Antarctic organisation, along the lines of the US Antarctic Service, which would be ‘responsible for the consideration and handling of all questions connected with the defence and development of Argentine interests in the Antarctic’. It was called the National Antarctic Committee and was controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The chairman of the three-person committee was the Foreign Ministry’s Isidoro Ruiz Moreno, while the other two members represented the Argentine Navy and Argentine Meteorological Bureau.36
The problem with the Argentine claim was that it overlapped not only Britain’s Falkland Islands Dependencies but also the territory that Byrd had indicated the United States might claim. There was no way that Argentina could assert its claim by force of arms against Britain or the United States, and it did not believe such a course was necessary. Convinced that it had a strong legal case – based upon occupation, proximity and the sector being ‘a prolongation of the American Continent’ – Argentina suggested to the British government in September 1940 that an international conference be held to discuss the conflicting claims. This was not a suggestion that Britain was willing to consider, since it was well aware that some of its territorial claims were legally dubious, compared with Argentina’s. But the issue would not go away. Indeed, the situation became even more complicated in November 1940, when Chile informed Britain that it ‘had issued a decree laying claim to all Antarctic territory’ between 53° E and 90° W, which again overlapped with the Falkland Islands Dependencies as well as with Argentina’s claim. While Britain stood by its own claim, it was concerned to learn that Chile and Argentina were planning a conference of their own to reconcile their competing claims.37
The British were even more concerned when the subsequent conference of Chilean and Argentinian legal advisers led to an agreement between the two governments in March 1941 to pursue jointly the ‘indubitable sovereign rights of Chile and Argentina in the Antarctic Zone’. Emboldened by the agreement, and doubtless annoyed by the continued British refusal to countenance the Argentine claims, Buenos Aires announced in mid-July, as German forces stormed into Russia, that it would begin to staff its meteorological base on Laurie Island with naval wireless operators rather than civilian scientists.
The British naval attaché at the embassy in Argentina warned London that this was being done both to strengthen the Argentine claim to the South Orkneys and to test British resolve, since ‘such an act would not normally be tolerated by another owner’. But the British Navy was otherwise occupied by the war with Germany and Italy.
A few months later, the emboldened Argentinians went a step further, announcing the establishment of an Argentine post office on Laurie Island to be staffed by the base’s radio telegrapher. Letters from the post office would carry Argentine stamps postmarked ‘Islas Orcadas del Sud: Argentina’. The British ambassador in Buenos Aires warned Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that this was intended as ‘a definite exercise of sovereignty’, which was designed to appeal to young and nationalist-minded Argentinians, who had been encouraged by the semi-official newspaper La Prensa to regard that part of the Antarctic and the Falkland Islands as their own.38 In more normal times, the British government might have responded with a strong protest or even by the dispatch of a warship. These were not normal times. The ambassador’s dispatch was received in London at about the same time that Japan was launching its war in the Pacific.
Britain was unsure how to react to the Argentine challenge. In the early 1900s, its officials had seen no value in retaining the South Orkneys and had offered to give the island chain to Argentina in return for a block of land in Buenos Aires on which to build a new British embassy. But the offer had lapsed and the islands had become valuable with the growth in Antarctic whaling. By 1925, Britain decided that it had to hold on to all its island possessions in the Antarctic and stretching north to the Falklands, since the loss of one island chain to Argentina might see the whole British position in the Antarctic collapse like a house of cards. By the early 1940s, officials wanted to retain the islands for strategic and economic reasons, although mainly to deny them to other nations rather than for their intrinsic worth.
The British officials noted the comments of Byrd, who had lauded the possibility of establishing an American naval base on the Antarctic Peninsula to control the vital seaway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This had long been controlled by Britain, and it was not keen to cede control to the United States. Nor did it want Argentina to gain a foothold there, which might be a precursor to it dislodging Britain from the contested Falkland Islands. At the same time, Britain did not want to cause a rupture with the Argentinians, whose foodstuffs were essential for the British war effort. Anyway, there was no spare British naval ship that could be sent to the South Orkneys. The officials decided that such action would have to await the end of the war.39
In the absence of a British response, Argentina shifted its gaze from the South Orkneys to the South Shetlands. In late January 1942, it sent the transport ship Primero de Mayo to Deception Island. A British warship had visited the island in early 1941 to destroy a store of fuel oil abandoned at the unoccupied whaling station. For nearly a year, only the recovering wildlife had been in residence. Now an Argentinian officer went ashore to formally claim the island by ‘hoisting an Argentine flag, depositing the Act of Possession in a chest on the island and painting the national colours of the Argentine Republic on the walls and roof of certain installations’. With no whalers or British officials in residence, there were only penguins and seals to watch the Argentinian sailors painting their flag onto the seaward-facing walls of the boiling-down works. Then the island was left once more to its wildlife, as the Primero de Mayo sailed south-west to erect an Argentine flag and a light beacon on one of the nearby Melchior Islands.
Rumours of the claims were not reported in the Buenos Aires press until March, and no official notice was sent to the British government. At the same time, a new map of Argentina’s territorial claim in Antarctica was published in Buenos Aires.40 Argentina might have hoped that Britain would not notice these transgressions, or be too preoccupied to react, since its forces were by then being seriously beset on two fronts, with the Germans threatening the British garrison in Egypt and the Japanese having just taken Singapore. Indeed, such was the glacial pace of the British diplomatic reaction to developments in the Antarctic that it was the end of June 1942 before Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden reacted to the establishment of the Argentine post office on Laurie Island. He informed Buenos Aires that Britain would not recognise any mail originating there. At the same time, he asked for confirmation of the newspaper reports concerning the naval officer’s action in claiming Deception Island.41
Britain was hamstrung. Fulminate as they might in the Foreign Office, the officials could not afford to risk a breach with the Argentinians. But nor could they sit and watch as British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands Dependencies was whittled away by increasingly bold Argentinian actions. The officials prepared a protest note but it was never delivered. A diplomatic protest would hardly suffice, it was realised, since it would be unlikely to make Argentina desist from actions that were popular on the streets of Buenos Aires. Nor would the dispatch of a naval ship on a symbolic visit to the islands have the required effect, since it was hardly likely to make the Argentinians pack up and leave.
British legal advisers warned the government that its sovereignty was being progressively weakened and might disappear altogether unless more decisive action was taken. In the case of the South Shetlands, the Foreign Office confided that the British title was ‘extremely weak’. Although officials were divided on the potential economic and strategic value of Britain’s Antarctic territories, they were agreed on ‘the importance of strongly resisting any attempt on the part of foreign governments to contest the British title’.42 Still nothing was done. It was not until January 1943, when London learnt that Argentina was preparing to send the Primero de Mayo to perform further claiming ceremonies on the South Orkneys and the South Shetlands, that the British government finally decided to take decisive action to thwart the Argentine ambitions.
An armed merchant cruiser based in the Falkland Islands, HMS Carnarvon Castle, was sent to the disputed islands. Leaving Port Stanley on 25 January 1943, the converted passenger ship headed first to Deception Island, where its sailors splashed ashore intent on removing marks of Argentine ownership from the island’s dilapidated buildings. A Union Jack was raised and a record of the ship’s visit was left. Then the Argentine colours were painted over and other traces of the Argentine visit ‘obliterated’, while a notice was pinned to a prominent place on one of the buildings indicating that the owner’s lease had lapsed and the buildings were now the possession of the British government. Then the ship was gone, steaming off to Signy Island in the South Orkneys, where flagpoles were erected to fly the Union Jack and a record of the visit was deposited in a cairn of rocks.
Nearby was Laurie Island, with its Argentine meteorological station and staff of naval officers, and it was here the ship was next to visit. The British were concerned by the possible Argentinian reaction to the arrival of the Carnarvon Castle, and its captain was specially instructed ‘not to make a demonstration of force if the Argentinians showed any disposition to resist a landing’. So careful was the captain when he went ashore on 9 February 1943 that he pointedly ignored the Argentine flag flying above the station on the supposedly British island. He also did not talk at all to the Argentinians about the vexed question of British sovereignty. Instead, he explained his ship’s presence as being merely a patrol to discover whether or not various island anchorages were being used by German ships. And so the visit passed with good feelings all round.43
The flag-waving cruise of the Carnarvon Castle left the Argentinians securely in occupation of Laurie Island and free to continue their assertions of sovereignty throughout the Falkland Islands Dependencies. Britain remained just as determined to stop them. While the Carnarvon Castle was steaming towards Deception Island, the British war cabinet met to consider its next move. Its members decided that they would initiate an occupation of their own. Churchill approved the dispatch of an expedition in the summer of 1943–44 that would assert British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands Dependencies by establishing two permanent bases. There would be a small base of about four men on Deception Island, while the main base of about eleven men would be at Hope Bay in ‘Grahamland’, on the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.44
This indicated a dramatic change in British policy, which had hitherto argued that actual occupation was not required in polar regions to achieve valid title to a territory. Only acts of discovery and exploration were needed, followed by acts of administration. The Argentinians and the Americans had effectively rebutted the British argument by repeatedly arguing that occupation was necessary, and by showing that permanent bases in the Antarctic were possible. It was only a matter of time before Britain was forced to acknowledge that reality and to respond in kind. That time had now come.
It was not a moment too soon. In the wake of the Carnarvon Castle’s visit to Deception Island, the British government protested to Buenos Aires about the display of Argentine colours at the abandoned whaling settlement, declaring that it was determined to defend its title to the island. But the Argentinians maintained their claim and protested at the removal of their national emblems. The glacial pace of Antarctic diplomacy had been replaced by a frenzied tit-for-tat, with British intelligence reporting that the Primero de Mayo had left Argentina for the Antarctica on 4 February with two Chilean naval officers aboard as observers. While the Carnarvon Castle was visiting the South Shetlands and South Orkneys to assert British sovereignty, the Primero de Mayo was on a long cruise of its own to assert Argentine sovereignty. The presence of the Chilean officers was to reassure Chile that, despite their overlapping territorial claims, Argentina’s ambitions in the Antarctic posed no threat to it.
However, the Argentinians tried to keep secret from the Chileans the acts of sovereignty they performed at the several places they visited on the Antarctic Peninsula and in the South Shetlands. Among these was the hastily abandoned East Base of the United States Antarctic Service at Marguerite Bay, where American supplies and personal possessions were pillaged. When the Chileans were not watching, Argentinian officers concealed cylinders containing proclamations that claimed all the Antarctic between 25° W and 68° W. The last port of call for the Primero de Mayo was Deception Island, where the Argentinian sailors painted over the Union Jack. Then, just before the ship sailed and when they thought the Chileans were not watching, they painted back the colours of their own flag. However, it was noticed by the Chileans, who duly reported it to a British intelligence officer in Santiago.45
The British then implemented the decision of their war cabinet with ‘Operation Tabarin’, which involved establishing permanent bases in the Falkland Islands Dependencies as a counter to the Argentine activities. Although the move had been authorised by the war cabinet in January 1943, it was not until December that the troopship Highland Monarch left Britain with a mixed party of service personnel and scientists. It was bound initially for the Falkland Islands, where four men were put ashore on Deception Island on 6 February 1944, while ten were sent south-west to Port Lockroy on Wiencke Island, just off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The plan to have a third base at Hope Bay, on the tip of the peninsula, had to be abandoned because of heavy ice.
Lieutenant Commander James Marr of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, who had been a Boy Scout on Shackleton’s last expedition and a hydrologist on Mawson’s 1929 voyage, was placed in command of the two bases. As an explicit act of sovereignty, he was sworn in as a magistrate for Graham Land, the South Orkneys and the South Shetlands. He was also instructed that if he encountered an Argentine or Chilean expedition, he should ‘assert British sovereignty by all means short of violent force’.
The cover story for the secret operation, as far as Argentina was concerned, was that the parties were being sent to keep a watch for German raiders, while the British public was told in April 1944 that it was a resumption of Britain’s pre-war scientific and survey work in Antarctica. The personnel also had a scientific program to keep them busy, which would provide Britain with a moral title to the territory that would be superior to that of the Argentinians. Meteorological and tidal observations, along with surveying, would provide practical assistance for British forces operating in the area, while studies in botany, biology and geology would allow a proper assessment of the region’s potential value to Britain. The two bases were equipped with low-powered radio sets that were unlikely to be overheard by any Argentine listening stations but could be picked up in the Falkland Islands capital, Port Stanley. The parties were instructed to be circumspect in their use of the radios, since ‘too much advertisement of our presence … will attract attention not only from our enemies but also from our anti-Imperialist friends on the American continent’.46
Evidence of that year’s Argentine visit was seen at both Port Lockroy and on Deception Island, where the Argentinians had obliterated all signs of British ownership. That was quickly put right by Marr and his men. Once again, the Argentinian flag was painted over on the old whaling buildings and the Union Jack painted in its place. This time, however, the British were there to stay, and they quickly occupied the whaling station, thereby answering the legal arguments of the Americans and the Argentinians.
The site of the other base, Port Lockroy, was chosen because the British knew it had been a place of Argentine interest and had been visited by the Primero de Mayo. Although it was not well located for scientific or exploration purposes, Port Lockroy’s position – roughly midway along the Antarctic Peninsula – was judged by Britain to be ‘of considerable political value as a site for administrative acts’. The first such act was to remove the proclamation and flag left there by the Argentinians. No trace would be left of the Argentine presence, with all of their proclamations and emblems removed to Port Stanley or otherwise obliterated. As the Argentinians had done, the British established post offices at their bases and issued new stamps for the Falkland Islands Dependencies in early 1944 so that postmarked mail could be sent from the bases. By the end of the first year, Marr was able to report with satisfaction that from ‘the purely political standpoint’, Britain’s position in the Falkland Islands Dependencies ‘has once again been revived’.47 It was just the beginning of an expanded British presence.
The British government regarded the project as so important that it interrupted the production of crates for Spitfire fighters so that a British factory could build two huts for an expanded network of bases. In giving priority to the huts, Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley noted that it was ‘a matter of great importance for political reasons that this venture should be continued for a second year’. But it was all too much for Marr, who could not face a further winter in the isolation of the Antarctic. Suffering from severe depression, he was invalided home.
His departure threw Britain’s plans into disarray. Although a new base was established at Hope Bay and four men took over Byrd’s abandoned East Base on what the Americans called ‘Stonington Island’ in Marguerite Bay, the plan for a fifth base in the South Orkneys was postponed. The options of either ejecting the Argentinians from Laurie Island by force or establishing a British base alongside the Argentinian one had been rejected by British officials, for fear of provoking an irretrievable breakdown in relations with Buenos Aires. Instead, one of the specially constructed huts was erected on Coronation Island, the largest island of the South Orkneys, but it was left empty of inhabitants.48 It would stand as a symbol of British possession and future intentions.
However, it was also a sign of Britain’s limited power in the Antarctic, since Argentina remained the only nation in actual occupation of the South Orkneys. As a consequence, the Argentine claim to sovereignty over the South Orkneys was still stronger than Britain’s, and its claim on Laurie Island was unassailable. Argentina also maintained its claim to Deception Island – in the face of Chilean objections and the British occupation – by publishing a map of the island, supposedly based upon work done during the visits of the Primero de Mayo. It was a ‘further provocative measure,’ noted the British Foreign Office, although it dismissed the map as being based on a British chart, which had in turn been based upon an earlier French one.49
Chile was more circumspect in pushing forward with its territorial claim. Attempts to create a common front with Argentina were fraught with difficulties because both nations wanted much the same territory. Chile was suspicious of its neighbour, with whom it had long-running border disputes, and was angered to learn of the Argentine claim on Deception Island, which it considered Chilean. Yet the Chilean public did not share the passion that Argentinians regularly displayed about the Antarctic, or about the supposed perfidy of the British in occupying lands that were rightfully Argentinian.
This was a source of frustration for the few Antarctic enthusiasts in Chile, who were keen to have their compatriots share their ardour for the continent and its potential. One of the foremost enthusiasts was Oscar Pinochet de la Barra, whose book La Antarctica Chilena was published in 1944. The British Embassy in Santiago reported an upsurge of Chilean interest in the wake of the publication of the book and several newspaper articles by Pinochet.
One such article, written in November 1944, complained that the Marr expedition had, earlier that year, established British bases in the Chilean area without seeking Chilean authority. Pinochet regretted the ‘complete ignorance [among Chileans] of everything connected with the Antarctic, its present value, and its immense possibilities for the future’. He urged Chile to establish a whaling industry in the Antarctic before other nations returned there at the end of the war. Pinochet also called for a scientific expedition to be sent, and urged that a permanent meteorological station be established. When Britain, the United States and Argentina returned at the end of the war to re-establish their claims within Chilean Antarctica, he wrote, they would then find Chile ‘in full and effective possession of that which is ours’. Chile would be well on the way to incorporating ‘those vast territories in a more effective manner, into the national economy’.50
As the war crashed towards its conclusion in 1945, the British government was forced to consider whether it should continue with its expanded commitment in the Antarctic. It had been easier before the war, when legal opinion and usual practice in polar regions suggested that Antarctic territories could be claimed without occupation. Now that occupation was more widely accepted as necessary for the recognition of sovereignty, Britain had to work out how it might retain control over territories that it had come to possess by little more than the stroke of a pen.
The pre-war Discovery Committee – named after the research ship that had undertaken Britain’s scientific research in the Antarctic – proposed that it take over control of Operation Tabarin once the war ended. Whereas the pre-war research had been done mostly at sea by the Discovery II, concerning itself mainly with whaling, the interdepartmental committee suggested in November 1944 that it should base part of its post-war research at shore stations in order to ‘materially strengthen the territorial position’. Doing so would also help maintain ‘British pre-eminence in research and enterprise in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic’.51 Whether Britain had really achieved such pre-eminence would likely have been disputed by Norway and the United States. What is important, though, is that Britain believed it was pre-eminent in science, and it was convinced that this gave it greater rights than others to the territories it claimed. In brief, Britain believed it ‘knew’ the territories in greater detail than its rivals and therefore had a superior claim to their sovereignty.
The funding of the Discovery Committee had been financed largely by the licence fees paid by whalers to the Falkland Islands administration. However, those returns had steadily reduced, as the whalers realised that they did not have to enter British waters to get a good harvest. By keeping to international waters, the whaling companies could avoid the onerous imposts altogether. As a result, while whaling was likely to resume its importance after the war, it appeared unlikely that Britain would reap much of its profits. New reasons had to be developed to justify the expense of British activity in the Antarctic.
The Discovery Committee asked the government for £250,000 to finance a five-year research program. There was, of course, the political aspect, and the government was reminded how Britain’s ‘title to the Falkland Islands Dependencies has benefited very much as a result of the Discovery Committee activities spread over the last twenty years’. And there was the economic aspect, since the aim of the research was to ‘open the way to the general development of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions’. But what could be developed in such a forbidding region now that whaling had slipped from Britain’s grasp?
Coal deposits had often been suggested by explorers as being one justification for their nations’ involvement, but the quality of the coal and the difficulties of mining in the Antarctic made it not worth the bother. Although the committee suggested that whaling might grow in importance if whale meat could be used as food for humans, the whalers could still operate in international waters. The committee pointed instead to resources that could be exploited immediately in the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands Dependencies, such as seals, fish and seaweed, and to the likelihood that valuable minerals and oil would be found there. Oil was the great attraction.52
The Antarctic was possibly the least of Britain’s concerns in 1945, as the war wound down and the problems of post-war reconstruction loomed large. But decisions had to be made about the future of Britain’s territorial claims. The oldest of those claims on the continent dated back only to 1908, when the Falkland Islands Dependencies had been annexed. There had been little spent on them and not much more gained in return. After less than forty years in fitful control, Britain could have decided to sever its link and sail away, as it would do in other parts of its empire.
That might have happened, had Britain not established the four bases in the Falkland Islands Dependencies, which made it a matter of prestige for the waning empire not to concede to any challenges from its territorial rivals. The prospect of oil and other resources also figured in the British calculations, and officials and ministers decided in early 1945 to continue their permanent occupation.
The British would not be alone. The end of the war would see a mad scramble for polar territory, and mark the end of the Antarctic as the last continent unoccupied by humans.