It took two American icebreakers to open a passage into ice-choked Marguerite Bay on 20 February 1948, allowing Finn Ronne and his companions to head home aboard the wooden-hulled tug Port of Beaumont.1 Ronne’s departure marked the last of the big private expeditions. The expense had become too great for all but governments. Private benefactors and media organisations were no longer prepared to fund expeditions that were dealing with increasingly complex science and that elicited little public interest.
Even Ronne’s expedition, which had been under the auspices of the American Geographical Society, had been funded overwhelmingly by different parts of the US Department of Defense, while he had made territorial claims on behalf of the State Department. Before leaving for home, Ronne sent a radio message to Washington reporting how he had claimed all the territory that had been discovered during the expedition. He made the claims despite the joint program of geographic discovery and scientific investigation that he had organised with the leader of the nearby British base. It was, he wrote, ‘the first example of international exploration in the Antarctic’.2 And it forced Ronne to reconsider the notion of claiming territory in the Antarctic.
Ronne had begun writing a report of his expedition while working alongside the British, and had completed it during the voyage home. Writing from Chile on 14 March 1948, he informed the director of the American Geographical Society of the expedition’s ‘extremely rich harvest of results’.3 Apart from meteorological and other observations, and a great collection of rocks, he had crossed the Antarctic Peninsula to the Weddell Sea and provided final proof that the peninsula was not divided from the continent by one or more channels.
Overall, he claimed to have discovered at least ‘650,000 square kilometres of ‘new territory’ and had photographed from the expedition’s three aircraft a total of 165,000 square kilometres of territory. The 14,000 pictures that he had taken on his flights would be used to improve the maps of that part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies. The aerial photographs were particularly valuable because the flights had been taken in conjunction with a four-man sledge party of British and Americans, who had travelled more than a thousand miles along the Weddell Coast obtaining ground control points, which would enable mountains and bays and other features to be accurately positioned on maps.4 These could reinforce the claim that the United States might make to the area that American cartographers called ‘Palmer Land’.
The ill-defined Palmer Land had been explored by expeditions from several countries, and its sovereignty had long been a matter of dispute between the British, Chileans and Argentinians. Although his own expedition had reinforced the potential claim that the United States might make to Palmer Land, Ronne used his report to argue that the United States should ‘support a policy of internationalization of the Antarctic under the United Nations’. The alternative was for the United States to lay claim to all the areas that had been discovered by its citizens. But this would result in ‘something like a patch work quilt’, wrote Ronne, which ‘might impede the exploration and development of the Continent’. How were scientists and surveyors to operate in the Antarctic, if national borders were drawn on the ice and access was restricted by soldiers? The Antarctic was unique, argued Ronne, in being ‘so completely devoid of native inhabitants, deep seated hates and jealousies, [and] economic resources in world demand’. As such, it provided an excellent opportunity ‘for the United Nations to experiment in the internationalizing of disputed areas for the common good of all peoples’.5
When the Port of Beaumont arrived back in New York in April 1948, the reception was much more subdued than those which Byrd had received in the 1920s and 1930s. There were no ticker-tape parades or meetings with the president and Congress. Nor were there the grand dinners in swanky New York hotels that Byrd had enjoyed, or the lucrative lecture tours and radio talks to hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country. There was just a welcome at the US Navy wharf in Manhattan, followed by a reception and informal dinner organised by the cash-strapped American Geographical Society in the Colonial room of the Hotel McAlpin. Diners then walked to the nearby Engineering Societies’ Building to hear talks by geologist Laurence Gould, now president of Carleton College, Sir Hubert Wilkins and Ronne, with maps prepared by the American Geographical Society showing where his expedition had explored and the rival territorial claims. Byrd was notably absent. In their talks, both Ronne and Gould disparaged the competition for territory and urged the creation of an international regime to govern the continent.6
Despite his views about the desirability of an international regime, Ronne was anxious to have American names memorialised on Palmer Land. Although he had worked in tandem with the British, Ronne wanted to have his names publicised and preserved on maps before the British were able to get their own names approved and published. While the British had been surveying the west coast of the Weddell Sea by dog sledge, Ronne had been photographing it from the air. The two groups had agreed where they each would name geographical features, but that apparent understanding was overtaken by the more compelling desire by each group to maximise the number of national names that were to be applied to maps of that most disputed of territories.
Within days of returning to New York, Ronne was off to Washington with a cartographer from the American Geographical Society, William Briesemeister. There, they met with the relevant committee of the US Board of Geographical Names so that Ronne’s names could get official approval as soon as possible. Going through the names one by one, Ronne justified each in its turn, although he agreed to drop several to avoid duplication. For instance, ‘Isaiah Bowman Coast’ was discarded because there already was a ‘Bowman Coast’. The great majority of names were approved by the committee, which was composed of Captain Harold Saunders, Dr Meredith Burrill, W. L. G. Joerg and Dr Kenneth Bertrand, all of whom were conscious of the political importance of maximising the number of American names in the Antarctic. Joerg would have been particularly pleased by Ronne naming a plateau in his honour. The names were then submitted to the Board on Geographical Names, which quickly gave them its stamp of approval. Ronne thanked them for their ‘promptness of consideration’.7
There were so many changes to the American Geographical Society’s map of Palmer Land as a result of Ronne’s expedition that Briesemeister urged that an entirely new map be drawn up.8 This was an indication of the expedition’s geographical achievements, which had been made possible by the cooperation Ronne had enjoyed with the British, particularly through the loan of their trained sledge dogs. Gould also testified to the achievements of Ronne’s expedition, which he thought were ‘out of all proportion to its size’. In Gould’s field of geology, Ronne had ‘brought back the most extensive geological collection that has been brought by any Antarctic expedition’.9
Yet Ronne struggled to achieve any recognition. The American Philosophical Society, which had published the results of Byrd’s 1939–41 expedition, declined to publish Ronne’s scientific results, citing the lack of demand for the Byrd publication.10 Popular articles that Ronne wrote for national magazines were also rejected by editors, which he began to suspect was due to Byrd’s influence. That suspicion hardened when the National Geographic, which had a long and close association with Byrd and had published a lengthy report of his expedition, cancelled both an article and a lecture that Ronne had been commissioned to do.11
Ronne also struggled to find a publisher for the book he had written about the expedition. In October 1948, he appealed to the American Geographical Society’s director, Dr John Wright, for help in having the manuscript considered by publisher Henry Holt. Ronne did not want the publisher asking Byrd for an assessment of the manuscript for fear that he would advise against its publication. Ronne claimed that Byrd had enjoyed ‘a monopoly on the Antarctic all of his life, and I intend to continue fighting it’. Unsuccessful at Holt’s, Ronne then asked Gould and others for help to find a publisher. He would eventually get the manuscript accepted, after it had been rewritten by a science fiction writer and had a preface provided by Isaiah Bowman.12 The book included maps that privileged American names over British ones on the Weddell Sea coast, which caused considerable consternation in London when the book appeared. Published in 1949 as Antarctic Conquest, the sales would be disappointing, leading Ronne to conclude that ‘the world, particularly the Americans, are not interested in [the] Antarctic’.13
As Ronne well knew, Byrd was one American who continued to be interested in the Antarctic. His expeditions had given him a personal connection to the continent, particularly to the area of the Ross Sea, where the successive Little America bases had been established. In his popular account of Operation Highjump, Byrd noted how Paul Siple, who had first gone there as a Boy Scout with Byrd and had since become a leading polar scientist, referred to his latest landing in the Antarctic as ‘coming home’.14 Byrd could almost have been writing about himself. He had a sense of ownership over the place and believed, unlike Ronne, that the United States should ‘control as much of the Antarctic as possible’ because America would ‘use its material benefits for the good of all humanity’. He saw the Antarctic as ‘a great untouched reservoir of natural resources’ and envisaged a time when it would be ‘practicable to procure and utilize the resources that lie buried down there at the bottom of the world’. Meanwhile, America needed to control the continent as a training ground for its forces – to prepare them for a war that would be ‘fought across the top of the world’.15
American control of the Antarctic was not helped by the divisions between Byrd and Ronne, which were set to worsen. Although the ageing Byrd expressed support for Ronne, he was annoyed that he had not named an important geographic feature in Byrd’s honour. The upstart explorer had chosen instead to name a newly discovered region ‘Edith Ronne Land’ after his wife, although it is now known as the ‘Ronne Ice Shelf’. Ronne had even named a feature after a dog food company that had contributed food for his huskies.16 More importantly, the two men were rivals for the patronage of the US Navy and the support of Congress for another expedition. Byrd was having trouble financing his lavish lifestyle. He now wanted to fly from one pole to the other, in an attempt to recapture the attention of the American public and potential patrons, or at least lead a follow-up naval expedition to Operation Highjump. By August 1948, just four months after his return to New York, Ronne had begun seeking support from officials for another small expedition of his own.
With a base in Gould Bay on the southern coast of the Weddell Sea, Ronne’s proposed expedition would concentrate on the sector between 45° W and 10° E. Although this included Coats Land and Queen Maud Land, which had been claimed by the British and Norwegians respectively, Ronne noted that the sector remained ‘unknown geographically, geologically and geophysically’. He wanted to photograph the continent east of Edith Ronne Land, and do soundings beneath the ice that might lead to the discovery of minerals. Among the first officials Ronne approached was Samuel Boggs, who lived near to Ronne’s home in Chevy Chase, outside Washington. The State Department geographer was noncommittal. It was not the grand plan that Ronne had previously proposed to Secretary of State George Marshall, which had envisaged a ring of American bases and the photographing of the entire continent.17
Moreover, Ronne’s shifting of his attention to the other side of the continent would leave the former American base at Marguerite Bay unoccupied. The British government suggested in June 1948 that it be allowed to buy the buildings so that they did not fall into ‘the hands of Argentine or Chilean detachments which might visit Stonington Island during the next Antarctic season’. A British takeover would effectively end the territorial claim that the United States might assert to that part of the Antarctica, even though it was part of Britain’s Falkland Islands Dependencies.
The State Department was never going to agree to the sale, both as ‘a matter of utility and convenience for future American expeditions and as a matter of policy with respect to American interests in Antarctica’.18 To protect those interests, Ronne urged Secretary of State Marshall in December 1948 that the United States reoccupy the base on a permanent basis, with a party of seven men continuing the observations that Ronne had begun the previous year. Despite his support for bringing the Antarctic under the control of the United Nations, Ronne argued that such a pre-emptive move was necessary because of ‘the political situation involving the Antarctic, and because of my interest in seeing that our nation’s interests are pursued in this part of the world’.19 By that time, his recommendation had to compete with Byrd’s political manoeuvring for an expedition of his own.
As the navy’s pre-eminent polar adviser, Byrd wanted to lead another fleet of ships, including an aircraft carrier, to continue the work of Operation Highjump. However, he was now past sixty, suffering bouts of ill health, and his political position in Washington had been eroded. Veering ever further to the political right, Byrd was intensely critical of President Truman’s policies, blasting them for turning the United States into ‘a socialist nation’. He was also at the forefront of efforts by the navy to resist Truman’s policy to merge the services into a Department of Defense. Sailing off to the Antarctic again on board an aircraft carrier would have been a respite from these concerns, and provide a chance to return to the spotlight. His finances could certainly have used the boost that all the publicity would have brought.
It was not to be. In mid-August 1949, just when all the planning seemed to be in place for an expedition that summer, it was cancelled. Byrd was dismayed and cast around to see who in the Truman administration he could blame.20 But it was nothing personal: the cost–benefit analysis of another Operation Highjump simply did not stack up. Photographing the continent without hundreds of ground control points had proved to be an expensive waste of time. There was also a new aerial navigation system being developed that might allow high-altitude planes to photograph the continent in a single summer, without the need for ground control points or a cumbersome naval fleet.21
Ronne’s expedition also encountered strong headwinds in Washington. His plan for a base on Gould Bay depended on the assistance of two icebreakers, which would force their way through the hundreds of kilometres of ice in the Weddell Sea. But the ships were committed elsewhere for the summer of 1949–50, forcing Ronne to postpone his expedition for at least a year.22
Both Byrd and Ronne worked away at the navy and other government departments, and cultivated their separate supporters in Congress. While Byrd could count on his brother Harry for support, Ronne had the backing of Senator Francis Case, who arranged a meeting between Ronne and the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission to talk about exploring the Antarctic for uranium. There was a popular view that under the Antarctic ice there was ‘possibly more uranium, the raw material of atomic energy, than anywhere else’. However, as Case tried to get government support for Ronne’s proposed expedition, he encountered opposition from ‘certain persons within the Department of State’ who believed that ‘the United States should not assert any claims in the Antarctic lest we offend England or some other continental powers’.23 Still, there were some American officials who wanted the United States to lay claim to as much of the Antarctic as it could, and technological advances were providing new ways for them to do so.
While Ronne had used three small aircraft to photograph 650,000 square kilometres of the Antarctic, the flights had to be supported by regular landings and ground parties to obtain astronomical positions for mapping purposes. The wartime development of low-frequency radio navigation systems, known as LORAN, which allowed aircraft and ships to be located accurately, theoretically meant that aircraft could fly over the whole continent and photograph its surface from a great height. Since the position of the aircraft would be known with some precision at the time each photograph was taken, there would be no need for ground control points. In practice, though, there would be difficulties with radio communication due to the prevalence of electromagnetic storms in the Antarctic. Nevertheless, if LORAN stations could be established at the southern tips of South America and New Zealand, and on Antarctica itself, there was the tantalising possibility that long-range aircraft might fly from New Zealand across Antarctica to South America at a height of 40,000 feet, their cameras capturing the whole continent in far fewer flights and at much less cost than if Ronne’s more intensive methods were used. At Ronne’s suggestion, Boggs explored this question with the Air Force’s Colonel James Tison in August 1949. They agreed that a plan should be prepared ‘for producing a reconnaissance map of the entire Antarctic continent at least expense’.24
Boggs was enthusiastic about the idea and pursued it further with air force and naval officers. The geographer was on the Defense Department’s Research and Development Board, the precursor of the National Science Foundation, which played an influential role in determining the nature and purpose of Antarctic expeditions. Boggs assured Ronne that both the air force and the board were well-disposed towards his plans, but said they were somewhat confused as to whether he was pushing for the scientific base on Gould Bay or for his earlier suggestion of an aerial survey of the entire continent. With the navy having postponed Byrd’s planned naval expedition, there was an opportunity for the board to take the lead in Antarctic exploration and investigation. Boggs suggested as much, proposing that the board ‘evolve a plan for scientific work in Antarctica, and particularly for the mapping which must precede making any comprehensive international scientific plan for the whole Antarctic region’.
The National Academy of Sciences had already been asked by the State Department for advice on the ‘possibilities and importance of scientific research in the Antarctic’ as a precursor to developing a program, possibly in coordination with other countries. The academy’s committee was chaired by Bowman and had as its principal recommendation ‘the production of a general map of the Antarctic Continent on a uniform scale’. Once that was done, exploration and scientific investigation could be planned in earnest. Since a program to map the entire continent would take a year or more to prepare, Boggs urged Ronne to press ahead with a limited expedition to establish a base on Gould Bay during the summer of 1949–50, and the comprehensive mapping program was planned to begin the following summer.25
It was all too soon for Ronne, who was unable to obtain navy icebreakers that summer. Instead, he began discussions with the board to take a scientific expedition to Gould Bay in the summer of 1950–51, with Ronne stressing that he was ‘extremely anxious to maintain the highest scientific standards’.26 This was a jab at Byrd, who had often been criticised for preferring adventure and publicity over science. It was also a sign of things to come, as science came to compete more strongly with sovereignty as the raison d’être for Antarctic expeditions.
Whether the driving force was science or sovereignty, the creation of accurate maps was essential, and Ronne had mapping high on his agenda. As he pointed out in an article in Scientific Monthly, there were still more than ten million square kilometres that remained unexplored. With ‘new devices’ to aid exploration, Ronne called for the army, navy and air force to pool their resources to ‘undertake a comprehensive mapping program’.27 But the armed services had other things on their mind. The outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950 relegated the Antarctic almost to the bottom of America’s agenda. The war also put on hold the discussions about the internationalisation of the Antarctic.
The State Department had proposed in early 1948 that the Antarctic should come under the trusteeship of the United Nations. This was intended to end the intensifying rivalry between Britain, Argentina and Chile, while allowing the United States to range over all the Antarctic without reference to the notional owners of its different sectors. The jostling for territory was threatening to escalate into armed conflict. Argentina and Chile had raised the ante in July 1947 when they increased the number of their bases and agreed that their respective Antarctic territories would no longer overlap.
In late November, eight Argentine naval ships had steamed into the sunken caldera of Deception Island, where Britain had one of its small bases, and brazenly set about establishing a base of their own. Despite a protest from the leader of the British base in his role as resident magistrate, the Argentinians refused to budge. The British ambassador in Buenos Aires then protested about the ‘continued acts of trespass’ and demanded that the Argentinians either apply for permission to have a scientific base or leave forthwith. Again the Argentinians refused, with foreign affairs minister Juan Bramuglia noting that the ‘military detachments which occupy those bases, on which the national flag is flown, know that they are stationed on Argentine territory’. Indeed, continued Bramuglia, the ‘entire nation is conscious of this and in consequence the Government – interpreting the feeling of the whole population – rejects the request to withdraw its nationals’. A British protest to the Chilean government about their activities in the Falkland Islands Dependencies met with a similar rebuff.28 And there was nothing that the British could do in the face of the locally strong Argentinian and Chilean forces. Worse was to come.
In early February 1948, Argentina announced that it was sending a naval taskforce of two cruisers and six destroyers for exercises in Antarctic waters. At the same time, the Chilean president, Gabriel Gonzáles Videla, disclosed that he and other senior army officers and politicians were aboard the armed troopship, Presidente Pinto, which was steaming with a flotilla of Chilean naval vessels towards Antarctica. Videla intended to take formal possession of Chilean Antarctica and preside over the establishment of a military base on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. He would name the base after Bernardo O’Higgins – Chile’s equivalent to George Washington – and rename that part of the peninsula as ‘Penisola O’Higgins’. It would be the first permanent base on the continent itself, and was being established despite strong British objections.
With the Chilean president raising his nation’s flag on one part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies and the Argentine flotilla heading for another, the British navy rushed the powerful cruiser HMS Nigeria to Port Stanley. The pugnacious British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin told the House of Commons that Britain was not going to ignore ‘the challenge to our authority’ posed by these ‘ostentatious naval and other demonstrations’, while the Australian prime minister, Ben Chifley, offered to send any naval help that Britain needed. Undaunted, the Chilean president went on to visit his nation’s base on Greenwich Island, from where he complained of the ‘vicious and obsolete imperialisms’ which ‘threatened by armed violence to displace Chile and Argentina from their territories’. Although the commander of Britain’s naval forces in the West Indies, Admiral William Tennant, thought a naval clash with Argentina would be ‘sheer stupidity’, and the Chilean president considered the idea of a naval conflict ‘simply absurd’, the captain of the Nigeria conferred with the Falkland Islands’ governor, Sir Miles Clifford, about the best means of dislodging the South Americans from Deception Island.29 Rather than seeking a confrontation, Clifford boarded the Nigeria for a flag-showing cruise of his dependencies, in the vain hope that it would somehow cause the South Americans to pack up and go home. However, they already regarded themselves as being home.
When the Chilean ships arrived back at Punta Arenas with Videla and his gold-braided companions on 23 February 1948, the triumphant president told a cheering crowd from the balcony of the local governor’s palace how he had managed to ‘defend and consolidate Chilean sovereignty in the Antarctic’. To show that the Antarctic was part of Chile, Videla announced the creation of a Department of the Antarctic, which would merge Chile’s southernmost province with its Antarctic territory. Then he flew off to Santiago, where he was greeted with even more excitement as he drove in an open car through streets crowded with Chileans, who had become ardent about the Antarctic following their president’s swashbuckling cruise among the ice-flecked waters.
Videla continued the nationalist symbolism by going to lay a wreath at Santiago’s statue of Bernardo O’Higgins, before that night addressing the torch- and flag-waving crowds from the presidential palace. With the British embassy and Australian legation ringed by police to protect them against the popular outrage, the Australian official John Cumpston reported to Canberra how the president was ‘cheered wildly during his references to the Antarctic’.30 After their hectic summer in the Antarctic, the Chilean and Argentine governments agreed once again to defend their ‘indisputable rights’ to the South American Antarctic and continue their present course of prosecuting their territorial claims ‘in a spirit of reciprocal co-operation’.31 They had no interest in internationalising what they regarded as their national territories.
There had been some interest by the British in the possibility of internationalising the Antarctic. A senior Colonial Office official, J. S. Bennett, had even suggested in jest that a king penguin could be designated as an inhabitant so that the continent could be brought under the UN trusteeship system, which was meant to benefit dependent people living in trustee territories. More seriously, Bennett thought it was absurd ‘for an uninhabited wilderness to be divided up among various colonial powers; and a map of the Antarctic cut up like a cake into slices of different colours is a sorry spectacle for anyone who has hopes of sanity in international affairs’.32
Similarly, Admiral Tennant, who had responsibility for naval forces in the Antarctic, could see little strategic interest in the continent and thought only the Falkland Islands and South Georgia were worth defending ‘to the extent of going to war’. As for the rest, he suggested that it be internationalised under the control of the various claimant nations and the United States.33 However, the British chiefs of staff still feared that losing control over the Falkland Islands Dependencies would weaken Britain’s control of the Falkland Islands, which were regarded as being of vital strategic importance for controlling the South Atlantic and the sea route to the Pacific. They were also reluctant to abandon the Antarctic until the presence or otherwise of uranium deposits was confirmed, and the potential value of the continent for air routes ascertained. Accordingly, Britain’s defence planners urged in August 1948 that the status quo be maintained until the strategic value of the Antarctic was clarified.34
Fears had emerged early in 1948 that placing the Antarctic under United Nations trusteeship would open the door to the Soviet Union, which was beginning to participate in Antarctic whaling. Britain also surmised that the trusteeship proposal would not be welcomed in Santiago or Buenos Aires, since Argentina and Chile were unlikely to relinquish their claims to the Antarctic sectors that they regarded as integral parts of their national territories.
Indeed, Chile was quick to oppose the idea of trusteeship. When the State Department suggested as an alternative that the continent could be controlled by a condominium of the seven existing claimants plus the United States, Britain dismissed the idea, fearing that it would be impossible to exclude the Soviet Union from such an arrangement.35
In the absence of any agreement, and to head off the risk of open conflict, British officials agreed with their South American counterparts to stop escalating the arms race in the Antarctic. The three countries agreed not to send warships south of 60° S latitude during the coming summer season, when their bases were due to be resup-plied and their personnel changed over. Only warship movements that had been ‘customary for a number of years’ would be allowed. Importantly for Britain, it would not restrict its warship movements in the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. This would allow one or two powerful ships to be based close by, as a continuing deterrent to any untoward action by the Chileans or the Argentinians.36
Britain’s time as an imperial power was running out. It had withdrawn from Burma and India and was rethinking its global strategic needs within the context of a possible war with Russia. While retaining control of the Falkland Islands was regarded as vital, there was much more uncertainty in London about the Falkland Islands Dependencies, where Britain’s title was weaker and the strategic and economic potential was more problematic. With Chile and Argentina challenging Britain’s title by sending warships and establishing their own bases in the Falkland Islands Dependencies, there was a desire in London for a solution before the growing dispute escalated out of control.
The British had tried without success to get Chile and Argentina to agree to refer the question to the International Court of Justice. Britain then suggested in March 1948 that talks be held between the United States, Britain, Argentina and Chile to settle the conflict over the Falkland Islands Dependencies. Privately, Britain was prepared to concede all the dependencies other than Deception Island and Admiralty Bay in the South Shetlands and Signy Island in the South Orkneys, which was where Britain regarded its title was ‘best and our strategic and commercial interests greatest’. It was only when those talks were rejected that Britain reconsidered the American proposal for a condominium.
Such a condominium would require the support of the seven territorial claimants. However, London could not even get its fellow Commonwealth countries to agree. South Africa was willing to support a condominium provided that it did not intrude on Britain’s control of the islands in the Falkland Islands Dependencies.37 New Zealand took a different tack, describing the condominium proposal as ‘a most unsatisfactory halfway house’. Its preferred option continued to be the widely rejected UN trusteeship plan.38 Placing the continent under the control of a United Nations sub-agency, with New Zealand being one of the controlling powers, was better than losing the Ross Dependency altogether, in the event that the United States asserted a claim to it.39
With no New Zealander having been to the Ross Dependency since it was annexed in 1923, it is difficult to see how New Zealand could have argued that it had any valid title to the territory. Byrd’s successive expeditions had given the United States a much stronger claim, should it ever want to exercise it. As for the future, there was no way that New Zealand could compete with the scale of resources that the United States could deploy in the Antarctic. Washington’s failure to make a claim to the Ross Dependency was the only reason that New Zealand could harbour the illusion that it was in possession of the territory. This is perhaps why there was some support in New Zealand for the proposed international regime to end the territorial rivalry and develop and administer the Antarctic on behalf of, if not the whole world, then at least the several existing claimants. As Wellington’s Dominion newspaper argued in February 1948, an international conference to settle the various territorial disputes should ‘clarify the rights and responsibilities of the various countries claiming Antarctic territory’ so that ‘the Antarctic, with its new-found potentialities, is used for the promotion of international peace and security’.40
While South Africa and New Zealand had been prepared to countenance the idea, Australia was adamantly opposed to both a condominium and UN trusteeship. It had just established bases on Heard and Macquarie Islands and was hoping to have further bases on the continent itself. Making the Antarctic a UN trusteeship, or placing it under the control of a condominium, would do away with Australia’s title and open the Australian Antarctic Territory to possibly hostile powers. It might also complicate the exploitation by Australia of Antarctic resources.
Accordingly, the Australians urged Britain to refuse any negotiation with Washington that ‘would in any way imply that there is any doubt about the existing rights we and others have in [the] Antarctic Territory’. Of course, the Australian government was well aware that its title had become weaker in the absence of any Australian visits over the past two decades. It argued nevertheless that its title rested upon its ‘continuing interest in research and development in [the] Australian Antarctic Territory’.41 Although that would not have been the basis for any title recognisable in a court of international law, there was little else that Australia could do in the short term to reinforce its legal position.
In July 1948, the British government informed Australia that it proposed to open negotiations with the United States and other Antarctic powers to achieve a pooling of all Antarctic territory under a commission of the seven claimants and the United States. Although Britain claimed that it wanted to retain the South Shetlands and the South Orkneys, it told Australia that it was prepared even to cede their control to such a commission. The British government knew that this proposal would meet opposition in Australia but argued that ‘some form of international settlement is sooner or later inevitable’.42
Australia remained unconvinced. While agreeing that an eight-power commission would be useful to coordinate exploration and scientific work, Australia refused to hand over its title. In contrast to the Falkland Islands Dependencies, where such a commission might resolve the dispute between the rival claimants, Australia argued that its ‘title to Australian Antarctic territory is clear and has been widely recognized’ and that there had been no rival claims made to it, other than the private claims of Ellsworth and Christensen. It was unaware that the American aircraft of Operation Highjump had been dropping claim forms on the icy hinterland of the Australian Antarctic Territory, and that secret maps had been compiled by the CIA showing the United States as the owner of much of the Australian territory.
Australia suggested instead that any Antarctic commission be of an advisory nature only and be used to stimulate research and development. By joining the United States and the existing seven claimants together, it might also have the advantage of deterring Russia from making a claim.43 Although both Australia and New Zealand agreed in November 1948 that the British government could press ahead with its negotiations with the United States, these came to nothing. The United States remained hesitant about making territorial claims and was unwilling to press ahead with proposals that had met with such negative reactions from Australia, Argentina, Chile, France and Norway.44
Without a New Zealand expedition, it was left to the British to propose one of their own, although New Zealand was asked to provide some of its members and part of the funding. The proposal was put forward by the former Antarctic explorer Frank Debenham, who was now head of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. He suggested that a small party be sent to McMurdo Sound in the summer of 1950–51 to study the origin and movement of floating ice sheets. The expedition would also investigate ‘possible economic assets … such as the fisheries and the potentialities of wind power’.
The proposal was supported by Britain’s Polar Committee, partly because it would have the political benefit of reinforcing New Zealand’s claim to the Ross Dependency by strengthening ‘the long record of British exploration in that region’.45 Although New Zealand prime minister Peter Fraser favoured an international regime to control the Antarctic, his government continued to hedge its bets and threw its support behind the British proposal, noting that the visit of a British expedition would help to counter the ‘extensive United States scientific exploration in recent years’ and strengthen New Zealand’s ‘territorial claims to the Ross Dependency’. However, New Zealand’s Antarctic Committee was disconcerted to learn in June 1949 that the expedition would not be possible before 1951 and would require much more support from New Zealand. Interestingly, officials predicted that the government was unlikely to support such an expedition ‘for political or strategic reasons alone’ and would need ‘cogent scientific reasons’.46 Rather than being a cover for politically driven expeditions, this was an early sign that science could be sufficient reason in itself to mount an expedition. In this case, though, the expedition never eventuated.
Australia was little closer than New Zealand in being able to occupy any part of the Antarctic territory that it so stridently claimed as its own. Without a suitable ice-strengthened supply ship, it had to move slowly, starting with the annexation of Heard Island and the reoccupation of Macquarie Island. It was only when those tasks were completed using a tank-landing ship in January 1948 that the Wyatt Earp was sent south to reconnoitre a site for an eventual Australian base on the continental coastline.
The ship was not up to the task. After being called back from Hobart for yet more repairs to its engine, it finally set out from Melbourne on 8 February. It did not begin well. Expedition leader Stuart Campbell began vomiting violently after eating a ‘doubtful oyster’ the night before departure, and he was soon joined by many of his companions once the ship encountered the prevailing westerly swell of the Southern Ocean. The rolling ship still leaked badly, and the starboard cabins and wardroom were quickly swamped with water, staying that way till it reached the pack ice. Even then, when sailing before a following sea, the alleyway door had to be kept shut at night to keep out the seawater, which meant that the engine fumes could not be properly ventilated.
The discomforts were all for nothing. The lateness of the departure and the extent of the pack ice meant the ship could not get close to the coastline that it was meant to reconnoitre. With Commonwealth Bay choked by ice, the ship headed east, in the hope of doing ‘some original survey’ of a coastline that had only been seen from the air. But nothing could be done with a ship that was unable to push its way through anything but the thinnest ice, while the almost constant cloud cover prevented accurate sightings of the ship’s position from being taken. As for the aircraft, it was too big to be easily employed and was able to make only two short flights The flights only confirmed that there was no way through the ice.47
As a naval ship, the Wyatt Earp was crowded by its regulation crew and could only carry two scientists, physicist Phillip Law and meteorologist Fritz Loewe. Much to the disgust of his companions, Campbell refused to change his clothes for weeks on end, consciously copying the explorers of an earlier era. It was too much for Law, who shared a cabin with him, and it doubtless helped to poison the relationship between the two men. Despite his nostalgia for the pre-war expeditions of which he had been a part, Campbell conceded that the times had moved on. Ships like the Wyatt Earp belonged to ‘a past era of Antarctic Exploration when requirements were simple and scientific aims not very complex’, whereas an expedition now required ‘complicated equipment, specialized personnel and room to employ them in’.
With the voyage an abysmal failure, Campbell and many of the crew stayed up all night drinking as the ship headed across Port Phillip Bay towards Melbourne. Law awoke to find that the crew was inebriated and Campbell had fallen into the sea The ship was forced ‘to turn around to retrieve him’. Fortunately, there were few onlookers at Melbourne’s Station Pier when the ship tied up on 1 April and its crew staggered ashore.48 It was an ignominious end to one of the least successful of all Antarctic voyages, which left Australia no closer to achieving its aim of establishing a permanent foothold on the continent.
In an article for the Melbourne Herald, Campbell tried to portray Australia’s Antarctic commitment in a positive light. It was wrong to expect quick results, he argued, since long-term observations were required in order to produce meaningful meteorological results. Similar patience was needed for the biological studies into the viability of re-establishing the fur seal and sea elephant industries. Although the Wyatt Earp had been sent to find a suitable site for a permanent base, one could not be established without spending some years training personnel in polar work and developing equipment that could operate in the extreme cold of the Antarctic. That polar experience was now being gained by the personnel manning the bases on Heard and Macquarie Islands, and they and their successors would be the men who would ‘set up the first permanent Australian settlement on the Antarctic Continent’.49 Despite Campbell’s forced optimism, Davis could not help thinking about how little had been achieved with the government’s expenditure of £300,000, compared with what Rymill had done with £10,000 during the 1934 Graham Land expedition.50 Davis would raise these concerns in official discussions about the failure of the Wyatt Earp voyage.
A new interdepartmental planning committee was created to devise a program for the island parties and to prepare for the eventual Antarctic base. Chaired by Campbell, it had representatives from the Bureau of Meteorology, the Mineralogical Bureau, the Fisheries Bureau, the Department of Supply, the Royal Australian Navy and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Davis and Mawson attended as advisers. The committee’s first meeting, in May 1948, was occupied mainly by discussions about future work on Heard Island and the possibility of using the Wyatt Earp for another reconnaissance voyage.
After spending so much on the first voyage and achieving so little, Davis warned that it would be politically dangerous not to send the Wyatt Earp back on another voyage to select a suitable mainland base. Mawson had never sailed on the ship, but he still thought the vessel might be used, along with an ice-strengthened tank-landing ship, to establish an Antarctic base, which he now thought should be sited further west on the coast of Princess Elizabeth Land or Mac. Robertson Land.51 But there would be no more voyages by the HMAS Wyatt Earp. The navy refused to risk the ship and its sailors in the Antarctic ever again, and the Antarctic Committee agreed in September 1948 that the ship should be sold.52
An ice-breaking ship was required to supply any permanent base on the continent. However, none could be found for sale in the so-called ‘sterling area’, and Australia lacked sufficient American dollars to purchase a vessel from elsewhere in the world or have one specially built.53 With the Wyatt Earp ruled out and no alternative vessel capable of dealing with the ice, the government reconciled itself to a delay of several years before it would become possible to mount another voyage to the continent, let alone establish a permanent base there.
Campbell was increasingly frustrated by the indecision. He told the Antarctic Committee in September 1948 that he thought the government remained interested in work being done in Australia’s Antarctic territory ‘from the Scientific as well as the Political angle’, but the refusal of anybody to make ‘a decision or even a firm recommendation had been continuing for a long time’. Not even the scientists on the committee thought that an Antarctic base could be justified on scientific grounds alone, but they were happy to draw up a scientific program if the government wanted ‘effective occupation of the Sector for International and Political reasons’.
The government certainly wanted this but it was deterred by the cost, which Campbell estimated at perhaps £300,000 for the first year and up to £30,000 per year thereafter. Much of the cost would come from the purchase of a new ship, for which the government was loath to commit funds. In the absence of a firm decision about a continental base, the Australian Antarctic Territory remained as vulnerable as ever to being taken over by one of Australia’s rivals. And there was little that Australia could do about it. All it could do was to maintain its presence on Heard and Macquarie Islands, in order to ensure their continued ownership and to act as training grounds for future Antarctic activities.54 Despite all the barriers to the establishment of a base on the continent itself, Australia’s commitment to cementing its Antarctic claim was undiminished.
It was decided that the Australian effort should be organised by an office under the control of the Department of External Affairs, rather than being hived off to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which had little interest in the Antarctic, or to the Australian navy or air force. This decision helped to ensure that Australian activities would continue to be focused primarily on shoring up Australian sovereignty, rather than on the pursuit of scientific discovery.55 For the present, though, it remained important to devise a scientific program for the island bases so that they could have a satisfying raison d’être during the several years that it would take for a mainland base to be established. While Campbell might have hoped to lead the historic expedition that would establish such a base, he was not attracted by the routine of running the island bases. He opted instead to return to his former position with the Department of Civil Aviation, in the expectation that he would resume the leadership when it came time to set up the mainland base. He was to be disappointed.
With the island bases focused on science, the organisation needed a senior scientific officer to act as assistant director. Phillip Law had been acting as scientific liaison officer while on leave from Melbourne University and was keen to take on the more senior and permanent role. However, Campbell was determined to thwart Law’s ambition. ‘That C[ampbell] dislikes me I have always known,’ Law confided to a friend, ‘just as I dislike him. We are completely incompatible. Our ideas on everything are irreconcilable.’ The depth of their antagonism did not bode well for the organisation if the more qualified and scientifically minded Law was appointed to a permanent position as Campbell’s deputy.
In July 1948, Campbell had argued against an extension to Law’s temporary appointment. When Law went ahead in September and applied for the position of deputy, Campbell did all he could to prevent the appointment. As head of the selection committee, he was well placed to do so. Firstly, he convinced Mawson, who was also on the committee, that scientific qualifications were less important for the position than ‘a wide general experience and organizing ability’.56 However, Campbell failed to sway the committee, with the secretary of the Department of External Affairs, John Burton, arguing that it was necessary to have a scientifically trained officer to oversee the activities of the island bases and to ensure the scientific data from the islands was ‘put to the best possible use’. At the same time, he assured Campbell in early December that Law would not necessarily become the permanent officer in charge of the Antarctic program or lead any future expedition to the continent.57
Campbell was not reassured. He knew his chances of leading any future Antarctic expedition were much slimmer if Law was given the job, while he was left to await developments in his old job at the Department of Civil Aviation. In a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the situation, just two weeks before he was due to leave his Antarctic job, Campbell sent an urgent teleprinter message to Burton advising ‘most strongly’ against the appointment of Law.58 It was all in vain. Law took up his position on 1 January 1949 and Campbell’s association with the Antarctic came to an end.
The diminutive and athletic Law had a taste for adventure, a strong commitment to science and a determination to do everything that was necessary to retain the Australian Antarctic Territory. In the months after his appointment, he proposed the building of an Antarctic Institute to house the expedition offices, along with a polar library and museum, which could become the ‘focal centre for planning and assisting attacks on the Antarctic Continent’, and would show Australians and international visitors ‘the heroic achievements of our great Antarctic explorers’.59
Law also made a series of speeches appealing for the Australian public to support the nation’s territorial claim in the Antarctic. He argued that Australia had an obligation, because of its proximity, to undertake scientific work in the Antarctic, which in turn would help to ‘justify our possession’. There were benefits to be gained from such scientific work, he claimed, particularly in the field of meteorology, with its supposed ability to provide predictions about Australia’s weather and climate. And there was profit to be made in the Antarctic from its ‘untapped resources’, particularly ‘oil and uranium’. Law told the ‘Carry On Club’ that nuclear power stations could be established in the Antarctic to ‘melt off the ice from large areas’ so that these resources could be tapped. But Australia could only benefit from such developments, he warned, if it retained control of its territory. And it could only retain control by occupying it and setting men to work on ‘scientific investigation’.60
Australia continued to be hamstrung by the lack of a ship that could smash its way through the ice and supply a base on the Antarctic continent. It had to make do with its bases on Heard and Macquarie Islands and hope that no other nation would establish a base of its own in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The difficulties of doing so were shown by a French expedition that attempted to establish a base on Adélie Land in the summer of 1948–49, only to have its ship, the Commander Charcot, blocked by the ice. The eleven personnel and their thirty dogs were forced to retreat to Melbourne, where the dogs were given to Australia for use on Heard and Macquarie Islands, before the ship returned to France.61
When the Liberal government of Robert Menzies was elected in December 1949, it was advised that the Australian title to its Antarctic territory depended on the government undertaking ‘some work of exploration or, better still, effective occupation’ as soon as possible. It was readily conceded that the cost of this could not be recouped by any scientific results, but ‘political reasons make it desirable for Australia to consolidate her claims’. As the Antarctic Executive Committee advised, the consolidation of these claims was ‘a major and an urgent reason for establishing a continental Station’.62
Officials had no illusions about the tenuous nature of Australia’s territorial title. While Mawson had done a lot of flag-raising during his two voyages between 1929 and 1930, Lars Christensen had done a lot more exploration of the Australian territory. Whereas the Norwegian had taken aerial photographs along about 1600 kilometres of the territory’s western coastline, Australia had never taken any. Even the American Operation Highjump had taken survey photographs, albeit of dubious value, and the US Navy Hydrographer now probably had ‘better information about the Territory than the Commonwealth Government’.
It was assumed that the United States was rushing to use this information to compile new maps of the Antarctic, which would be crowded with names given by American explorers and approved by the US Board of Geographical Names. The board had declared that its approval of names would be done without considering ‘questions of political sovereignty’. In other words, American names were likely to replace Australian or British ones, and the 1939 Australian map of the Antarctic, which was presently being revised, was in danger of being made redundant if the American map was published first. To ensure that its map remained the best available, the Australian government was urged to gather information from the Norwegians and Americans.63
With even Australian Treasury officials agreeing on the need for a continental base, and the incoming Minister of External Affairs, Percy Spender, also convinced by Law’s arguments, it seemed that it would be quickly achieved. The case for the base was strengthened when Russia made clear that it had territorial ambitions in the Antarctic, based upon Bellingshausen’s historic voyage and the recent activities of Russian whalers.
In February 1949, the Soviet Geographical Society had met in Leningrad to discuss Bellingshausen’s voyage, with delegates noting the way that the names bestowed by Bellingshausen had mostly been replaced by English names. The chairman of the society’s cartographical committee complained that this showed ‘utter disrespect for the remarkably precise cartographical works of the expedition and its outstanding discoveries’. Much like the Americans and British, with their dispute over ‘Palmer Land’ and ‘Graham Land’, the committee went back to the original Russian documents to prove the primacy of Bellingshausen’s discoveries. This led in turn to calls for the name ‘Russian Sector of the Antarctic Continent’ to be given to the territories discovered by Bellingshausen, which principally lay within the Falkland Islands territories.64 A book published in Moscow that year reprinted some original documents from the voyage in order to prove that the Russians were first to discover the continent.65
The Russian arguments added a compelling new element to the post-war race for control of the Antarctic. In the case of the Australian Antarctic Territory, there was now a Cold War rationale for a base that was calculated to appeal to the conservative ministers of the Australian government. The presence of a base was also essential in the event that Australia’s sovereignty was tested in an international court. To strengthen its case before such a court, the government was advised, it would have to show ‘evidence of occupation and continuing activity in the region’. With other Antarctic claimants already accumulating such evidence, and with the United States and Russia both likely to become claimants, the need for Australian action was ‘urgent’.66 Law pressed the government not to wait for a ship to be built but instead to charter one so that a continental base could be established by December 1951. He suggested that six to eight men be landed at a suitable place on the coastline that first summer, with a group of about sixteen men being sent to occupy the base the following year.67 Just when it seemed certain that Law would achieve his aim, the outbreak of war in Korea on 25 June 1950 changed everything.
With Seoul falling within a week to the North Korean army, and with Australia quickly committing forces to the war, the establishment of an Antarctic base no longer seemed so urgent. There were fears that the conflict would escalate into another world war, this time between the United States and the Soviet Union. By August, Mawson was suggesting that Law’s plan to charter a ship for the 1951–52 season be abandoned. He believed the world could soon be embroiled in a war that would last ten or more years, which would remove any urgency about an Australian base. Mawson even suggested that the two island bases could be abandoned until the war was won. Davis agreed, telling Law in September 1950 that the chartering of a ship no longer seemed justified and that Australia should wait until it had built a ship of its own.68 The Australian base seemed further away than ever.
In order to defend its supposed sovereignty, Australia had been attracted by the prospect of basing an Australian whaling industry in Antarctic waters, and by the allure of discovering valuable minerals on its shores. Strategic reasons also figured in the Australian calculations. The Russians had taken control of a German factory ship and its associated whale-catchers and sent them to the Antarctic in the summer of 1946–47, manned by Norwegian crews. They were the first Russian ships in the Antarctic for more than a century, and they raised fears of a much greater Russian presence, which might then lead to the establishment of Russian bases in the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Much to the chagrin of the Australians and New Zealanders, as well as the British and Norwegians, the Japanese had also returned to the Antarctic after General Douglas MacArthur provided ships for them to resume their whaling industry, ostensibly as a temporary measure for one season. As head of the Allied occupation forces in Japan, MacArthur believed that whales would alleviate the worldwide shortage of fats and provide meat for Japanese consumption, thereby partly relieving the United States of the burden of providing food for the half-starved nation.
In that first whaling season there were two Japanese factory ships, twelve whale-catchers and seven carriers, which sailed south under the close supervision of American officers. They were the remnants of Japan’s large pre-war whaling fleet, and Australia wanted them included as part of its reparations payments. Australia was keen to ‘enter the Antarctic whaling industry at the earliest opportunity’, and the Japanese ships would allow Australia to do so.69 But that would depend on MacArthur, and the American general wanted the ships for his own purposes, with the whale meat being used for stock food and human consumption in Japan, although some housewives boycotted the queues when it was included among their rations. The whale oil, meanwhile, was sold on the international market. It was estimated that the first season in the Antarctic saved the American government $10 million, which would otherwise have been spent on feeding the Japanese.70 Japanese whaling was set to continue.
By 1950–51, the Japanese sent two fleets, comprising thirty-four ships, to the Antarctic, with an additional fleet being sent the following year. The close supervision of the Japanese whalers caused them to improve their previously wasteful methods, until they had the best record amongst all the whaling nations for the ‘complete utilization of the whale carcass and for the least number of violations of the Convention’.71
The return of Japanese whalers to the Antarctic, albeit under American control and with Australian observers aboard, was also opposed by the British chiefs of staff, who were concerned that the Japanese would ‘use the opportunity to gather intelligence about the Antarctic and any ports which her whalers make use’. The British wanted to ensure that Japan could not use its whaling presence to make a territorial claim in the Antarctic, based upon the earlier work of Lieutenant Nobu Shirase’s expedition. There was much discussion between British officials as to whether Japan had any existing territorial claim arising out of Shirase’s raising of the Japanese flag on the Ross Ice Barrier, and whether, if it did have a claim, it should be compelled to renounce it as part of its peace treaty with the Allies. Although the discussions were inconclusive, Japan was ultimately forced via the peace treaty to renounce any rights it might have to claim part of Antarctica.72
The reduction of whaling during the war had allowed whale stocks to recover somewhat from the depredations of their numbers during the 1930s. However, once the war was over, there was a rush by the whalers to return. They were eager to reap the profits that were to be made from whale oil, the price of which had risen nearly fivefold since 1939. Yet it would take some years to build new ships that could replace the hundreds that had been lost during the war.
The rush was not unregulated. Whereas Japan had refused to abide by the international whaling convention prior to the war, the industry was now more effectively governed by the International Whaling Commission, which determined the length of the Antarctic whaling season and the number and size of whales that could be killed. In the summer of 1946–47, for instance, it had decided that the season would run for just four months, or less if the quota of 16,000 blue whale equivalents was reached sooner. Under this quota system, two fin whales, two and a half humpback whales or six sei whales equalled one of the larger blue whales. These regulations were circumvented somewhat by whalers operating in the tropics and killing the migratory mammals as they congregated in their breeding grounds.
The commission also decreed that only those nations that had been engaged in whaling prior to the war could participate in Antarctic whaling after the war. Apart from the Russian whaling fleet, fourteen factory ships and sixty-three whale-catchers were sent south that year by Norway, Britain, Japan and the Netherlands. In fact, half the world’s whaling fleets were owned by Norway.73 By January 1951, with the price of whale oil still four times its pre-war level, there were nineteen factory ships and 239 whale-catchers engaged in the Antarctic whale fishery.74
Unlike the inter-war period, the whalers had little interest in making territorial claims or exploring the continent. The factory ships simply sailed south each year, their catchers seeking out the whales whose carcasses would be dragged aboard for processing, until the signal was received that the season was over and the killing had to cease.
Away from the Antarctic Peninsula, where the British, Argentinians and Chileans continued their shadow-boxing with protests and counter-protests, there were few ships other than whalers. The post-war rush to establish bases on the continent had petered out upon the outbreak of the Korean War. With the world’s attention focused upon the fighting on the Korean Peninsula, few noticed that the rivalry on the Antarctic Peninsula was about to escalate to a new and dangerous level.