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Going to Extremes

A couple of things kept Antarctic explorationgoing.Onewas seals.Sailors had found huge seal populations in the south, and sealing was a big industry at the time. That was enough reason for many to keep going back. Another incentive was scientific curiosity.What did Antarctica look like? Did anyone live there? If nothing else, Antarctica had a landmark: the South Pole. That was enough to make it a destination. Against the Odds For many polar explorers, the goal was getting there before anyone else. But before that could happen, they had to figure out where “there” was.Well into the 1800s, many maps of the polar re- gions were incomplete and inaccurate. Maps were drawn based on a handful of past reports,and awhole lot of guessing. Sometimes they were just completely made up. Lots of times mapmakers did not knowwhat a certain area was like— but they were pretty sure it was bad. They labeled such regionswith pictures

Tall Tales In 1588, the Spanish sailor

Laurent Ferrer Maldonado came home with a great story. He’d breezed through the Arctic Ocean through what he called the “Strait of Anian.” There, he’d seen Rus- sian ships stocked with products from China. According to Mal- donado, the Northwest Passage was not only there, but also was easy to get through. Maldonado’s tale had just one problem: He’d probably made it up. Why? One theory is that he wanted money. Polar expeditions were expensive. The money for them came from governments, such as Spain. That would help Maldonado’s case. Explorers to the Antarctic also had some tall tales to tell. In the late 1770s, a French explorer named Yves-Joseph de Kergulen-Trmarec traveled to the Antarctic. He hoped to find a place with mild weather and a friendly landscape. Guess what? He returned with just such a story. According to him, “New South France” was ready and waiting. Of course, he was wrong, but the idea of such a place was enough for the French government. They sent him back to look some more. The next time, he had to admit his mistake.