Greatest Antarctic Hero

[Paul]

If you select "other", please say who.

Amundsen - Norwegian, the leader of the first expedition to reach the South Pole.

Mawson - Australian, for whom science was the driving force and exploration secondary, but his story is one of the most incredible of all survival tales.

Scott - Englishman, leader of the second expedition to reach the South Pole and the most famous of the "Heroic Failures".

Shackleton - Irish, Came to within 90 miles of the South Pole in 1904 before turning back and leader of probably the most famous of all Antarctic expeditions on the Endurance.

There are many more, please feel free to suggest.

[Mike]

Whilst my vote for greatest Antarctic hero has to go to Shackleton, can I also make a suggestion for an extra category of 'Best Supporting Hero': Frank Wild, who (uniquely) served with Scott, Shackleton and Mawson on five separate Antarctic expeditions (Discovery, Nimrod, Aurora, Endurance and Quest) between 1901 and 1922.

Most notably, he was Shackleton's second in command on the Endurance expedition, and for several months led the group of men left by Shackleton on Elephant Island when the James Caird set off to South Georgia. To have been able to work with three such different types of 'Heroic Era' expedition leader suggests an extraordinary strength of character - and it's a shame he never wrote a book about his polar experiences! :grin:

[Paul]

Good call Mike, I'll add it as an extra poll as "Unsung Heroes".

[Lilith]

Shackleton ofcourse. sure he didn't make with Endurance, but to face sooo many hardships in those 2+ yrs and still everyman made it home---now that's impressive! i would've given up ages ago. i recently aquired a large, beautiful, badass book filled with the photography of Frank Hurley during the expedition of the Endurance.....

[Paul Ward]

Now here's a strange thing - despite all the visitors that this site gets from Australia and New Zealand (far more than you'd expect from the population sizes), none of them think that Mawson was the greatest?

[psr]

Paul,
Mawson is the greatest hero!
However, I think scott and his team were the most tragic heroes. They paid the ultimate price in their quest for the South Pole, their lives. And then to get there and find that someone else had beaten them - they must have been heartbroken. If they had achieved their goal, perhaps the adrenaline would have kept them going......
Therefore, I would have to say that, although as an Aussie I should say Mawson, I really belive it was Scott's team!

psr

[Trevor]

The True Hero! of Antartica is not yet named do to the fact that all that have been have done only harm to this very delicate eco-system. The Hero's of Antartica are the non - human animals living there and of course Water!

[Trevor]

PS There was no other option in the question box!

[psr]

Dear Trevor,
That goes without saying, however, it is human nature to conquer and sometimes it is only through this "conquering" are we able to better understand the world we live in. Perhaps we shouldn't have as much activity on Antarctica as we do, but we still need it to help us combat some of our problems - yes I know that we created these problems ourselves, but there's nothing we can do about that now, except finding ways to make it better.
Besides if it wasn't for these "heroes" we wouldn't have found out about the penguins!

psr

[Trevor]

True true, Although after reading some of the stories about the conquests of Antartica it's hard to belive that we ever made it in to the 21st Cen! I do agree that we need ice cores to understand the history of the atmosphere and to battle global worming this is all good work and the method is mostly done with little impact on the enviroment, I guess I just have a hard time thinking of conqueres as heros. For the most part it is for there ego and for profit people challange new lands and also military interests are involved. Alot of innocent animals are slaughtered in these fits of conquest. So in closing maybe Someone like Paul Ward is a hero for opening a site like this for people to educate them selves on such an important place on this planet!
Trevor