Pronunciation of ‘Antarctica’

There is some controversy abroad in the world about the correct way to pronounce ‘Antarctica’. The debate turns on whether the first ‘c’ should be silent or not. In this post I will settle this terrible row once and for all.

I begin by observing that, in the absence of compelling contrary evidence, it seems evident that the ‘c’ should be pronounced (and as a hard ‘c’): thus, /ænˈtɑːktɪkə/. All of the other letters in the word are pronounced, and it would be capricious in the extreme — again, in the absence of compelling contrary evidence — to neglect that one letter, which is otherwise so conspicuously normal.

Advocates of the silent ‘c’ argue, however, that they are in possession of just such compelling contrary evidence. They point, for instance, to Chaucer’s Astrolabe in which he wrote, “Than is the pol antartik by-nethe the Orisonte”, or to John Mandeville’s famous Travels in which we find it written that “In lybye men seen first the sterre Antartyk”. Even as late as 1777, after Captain Cook sailed the southern seas, we find in William Robertson’s The History of America the speculation that “It is probable that an open sea stretches to the Antartic pole”. In this way they mount a stirring defence of /ænˈtɑːtɪkə/.

To resolve this vexing dispute, let us turn to the peaceable science of etymology.

Our modern word ‘Antarctica’ is derived from the Middle English antartyk, sure enough, which had been previously borrowed from the Old French antartique, which in turn had been received from the Latin antarticus. So far, so good, for the silent school.

But — and here is the crucial point — the Latin was derived from the Greek, and the Greek is ἀνταρκτικός. Notice the very pronounced κ in the contested location. This, I remind you, at the fountainhead of our language, where the word was first introduced. The inescapable conclusion is that all else — the whole history from the slovenly Romans on down — was, it appears, nothing but a great wallowing in abominable linguistic perversion.

Notice also that ἀνταρκτικός is derived from the conjuction of ἀντί and ἄρκτος, meaning ‘against the Bear’ — a reference, of course, to that part of the sky opposite the constellation of the Great Bear (the Big Dipper, for those whose astrology is rusty). Thus by implication defenders of a silent ‘c’ are also committing themselves to silencing the ‘c’ in Arcturus, in Ursus arctos, in arctoid, in arcticize, and in arctogaeal, among other related words. If applied consistently, their position will therefore render them scarcely intelligible.

As one final piece of evidence let us observe that even the French, whose antartique was one of the proximate authorities supporting the abstemiousness of the silent school — even the French, I say, whose meticulous attention to linguistic purity is an admirable counterweight to their other qualities — even they have, in these latter days, amended their pronunciation to antarctique, bringing them into harmony with the Greek exemplar.

My thanks to Adam Hincks for suggesting the topic of this post.

Antarctica discovered

After Captain Cook’s failed attempt to find the great southern continent, people lost interest for a generation or two. He had left the question of whether the continent existed undecided, but even if it did exist, it was clear enough, it seemed, that it was perpetually locked in snow and ice and probably unreachable.

The spur to further exploration came about quite by accident. In 1819, over 40 years after Cook, a merchant sailor named William T. Smith was blown south while trying to round Cape Horn, and he discovered a hitherto unknown island. Returning to port and telling his story, he was disbelieved. The next summer, therefore, he deliberately sailed far south around the Cape, and this time discovered more islands, one of which he called Desolation Island on account of its being not a bit like Tahiti.

At long last, a glimpse of Antarctica. (Source: Flickr)

This time he was believed, and the Royal Navy sent a ship, under the command of one Edward Bransfield, to investigate. In the early months of 1820 he discovered a series of islands, including Elephant Island (which was to be so important to Shackleton’s Endurance expedition). Then he sailed into the Weddell Sea and discovered the Antarctic Peninsula. He did not know, of course, that it was a peninsula attached to a great continent, but it was, and he had found it.

William T. Smith had discovered something else during his forays to the south: seals, and lots of them. Word got out, and within a year or two the seas were full of sealing ships seeking fortunes. They were reckless in their slaughter, and had to seek new sealing grounds as they exhausted those already found. In this way the whole area was searched, and in February 1821 an American sealing ship, the Cecilia, landed at a place now called Hughes Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. The boat’s crew were the first to set foot on Antarctica.

Source: Coach Bookings

Penguins

There is no creature more emblematic of Antarctica than the penguin. Cute and quaint, penguins confound all who regard anthropomorphism as a sin. Speaking for myself, I have entirely given myself over to this terrible vice: to me, penguins wear little tuxedos and waddle around like over-stuffed English gentlemen enjoying the sights.

According to Penguin World, there are five species of penguin living in Antarctica today, but two species in particular appear repeatedly in the accounts of explorers: the Adélie and the Emperor.

Adélie penguin

The Adélie is a relatively small penguin, weighing about 5 kg (11 lbs). Like all penguins, it is sociable and lives in large groups. There are apparently about 5 million Adélie penguins living in the Ross Sea area of Antarctica, which explains why the explorers saw them so often. Despite there being no trees or plants in Antarctica, these penguins still build nests: they make circles of stones on the ground. As with other penguins, they keep their eggs warm not by sitting on them, but by balancing the eggs on their feet and under their bellies.

Antarctic literature abounds with affectionate descriptions of the humorous antics of this little bird. Here, for instance, is David Lewis, in his book Ice Bird, describing a colony of Adélie penguins:

Each adult had accumulated a ring of stones around itself. While it stood gazing contemplatively into the distance, its neighbour in the rear would snatch as many stones as it could get away with. Once the victim came out of its trance and saw what was happening it would squawk and wave its flippers in protest at the raider, only to succumb to temptation, in its turn, once another’s back was turned. The most acquisitive had accumulated great piles, while the least alert had been almost completely despoiled of these treasures.

 

Emperor penguins (Source: Polar Conservation)

The Emperor penguin is, as its name indicates, the largest and mightiest of the penguins (excluding the long extinct Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi, which, rather horrifyingly, was as large as a man). Emperors can tip the scales at over 30 kg (66 lbs) and stand up to 120 cm (4 ft) high. They have a certain dignity that the smaller Adélie’s lack — though, being penguins, this does not prevent their being ridiculous anyway. We may say that when they stand still, like little evening-wear buddhas, their contemplative air of boundless patience under suffering evokes a kind of reverence; when they walk, however, the reverence yields to mirth.

Emperor penguins are important for Antarctic exploration principally on account of something that happened during Robert Falcon Scott’s final expedition. The expedition had a significant scientific mandate, and certain members wanted to collect Emperor penguin eggs in order to study the bird’s embryology. Unfortunately, Emperor penguins hatch in the Antarctic spring, which means that eggs must be collected in the Antarctic winter, when it is both dark and very cold. The story of the horrendous difficulties and hair-raising dangers the expedition members suffered to collect those eggs is told in Apsley Cherry-Gerrard’s classic adventure book The Worst Journey in the World, which, having been once read, will forever cure one of complaints about the high cost of Emperor penguin omelettes.

I have remarked upon the ludicrous figure cut by penguins on ice. It is well, of course, to remember that a penguin is most at home in the water. Indeed, I may say (dispensing now with even my last shreds of scientific respectability) that a penguin is really more a fish than a bird. We are privileged in our time to have the means of viewing these fish underwater, where they are transformed from awkward to awe-inspiring.

Antarctic exploration: basic geography

To understand the early exploration of Antarctica, it is worthwhile to take a few minutes to understand the basic geography of the place.

Source: BBC

Antarctica is approximately circular in shape, and is centered roughly over the South Pole. The most significant geographical feature inconsistent with this general picture is the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches north toward South America. Because the Peninsula reaches further north than any other part of the continent it is the easiest to access, and was the first part of Antarctica to be discovered.

Two areas of Antarctica were especially important for early explorers. The first was the Weddell Sea, which fills the large bay east of the Antarctic Peninsula.  I believe that in the winter the Weddell Sea is frozen, but in the summer the water opens up — sometimes — to permit ships passage.  (It was here, during just such an attempt, that Shackleton and the Endurance were frozen into the ice.) The innermost coast of the Weddell Sea is covered by the Ronne Ice Shelf, which is the second largest ice shelf in Antarctica.

The other important area is the Ross Sea, west of the Peninsula. A portion of this sea is permanently frozen into what is called the Ross Ice Shelf (which, as I remarked in an earlier post, is as large as France). It was from this region that the first attempts on the South Pole were made. The Pole-trekkers headed south from the Ross Sea, crossing the ice shelf until they reached a mountaineous escarpment which, once surmounted, deposited them on the Antarctic Plateau, the mostly flat and featureless snow-plain that stretches south to the Pole and beyond. (The escarpment can be seen quite clearly on the RADARSAT image I included in this post.)

Ross Island. South is toward the bottom of the map. (Source: Wikipedia)

On the west side of the Ross Ice Shelf is Ross Island, which is perhaps the single most important site for early Antarctic expeditions. The water on the west side of the Island — on the left in the map above — opens up in summer to permit access, and this was where the bases for several early expeditions were located. Ross Island is notable for the two large volcanos, Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, that dominate it. On the south-west of the Island is Hut Point Peninsula, its name derived from the hut built on its southern tip during Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition in 1902. This is also the modern location of McMurdo Station, a research base operated by the United States.

On the east side of the Ross Sea is the Bay of Whales, which is the spot from which Roald Amundsen began his journey to the South Pole.

Location of the Bay of Whales. (Source: Wikipedia)

Admittedly, one can get through life without knowing these things, but if one is to do any reading about Antarctic exploration the basics presented here will stand one in good stead.

Captain James Cook

The modern history of Antarctic exploration — and, as far as we know, the history of Antarctic exploration, period — can be said to begin with Captain James Cook, the great sea-faring explorer. A few others before him had sailed into the latitudes at and slightly beyond 50ºS, but Cook made the first sustained attempt to push further south. It was during his second circumnavigation that he sailed into the uncharted southern seas in hopes of discovering the long-rumoured great southern continent.

Late in 1772 Cook, aboard the Resolution, departed Cape Town and sailed south. He was under instructions from the British Admiralty to claim any newly discovered lands for the King of England. Fairly early in the voyage the crew actually thought they had discovered land, only to find that it was just a huge iceberg floating north. (In the course of this voyage they sometimes encountered icebergs whose area they estimated at 200 square miles.) On 17 January 1773 the Resolution became the first known ship to sail south of the Antarctic circle (located at roughly 66ºS latitude).  Soon enough Cook encountered an enormous ice pack and, turning east, sailed along it for two months without finding an opening. Discouraged, and unable to ascertain whether the ice was connected to a land mass or not, he retreated north to New Zealand.

A coastal ice shelf, such as that Cook might have encountered. (Source: MBARI)

In the next Antarctic summer he tried again, once again crossing over the Antarctic circle until, on 30 January 1774, he reached latitude 71º10’S, the furthest south that he, or anyone before him, had attained. Though he did not know it, he was just over 100 miles from Antarctica. His way blocked by the pack ice, he wrote, “It was indeed my opinion that this ice extends quite to the Pole, or perhaps joins to some land to which it has been fixed since creation.” Unable, however, to decide the question, he left the southern waters for adventures elsewhere.

The result of Cook’s southward voyage was ambiguous, and it did little to stir further interest in Antarctic exploration. It was to be several decades before the search resumed — but that is a story for another day.

It is interesting to note, as a sidelight, that later on the same voyage, early in 1775, Cook discovered and named the island of South Georgia, which sits north of the Weddell Sea at latitude 54ºS. This island was to play a central role in Shackleton’s famous Endurance expedition in the early 20th century.

South Georgia Island (Source: Ted Dintersmith)

 

Antarctic drift

We are not talking about snow drift here, but tectonic plate drift. Antarctica wasn’t always at the South Pole, and it won’t always be.

Until about 170 million years ago, Antarctica was part of the Gondwana supercontinent and was located far from the polar regions. (Before that, back to about 500 million years ago, it had been part of Pangaea. In the Cambrian period it actually straddled the equator.)

The Gondwana supercontinent (Image: THS Earth/Space Science)

As Gondwana slowly broke up, Antarctica, still joined to Africa, Australia, and South America, drifted south. At this time it was home to numerous dinosaur species, and was forested. It separated from Africa about 160 million years ago, and then from Australia 40 million years ago. It was still far enough north to have a sub-tropical climate, and in this period Antarctica, like Australia, had marsupials.

Early Cenezoic Antarctic marsupial (speculative).

Roughly 23 million years ago its southward drift caused it to separate from South America. I am no geologist, but to me it seems that I can actually see this separation happening on the map: the Antarctic Peninsula reaches out toward Tierra del Fuego and gives every appearance of having been violently ripped away, the islands floating off like shards splintered from the torn seam. It would be interesting to know if there is any truth in this seeming.

Source: Wikipedia

For the last 15 million years, Antarctica has been covered in ice, and it has been a cold and silent place. Today the continent is drifting slowly, at the rate of a few centimeters (~an inch or two) per year, toward the Atlantic Ocean. It will not be a frozen world forever, and when its ice does melt, all those pretty beach houses along the world’s coasts — the ones, at least, that have been built to last — will get water damage.

Terra australis incognita

It is a notable and curious fact that Antarctica — the ‘unknown southern land’ — appeared on European maps for centuries before anyone laid eyes on it. The reason was historical and literary: ancient authorities had dilated on the appropriateness of its existence, and, having a great reverence for the ancients and no grounds on which to contradict them, medieval and early modern cartographers duly included it on their maps. Aristotle, in his Meteorologica, had written about a cold, uninhabited region at the South Pole, and Cicero, in the Somnium Scipionis, had spoken of a region “rigid with frost” at each of the poles. Cicero, especially, was influential on the medieval and early modern periods on account of Macrobius’ very popular commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, dating from the 5th century AD.

On the strength of these suggestions, it was believed that the geography of the south ought to mirror, to a large extent, the geography of the north, and since there was land in the northern regions, it would be fitting that there be land in the south as well. Those who remember the arguments Herodotus deployed, in his Histories, to generate a map of the rivers of Africa will be familiar with this sort of reasoning.

The Ulm map (1482), after Ptolemy.

In any case, the terra australis incognita was there on the maps. Sometimes it was shown as contiguous with southern Africa (as above), and sometimes not. As the years wore on, and especially after ships successfully rounded the Cape of Good Hope and, later, Cape Horn, some expressed doubt as to its existence. The ensuing debate played a role in motivating the initial explorations, by Captain Cook, which we shall come to in good time.

There is a lesson here somewhere.

Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).

Amazing facts about Antarctica

Antarctica, being a barren wasteland of snow and ice, might seem uninteresting, but nothing could be further from the truth. Here are a few amazing and true Antarctic facts:

• Antarctica is large — though not so large as it appears on a Mercator projection. It has an area greater than Europe. In addition, it is surrounded by enormous ice shelves that grow and shrink with the seasons. The Ross Ice Shelf alone is as large as France.
• About 98% of the land is perpetually covered with snow and ice. The average thickness of the snow is 1.6 km (1 mile).
• There is no wildlife in the interior of the continent. Seals, whales, and birds live around the perimeter.
• Because of its low average precipitation, Antarctica is considered to be a desert.
• Antarctica contains about 70% of the world’s fresh water.
• There are several large mountain ranges on the continent, including active volcanoes.
• The coldest temperature ever recorded was in Antarctica. It was a chilly –89.2°C (–129°F) .

Antarctica!

This year marks the centenary of the first successful attempt to reach the South Pole. In celebration of that achievement, and also because there is a huge storm blowing in today, and because February is dang cold, I hereby declare this month to be “Antarctica Month” here at All Manner of Thing.

Throughout the month I intend to write, as time allows, about the many fascinations of the great southern continent: its geography, wildlife, and especially the history of its exploration. The idea of a ‘theme month’ is something new for me, but I think it is going to be great fun.

I don’t know very much about Antarctica, to be honest, but there it is: big, white, and silent. It seems a shame to simply ignore it.

Gather around, then, and pull up a comfortable block of snow to sit on. Huddle together if you get chilled. Antarctica, here we come.