Journey and Joy

Charles Wilkes (1798–1877) was an American naval officer and explorer. Wilkes was born in New York City on April 3, 1798. He entered the navy as a midshipman in 1818, did service during the next few years in Mediterranean and Pacific areas, and in 1832–1833 did survey work in Narragansett Bay, which led to his appointment in Washington, D.C., to head a depot of charts and instruments that eventually became the United States Naval Observatory. In 1838 Wilkes was put in command of an important expedition for scientific exploration that took him to several island groups of the South Pacific, Australia, the Antarctic coastal areas now known as Wilkes Land, the Hawaiian Islands, the northwest coast of the United States, and islands of Oceania, completing a voyage around the world before his return to New York in the summer of 1842. During the next 20 years his main occupation was the preparation of records of this expedition. He wrote a 5-volume Narrative of the United States Explori...

Hubert Wilkins (1888–1958) was an Australian polar explorer and aviator who made the first west-to-east Arctic aerial crossing. Born in Mount Bryan East, Australia, on Oct. 31, 1888, George Hubert Wilkins was educated in electrical engineering at the School of Mines and Industries in Adelaide, after which he took up photography and learned the fundamentals of flying. As a newsreel photographer, he covered (1912–1913) the Balkan War for British newspaper and motion-picture concerns. The American explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson selected Wilkins as official photographer for the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913–1917), and his loyalty and devotion to the aims of the expedition resulted in his promotion to second in command. In September 1917, during World War I, Wilkins joined the Australian Flying Corps on the French front as a photographer. In 1919 he competed, unsuccessfully, for the London Daily Mail prize of $50,000 for a flight from England to Australia. Wilkins was second in co...

Ice Island, a large, tabular piece of glacial ice adrift in the Arctic or the Antarctic oceans. Arctic ice islands are less common and generally smaller than Antarctic ice islands, or icebergs (see Iceberg), but their location makes them more useful and durable for research. Scientists have used drifting ice stations since the Soviet Union established North Pole I on floe ice in May 1937, but ice islands have been found preferable because they are longer-lasting. Formation of Arctic Ice Islands The glaciers of Canada's Ellesmere Island form a massive ice shelf that floats on the water at the ocean edge and yet remains attached to the shore. Progressive advances of the glaciers push the shelf seaward, and the combined action of winds, tides, and waves breaks loose large pieces of the ice. The ice islands then drift with the polar pack ice in the clockwise current of the Beaufort Sea area. The islands sometimes are many square miles in extent. Their surface appearance is distinc...

British Antarctic Territory is a colony that extends between 20° and 80° west longitude and from latitude 60° south to the South Pole. It consists of the South Orkney and South Shetland islands and a wedge of Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula and the islands adjacent to the peninsula. Most of the islands are rugged, with many glaciers, and the Antarctic Peninsula is mountainous, Mt. Andrew Jackson rising to about 13,700 feet (4,175 meters). A snow-covered plateau extends along the peninsula at a height declining from about 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) in the south to about 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) in the north. Covered by ice, the continental area is fringed by ice shelves 800 feet (240 meters) thick. The territory has no permanent inhabitants, but there are scientific and field stations manned by scientists and technicians. The area was discovered in 1819–1821 and taken possession of by Britain over the period to 1832. The territory, created in 1962, is administered...