Tag Archives: Operation ‘Tabarin’

THE SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE – Continued

18 Jul

From its official beginning in 1934, the Institute’s aim has been to increase understanding of the polar regions through research and publication and to educate new generations of polar researchers; to make its collections accessible to the public and to project the history and significance of the polar regions to a wide audience.

As was recorded in the first section of this blog, in 1934 the Institute’s income was small – its activities depended heavily on Professor Frank Debenham, with one assistant, a Research Fellow and volunteer helpers.
The essential importance of both Polar Regions was recognized. In the Arctic military posts, weather and radar stations and airfields were already built and the possibilities and needs for transport, trade and mining (advocated strongly to the government by William Speirs Bruce as late as the 1920s – advice that was ignored), were apparent. In the Antarctic conflicting claims over control occupied political minds – Britain had a considerable interest -Edward Bransfield sighted, roughly mapped and claimed the Northern part of the Peninsula, in 1820 Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton had laid claim to parts of East Antarctica – the Australian explorer, Douglas Mawson had charted and claimed hundreds of miles of previously unmapped Antarctic coast line for the British Empire in his expeditions of 1914. Later, in 1936 Mawson led the British, Australian and New Zealand expedition the Banzare expedition which made claims over the Antarctic coastline closest to Australia, from 45°E to 160°E (later becoming the Australian Antarctic Territory). But no permanent bases had been established on the continent.
The Institute was occupied by the Admiralty during the war years 1939-1945. Its founding Director, Professor Debenham, was against the facility being occupied and stayed away from the Institute throughout the war and the Institute was transmuted to become became a sub-centre for Naval Intelligence, led from 1937 by James Wordie, Chair of the Committee of Management. Wordie advised an Interdepartmental Committee on all matters of policy and the Institute became a centre for research into cold weather warfare, clothing and equipment and produced geographical handbooks for the Admiralty – its library and map facilities ware enlarged.

In these war years, plans with far reaching implications for Antarctica were hatched by the British Government in which the Institute played a key role. The strategic necessity for a British presence on the continent was obvious – Argentina and Chile were making claims and in 1939 the United States established the US Antarctic Services expedition to the continent led by Admiral Richard Byrd, This was intended to be a permanent occupation. In the Institute, Wordie and Neil Mackintosh (both experienced polar experts and explorers), played a key role in an important venture, Operation Tabarin. The official description of the operation was that Tabarin was monitoring Axis surface ships and submarines and ‘looking for raider hideouts’ that would threaten Allied shipping. Its actual role however was to establish bases from which to administer the British Antarctic claim and so strengthen her hold to the area known as the Falkland Islands Dependencies (FID). The FID had been established through “Letters Patent” in 1908 (as amended in 1917) covering an area containing the South Orkney Islands, the South Shetlands, the South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia and Graham Land.

Operation Tabarin was the start of permanent occupation of Antarctica by Britain, it was always a civilian operation whose twin tasks were to preserve the claim and to carry out scientific research. Competing claims and the threat of cold war confrontation led, in the late 1950s, to search for effective arrangements for governance of the continent. This led in 1959 to the outstandingly successful Antarctic Treaty which was ratified in 1961. This reserved the Continent for peace and science, fostered international collaboration, banned nuclear testing or dumping and placed existing territorial claims to one side, whilst requiring that the signatories agree to make no further territorial claims. From the original 12 signatories there are now 29 full consultative parties to the Treaty whilst another 25 nations have acceded to it, but do not play a formal role in the governance of the continent. There are over 70 separate stations, some in permanent operation and the rest in operation only during the summer season.

Professor Debenham retired in 1946. He was succeeded by the Reverend Launcelot Fleming, and, in 1949 by Dr. Colin Bertram. The first full-time Director, Dr. Gordon Robin, was appointed in 1958. As the Institute developed post war it attracted senior ‘scholars’ from overseas and quickly became a recognised international centre for research and reference. It was enlarged to accommodate these burgeoning requirements on several occasions: in 1946 the rent from the Admiralty lease and a small grant from the Treasury allowed for extensions of offices, laboratories and the provision of a lecture theatre. In 1960, the Ford Foundation made a generous donation of nearly $300,000, a sum that allowed for further extension of the archives and map collection and a picture library. In the 1990s the Shackleton Library, named for Sir Ernest Shackleton and his son Sir Edward (Later Lord) Shackleton was built. It included a major extension of the archives and map collection plus a picture library and was opened by the Honourable Alexandra Shackleton, Edward Shackleton’s daughter. This development won one of the four awards given by the Royal Institute of British Architecture to the Easter Region.
In 2010, the centenary of Terra Nova, the Polar Museum was refurbished and reopened in June by the
Earl and Countess of Wessex and the museum was shortlisted for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year
Prize in 2011.
Awards kept coming! In 2014, the centenary of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the Heritage Lottery Fund, through its Collecting Cultures Programme, awarded £50,000 to the Institute for its By Endurance We Conquer Shackleton Project. The aim of the project was to allow for the four sections – museum, archive, library and picture library to combine in both purchasing Shackleton memorabilia and to promote Shackleton even more widely to the public.
So what of the Institute’s activities now? The first thing to say is that it is an exciting place to visit.
There is always a buzz when I go there. The Institute is a favorite venue for schools as well as
national and international visitors. Since 1957, it has been part of Cambridge University’s Teaching
and Research Programme and is a sub-department of the Department of Geography. The University Grants Committee provides its main financial support.
The museum is on the ground floor. It is an Aladdin’s cave of exhibits: there is a section on the
Antarctic in addition to a collection of indigenous objects from the Arctic regions. There are polar oil
paintings, watercolours and sketches, and more watercolours by Dr. Edward Wilson (of the Discovery
and Terra Nova expeditions), on British birds. There is a flag collection, models of famous polar ships, a scrimshaw collection and examples of Inuit art – enough to keep the enthusiast happy for hours as well as to interest the most casual of visitors. The library claims to house the world’s most comprehensive polar collection. Its archive is named the Thomas H Manning Archive (after the British-Canadian Arctic explorer who, amongst other sorties, led the British Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1936-1941). In the archive are hundreds of well –catalogued manuscripts relating to all aspects of research, explorers and exploration. Here researchers from all over the world, including myself, can spend many hours unraveling the arcane details of their chosen subjects and one of the pleasures of such a visit is in meeting with this diverse group. There is also a Picture Library which houses a vast array of Arctic and Antarctic photographs.
Research plays a pivotal contribution in the Institute which states that its projects, often interdisciplinary, cover aspects of the environmental sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities that are of relevance to the Arctic and Antarctica. The Institute states that ‘it has taken advantage of its role within the University of Cambridge to establish itself as an academic centre where problems of polar research can be studied, free from the demands of expedition administration, of governmental decision making, or of economic pressures’ and that this is this way, it believes, it can contribute most effectively. The list of subjects studied is daunting, for example: the Glacimarine Environments Group (dynamics of ice-sheets and delivery of sediment to the marine environment) The Polar Landscape and Remote Sensing Group (processes which modify the polar and sub-polar environments), Polar Social Science and Humanities Group (covering the anthropology, history and art of the Arctic).
One fascinating recent study, led by Professor Julian Dowdeswell, the Institute Director, investigated the patterns of wave-like ridges on the ocean floor to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula. These ridges are about 1.5 met res high and 20 metres wide, and were formed roughly 12,000 years ago (the last glacial maximum)! An autonomous underwater vehicle ‘lying’ 60 metres (197 feet) above the ocean floor recorded these wave- like ridges, which were produced when grounded ice sheets (the buttresses that stop ice flowing from inland) began to float free and these dropped into the sea-floor sediment – their shapes being influenced by the movements of the tides.
Changes in the positioning of the ridges indicated shrinkage in the grounded ice sheets by as much as 50 metres (more than 160 feet) a day. Importantly, this shrinkage ( from 12,000 years ago), is greater than has been measured in recent years, i.e. we now know that the ice is capable of retreating at speeds far higher than what we see today and the fear is that should climate change continue to weaken the ice- shelves in the next few decades, we could see similar rates of retreat. This would, of course have profound implications for global sea-level rise.
The Polar Record began life in 1930 as the Institute’s learned journal. It is published twice yearly and is essential reading for polar enthusiasts — each edition contains a review of all the major events in the polar regions during the previous six months and includes peer reviewed and authoritative articles on any subject of topical Polar interest. It is the journal that promotes the Institute to a wide international audience.
All in all, Professor Debenham would feel that the Institute lives up to all his far sighted original ambitions and aims.

1) Glacial Maximum refers to the peak of an ice age when the geographical extent of the ice sheet is at its maximum. Dowdswell’s result shows that the Antarctic Ice cap spread far out over what is now the Weddell Sea with the ice, extending right down to what is now the sea bed. As the ice started to retreat the ice front moved poleward creating the steps seen on the sea bed.

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BASES IN ANTARCTICA

12 Jun

In 1903 William Speirs Bruce departed his winter base in the South Orkneys and sailed to Argentina for refueling and refit of his ship the Scotia. On arrival in Buenos Aires he offered the continued control of his South Orkney meteorological and magnetic huts to Argentina and agreed to transport Argentine scientist to the site to continue the scientific work under the leadership of his meteorologist Mossman. His rationale was firstly, to ensure that his team’s detailed work would continue and secondly, to further his dream of a coordinated complex of meteorological stations in and around the Southern Atlantic. His motives were purely scientific.
On arrival at Buenos Aires Bruce contacted both the British First Minister
Mr. W. Haggard and the head of the Argentine Meteorological Service – a Mr. Walter Davies. Haggard contacted both the British and Argentine governments and the Argentine authorities responded with remarkable alacrity, thanking Dr. Bruce and promptly accepting the offer within a few days (incidentally about three months before Haggard heard from the British authorities)!
The Argentinean government clearly knew what they were doing. They allocated the work of ‘Postmaster’ to one of their staff. Stamps were issued representing the South Orkneys as an Argentinean suburb. This was a most significant decision -the presence of a postmaster is an internationally recognized part of demonstrating effective administration and authority over any claimed and occupied area. The South Orkney station has now been continuously manned by Argentina for the past 114 years. Bruce’s decision thus opened the door for the claims and counter claims in the region that continue to this day.
Argentina’s claim is based on her continued occupation of the station. British claims to the area are via the Falkland Islands Dependencies, a complex constitutional arrangement for administering British territories in Sub-Antarctica and Antarctica. In 1908 the Dependencies were listed as: South Georgia, the South Orkneys, South Shetlands, and the Sandwich Islands, and the territory of Graham’s Land, an area south of the 50th parallel S, and between 20° and 80° W. longitude. The agreement was modified in 1917 when it was recognized that this definition could be interpreted as a claim on Southern Argentina and Chile! Also explicitly, to extend to the South Pole.
Argentina’s challenge to the Dependencies came first in the late 1920s and then more extensively in the second-world war. In response, in the height of World War II, in the Antarctic Summer of 1943/44, Britain established what became a permanent occupation called ‘Operation Tabarin’. This was primarily a political statement — the Admiralty and Colonial Office aimed to strengthen British territorial rights to the sovereignty of the Falklands Island Dependency, whilst the Foreign Office aimed at minimizing disruption to Britain’s long-standing ties with Argentina and, particularly at that dark time, to ensure the shipment of war-time meat supplies.
Tabarin was the basis from which Britain’s subsequent post-war, long-term involvement in Antarctica developed. The Falklands Island Dependency Survey was renamed the British Antarctic Survey in 1962, its northern boundary changed to 60°. The organization now operates three research stations in the British Antarctic Territory: year round at Rothera, Halley, and summer only at Signy. In addition there are two summer field support stations: Fossil Bluff and Sky Blu.
In addition to continuous climatic, oceanographic, geographic, ice, atmospheric and space weather observations, findings include the record of a volcanic eruption from under the Antarctica ice sheet, which occurred over 2.000 years ago. This was, apparently, the biggest eruption in the last 10,000 years. The volcanic ash was found on the ice surface. A world-changing observation in 1985 was the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. This led to an international reduction in the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone depleting substances (ODS) which are mainly responsible for man-made chemical ozone depletion and which were used, for example, in fridges and inhalers.
Halley Research Station is built on a floating ice shelf in the Weddell Sea. The current Halley (VI), is the world’s first re-locatable research facility and indeed has been moved recently because of huge ice cracks in the ice shelf.
Signy is in the South Orkneys Island where Bruce’s work was based. It is a laboratory for biological research open from November to April each year (the southern hemisphere summer).
Bruce is not forgotten here. The Scotia Sea in the South Atlantic is named for his expedition. Also the research community named a laboratory on Signy Island for him in 2016.

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The British Antarctic Survey

2 Nov

I did not know, before reading the obituary of Richard Laws that The British Antarctic Survey (of which Laws was Director in the 1970s and 80s), that the successful continuation of this hugely renowned scientific base was indirectly due to the Falklands War.
The Survey was pioneered by Sir Vivian Fuchs who gained government support for the present headquarters in Cambridge as well as research stations based on the Antarctic Peninsula. Fuchs’ work was continued by Laws who consolidated the BAS’s reputation as a multidisciplinary research institute, but had to battle against severe funding cuts by the BAS’s funding body, the National Environmental Research Council.
A new facility at King Edward Point (which had been threatened with closure) had only just been occupied when the Argentines arrived at the Point. The team were interned for a short time.
When South Georgia and the Falklands were recovered, Margaret Thatcher concluded that it was in the British interest to have a continued presence in the South Atlantic and Antarctica and that scientific work there should be supported. Increased funding followed and BAS scientists are amongst the world leaders in Antarctic science. In Halley, they were the first to discover the depletion of the ozone layer over the South Pole, a discovery that informed the world of the potential damage that man could inflict on our world. The peninsula bases and the BAS headquarters in Cambridge continue their international contribution.
The importance of the peninsula had been recognised in W.W.11. Operation ‘Tabarin’ was undertaken by the Admiralty and the Colonial Office in 1943.Its aim,to establish a permanent presence in the Antarctic in response to possible territorial claims by, amongst other countries,Germany and Argentina (the latter country already staffing a base in the South Orkney Islands which was started by the Scottish explorer William Speirs Bruce of the ‘Scotia’ expedition).
The area still remains a source of disagreement between Britain and Argentina

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