>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> This morning we're
going to continue much
like the program of yesterday.
We're going to begin with a
talk that's slightly different,
not totally cartographic,
by Professor Oran Young
who is emeritus professor at the
Bren school of Environmental Science
and Management at the University
of California, Santa Barbara.
He's the founder of the Committee
for Humanitarian Development
and Global Change at the
National Academy of Sciences,
the author of 20 books on
environmental change and management
and policy issues, and this
morning he's going to talk to us
about the Arctic and the changing
governance and the boundary issues.
Professor Young.
>> Thank you very much for that
introduction and good morning.
So one of the rules applying to
human activities in the Arctic
and Antarctic, and for that
matter to the activities of people
who do the geospatial analysis
and remote sensing that we heard
about yesterday whether
they set foot
in the Arctic or Antarctic at all.
And who makes the rules.
And are the rules effective
and successful and for
that matter what do they have to
do with the issues of cartography,
and mapping, and remote
sensing and so on,
that we were hearing
about yesterday.
These are the sorts of
questions that people think
about governance focus on.
Speaking of the governance
of the Polar Regions,
of course a very large subject
and I can't cover it all today
but I thought I would develop
one particular theme that may be
of interest to a number of you.
And here's the theme,
the Polar Regions.
The Arctic and the Antarctic appear
to be polar opposites
regarding many matters,
including the basic features of
the governance or governing systems
that are in place for
the Polar Regions.
But here's my argument, digging
a little deeper we can see
similarities between the
governance systems operating
in the Polar Regions that will,
or I think should be of interest
to all those concerned with
governance, these questions
of rules, and rulemaking,
and their effectiveness
at the international level.
And I stress at the
international level
because of course we don't
have a world government,
but we have problems of governance
at the international level.
So we are thinking about how
do you achieve governance
without government.
That's the challenge for
areas like the Polar Regions.
So polar opposites.
Antarctica, for all practical
purposes, I'll come back to that
in a few minutes, but for all
practical purposes is created
as an international space.
It has no permanent human residence,
it has no major industries.
It's demilitarized under the terms
of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959
that was signed here in
Washington during the time
of the Eisenhower Administration.
It has strict environmental
regulations and it is generally open
on a quite unstructured basis
to the activities of science.
Contrast this to the north.
The Arctic.
The Arctic, much of the
Arctic is land, and the land
and the associated
exclusive economic zones are
under national jurisdiction of
5 Arctic coastal states the US,
Canada, Russia, Norway, and
Denmark because of Greenland.
The Arctic as permanent residents.
The Arctic has a population that
depending upon how you [inaudible]
of some 10 million
people, about 4 million
of whom are indigenous persons.
The Arctic has world-class
industries such as the oil
and gas facilities at
Prudhoe Bay in Alaska.
The Arctic is highly militarized.
It's a theater of operations
for strategic weapon systems,
particularly nuclear submarines.
And the effort to develop
rules for human activities
in the Arctic have focused on the
maintenance of the Arctic as a zone
of peace and sustainable development
given the military significance,
the economic significance, and
the human populations of region.
So the contrast are in many
respects stronger or sharper
than the similarities even though
we tend to talk about the antipodes,
the Arctic and Antarctic,
in one breath.
Nevertheless, and this is the
point I want to explore with you
in the next 20 minutes or so,
there are a number of dimensions
of similarity between the 2 Polar
Regions with respect to the rules,
the governance systems that are
in place for the 2 Polar Regions.
Here is simply a list of
topics, I won't read through them
because I was want to talk
briefly about each of them
in the coming few minutes.
So there's a rich history
of international cooperation
in both the Polar Regions.
Most of you expect, of I hope
you will know something at least
about the remarkable story
of the Arctic Treaty System.
The ATS that started with the 12
nation Antarctic Treaty signed here
in Washington in 1959, and has since
developed through, for example,
the negotiation of the
convention and the conservation
of Antarctic Marine living
resources, the environment protocol
to the Antarctic Treaty and a whole
variety of scientific activities.
And so the Antarctic is now, in
the language of the treaty system,
set aside as a continent
for science and nature.
The Antarctic has a ban on
mining activities for example,
for at least a 50-year period.
So this is perhaps a well-known
story, but at the same time,
there's a rich history of
international cooperation
with respect to human
activities in the Arctic,
in the North Polar Region as well.
In 1911 four countries signed the
North Pacific Ceiling Convention
to widen the ceiling among students
of international resource management
as one of the first effective
conservation agreements.
Not a preservation agreement,
but a conservation agreement
to encourage sustainable harvest
of the North Pacific fur seal.
The 1920 Treaty of Svalbard and
The Treaty of Spitsbergenaul signed
as part of the peace settlement
after World War I allocated
sovereignty
over the Svalbard Archipelago,
on the Archipelago Islands
about 600 miles north of the north
coast of Norway to the Kingdom
of Norway, but with very
significant restrictions.
So the treaty said that
the Archipelago should be
forever demilitarized.
It said that Norway should
allow activities in the part
of other signatories under the
same terms as Norwegian nationals.
So for those who thought that
sovereignty was indivisible,
either you had it or you didn't.
This is a very dramatic example.
Well that's not the case
Norway is sovereign in respect
to the Svalbard Archipelago,
but with restrictions.
In 1973 height of the Cold War, and
the 5 nation international agreement
on the conservation of polar
bears, which is widely seen
as having been quite a
successful agreement.
We may talk about the current
threats of climate change
to polar bears, but the
1973 agreement has been
quite significant.
And in 1996 we had the Ottawa
Declaration on the establishment
of the Arctic Council, which is an
intergovernmental body which deals
with issues of environmental
protection
and sustainable development
in the Arctic not the same
as the Antarctic Treaty, but
nevertheless multilateral mechanism
for addressing Arctic issues.
Both of these governance systems.
The Antarctic Treaty System and
the collection of arrangements
for the Arctic, feature
institutional innovation.
Some examples, Article 4 of
the 1959 Antarctic Treaty
on jurisdiction is a
remarkable compromise.
It says that nothing that happens
under the treaty will diminish
or compromise the jurisdictional
claims made
by the 7 claimant states, you heard
something about that yesterday,
but at the same time nothing
that happens under the terms
of the treaty would be
allowed to strengthen
or augment these jurisdictional
plans.
So we like to say that the Antarctic
Treaty put the jurisdictional plans
of the 7 claimant states on ice.
And the experience since then
as I said at the onset is
that the continent has been
governed as an international space.
One of the aspects of this is
Article 7 of the Antarctic Treaty
on freedom of access to
all areas of Antarctica.
It says in effected that nationals
of the signatory countries,
which basically means personnel
at the research stations,
can visit other research
stations at any time
without advance notice or warning.
And so in effect they're using the
scientific enterprise in Antarctica
to monitor or to track what's
going on in other research stations
and therefore indirectly
ensuring compliance
with the terms of the treaty.
This is one thing I want to stress
toward the end of this talk,
there is science doing science, but
at the same time, playing a role
in what we now increasingly
call science diplomacy,
whereas science also is a
significant activity which helps
to maintain, or to keep up the
terms of an international agreement.
There's also the provision in the
[inaudible] treaty, the conservation
of Antarctic marine
land resources regarding
ecosystem-based management.
This is the first international
agreement to say the goal
or the objective should not
just be the conservation
of individual species, but should
be ecosystem-based management.
That we should be looking
at ecosystems rather
than just harnesses species.
A complicated story as to how
you implement those provisions,
are very innovative
at the time, in 1980.
There are all kinds of
innovations in the Arctic as well.
So for example, the role of
what we call the range states.
So for example with the 5 country
agreement on polar bears, Russia,
the US, Canada, Norway, Denmark,
polar bears don't stay all the time
within the jurisdictional
boundaries of these 5 countries.
But the 5 countries are the range
states and they simply said,
"We as the range states will
take responsibility for engaging
in management activities
regarding this species."
So this is very innovative
with respect international law,
but it worked quite well.
I mentioned already the
innovation of the limits
to Norwegian sovereignty
regarding the Svalbard Archipelago,
the Ottawa Declaration setting
up the Arctic Council
devised a very prominent role
for what are called
permanent participants.
These are indigenous peoples
organizations representing the
permanent human residence
of the region
which are not legally
members of the Arctic Council.
But nevertheless, they're given a
privileged place to sit at the table
with representatives of
the 8 national governments
and have a voice in all decisions
made by the Arctic Council.
This is one regarded as
the first such illustration
of providing non-state actors with
indigenous peoples organizations
with such a prominent seat at the
table of international government.
Both systems involve complex
issues regarding membership.
Basically this is a matter
of tension between 2 ways
of framing the membership question.
Who should be at the table?
Who should make the rules?
The tensions between
the idea exclusive clubs
with restricted membership versus
a notion of a common heritage
of humankind with membership
open to all.
So in the case of Antarctica,
initially there were
12 signatory countries.
The 7 claimant states plus 5
others, and they set themselves
up as an exclusive club with
rather restrictive requirements
for a consultative party status.
Over the years pressures from
people knocking on the gate,
others have led to an
easing of the restrictions,
but not to an elimination
of the restrictions
and so we now have 29
consultative parties
to the Antarctic Treaty System,
but not 200 members,
like the United Nations.
In the Arctic, the problem has been
to strike a balance among the
members of the 8 Arctic countries.
The 5 literal countries plus
Iceland, Sweden, Finland,
and the permanent participants and
non-Arctic states who can apply
for the status of observers
in the Arctic Council.
And the non-Arctic states that
are interested are major countries
like China, like Japan, like
the United Kingdom, like France,
like Germany, and so
on and so forth.
And so much of the
politics of membership
in the Arctic Council
has been about resolving
or reconciling the tensions
among these different categories
of participants.
So at the present time, we
have 8 Arctic member states
in the Arctic Council.
Twelve non-Arctic state observers,
and 20 non-state observers.
It is a very complex mosaic
and something that's still very
controversial at this time.
Science diplomacy, I mentioned
the term science diplomacy.
It's a prominent feature
of both systems.
The role of science not only
for the sake of science itself,
doing good cutting edge
science, but science as a force,
an activity that has played a role
in international cooperation
in these regions.
In the Antarctic people mentioned,
I think yesterday the
international [inaudible] year 1957,
58 and the role of what we know
as the scientific committee
on Antarctic research.
There's no question that
these activities played a role
of significance in the
drive toward the signing
of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959.
And today under the terms
of the Environmental Protocol
Antarctica is specifically set aside
in a quotation from the
protocol as a natural reserve,
devoted to peace and science.
And it's interesting that for
example the first observation
of the stratospheric ozone hole
took place with data collected
in Antarctica by the
British Antarctic survey.
The scientific activities
played a very important role
in the maintenance of Antarctica
as a zone of peace and cooperation.
In the Arctic situation
somewhat different,
but the Arctic Council
functions to a large extent
through what it calls
working groups.
And working groups are
science intensive activities.
The working groups play a very
important role in the identification
of important issues, and
the framing of those issues,
and then getting them onto the
agenda of the diplomatic community.
So for example in 1997, the State
of the Arctic Environment
Report was critical
in identifying the
significance of the issue
of persistent organic pollutants.
And played a role in the negotiation
of what became the 2001
Stockholm Convention
on persistent organic pollutants.
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
has played a very significant role
in our thinking about the
realities of climate change.
As some of you will know
climate change the impact,
the effects of climate change are
showing up at roughly twice the rate
in the Arctic as they are
in other parts of the world.
Whether we measure this in terms
of surface temperature increases,
melting of sea ice, and a
number of other measures.
And so where the Intergovernmental
Panel
on Climate Change had mainly been
doing large-scale simulations,
the Arctic climate impact assessment
in the early 2000 actually
documented empirically the
significance of the
impacts of climate change.
And it has played a very significant
role in the larger global debates.
The Arctic marine shipping
assessment has played a very
significant role in the push
which we now see reaching fruition
to develop a series of
regulatory rules under the auspices
of the International
Maritime Organization,
applying to commercial
vessels actually
in both of the Polar Regions.
Governments in both polar systems
requires jurisdictional juggling.
So, as I mentioned, the
implication of Article 4
of the Antarctica Treaty,
have made the Antarctic
into a defecto international space
while protecting the residual
position of the claimant states.
In the Arctic, we've had
to do some fancy footwork
to circumvent jurisdictional
problems.
We have a tacit agreement to not
pursue, in a conflicting way,
the issue regarding the status
of the northern sea route
over the north coast of Russia and
the Northwest Passage in Canada.
We've agreed to treat claims
for extended jurisdiction
over the seabed adjacent to
the Arctic coast of countries
under the terms of Article 76 of the
UN Convention on the law of the sea.
Interestingly, governance
in both Polar Regions operates
largely outside the UN system.
In both cases the parties to
the international agreements
on the Polar Regions have
kept the UN at arm's length.
Both systems operate as restricted
membership arrangements outside the
auspices of the UN.
Accommodations have been
made to expand the Antarctica
as an alternative to bringing
it within the UN system
as some parties had advocated.
The evolving role of non-state,
monarchy state observers
in the Antarctic Council is another
effort to accommodate the interests
and concerns of outsiders
without turning to the UN.
And whether this is a good
thing or bad thing we could talk
about later on, but it's
a striking characteristic,
a similar characteristic
of these 2 systems.
Institutional enterprise, a
prominent feature of both systems.
So even though the Antarctic
Treaty System is regarded
as a comprehensive
governance system.
There are many other
international regimes that are also
at the same time, relevant
to the Antarctic.
The UN convention on the law of the
sea, the International Convention
on the regulation of whaling.
The MARPOL Regime on
pollution from ships.
The UNFCCC on climate.
The Convention on Biological
Diversity and so on and so forth.
And so on of our interesting
challenges in the Antarctic
and similar issues occur in
the Arctic, is how do we deal
with the interplay, the interaction
between the Antarctic Treaty System
or the Arctic Council, and all of
these other rules, systems of rules,
of a more specialized nature
dealing with shipping, or whaling,
or fishing, or climate,
or biological diversity.
In general, the effort to integrate
these systems is further advanced
with respect to the Antarctic than
it is with respect to the Arctic.
But one of the things that we
see is that with a certain amount
of imagination and ingenuity, there
are opportunities to avoid conflict.
The concern about these
interplay question is what happens
when different systems of
rules conflict with each other.
What you do then?
How do you resolve these conflicts?
And in both cases we've experienced
a fairly successful effort
to minimize or avoid conflict.
So for example, the International
Convention on the regulation
of whaling and the Conservation of
Antarctic Marine Living Resources,
which have overlapping jurisdictions
over Marine resources south
of 60 degrees south,
have managed to operate
in reasonable harmony working
out their differences
on case-by-case basis.
Finally, the last point here is
that both systems have
demonstrated an ability to adapt
to changing circumstances.
Someone said yesterday with
respect I think particularly
to the Antarctic, but it's very
true of the Arctic as well,
is that these are changing systems.
These are highly dynamic systems.
And so governance systems need to be
adaptable, they need to be flexible,
they need to be reasonably
nimble in being able to respond
to changing circumstances and
changing human activities.
Especially as we move deeper
into what we now all think
of as the arthropathian, an era
of human dominated systems
up to the global level.
As it happens, both of these
governance systems for the Arctic
and for Antarctica has proven to be
quite adaptable to changing issues,
changing pressures, changing needs.
In the Antarctic it has generally
taken the form of adding elements
to the Antarctic Treaty System.
And I have no doubt that there
will be additional elements added
to the Antarctic Treaty System
over the foreseeable future.
In the Arctic, this has mainly
taken the form of relying
on non-legally binding arrangements
like the Arctic Council,
but also like the creation of the
taskforces of the Arctic Council
on special issues and likely
increasing role granted
to the observers under the
terms of the Arctic Council.
The adaptation, adaptability
is another similarity
between these 2 systems.
So the come back to questions
I raised at the beginning.
The Antarctic Treaty
System is widely regarded
as the gold standard, in the
domain of international governance.
The Antarctic Treaty system has
kept Antarctica demilitarized,
non-industrialized,
environmentally intact,
manage as an international space,
with a remarkably vibrant
scientific program.
Whether this will continue into the
indefinite future is something we
could discuss in the
question period.
But there's no question that
this is a remarkable performance.
But this does not mean
that we should be hoping
or expecting the Arctic
governance system
to evolve in the same direction.
The differences that I mentioned
at the outset are too dramatic
and one size definitely does
not fit all in the realm
of international government.
But there are lessons
that apply back and forth
between the 2 Polar
Regions regarding issues
of institutional relation,
jurisdictional juggling,
membership, interplay, and so forth.
And just to conclude where I
began, so what does all this mean
from the purview of people
thinking about cartography,
geospatial mapping,
remote-sensing and so on,
which I suspect is the central
interest of many of you here.
Well it's not only the case that
the Polar Regions have been managed
in a manner that facilitates the
conduct of cutting-edge science
in the 2 Polar Regions, but it's
also the case as I mentioned before,
that science has itself become
a mechanism of diplomacy
in the in the 2 Polar Regions.
So for example, science has played a
role in identifying emerging issues
like the stratospheric ozone
loss issue, like the impacts
of climate change, like the impacts
of persistent organic pollutants,
and for that matter, heavy metals
like mercury in the Arctic system.
So science has been forced to
identify issues, frame them,
and get them onto the agenda.
Science has also a force for keeping
watch over what happens, monitoring,
determining whether or not the terms
of these international management
systems are being complied
with effectively.
The Antarctic system of Article 7
of the Antarctic Treaty is a
remarkable arrangement providing a
very striking breath unfamiliar
role to science for many scientists.
And are in effect similar
kinds of roles for science
in the Arctic system as well.
So I do think there are some really
significant links between issues
of cartography, geospatial data
analysis, remote-sensing, and so on,
and the kinds of governance
questions that I've laid before you
in this short presentation.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Well when I started planning this
conference, this is the ninth one
of these that I put together
the thing that came to mind,
the ideas for the titles
and the themes
of these conferences don't
come from me usually.
They either come from the Phillips
Society or from some meeting
or something that's
going on in the world.
What I wanted to really get across
was something that Oren brought out
and that really is this
notion of dynamics.
The idea of change.
The polls at this point
represent sort
of dynamic cartography at its best.
We saw yesterday the
historical stuff.
The changing face of the Polar
Regions through time with the Claire
and Colon [inaudible] presentations
we saw the dynamics kind
of happening in real time,
kind of happening now.
And Oren kept talking about dynamics
in his talk, in the governance.
So in this case a map
is not just a map.
It's not just a static object.
It represents a sort of snapshot
in a very dynamic process.
That's not only natural
but also man-made.
And so that was really the
central idea of the conference.
And I think we've established
that and we've come a long way.
Now, the last paper, the one
that's going to kind of wrap
up the conference is of a
radically different sort.
And it is by Arthur Dunkelman.
Arthur Dunkelman, who many of you
know was the former curator here
at the Library of Congress
of the Kislak Collection.
He works currently as director of
the Kislak Foundation and for many,
many, many years has
been an avid collector
and really the force
behind the Kislak Collection
as it sits here at the library.
And as you can see it
in the Exploring the
Early Americas Exhibit.
But also other collections that Mr.
Kislak has amassed during his time
as a collector.
Mr. Kislak, by the way is
still alive and collecting.
Which is why Arthur, I assume,
is still employed [laughter].
But Arthur has put together over the
last many years a rather incredible
collection of polar artifacts.
It was recently displayed
at the Osher Map Library.
The online exhibit is still up.
And to talk a little bit about
collecting and the Polar Regions,
I give you Arthur Dunkelman.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you John and I want
to thank the Phillips Society
for this invitation and
the Library for being here.
I've had many wonderful
experiences at the Library,
including the 3 1/2 years I spent
as curator of the Kislak Collection
and developing the Exploring
the Early Americas Exhibition,
and adjunct programs, and
fellowships, and talks, lectures,
and other activities here.
When you have a major incident like
giving away an entire collection
of many thousands of objects, as
a collector, I guess one is faced
with a challenge, you
know, what next?
I've been to the mountain and
I don't want to come down.
When I returned to Florida
after 3 1/2 years here,
Jay hadn't stopped collecting,
or really collecting is
one aspect of his life.
But it starts out with interest.
Fascination and interest.
We see today many notorious,
wealthy people purchasing
enormously expensive things to wit,
the Picasso this week for 170
million, Giacometti for 141 million.
Many people and I think most
of the people who buy things
of that magnitude, you
know or are looking
for either notoriety,
or profit, or both.
When I first came to
work for the Foundation
and Jay Kislak I saw
there were about 45
or 50 boxes of books in storage.
And I said, well what
are these books about.
And someone told me that the
foundation purchased the entire
library of this scholarly couple
would recently passed away.
And my predecessor had accessioned
to all the items that were pertinent
to the collecting interest
at that time.
And this was the stuff
that was left over.
So I put it to my task to go through
it and find what was in these boxes
and what could it possibly be worth.
So I made an exhaustive list of
hundreds and hundreds of books,
the title, the author,
the date of publication,
circulated it to a large selection
of rare book and used book dealers
and said, 'What will
you give us for them?
You know they're just
sitting in storage.'
And I got a response, so
I called the list and lo
and behold what was offered was more
than the entire library was valued
at when we first purchased it.
I went with my results of
my research to Mr. Kislak,
and he looked through this
list and he looked up to me
and he said, 'You do this?"
And I said with pride, 'Yes.'
He said, 'Why?'
[Laughter] I knew that I was in
trouble because he's a businessman.
He understands perfectly well
what the implication was.
He said young man, let me
explain something to you,
I do not need to sell to buy.
That's a measure.
It's a nice story, but it's a
measure of true his true idea
of collecting, was to keep going.
You know that he may not understand
or know what any of
all of this is about.
But if you keep at it sooner
or later you'll get some stuff
that's really, really important.
And through that process, you
know eventually 4000 books, maps,
manuscripts, artifacts,
works of art were assembled
and donated Library of Congress.
What you do now?
Well he had always had an interest
in exploration, actually the coil
of his interest are
travels and voyages
so that can take you
anywhere through any time.
But he had a real fascination
with polar exploration.
We went, we dealt in earnest
into that endeavor and started
to amass quite a large collection.
Many thousands of things
now of polar exploration.
And that has led into
another major portion
of the collection,
which is navigation.
Early treatises, early books, now
considering some Portolan charts.
What's this all about?
There's pure science that
can work with any material,
we see many things that are copied,
or now we have digital copies
of things, but these
are the originals.
There is a magnetic pull
of the original over any
of the possible copies
or facsimiles.
I used to collect facsimiles when
I came to work for Mr. Kislak,
he said, 'You don't
need to do that anymore,
you can now have the real thing.'
So as an introduction,
that's the background really
of Kislak Collection and
the Kislak Foundation.
When it came to the polar
material it was quite a different
story though.
I mean first of all what is the
story you're going to tell and why?
There are many, many
polar collections.
Not like the early Americas,
the things are extremely rare.
Fifteen, or 20, or 30 years ago
anyone could've really begun a polar
collection and had a
significant collection
of very interesting things,
because most of the things
were published the 19th
and 20th centuries and they were
published for popular consumption.
Ah, popular consumption
that was interesting.
What is the impact?
What has been the impact of
all of these explorations?
On the popular psyche?
How do you create a context?
A political context,
an economic interest?
So this is really, as we go through
this story, and we're going to start
out with things that some of
you may have seen yesterday,
but will rapidly move
through the early history,
into more contemporary
or modern history.
So we start out with the Arctic.
I guess, as Gertrude Stein once
famously said about Philadelphia,
'There is no there there.'
That is with the Arctic
there is less
and less there there
as time goes by.
It is a point in space.
As contrast to the Antarctic,
which is a big place.
I don't know if anyone
has, this is how big it is,
here you see the United States
and also just the state of Texas.
So we're talking about a
huge, huge, huge continent.
First encounters.
We saw yesterday the Macrobian
world, divided into 5 areas.
We saw Claudius Ptolemy and his
view of the Arctic and Antarctic.
[Inaudible] realistic globe.
The first real globe that
tried to put the earth
into a 3-dimensional
context and globe.
And interestingly enough
what we didn't see yesterday
but there's a companion to the
terrestrial global that can be made,
which is a celestial globe.
So not only did he place
the earth in space,
but he placed the space
around the earth.
It's quite an interesting concept.
His depiction of the passageway
between the Brazil and Antarctica,
between the Argentina
and Antarctica.
We say Ortelius, we saw [inaudible].
And Ortelius' map of the Arctic,
probably the most interesting Arctic
map that was ever made actually,
it has more detail than
any other map that I know
of of the Arctic regions.
And then we get into popular
or popularized conceptions
or images of the Arctic regions.
In 1601, there is this image
of Laplanders from Dhubri.
And early printing of
[inaudible] and his travels
to the Northeast Passage.
I don't think very many people you
know have really gotten into a study
of the attempts to find the
Northeast Passage to the Orient.
A fascinating story.
But these stories begin
around the same time
in the middle to late 16th century.
You've got Frobisher hunting
for a Northwest Passage
and looking for gold.
And finding gold and bringing his
gold back and getting more money
to find more black rocks.
And he made several trips
and several failed attempts
to establish a colony
in Hudson's Bay.
But then you have these
really intrepid sailors
who know how far it is across.
I mean they've gone pretty far
along the northern coast of Russia
and still trying to make
the long trek to the Orient.
And then a lot of them you know
we heard yesterday about the land
of no bears, well this was the land
of big bears, and aggressive bears.
The first year that
[inaudible] spent,
actually got stranded in the Arctic.
I think 9 of his companions were
attacked and killed by bears.
They were quite aggressive animals.
And there were a lot of them.
I mean now one is lucky to see
any polar bear on a flyover.
But then, there were
massive numbers of bears.
George Weymouth sailed for the
English through the Arctic region
after he defeated a mutiny,
stranded his mutineers.
They had to stop and
get fresh water.
So here's a picture of them chopping
up some iceberg stool
to obtain freshwater.
And some beautiful,
beautiful cartography.
These are Cornelli's Arctic Map.
And two culottes that he
had made for massive globes.
Very similar to the globes that
used to be out in the corridor here
and I think they're now
downstairs at the Geography
and Map Division, or
will soon be there.
Speculative cartography
or speculative geographies
is very interesting.
When you had the, you had the
or Ortelius Arctic
region there's a form
of speculative geography
based on myth.
And I don't really believe from
reading that they considered this
to be speculative, and
he made these maps.
I mean these are based on
stories and it was accepted.
But then you have other
cartographers, in this case,
[inaudible] who are now trying
to create what they believe would be
accurate pictures of the Antarctic.
And here you see 2 islands of
Antarctica separated by an ocean.
And I'm wondering if this might
go back to some ancient concept
that we heard yesterday from Chet
Van Duzer, about the two lakes
with the grass river between them.
I'm interested to speak to Chet
about that and get his views.
And they went further in their
speculations, leaving the stories
of Admiral De Fonte who claimed
to have crossed the North American
continent in the Arctic region
and came out on the other side.
And so they created this map
with a huge, almost an inland sea
on the northwest coast of
Canada and the Strait of Anian,
which had been also on much earlier
maps, here expanded quite amazingly.
And then we get into
something more substantial.
The British wanting to expand their
sphere of influence and realizing
that they were behind really
in developing their colonies,
needed to know where they were
on the surface of the planet.
And so they offered a huge
prize, 20,000 pound prize,
to anyone who could
invent, or contrive,
or build a nautical clock capable
of calculating precise longitude.
The longitude prize
was pursued by many.
The first successful clock was
built by a man named Harrison.
And this is his first
clock, each one.
One of many successive
versions, increasingly smaller,
but in being able to miniaturize
many of the components.
This was first tested in 1735.
He worked on it for about 6 or 7
years and it worked really well.
As a matter of fact, it
worked surprisingly well.
It worked so surprisingly well that
they refused to give him the prize.
And so he continued to build
clocks for years and years to come.
He finally succeeded in getting
his prize money, all of it.
He had been given dribs and drabs
over the next 30 or 40 years.
In 1772 from 35 to 72, that's 37
years before he finally got his
payment, and he died 2 years later.
What do you need to do to
finally get that prize money?
They set him impossible
tasks of accuracy,
and he triumphed each
and every time.
He had to publish his findings.
This is a book called,
"The Principles
of Mr. Harrison's Timekeeper."
He had to publish the
plans for the clock.
So anyone could build it.
This particular printing includes
Indian tissue, or tracings,
tracing papers of all the
bits and pieces of his clock.
So if you had a few pieces of
brass and a good little saw,
you could cut it up in little
pieces and make your own clock.
Which others did and did very well.
These are 2 versions
of his later clocks.
On the left you'll see
the inwards, the workings.
It's a very beautiful,
beautiful piece of machinery.
And on the right the exterior.
It looks like a big pocket watch.
So this is James Cook.
James Cook took this
timekeeper on 2 of his voyages,
second and third voyages.
And it's largely responsible
for the accuracy of the maps
that he was able to create.
Here's his chart of the George and
I don't know if you can see it here,
but the distances are calculated
incredibly accurately you know
as he circumnavigates these
small islands and spaces.
And it's largely because
he had the access
of this incredibly accurate watch.
Another piece of interesting
speculative cartography.
This is a star chart of
Antarctica naming constellations
that had never been seen in 1834.
Some of them included let's see, I'm
not an astronomer and I don't know
if these are still current
names, but there's Telescopium,
does anyone recognize
that as a constellation?
Yeah? Okay.
And Octans?
Yes Octans across the
sky in the center.
So this is a wonderful
publication and it speaks
to the popular interest in these
ideas, these scientific ideas.
And this kind of lays the
ground work for popular support
of later scientific
exploration and discovery.
The Wilkes Expedition.
Mapping 600 miles of
coastline of Antarctica.
A massive, massive commercial
and scientific effort.
Mr. Wilkes turned out
to be not a very kind,
although very capable, captain.
Later on he served in the Civil
War and was court-martialed twice
for rude behavior towards
men and superiors.
He wrote, he reminds me a
little bit of General Grant.
Ulysses S Grant, who was also
a great Civil War general.
Wilkes wrote a 1200
page autobiography,
and had it self-published,
justifiable all of his actions.
And you know, starting as a
young officer commanding this
EW2 expedition.
Triumph and tragedy.
Now we get into the
real popular stuff.
You see John Franklin.
Several, a very distinguished
captain, several expeditions
into the Arctic regions,
given command of 2 ships
specially built and outfitted.
Sailed into the gorges.
These are these are
from the illustrated
"London News" the beautiful,
beautiful wood engravings
that were created to illustrate
these fascinating stories
of unreal, supernatural places.
He didn't get very far.
And this is one of
the dramatic images,
they forged the last
chain with their bodies.
So you can imagine,
you know seeing this,
reading this in the popular
press how the imagination
of the populace was stimulated
and fascinated by these people
who would risk their lives.
Someone, you know asked
yesterday about you know what
about the sailors, I mean
how were they recruited,
what did they expect?
Well many of them who
volunteered consider the fact
that they may not come
back, you know very,
very many of them did not come back.
There were shipwrecks.
I love this picture.
"Two Years of Residence
on an Uninhabited Island"
by Charles Medyett Goodrich.
He was a whaler.
Well eventually in 1859, 14 years
after they sailed relics
were first discovered
of the Franklin Expedition
and published.
And these are some of the
artifacts that were found.
And you see that in that
even 75 years later in 1912,
they became objects that
were used in cigarette cards.
There was a whole series of
cigarette cards published
by the Player Cigarette Company of
Arctic and Antarctic exploration.
Also, this became the Franklin
Expedition became a very,
he was not only a celebrity, he
became kind of a legendary figure.
Someone no less than Charles
Dickens produced the play written
by Wilkie Collins called
"The Frozen Deep."
That was based on the
Franklin Expedition.
And the play was quite
successful and so popular
that Wilkie Collins went on to
write a short novel based again
on the Franklin story.
Kane, this was, there was a Polaris
expedition that went off about 1861
with a really nasty
captain named Paul
who was eventually probably
poisoned by his crew and taken
over by the second in command
who was a notorious drunk.
And the expedition, that
was probably the high point
of the expedition, was
when Paul was murdered
because it deteriorated
further and further
until eventually the captain
had sent out a large group,
a hunting group and
they were out hunting
and I think there were 17
individuals on this force
and unfortunately while they were
out hunting, they were, the iceberg,
the iceberg that they were on broke.
And they were stranded on the
iceberg 12 miles from the ship.
And the ship sailed
away and just left them.
They could see the
ship for almost 2 weeks
because it wasn't moving
very quickly
and no one ever came back for them.
They spent 6 months floating
on this iceberg down the coast
of the Atlantic Coast and were
finally rescued by some sealers.
And the only reason
they survived was
because they had two Inuit
that knew how to hunt.
They never would have survived had
they not had their Indian companions
or Indian hunters.
And this is Tyson's drift.
Or actually that's the next.
And Kane who died young.
These explorers, you know
have remarkable life stories.
Kane died at a very young
age, he was 42 years old.
He had all of these triumphs
in his medical career
and also his Arctic career.
Well I couldn't call his
Arctic career a triumph,
but he had a lot of notoriety.
He got involved with 3 sisters,
the Fox sisters, who were mediums,
and they were charlatans of course.
And he fell in love with
the middle sister, Margaret,
and he convinced her to
give up her errant ways
of you know hoodwinking people
with her sisters and convert
to Catholicism and she
claimed that he married her.
There are no records.
But after his death, their
love letters were published.
They were quite passionate
for the time.
And it seems that after he passed
away she went right back to work
with her sisters and sailed
off to England and got
into quite a bit of
trouble actually.
There's the expedition.
Oh this is the, I've
gotten the slides confused,
but this is Mr. Tyson
floating on his iceberg,
which is actually quite
a lot larger than this.
It was a quite large chunk of
ice, floating down the Atlantic.
This is a ship called the Pandora.
Not a really great name for a ship.
But this is Captain Young, English
Captain Young, took 2 expeditions
up into the Arctic
regions from England.
And a man who published "New
York Herald News Paper" James
Gordon Bennett.
James Gordon Bennett interesting
character, newspapermen,
probably best known today
for sponsoring Stanley's
search for Livingston.
And he did that as a publicity
stunt essentially to sell newspapers
and to sell advertising,
which he did both.
And he thought this
is really good scheme
to sell papers, these adventures.
So he goes to England,
he buys the Pandora,
remember it's a bad name for a ship.
He renames it Jeanette
after his wife.
Sails it around South
America to San Francisco
and refits the boat
for heavy, heavy seas.
He's a powerful and wealthy man.
He convinces the United States
government to put a crew on his ship
to sail up to the North Pole.
Not a good idea.
So they search around, the find
a young Lieutenant named DeLong,
they put him on the ship
with 22 or 23 sailors.
They have a big party, he casts off,
sails up through the [inaudible]
and within 2 months
he's frozen in the ice
and he stayed in the
ice for 2 years.
Eventually, the ship is,
as you would imagine
crushed, in very bad weather.
The crew puts out in
three lifeboats.
One lifeboat disappears immediately,
the two lifeboats actually make it
across the sea and crash into
the Lina Delta region of Siberia.
Unfortunately, one crew, including
Captain DeLong freezes to death.
But a second group of
sailors is rescued by Indians
and they travel all across Russia.
Stories are filed along all
of their trek from Siberia,
they meet with the
czar, and they come back
to the United States
hailed as heroes.
Bennett sells a lot of papers.
So the Lieutenant was
in his early thirties,
but it became a major incident
in United States Naval history.
As a matter of fact, just across
the way here in Annapolis,
the largest monument is this
monument to the Jeanette.
Fifty years later, a man name
Ellsberg finds the widow, Emma,
and writes her life,
"Explorer's Wife"
and publishes a book
called "Hell on Ice."
See the memory is long and she was
quite a young widow when he was lost
and part of the collection we
have, the Jeanette sub collection,
let's call it, is a bookshelf
that's probably 4 feet long.
And it's full of all kind of
interesting books that were written
about the expedition at the time
and the congressional investigations
that followed up after the fiasco.
The questions began
to ask, you know,
why did the United States Navy
put a crew on this ship to sail
into nowhere to sell newspaper
for a guy in New York.
We still hear stories like
this occasionally don't we?
The first really serious attempts,
or you know that I can identify
through science was the first
international polar year,
which is 1882 to 83 or 81 to 82.
And this was the really Greely,
the notorious Greely Expedition.
Greely, I don't know if we can
really, I think it's a good point,
but this was an international
investigation
of both geomagnetism,
and climatology.
And they were groups that
were sent into the Arctic.
I think 9, there were
12 into the Arctic,
and Greely's was the furthest north.
There was a very elaborate
scheme of outfitting them
and refitting them
that totally failed.
No one came for 2 years.
It was very bad weather.
And they wound up stranded for
quite a, for these whole 2 years.
And when they were finally
rescued 2 years later,
the journal of the captain,
who rescued them wrote,
"As we neared it, neared the shore,
we saw one man make his appearance
where you could look
down toward the cape.
He saw the boat and came down
to where we were going to land.
Seeing only one man, and the way
he staggered down over the snow,
we thought it a bad omen."
No there were claims never
proven of cannibalism, murder,
really kind of ugly
and grim stories.
That were never corroborated.
Recently, there've been
some forensic study
that would indicate that, yes,
that something went on up there.
But he continued on.
He became an admiral.
This is a picture of
the "London News'
of the discovery of the lost party.
This is a 3-D postcard of
the Columbian Expedition.
I think we also saw
yesterday another picture
of this diorama that was created.
He went on to become an admiral,
write several books on the history
of polar exploration, and
become quite a celebrated member
of the scientific community.
He never told the true story.
There were other attempts
to reach the North Pole.
This is a gentleman named Salomon
Andree who tried in a balloon.
He died. And then there was Pierre
who made it to the North Pole.
This is a kind of a
map of his attempt,
along with his archrival
Dr. Cook, making claims.
The French, having a
great sense of humor,
and they depicted these guys here.
I love the leggings that they're
wearing, sort of Wild West leggings.
And the penguins, yeah
the penguin audience.
Hilarious.
This is Scott as a young
officer, Robert Scott,
who again just continues this quite
serious scientific, I would not want
to say veneer, because they
were a serious scientist.
I mean when he came to parish,
they were still dragging
sledges full of rocks.
I mean, they died because
they wouldn't leave their
scientific specimens.
I don't want to diminish
his seriousness of purpose,
or seriousness of effort.
But one might question the goal.
And Shackleton.
They started out as partners and
wound up as quite sincere enemies.
This is in 1901 Shackleton a
very young man, very determined.
This is in his attempt in 1909,
when he traveled within the 90 miles
of the South Pole and had to give
up because he didn't
have 30 pounds of food.
Imagine that.
Dragging his sledge.
And Amundsen.
No scientific pretense whatsoever.
I'm going to the Pole
because it's there.
And he ridiculed in press,
and in public, and in private.
He ridiculed Scott
for his use of horses.
He thought that was the
lamest idea in the world.
We bring the dogs, and
the dogs eat the dogs,
and then we eat the
dogs that ate the dogs.
And that was his, you
know, very practical man.
Look what he had done, you know
prior to this he was the first
to traverse the Northwest Passage.
He was the ultimate
20th-century explorer.
Scott. Scott had the
foresight to bring with him one
of the great photographers of the
20th century, a man named Ponting.
And we have in the collection,
a book of contact prints,
4 x 5 contact prints
made from glass plates.
There are 440 some odd
images in one book.
And there are 2 books.
Ponting had to actually
make the photographic plates
in order to take the photographs.
And here's a picture of him.
He also made a movie.
And here he is with his
very long-range lens.
And some of his wonderful
portraits of the sailors.
Many of whom did not come back.
And the map of the two attempts
to reach the Pole, Amundsen,
who arrived on the 14th
of December in 1911
and Scott on 17th of January.
So Amundsen beat Scott by a month.
This is the grave of Scott
and his party, Evans, Bowers.
Taken by [inaudible]
who was their ski coach.
And developed and printed
by Ponting.
This is a letter, which
I'm going to read.
This is Kathleen Scott's letter to
a man named Edgerton Richard Negron
who was there were their ski coach
and developed and printed
by Ponting.
This is a letter from going
to review this is Kathleen
Scott's letter to Menon Egerton
who was a major financial
backer of the Scott expedition.
The letter she wrote
hurriedly without sleep,
explaining that because
she's been at sea
and that it had been Scott's
wish that only she should deal
with her diaries, she
has been unable
to send Egerton the enclosure,
a letter to him by Scott,
left with his diaries until Kathleen
Scott, Kathleen Scott had been
at sea so she did not
receive the information
that her husband had
died until the 13th
of February, a month
after he passed.
"My dearest Sir George,
this was in Con's diary.
I was at sea and he had written,
what he had written are my
instruction that he counted on me
to deal with his diaries, so that
is why you haven't had it before.
I now write very hurriedly
hoping to catch the mail.
It's a glorious record,
wonderfully written, stirring
and inspiring to the last degree.
They would have got through if
they hadn't stood by their sick.
And so I am very glad
they did not get through.
They didn't lose any of
their scientific effects.
Carried 35 pounds of geological
specimens through to the last,
the last week of those 3 men
is a wonderful tail and safe
from the brutal agony of helping
responsibilities unfulfilled,
there should of been no regrets.
He was the last to go.
And at the end he writes 'last entry
for God's sake look
after our people.'
One wishes that he hadn't worried,
so that is all very
sincerely, Kathleen Scott."
So that is a very touching note
and a poignant recollection.
And then we have the
Discovery Expedition.
The famous Shackleton
800-mile voyage over open sea.
A miraculous occurrence
if ever there was one.
This, Shackleton also brought a
photographer his name was Hurley.
And this is a picture of the
Discovery caught in the ice.
His picture of the Discovery
going down into the ice.
The dogs are really interested.
And this is a curious item.
This is a picture of the boat
that actually rescued the crew
and I'm not going to go
through the whole story.
Most of you probably are
familiar with the story.
But this is a Chilean tugboat
that, another miraculously was able
to make it across the Antarctic
Ocean and able to save the crew.
And this was, this book was compiled
by the captain of the [inaudible],
25 years later as a gift to women
that we haven't been
able to identify.
And the picture of the ship and
the other two images that I showed
of the Discovery were also
in this little scrapbook.
Frank Hurley wrote a book,
"Shackleton's Argonauts"
it's been made into movies
and it's a well-known
and great saga.
This is a sovereign album
that was created by four
of the Shackleton last
Antarctic Expedition.
And this was, this
particularly copy was owned
by Worsley who was his warden.
His last picture.
This is a display that we have
in the gallery showing
Shackleton's manhole harness
that he used to pull that sledge.
Then we go into the more modern
and contemporary aerial
exploration, Byrd.
Byrd was a tireless and
successful self-promoter.
Here, this was a map
that was distributed
by the Tidewater oil
company, one of his sponsors,
where people could actually draw in
or keep track of his accomplishments
as they were published in newspaper
and in private correspondence.
If you remember, the club.
He convinced President Roosevelt
that this was a great glory
for the United States and Roosevelt
it is claimed actually drew this
stamp, which was published in 1934.
But he actually sketched
out the support
for the second Byrd Expedition.
And we get into something
that I find fascinating.
Fiction associated with
Arctic Exploration.
Frankenstein is a polar story.
And it's a series of letters written
by a young gentleman to his sister
on exploration that he's
making of the Arctic region
and he finds Dr. Frankenstein
nearly frozen to death.
Takes him onboard his ship and then
the doctor tells the back story.
Tells the back story
through the entire book,
and in the last chapter,
the doctor dies.
And the monster appears.
And has a 14-page soliloquy over
the dead body of his creator.
If you haven't read the book,
if you've only seen the movie,
or the classic comic, it is really
quite interesting how intellectually
capable the monster is.
One feels that Ms. Shelly had
some help from her friends
in writing this last soliloquy.
It speaks a lot about
science and about ethics.
It's quite interesting.
"The Tale of the Ancient Mariner."
"Riley the Ancient
Mariner" by Coleridge.
When Coleridge was young one of
Cook's navigators was his tutor.
And that was one of his inspirations
I think for writing this book,
which is of course around
sailing to the Antarctica.
These are Gustave Dore's
illustrations, go back.
This happens to be the only
authorized illustrated edition
of "The Rime The Ancient Mariner."
It was done by young Scottish artist
with the approval of Coleridge,
who actually looked over the
illustrations and approved them.
Jules Verne wonderful stories,
great illustrations,
beautiful bookbinding.
This is original poster for
the conquest of the pole.
I wanted to show some of the film
but we couldn't really get it
to work here, but you can
see it on the Internet.
I mean, thank goodness we
have access to so many videos,
I mean it's just incredible.
I've been able to compile probably
60 or more just from YouTube alone
of Arctic and Antarctic
film material.
Utopias, dystopias,
and fantastic worlds.
This is written by Bishop Hall,
let me see if I have a note here,
Joseph Hall was a bishop,
became a bishop in England.
This was written in 1605 and he's
created a fictitious Antarctic world
with the places like Morontobia,
let's see, he has Crapolia,
Vergalia, Maronia, and
Lavernia are these states
on this fictitious
continent of Antarctica.
These are hollow earth.
The earth is hollow the pole is
so long sought are but phantoms.
There are openings at the
northern and southern extremities,
in the anterior are vast continents,
oceans, mountains, and rivers.
Vegetable animal life are
evident in this new world.
And it is probably people
by races yet unknown
to the dwellers on the exterior.
"The Smoky God."
The earth is hollow, the pole
so long-sought are by phantoms.
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote
about a shipwreck and sailing
to an island off the
coast of Antarctica,
where there is a world of.
Lovecraft.
Also wrote, "Mountains of Madness"
set in the Antarctic continent.
"People of the South
Pole" these are the 1940s.
And a fascinating book that
very few have heard of,
"Islandia" by Austin Tappan Wright.
This is about a, this was a
10,000-page novel published
after his death, edited
by his wife and daughter.
And I mean this is an entire world.
It's kind of like a script for an
electronic game that we play today.
There are so many depths and so
many different things going on.
Quite an extraordinary.
You could never finish
it, obviously.
And then the last few slides, books
written for children on whaling.
In the 1830s and on sealing.
Some wonderful children's
books, beautiful covers,
and chromolithographic
illustrations.
And Peary's wife got into the act.
Wrote 2 books about her
child, born in the Arctic.
Great botanical illustrations.
Popular music, "Aurora Borie Alice."
[Laughter] I'm trying to find
a recording of it I thought I,
but I, it sounds interesting.
On the upper left hand side is
music that was written by the crew
of the Peacock, one of the ships
that was commanded by Wilkes.
Two of the ship's officers
wrote music,
beautiful music, about
their travels.
Andrew Previn, "Sinfonia
Antarctica."
And then some spoofs.
"A Dash at The Pole"
somebody taking their Model-T.
"Bird Life of The Pole, by
Commander Christopher Robin."
We have an umbrella of Arctic floor.
And sorry about the boring gifts,
but the hip waders are useful,
get useful get used to them.
And that's the end.
Or the ends.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
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