Development of a Remote Station Architecture
McMurdo Station,
Antarctica
4. HISTORIC BACKGROUND
Ross Island was discovered in 1841 by James Clark Ross, a British Royal Navy explorer, during a four year expedition voyage to reach the south magnetic pole. Sailing west and skirting the pack ice, he found a pass of clear water and headed south to find an open sea, the end of which was blocked by a permanent ice shelf and a very mountainous island. Coincidentally on this occasion, he was to witness the largest record eruption of its active volcano, which he named after his ship The Erebus.
Sixty-one years later, on January 21, 1902, Royal Navy Commander Robert Falcon Scott on his National Antarctic Expedition made the first land fall on Ross Island and built the first known structure on the continent at Hut Point (fig. 2). The site was at the southernmost location on the island adjacent to the Ice Barrier. It offered a good harbor free of ice since the flows drifted east toward the continent, away from the island. The island provided excellent observation points and views to the mountains forty miles to the east, which he named The Royal Society Range, as well as a chance to investigate Erebus’s volcanic activity and collect geological samples. Scott’s expedition explored and named many of the geographic features of the McMurdo Station area, such as Observation Hill, Castle Rock, Arrival Heights and Winter Quarters Bay.
In 1907 Ernest Shackleton, who had accompanied Scott on his first expedition, left England aboard the Nimrod in an attempt to reach the South pole. Shackleton had asked Scott if his British Antarctic Expedition could make use of the Discovery hut at McMurdo. Scott refused, saying that he hoped to use it himself in the near future. Unsuccessful in reaching the pole, Shackleton’s expedition barely made it back to McMurdo before the winter of 1909. Unable to reach their own hut at Cape Royds, 22 miles to the north, they took shelter in the Discovery hut. They first used the hut in August of 1908 on their way to the Pole and found it in the same condition in which it was left seven years before. Save for some snow accumulation, everything from biscuits to tinned meat remained intact within the snug wooden shelter.
When Scott returned for his last, and ill fated exploration to the pole in 1910, he found Shackleton had not only broken into the shelter but had even left the window open when he left, causing Scott’s party to be deprived of the comforts of its shelter until many days of hard labor were spent removing the hardened snow from its interior. The event depressed Scott to think that his fellow explorers should have such little regard for the comfort of others. Months later, he was to die on his return trek from the Pole, 11 miles from his last provisions depot and 150 miles from the hut.
Shackleton’s next expedition in 1914 made use of the hut as a base of operations for laying depots for the attempted crossing of the continent from the Weddell Sea. Due to impassable ice Shackleton never began the traverse, though his depots were laid with great difficulty in horrible weather and at the loss of three of his men.
Proceed to next section: 5. The International Geophysical Year
Table of Contents
1. Abstract
2.
Preface
3. Location
4. Historic Background
5. The International Geophysical Year
6. The United States Antarctic Research Program
7. The Engineering Manual for McMurdo Station
8. The Holmes & Narver Ten Year Master Plan
9. The Replacement Science Facility
10. Final Design of the Replacement Science Facility
11. Bibliography
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