I'm reading Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea, the journals penned by Sir George Nares during his leadership of the British Arctic Expedition 1875-76, and came across the following passage;
‘At 10pm we arrived at Cape Isabella, and on Commander Markham climbing up to the depot he found the package of letters and newspapers left there by Sir Allen Young a few weeks previously; we gathered from them that a duplicate packet had been carried on to Cape Sabine.’
The practice in early polar exploration was to deposit letters, documents and progress updates in rock cairns built high on prominent landmarks and in view of passing explorers. The contents would be removed by these fellow explorers and eventually find there way to their destination – a letter arriving 2 years later was not uncommon. How times have changed…
At 18.34 GMT on the 1st April 1998, in a temperature of -30°C, I stood at the magnetic North Pole joined by eight Year 9 and l0 students (aged 13 to 15) and two teachers from Robertsbridge Community College in East Sussex. History had been made as it was the first British school party to reach the Pole and for good measure, 14-year-olds John and William Rigby claimed their own piece of the limelight in being the first twins in the world ever to set foot there!
The expedition, named Polar Watch, was the culmination of a grander geographical North Pole expedition that I was leading and set out to bring the ‘polar adventure’ to the classroom, or armchair. Internet was in its infancy and this was new territory. The BBC ran a piece in its Sci/Tech section titled ‘Internet to track North Pole walkers’. The tracking was quite rudimentary – we would call our UK Base Camp using HF Radio (relayed through a radio station in North Scotland) and answer questions that had been submitted by students and our website would be updated by our base Camp team afterwards. Of course this was assuming we were able to make radio contact in the first place.
In 2007 I lead a similar venture, with schools this time tracking my progress to both North and South Poles and a student expedition to the High Arctic and North Pole. Technology had advanced considerably by then and utilising Humanedgetech™ technology (www.humanedgetech.com) and equipped with satellite handsets, PDA’s and solar panels I was able to send text and images direct to the expedition website. Using a web-based map our position could be updated 'from the ice' as we inched ever closer towards the Poles.
This year Briton Felicity Aston (@felicity_Aston) completed the 1st female solo supported crossing of Antarctica – she ‘tweeted’ her way across using a satellite handset to send a tweet (a message restricted to 140 characters) each day to the outside world. Each tweet was automatically fed into a number of other social platforms such as Facebook, Linked and Blogger and streamed onto a multitude of individual websites and mobile phones.
In her sledge she carried a small yellow device, aptly named Yellowbrick (www.yellowbrick-tracking.com), which automatically transmitted her position every 5 minutes, and via satellite updated a web-based map of Antarctica. Live tracking step-by-step.
It will be interesting to see where technology takes polar exploration next!
Explore more in seanchapple.co.uk
‘At 10pm we arrived at Cape Isabella, and on Commander Markham climbing up to the depot he found the package of letters and newspapers left there by Sir Allen Young a few weeks previously; we gathered from them that a duplicate packet had been carried on to Cape Sabine.’
The practice in early polar exploration was to deposit letters, documents and progress updates in rock cairns built high on prominent landmarks and in view of passing explorers. The contents would be removed by these fellow explorers and eventually find there way to their destination – a letter arriving 2 years later was not uncommon. How times have changed…
At 18.34 GMT on the 1st April 1998, in a temperature of -30°C, I stood at the magnetic North Pole joined by eight Year 9 and l0 students (aged 13 to 15) and two teachers from Robertsbridge Community College in East Sussex. History had been made as it was the first British school party to reach the Pole and for good measure, 14-year-olds John and William Rigby claimed their own piece of the limelight in being the first twins in the world ever to set foot there!
The expedition, named Polar Watch, was the culmination of a grander geographical North Pole expedition that I was leading and set out to bring the ‘polar adventure’ to the classroom, or armchair. Internet was in its infancy and this was new territory. The BBC ran a piece in its Sci/Tech section titled ‘Internet to track North Pole walkers’. The tracking was quite rudimentary – we would call our UK Base Camp using HF Radio (relayed through a radio station in North Scotland) and answer questions that had been submitted by students and our website would be updated by our base Camp team afterwards. Of course this was assuming we were able to make radio contact in the first place.
In 2007 I lead a similar venture, with schools this time tracking my progress to both North and South Poles and a student expedition to the High Arctic and North Pole. Technology had advanced considerably by then and utilising Humanedgetech™ technology (www.humanedgetech.com) and equipped with satellite handsets, PDA’s and solar panels I was able to send text and images direct to the expedition website. Using a web-based map our position could be updated 'from the ice' as we inched ever closer towards the Poles.
This year Briton Felicity Aston (@felicity_Aston) completed the 1st female solo supported crossing of Antarctica – she ‘tweeted’ her way across using a satellite handset to send a tweet (a message restricted to 140 characters) each day to the outside world. Each tweet was automatically fed into a number of other social platforms such as Facebook, Linked and Blogger and streamed onto a multitude of individual websites and mobile phones.
In her sledge she carried a small yellow device, aptly named Yellowbrick (www.yellowbrick-tracking.com), which automatically transmitted her position every 5 minutes, and via satellite updated a web-based map of Antarctica. Live tracking step-by-step.
It will be interesting to see where technology takes polar exploration next!
Explore more in seanchapple.co.uk
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