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News of the Campion expedition inspired a wave of public interest in Antarctica, but ironically, not in the mechanical man. However, England, threatened by the upstart American and his metal puppet, convened the 1895 International Geographical Congress to revive British interest in planting a Union Jack on the South Pole. In 1898, Carsten Borchgrevink's attempt to claim the pole for England, aboard the Southern Cross, failed.
Other English expeditions met similar fates. On January 9, 1909, Ernest Shackelton passed within 160 kilometers of the South Pole. In 1912, Robert Scott died during his effort to reach the pole.
It was the Norwegian Roald Amundsen who finally made it to the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
They all followed the route pioneered by Professor Archibald Campion. |
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The Euterpe was the iron-hulled sailing vessel used for the first leg of this journey. The ship approached Antarctica from the Ross Sea. As it neared the Ross Ice Shelf, it was surrounded and eventually trapped by pack ice. The crew would have to await the spring thaw in order to free the vessel. Campion, over the protest of Captain Bentine, decided on a solo attempt to reach the South Pole, with Boilerplate as sled-puller. The professor and his construct departed rapidly over the horizon, reappearing at the trapped Euterpe two weeks later. Campion was in reasonable physical condition, but remarkably quiet about whether he had actually reached the pole. (In later years, he excused himself by saying he had lost any physical evidence of his accomplishment and therefore could not claim to have performed such a feat.)
After five months, the pack ice shifted enough for Boilerplate to effectively carve out a channel that the Euterpe could escape through. The expedition arrived at Cape Evans in the spring of 1895.
(Click on photo for larger image)
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