A masked figure dressed in heavy winter gear stood upon the rocky, snow covered hill overlooking the ice floes and drift ice covered the Bellingshausen Sea. The person shifted fractionally bringing long tubed ship binoculars to their face to examine the seascape more carefully. Antarctica was the southern most continent upon the planet of Terra, and possessed one of it's most desolate environments, the continent was a mixture of ice, mountains, tundra and polar desert.
Antarctica, had been formally discovered and it's coastline and ice shelves roughly charted by the First Russian Antarctic Expedition joinly lead by Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev aboard the Imperial Russian Naval Sloops K.Y.V. Vostok and K.Y.V. Mirny in 1819-1821.
They had made some preliminary assessments of the continent and local flora: largely Moss, fungi and Lichen and local fauna: they had noted Penguins, petrels, cormarants, gulls and albatross as well as blue whales, orca, colossal squid, fur seals and leopard seals. Though this was only by distant or off shore obervation, as no serious attempts were actually made to land due to the difficult sea and ice conditions the two naval officers encountered during their expedition. The Russian explorers had effected landings on several of the outer islands of the Antarctican Penisula with some success but they had also warned them of the likely dangers of trying it upon the interior of the continent itself.
They had also noted the frigid temperatures, and snow falls that dominated the continent's climate. They found it to be the coldest, windiest, and driest of Terra's continents. Near the coast, the temperature rarely exceeded 10 °C in summer and fell to below −40 °C in winter. Over the elevated inland, it could rise to about −30 °C in summer but fall below −80 °C in winter. The harsh arctic wind, also surprised the Russian explorers, as it was frequently very strong and very presistent. This caused attempts to survey Antarctica from the air by tethered and dirigible balloons, and four light observational aircraft carried by the two sloops to be problematic.
Beyond this initial scientific and navigational expedition, scant further interest had been taken in Antarctica by any of the major naval or imperial powers. The only other major scientific and navigational expedition to Antarctica was mounted by Great Britain in 1839-43, under the command of James Clark Ross in the H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror, which confirmed many of Bellingshausen and Lazarev's 1819-21 findings and made several discoveries of their own. The frozen continent, which was regarded as worthless for either valuable resources or basing rights, had largely been left to the occassional attention of seasonal deep sea fishermen, whalers and seal hunters since the 1820s. That, at least had been the official story as far as anyone was concerned, regarding the south polar regions, the truth had in fact been rather more different.
In truth, the interests of a number of individuals had been excited by the observations and reports of Bellingshausen and Lazarev, which had been published in various polar and scientific journals and intensively discussed during 1822-24. Quietly, these interested parties had gotten together and pooled their resources, recruited whatever personel was deemed necessary and charted a small fleet of specially modified or built arctic ships and ice breakers to establish a permanent scientific colony/research station in the Antarctic Penisula, that the Russians had already partially charted.
They had obtained provisional leases from the British Empire to use the South Orkney and South Shetland islands off the peninsula, which the British had claimed largely for distant fishing and whaling rights but had never formally occupied. This whole process had taken some twenty years of intense preparations and lobbying before the first group of explorers and researchers was ready to leave for the Antarctica in 1844.
This arrangement had suited both the organizers of the new antarctican expedition and the British government, as it gave the reseach group "official" British support and nominal "protection". From the British perspective, the enterprise, allowed them to actually have someone occupy the islands, at no cost to the British Treasury. Through 1845, the first waves of people arrived by ship at the South Orkneys to establish what the organizers called their portal camp to the Antarctican continent. It would serve as their main supply and communications hub with the outside world. They were escorted by the Royal Navy armoured cruiser H.M.S. Endurant, which was based in the British Falkland islands and would thereafter visit, the South Orkneys, once every few months to see that all was well and bring news and mail from the outside world to the base, as well as escort incoming and outgoing supply convoys the group had chartered.
The next forty-four years had followed a steady rythme, of development, exploration and entrenchment by the explorer community both in the South Orkneys, the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Penisula. Within the first twenty years of it's founding, the British government had all but forgotten about the scientific colony. By 1865, due to naval committments elsewhere in the world, the Endurant was withdrawn from it's escort and mail duties and the South Polar colony was advised to organize it's own system of dispatch and escort vessels for the supply convoys.
Unknown to the British government in distant London, the Antarcticans, had already done just that; having secretly established a capable and well armed land militia to both police and protect their research stations, store houses and living installations that now dotted the whole of the Penisula and Western Antarctica up to and including the Transantarctican Mountain range. Had the British been aware of this, and the powerful navy the Antarcticans were in the process of secretly assembling in hidden naval dockyards buried in the south polar glaciers and rocky coasts they would have been even more alarmed.
Another twenty-four years had passed quietly enough, without the British Empire showing the slightest signs that it understood just what was going on within the confines of the South Pole. Which, suited it's inhabitants just fine. It had given them the preciously needed time to build their strength, increase their numbers and prefect their arrangements for the day they knew was coming. The South Polar Confederation, as they called themselves, now covered the whole of the Eastern Antarctica.
Today, though, that long quiet might be ending the observer thought. He watched as a British warship made steady progress across the furthest edge of the Bellingshausen Sea for the first time in years to check up on the silent, ice entombed colony. Ordinarily, British ships approached the Antarctican coasts from the direction of the Falklands, making for the harbour at South Orkneys, this ship was not. It was approaching from the west, nosing around to see what it could without the colony being aware they were doing it.
Evidently, the British didn't know that the colony was now spread all over the continent and all the coasts had watch posts to observe and report anyone or anything in the area to the South Polar capital. If, the British Royal Navy, still thought the colony was confined to the South Orkneys, South Shetlands and the Penisula, as their last reports indicated, it didn't explain why they would be curious about the rest of the coastline. He watched the armoured ship, for he could see clearly that it was a major ironclad warship after watching it for nearly an hour. Time to report in, he thought, his superiors would determine the best response to this interloper.
No comments:
Post a Comment