Calum and Tom on:
- The history of British Antarctic exploration, from Captain Cook's mission to find Terra Australis to Shackleton's heroic survival after the Endurance was trapped in ice,
- The geopolitical status of Antarctica, including Britain's territorial claims, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that prohibits mining and militarisation, and how this could change after 2048,
- The potential economic value of the British Antarctic Territory with its vast untapped resources (oil, gas, gold, and other minerals) and whether Britain should develop these resources before other nations claim them,
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Introduction
(00:01:30) - Antarctic Overview
(00:04:16) - Historical Expeditions
(00:12:50) - Heroic Age
(00:31:19) - Sovereignty Issues
(00:34:58) - Antarctic Treaty
(00:36:49) - Resource Potential
(00:54:25) - Future Prospects
Transcript
00:00:00 - Introduction
Tom Ough
Welcome back to the King Charles III Space Station. I'm Tom Ough.
Calum Drysdale
And I'm Calum Drysdale. And if you, our listeners, have a telescope handy, you might be able to see our orbital space pub speeding southwards. Tom's behind the bar with one hand on our ship's wheels and the other one clutching a pint of gin.
Tom Ough
Listeners, you can't see the wheel but let me assure you that it's fashioned of beautiful English oak. A perfect replica of the wheel on HMS Victory.
Calum Drysdale
Tom, tell me where you're taking us.
Tom Ough
Well, take a look through that Mullions porthole we put in the floor.
Calum Drysdale
Yep, taking a look.
Tom Ough
What do you see?
Calum Drysdale
I see the Falklands to the west. South Georgia… and I think that must be the South Sandwich Islands to the east. And now it's a long rocky peninsula.
Tom Ough
Yeah, an enormous apparently inhospitable peninsula.
Calum Drysdale
And yet, something about it feels like home.
Tom Ough
Correct. As we sweep over this frozen continent, you will need no reminding that we are looking over the British Antarctic Territory.
I will stop the ship here.
00:01:30 - Antarctic Overview
Calum Drysdale
Listeners, the view is stunning. Mile upon mile of white wilderness with the southern lights dancing above it. But Tom, maybe you can tell the listeners why you've brought us here.
Tom Ough
Well, in short, what we're looking at is Britain's most valuable overseas possession. It could be the ticket to a new age of British prosperity, but it's under threat. And I think it's high time the country pay the matter some attention.
Calum Drysdale
Well, I think it's something that we often forget. In that it's notable when, well or maybe not so notable to some people, when we try to rid ourselves of a few tiny atolls in the Indian Ocean. But actually the idea that we own a whole sort of section of a slice of a continent is maybe even less well known.
Tom Ough
Yeah and let's put this in perspective because the Chagos Islands, important as they are, are pretty minuscule in terms of land mass. Whereas the British Antarctic Territory is about eight times the size of Great Britain. It's insane, it's absolutely enormous and I think it's high time the country paid the matter some attention.
Calum Drysdale
I think it's a bit risky Tom, isn’t it? Because the more attention we draw to our overseas territories the greater risk that the FCDO tries to find someone to foist them off on.
Tom Ough
Yeah I do worry about this because I think our claim to the Antarctic territory is in fact weaker than our claim to the Chagos Islands. So if you are listening and you are a senior civil servant at the FCDO then please, please avert your ears. But we are going to do an episode on the British Antarctic Territory nevertheless.
Calum Drysdale
And our first one without a guest as seemingly Tom you are appointing yourself as our resident expert in the field.
Tom Ough
Well there is a there is a criminal dearth of enthusiasts about the British Antarctic territory and I hope listeners will over the next half hour or so come to understand why I think there's a dearth.
Calum Drysdale
Whilst most people are going out to the pub and talking to women, what on earth have you done spending your time worrying about the British Antarctic territory?
Tom Ough
I for one got nerd sniped by the BAT as they call it last year when a big oil and gas discovery was made in the waters surrounding it and that led me to look into the BAT to which I had not given much thought prior to that. I discovered that it's enormous. It could be very lucrative. It's very exciting. It's a frontier. There's an amazing British history there as well. Perhaps we can get into all of those over this conversation.
Calum Drysdale
Absolutely. Do you want to start us off, Tom? Why on earth do we own a slice of this icy pie?
00:04:16 - Historical Expeditions
Tom Ough
There's a story to this which explains why we make the claim and I think we can get into that very soon. But I think it's worth winding back a little further because Antarctica has a fascinating recent history. Ancient and medieval cartographers hadn't been there. They nevertheless assumed that because of all the land mass that they're aware of north of the equator that there would be a continent in the far south to counterbalance that land in the north.
So that's not really evidence in favour of Antarctica existing but nevertheless a picture began to build and we had 17th century sailors coming home with stories of islands of ice trailing through empty seas.
Calum Drysdale
I mean the counterweight stuff is funny right because actually there isn't really a continent down there. Most of the land on the globe is concentrated to the north, there isn't reason really to go. I suppose the southern ocean around Antarctica is so empty that actually it's quite an inhospitable place for a wooden hulled ship to go.
Tom Ough
The seas around there are full of ice. They're very stormy. There's a prevailing west wind that rushes clockwise around the continent, dragging this very strong current along beneath. So not only is it freezing, it's also a very difficult place to navigate. So you can sort of understand why nobody went, why nobody discovered Antarctica sooner than they did. But nevertheless, people were interested.
Calum Drysdale
And there was a sense that there had to be something there, right? Like you weren't just venturing out into open ocean.
Tom Ough
Well, it's almost a little spooky because if you look at some of the old maps, they will even insert a large southern continent called Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, which means the southern land not yet known. And so we had French sailors, Dutch sailors, English sailors, including Francis Drake, who all went on a hunt for this continent. Didn't find anything.
Calum Drysdale
Yeah, and I think it's interesting you talk about this unknown southern and counterweight continent as I think Terry Pratchett put it. When I’ve heard that term, it's always been in reference to Australia, right? And Cook's expeditions down south.
Tom Ough
Yeah, well, Cook's a very important figure here. And the background is that in 1768, he was chosen to lead an expedition, chosen by the Royal Society, and its putative purpose was to observe the transit of Venus. And the idea was that if the transit of Venus were monitored from various points on the surface of the globe, the Astronomer Royal could accurately determine the distance between the planets. So that, as I say, was a putative purpose of that mission in 1768. And they do it, Cook’s in Tahiti, and then in June 1769, still in Tahiti, he opens an envelope which he carried with him on the ship all the way from London and it contains secret instructions from King George III.
Calum Drysdale
I mean this is the sort of thing that you really you read about in kind of Cold War spy thrillers. The dour Soviet commander get into the northwest passage, opens the letters and ‘Bomb Vancouver immediately, Comrade Captain.’
Tom Ough
But it is in fact even better instructions for a second mission and the mission was to find this mysterious southern continent Terra Australis and claim it for Britain.
Calum Drysdale
Which we love to hear.
Tom Ough
We love it. Aso he sets out to find to find Terra Australis. He finds New Zealand, he finds Australia, and fabulously none of his crew dies of scurvy because he's a wonderful captain, but no Terra Australis. And so Cook returns home.
Calum Drysdale
Really, so he was actually was always looking for Antarctica?
Tom Ough
He was looking for Antarctica, yeah. He was looking for an even more southerly continent. I’d say he did pretty well, I’d say he discovered a continent it just happened to be the wrong continent.
I'm not saying we should tear down all the statues and burn all the stamps bearing his face.
Calum Drysdale
So Australia found, still impressive. We're not cancelling Cook yet.
Tom Ough
Yeah, I think we can give him a pass. But he does not give himself a pass. He goes on another expedition. And so this is in 1774 and his ships entered the Antarctic Circle several times and it was, as I say, incredibly cold there and this means that they had to turn back when they were merely a hundred and twenty one kilometres from Antarctica's coast.
Calum Drysdale
And is this because it's so cold that the sailors can't survive or is it because almost like stepping onto a conveyor belt that they start just being whizzed around the globe sort of sent sent careening off westwards that they have to withdraw?
Tom Ough
Well I think we can we can turn to his own diary entry, ‘I who had ambitions not only to go farther than anyone had done before but as far as it was possible for man to go was not sorry at meeting with this interruption.’ So I think we can infer from that that none of the crew wanted to be there. Even Cook, one of the most adventurous seafarers in British history was like, oh my God, I really want to warm my hands on a fire somewhere.
Calum Drysdale
Well, it's like that, the clip of Fernando Alonso coming up behind Schumacher. I can't remember which Grand Prix it was. And he's racing at his back end. And he says famously in the post-race interview, “I knew he was going to move. He's got a wife and children waiting for him at home.”
Tom Ough
Okay, I'm going to give you a fun fact about Cook. He was married at 34. He was at sea for more than half his married life, yet he still had six children.
Calum Drysdale
It's good going.
Tom Ough
Get a move on, Calum.
Calum Drysdale
Okay so, Cook can't cut it. Our great explorer yet defeated by a bit of wind and a bit of a nip in the air.
Tom Ough
Yeah so Cook scuttles home with his tail between his legs and it's such difficulty to navigate that it's another 40 years till something really significant happens in this endeavour to find this mystery continent and what happens is that the commander of the first Russian Antarctic expedition, whose name is Fabian Bellingshausen…
Calum Drysdale
Which doesn't strike me as a particularly Russian name.
Tom O
No, nor me. It’s all very suspect. What is more suspect is that his manuscript charts shows a patch of blue at the lower edge. And that is said to be the first departure from blank space on those maps near the pole, because that could very well be a sign of a continent.
Calum Drysdale
And are we sure that he didn't just spot a significantly sized ice floe or, you know, a particularly large seal or something like that?
Tom Ough
Well, we will get to that. But not two days after Bellingshausen's sighting of that little patch of blue, an officer in the British Royal Navy, Edward Bransfield, saw something else.
I’ll give you a bit of background on the great Edward Bransfield. He was born in Cork, he was press ganged at the age of 18 into joining the Navy. He went through the ranks and at 34 or so he was posted to the Navy's new Pacific squadron off Valparaiso…
Calum Drysdale
Is that how you pronounce it?
Tom Ough
…in Chile. Yeah, I believe so. Our Chilean listeners, who will be very angry about this episode as it is because of the contested claim in the Antarctic, can correct me.
But Bransfield on 30th of January 1820, which as I say was two days after Bellingshausen sighting, saw Trinity Peninsula which is the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland.
Calum Drysdale
Which we are now hovering above.
Tom Ough
Which we are hovering above right now. And so the Russians have this claim to have seen it first, but from the 1960s there is some Cold War revisionism in which I think it was British scientists who said, well actually Fabian Bellingshausen did not see the continent. He just saw some sea ice.
Calum Drysdale
I'm glad that my sort of inherent chauvinism lines up with 1960s British scientific attitudes.
Tom Ough
So Edward Bransfield is a hero and we saw it first.
But sadly people did not realize the significance of this at the time. It would seem in 2000 the Royal Mail wanted to issue a commemorative stamp in Bransfield's honor but nobody knew what his face looked like. Nobody had painted a portrait of this guy. So unfortunately the stamp depicted instead RRS Bransfield, which was a surveying vessel named after him.
Calum Drysdale
I had an English teacher at school who was called Ben Bransfield. I wonder if he was any relative thereof. I remember him being particularly rosy-cheeked, a sort of a man who I think would do well in cold weather.
Tom Ough
I guess we'll never know because this age of exploration is over, or is it?
Calum Drysdale
Beautifully teed up there, Tom.
00:12:50 - Heroic Age
Tom Ough
Well, before we get on to present-day Antarctica, I do want to talk about what is called the heroic era. And this is an amazing era in British exploration. And it's roughly the first few decades of the 19th century. And at this point, people in lots of the sort of advanced countries at that time were getting interested in this continent which, as I say, was seen first by a Briton.
And so people were scrambling expeditions and it was a very exciting time.
Calum Drysdale
I think what's notable as well, I mean, I have to say I was struck when I was reading your notes of this, is this is happening at the beginning of the 20th century. So there have been ships rounding the Cape to India for centuries at this point, and yet that barrier of these cold and windy seas south of the Cape was so, so great that even the sort of great tea clippers of the time... when you go and see the Cutty Sark, which is this astonishingly beautiful and seemingly very high-tech ship, that even those were not enough to brave these terrifying seas.
Tom Ough
Yeah, well let me give you an example of this. There was a Belgian ship, the imaginatively named Belgica, which was sent forth in 1897 or so and it accidentally became the first vessel to winter in Antarctic waters just because it got trapped in pack ice.
Calum Drysdale
Which won't be the last to do so.
Tom Ough
No, the first in a long line of vessels to be trapped in pack ice. There's a new body set up in Britain, the British National Antarctic Expedition, and there's this guy called Robert Falcon Scott, friend of the show, who on board the Discovery sets a new record for reaching the farthest point south. People are now exploring the landmass, which is very exciting.
Calum Drysdale
So this is further south than the Belgica gets?
Tom Ough
Well, they didn't land, they didn't land.
Calum Drysdale
Oh, but he does, but he does actually?
Calum Drysdale
Yeah. They didn't land, Scott and others are now actually on the landmass.
Calum Drysdale
And he's the first…
Tom Ough
Well, in fact, he wasn't only on the landmass, he also hovered above it in a tethered balloon for air reconnaissance, which is tragically missing from the accounts of Scott’s derring-do.
Calum Drysdale
A predecessor of our own then as we too hover above the Antarctic.
Tom Ough
Yeah, we're not tethered but it was a view not unlike ours.
Calum Drysdale
So he was the first man or his crew were the first people to land on the Antarctic?
Tom Ough
They were early, there were other expeditions coming from places like France, Germany, and Sweden and the race at this point is not so much to get on the continent as to get to the South Pole itself.
Calum Drysdale
I fear I know the answer to this Tom but was it a Brit, was it a Briton who reached the South Pole first?
Tom Ough
Well it seemed well it seemed like it might be for a while. Robert Falcon Scott led this expedition with a five-man party, and they were racing for the South Pole, they were racing the Norwegian crew led by Roald Amundsen.
And after this incredibly arduous journey, the Englishmen thought they'd got there or they thought they'd won. And the South Pole itself was hoving into view and then they saw the fluttering flag of Norway and a tent and that had been left by Amundsen's crew and he'd left a letter for Scott saying, well done, better like next time basically and please pass on this letter to the King of Norway — which I think Scott found quite patronising.
And so they had their little squares of chocolate they'd apportioned for what they hoped would be this momentous point, and they had to set off, they had to start setting off home and this was an 800 mile journey and it was torturous and very sadly all five of Scott's party died from cold and hunger.
Calum Drysdale
This is the famous Captain Oates, ‘I'm stepping out and I may be sometime.’
Tom Ough
Sacrificing himself for the sake of the other men, knowing there was not enough food to sustain them all. There were three men left and they continued for another 20 miles in what must have been horrible conditions and unfortunately they didn't make it either and the really sad thing is that they were just 11 miles from the next food and fuel depot.
There was a search party sent out and they found the bodies of Scott and two other men on the expedition, Dr. Wilson and Birdie Bowers, and they were just in their sleeping bags inside a tent covered with snow. Journals and papers were recovered, but the bodies were left in Antarctica.
Captain Oates’ body is still there, I suppose, because it was never found. And because of that recovery mission, as I say, we have the journals left by Scott and his men, and that means we have Scott's final diary entry. He knows that the depot is 11 miles away. He says, 'But outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. For God's sake, look after our people.'
Calum Drysdale
Both awful but heroic as well.
Tom Ough
Yeah, awful and heroic. And so the torch of great British Antarctic exploration passes on to a man called Ernest Shackleton, and Ernest Shackleton is an enormous personal hero of Calum’s.
Calum Drysdale
Yes, Shackleton is often accused because, of course, his mission was a failure, but they managed to get back alive. And I think his combination of derring-do and, frankly, horrendous and even dangerous amateurism, appeals to me.
Tom Ough
We can fill this out a bit. Tell the listeners about the Weddell Sea.
Calum Drysdale
Well, Shackleton, after the victory of Amundsen, Shackleton goes forward and tries to carry the torch of British Antarctic exploration. And so he sets out in the Endurance in early 1915. And his aim is to not only reach the South Pole but then go across it, and this is obviously more difficult because you can't retreat to the caches and the storage depots that you've left along the way.
Instead, you're always crossing unknown terrain. And I think if you imagine Antarctica as one of the horseshoe crabs whose blood is harvested en masse for pharmaceutical products, with a tail. And it is into this tail that he comes in, the Weddell Sea. And in 1915, they arrive and wend their way inbetween floes and icebergs.
But in January 1915, the ship is stuck and is stuck fast. First, spirits seem high and they attempt to, after a month, manually cut their way out. So they're cutting holes in the ice with big saws and picks, trying to create a space. And they move the ship back and then try to effectively ram their way back out to open water so they can continue their journey.
They get within 400 feet of open water before they realise that some of this ice is 18 feet thick. And there is no way that they can reach water. So they have to settle in and accept that this is going to be their winter station. And they are going to, like the Belgica before them, winter in the pack ice.
And I think that when people talk about this, it's difficult to grasp the sheer scale of the time periods that we're talking about here. That first, these men are just in the ship. They’re bored, there’s nothing to do, they have to just survive over the winter. And they play football, they put on cabarets and variety shows, they name the lower berth the Ritz and put on variety shows and dressing up. Scott actually wins an award for worst singer.
Tom Ough
It sounds a lot like lockdown. My housemates and I were in a 5 bedroom house at that point and we did a bar crawl. All the guys turned their room into a themed bar and it was fantastic.
Calum Drysdale
And I think doing things like this is really important because the men are bored. But he's an absolutely ferocious disciplinarian, so he maintains the spirits of the crew by keeping to a really rigorous routine of scrubbing the ships. They have more than 50 dogs on board which are meant to act as pack dogs. The mess and the smell must have been awful.
Calum Drysdale
And what’s astonishing as well is they had a photographer with them, they had Frank Hurley, who is capturing video and photographs of these early games of football on the ice, of variety shows, of singing that are astonishing watching given how distant these people are and actually yet how close they become through the footage.
Tom Ough
Yeah, I really recommend looking up this footage. This is incredible that they captured it at that early stage.
Calum Drysdale
And then, so we're three months in, they've been stuck in the ice for three months, and now the ice starts buckling. So the pressure starts building up and starts buckling around them. So the hull of the ship is three feet thick, but the fears start to mount that even this powerful ship is not going to be able to manage. And their original idea at this point is that they're going to sit in the ice, and the pack ice is always moving, it's floating, and they want to get to a supply depot that was being left from a previous expedition on Paulet Island. And they've originally made an effort to get there with dogs on sleds moving through the ice.
But it's just impossible. The ice is forming mountains and ridges that are impassable. And so they just have to wait. Six months in, the hull starts really giving way and the rudder is broken. So there's no way now that the ship will work. And they take their supplies off the ship. Nine months in, the ship keels over 30 degrees. And the ship is now tilting. There's a fear that it's going to give way. Nine and a half months in, the order is given to abandon ship.
Shackleton tells his men, ships and stores are gone, we will go home. So the mission is now impossible, there's no attempt going to be made. And now they're hoping that, as I said, that they will drift close enough to Paulet Island to be able to find these stores and survive and then an attempt to rescue. But unfortunately the ice floe is unpredictable and they move too far to the northeast and they watch Paulet Island pass in front of them. Inaccessible but the opportunity of survival is there. And so now we're 14 months in and Shackleton abandons the Paulet Island.
And he says to the men the only thing we can do now is go for this different place, Elephant Island. There are no supplies on Elephant Island but at least it's out of the ice. You'd be out and you could actually attempt to connect to South Georgia which is the closest human and occupied territory. And the conditions at this point are awful. We're 14 months in and the men have been eating largely meat, so anything they can scavenge. So they're down to a biscuit for lunch and three sugar cubes a day and they're eating seal steaks.
Tom Ough
Keto.
Calum Drysdale
I mean their breath must have stunk, just disgusting. Although, although the men talk very highly apparently of penguin livers as a real delicacy.
Tom Ough
I can see that becoming very popular on Instagram.
Calum Drysdale
And at this point they have to kill the dogs. So these dogs who have become like pets and really close companions are killed 14 and a half months in. And then soon after the ice floe breaks apart and suddenly their camp is splitting in two.
And the crew, all 27 of them, take to the sea in these three tiny lifeboats. These are 23 foot long open boats. And after six days at sea, I mean, storms the whole way through, as you said, these are not hospitable waters, they land on Elephant Island. And this is the first time in 15 months, since, well, 15 months they got stuck, that they have been on solid land. And now the question is, how can they reconnect with humanity.
And so Shackleton and five men set off in one of these lifeboats, leaving behind the rest of his crew. And they have a journey of 800 miles to cross. They set out and immediately gales start up again. The navigator Frank Worsley has a single opportunity to take a reading off the sun, because the rest of the time it's so overcast. And by some miracle, he is able to guide the crew to South Georgia.
And as they come into the bay on the wrong side, the opposite side of the island to the whaling station, the main pin holding the rudder in falls out, rendering the boat useless. They wouldn't be able to use it. Had they been at sea, they wouldn't have been able to direct themselves. And now they've got the problem that three of the men are too sick to travel any further. So Shackleton in, again, what is an astonishing act of amateurism, he's not a mountaineer, attempts to cross these glaciers and mountains to the whaling station.
Tom Ough
He's a gentleman mountaineer.
Calum Drysdale
He is from the finest tradition of enthusiastic amateurism.
So the men, they twist screws into the bottom of their shoes, they have a bit of rope, a carpenter's adze, and they set off on this journey. And there's one particularly notable story where they're up at the top of a mountain and night is closing in. They know that if they don't get down this mountain, they will die of exposure. And what they do is they coil the rope up into a rudimentary toboggan, wrap their arms around each other, and just launch themselves off into the void.
Tom Ough
It must have been very dark.
Calum Drysdale
Right, they can't see any sign. And if there is a cliff, they're dead. And yet, Shackleton has the most astonishing luck.
There's a very good line written by a man who wasn't actually on the expedition with them, but writes afterwards about these three characters, Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton. And he says, ‘for scientific discovery, give me Scott. For speed and efficiency of travel, give me Armisen. But when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’
Tom Ough
I like it.
Calum Drysdale
And in this vein, he walks into the whaling station.
Tom Ough
Strides into the whaling station.
Calum Drysdale
Strides into the whaling station. It’s 16 months after they've got stuck. And there's a man there to whom he says, “I'm Shackleton, don't you know me?” And the man replies, “I know your voice, but I don't recognise you.” He's so changed by these experiences.
And after that, it is then three more months before they're able to return on a ship of the Chilean navy’s to go down to Elephant Island and rescue their crew. And when Elephant Island hoves into view they see a weak signal fire. And there is a question, how many of these men have survived? And the answer is all of them. All 22 men left behind have survived this wait, and they are all rescued from Elephant Island.
And in that way, it is a disaster. The expedition is a disaster. But I think for me, it is the most astonishing example of pluck and courage.
Tom Ough
It is. And the International Court of Justice has a few criteria it looks at when it's apportioning sovereignty. And unfortunately, pluck isn't on that list. But the contention of the Anglofuturism Podcast is that it should be taken into account. And we're going to return to this issue of sovereignty. But all this is to say that there is a magnificent history of British adventuring and pioneering in Antarctica.
And so Shackleton's death in 1922, when he's, by kind of popular account, a broken man, does mark the end of the heroic age, but it does not mark the end of the exploration of Antartica. From the 20s and 30s, you've got American explorers in early planes flying over parts of Antarctica. You've got a race to name different parts of the continent because that's kind of the equivalent of putting your flag in the ground. It's the next best thing.
Note that there's a bit of it now called Queen Elizabeth Land for similar reasons. So there's a German Antarctic expedition of 1939 and that drops, I'm sorry to say, metal swastikas over what is now Queen Maud Land [to claim it] for Nazi Germany, though listeners will be reassured to know that the area is now claimed by Norway.
00:31:19 - Sovereignty Issues
Calum Drysdale
That I have to say is not an example of pluck.
Tom Ough
No. I think it's kind of cheeky if you're just dropping swastikas on it from above. Anyway, there's not much economic utility on Antarctica itself at this point [in the early 20th century].
Calum Drysdale
What's the skiing like?
Tom Ough
I think it was Shackleton who climbed Mount Erebus, which is a live volcano. I don't think it was like throwing out magma at that point. But theoretically, theoretically, there could be very, very nippy skiing. But at that point, people don't care about skiing. They're more interested in whaling and the sovereignty issue is a little more of an abstract thing because there's no real reason for it.
Nevertheless, the US, which is becoming the most powerful country in the world, wants to retain the right to a slice and in 1924 the Secretary of State says, ‘It is the opinion of this department that the discovery of lands unknown to civilisation even when coupled with a formal taking of possession does not support a valid claim of sovereignty unless the discovery is followed by an actual settlement of the discovered country.’
Calum Drysdale
Sounds like something someone late to the party would say.
Tom Ough
It does, it does, someone late to the party and without a national history of pluck.
Calum Drysdale
And what they then attempt to impose a settlement on Antarctica?
Tom Ough
Well not quite yet, there's still this chaotic state of proto-colonialism. In World War II for instance, oh but by the way like very minor historical footnote which is that this country called Argentina has been founded and so the Argentinians and the Chileans also want a slice of Antarctica and Argentina is allied with the Germans in World War II. And so Deception Island, which is this volcanic island just to the north of the peninsula…
Calum Drysdale
That's the end of the horseshoe crab's tail for those still keeping to our vertebrate-based metaphor.
Tom Ough
And it's this incredible sort of black, grey, very dark island with basically no life on it at all.
Nevertheless in World War 2 it is the subject of a game of capture the flag basically between the Brits and the Argentinians and so nobody wants to actually leave troops stationed on it, but they both want it as guarding Drake's passage, which is between the Antarctic and South America.
And so the Argentinians turn up and they put their flag in it, the Brits turn up and they remove the flag and place it their own. This happens, I think this happens a few times over. The war eventually ends and still nobody really owns the Antarctic but everyone kind of wants at least a right to own some of it and things hot up a little bit in 1952 and that's the point where there's a British meteorological party that lands at Hope Bay which is on the northern end of this peninsula and then the Argentine navy turns up and they use small arms fire to chase this meteorological party back to its ship.
Calum Drysdale
Not the last time that the Argentinains would intrude on peaceful British activity in this part of the world. Fortunately, the Argentinian government agreed not to interfere with the British scientists but nevertheless there is a growing international sense that order must be brought to the Antarctic at some point. The Soviets are interested, the Americans are interested, I think there's more of a sense at this point that there might be oil, gas, coal, good mining, all that kind of thing.
And so a program of geophysical research is set up jointly by various countries in the late 50s and then when that ends in 1958 that leaves a bit of a legislative vacancy and President Eisenhower fills that vacancy by brokering a treaty and this is a very important treaty in the history of the Antarctic.
00:34:58 - Antarctic Treaty
Calum Drysdale
This is the Antarctic Treaty that still binds us today isn't it?
Tom Ough
Yeah it was an agreement between all the countries that were active on Antarctica at the time so that's the Argentinians, Australia, Belgium who we've mentioned.
Calum Drysdale
Belgium is still relevant in this?
Tom Ough
Yeah, I mean preposterously yes they are one of the 12 parties to this treaty. There's also Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union and then of course us and the US.
It was signed on December 1st 1959 and enacted in 1961 and its objectives are to keep Antarctica demilitarised, to prevent these countries from using it as a place to test nukes and to ensure that it is used for peaceful and scientific purposes only.
And a few countries have been added so if you have a long-term scientific commitment to Antarctica you can be a consultant party and so we've got China and Iran involved, I think, for instance. But that's where we are now, we still have this treaty which prevents countries from militarising Antarctica to doing anything really economic with it. But what's interesting, Calum, is that this treaty can be revised from 2048 onwards.
Calum Drysdale
Right, so we're now staring down the end of what is potentially the sort of halcyon period of Antarctic quietude and peace, and now people are waking up to actually the resources and what this area has to offer.
00:36:49 - Resource Potential
Tom Ough
Well, I think it's certainly fair to say that people are waking up to the potential wealth of the other polar region. I'm thinking of course of Greenland which the Trump administration has shown a lot of interest in buying. Trump wants to drill in Greenland, he wants to use it for strategic purposes, he sent his son Donald Trump Jr to Greenland recently and he's trying to get them to vote for independence from Denmark.
And so the Trump team sees a landmass rich in gas, oil, gold and rare earth minerals and as ice begins to melt this stuff becomes more accessible.
Calum Drysdale
Well and it's not just the Americans who are looking, right? The Russians as well are searching under the Arctic for oil. I think there was a finding of these vast oil fields up in sort of underneath the ice and the Chinese as well, I think are excited by the opening of trade routes that emerge as the Arctic ice opens up, that you can start moving containers across the world without necessarily having to go through Suez or around the Cape.
Tom Ough
Yeah. And I think Donald Trump has said that he wants to order 40 icebreakers and the US Navy doesn't have any. We have one.
Calum Drysdale
That's almost the two power standard.
But I think yeah, I think you're right that we are now emerging back into a time of territorial expansion of where these the borders and the assumptions that what was once fixed on a map is now open to reevaluation. And it might be time to act on our own behalf.
Tom Ough
I spoke to a professor of geopolitics about this, a guy called Klaus Dodds. And I'll tell you what he said to me, which is that ‘the Greenland saga is just a reminder that both the Arctic and Antarctic are no longer protected by what was until quite recently termed exceptionalism’ and he said of Trump that ‘he has not discovered Antarctica yet but he might do so in his second term, and if he does he will be briefed on the arrival of several more countries to Antarctica.’
So it's not just the Brits and all those other countries like the Norwegians who maintain bases there, there's also an Indian base, a Turkish base, Chinese bases, even Iran has said that it wants an Antarctic base. And like I say in 2048, any of the original 12 signatories to the treaty may request a conference to review the existing terms.
So given the changing attitudes towards the polar regions, given this point at which the treaty can be re-evaluated and given some quite exciting evidence of mineral wealth which we'll get to, this could be a very important era for the Antarctic and we might find ourselves in a situation where we are looking back through history at the basis of our claim, and looking at stories like Scott’s and Shackleton’s and thanking our lucky stars that they actually did do this exploration because everyone's going to want a slice of the Antarctic.
Calum Drysdale
You mention the mineral wealth. Our claim, and you should talk more about it, is particularly vulnerable, because the Chileans and the Argentinians claims overlap our own, in that our claim, which is this end of this peninsula, the rocky and exposed bits are actually in many ways, quite an advantageous area to claim, because you don't have to dig through thick, thick ice sheets. But it also is the area, unfortunately, that is closest to Argentina and Chile. And being willing to forcefully push our claim might be quite critical.
Tom Ough
Listeners, we're going to leave you with that bombshell, but we'll be back after a break.
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Calum Drysdale
Welcome back, listeners. Tom is polishing off his third pint of gin and has spotted through the porthole a collection of three buildings that have got him rather excited. What are those Tom?
Tom Ough
Yeah, so what we've got below us Calum, come have a look. It's Port Lockroy and listeners, Port Lockroy is the main British outpost at the moment in Antarctica and it's three buildings, the largest of which is Bransfield House, and that houses a post office among other thing. This is the UK’s most southerly public post office, and it is also known as the Penguin Post Office.
Calum Drysdale
Do you think it also stocks sort of crass birthday cards that you can send to your stepdad?
Tom Ough
Yeah, I'm sure you can get your holiday travel insurance. Probably a bit expensive down there. Port Lockroy is largely occupied by the British Antarctic Survey and this is the organisation that conducts scientific work on behalf of the country in conjunction with other countries' polar operations.
And I have an exciting update for listeners to the Anglofuturism Podcast, which is that the British Antarctic Survey is hiring.
Calum Drysdale
Exactly. So if you have always thought of yourself as a doer of derring-do, and think that actually what Shackleton did sounds quite exciting, this is your chance.
Tom Ough
Well, you can be an agricultural plant operator, or an agricultural plant mechanic, a glacier geophysicist, or more excitingly, unfortunately, this is a remote position, but you can currently apply to be an Antarctic Place Names Committee ad hoc member.
Calum Drysdale
And what would this involve?
Tom Ough
Well, you join a committee and then you just make up names for bits of the Antarctic. So we have a few suggestions. We propose the Duchy of Antarctica Mining Territory for forbidden reasons that we'll refer to shortly, Snow-on-the-Wold, New New South Wales, and perhaps HMP Shackleton.
Calum Drysdale
Where we send everyone who plays TikToks on the bus.
Tom Ough
They're all getting rounded up and they're all getting sent HMP Shackleton. They will regret every decibel of tube music they inflict on us.
Calum Drysdale
So Tom, other than the ability to send postcards home to your loved ones, what else is there in Antarctica? And what are these people actually doing other than looking at plants?
Tom Ough
Well a lot of their work is to do with the climate. But as regards your first question, not only can you send a smutty postcard from the Antarctic, you might also be able to get filthy rich.
Calum Drysdale
And what would this involve?
Tom Ough
Because this is a geologically very interesting part of the world. And so as listeners will remember, this is a peninsula. And it's a peninsula that is rocky. It's got exposed rock. So it's not covered by like a kilometre of ice as most of the continent is. And because you're not allowed to mine there we don't know a ton about what's going on geologically in Antarctica but there are some clues. And one of the clues comes from the geological composition of other continents which used to be part of this huge continental landmass called Gondwana that Antarctica was once a part of as well.
Calum Drysdale
Gondwana? I hardly know her.
Tom Ough
Brilliant, thank you Calum. The peninsula seems to have some shared history with South America and the kind of rock it is suggests that there might be quite significant gold deposits which is very exciting. There's copper, there's visible copper staining on these rocks that's definitely not worth going all the way to the Antarctic to mine for but the gold might be.
Right so we've got copper which is not very exciting, gold which could definitely be exciting and incidentally in New Zealand's part of Antarctica there is a volcano that spews gold. I'm not making this up. It's just obviously very expensive to get to but it spews gold dust.
Calum Drysdale
I like the idea I like the idea of an Antarctic-based or localised gold rush, in which you swing open the saloon doors and you walk in with your 900...
Tom Ough
SHUT THE DOOR! SHUT THE DOOR!
Calum Drysdale
The wind whistling underneath the salons doors. Actually, you can't have any decent gunfights because you can't find your ammunition tucked in one of your pockets.
Tom Ough
But there'll be more than a gold rush. There could be a uranium rush. There could be a diamond-bearing rock rush. Because both of those have been found in Antarctica. So you've got potentially this colossal mineral wealth. Bear in mind that our slice is a as I said, and so your odds are pretty good of finding some good stuff, quite apart from these clues which we already have. One final clue is the presence of active volcanoes in the British Antarctica Territory. And they're exciting because they bring metals to the surface that are often very valuable. I remember a geologist at Oxford once telling me every volcano has underneath it tens of millions of pounds of precious metals and if they're active then so much the better. And crucially, the British territory has several of these.
Calum Drysdale
So like I say, it could make a diamonds are only the tip of the iceberg are they not?
Tom Ough
They are only the tip of the iceberg, thank you Calum. They are the tip of the iceberg because there's also a lot of fuel there and this Russian crew found huge reserves of oil and gas in I think the Weddell Sea just off the peninsula. Specifically what that crew found was apparently reserves of oil and gas that in total are ten times larger than our entire North Sea output over the past half-century.
Calum Drysdale
And I think Tom many a Green voting pensioner might at this point pop up and say ruin one of the last undamaged environments or habitats in the world, and would be frankly appalled by our glee at the thought of nodding donkeys studding the landscape. Is this a problem? Is there a risk of us damaging the environment by doing this?
Tom Ough
Well I think there's a lot you can say in response to that question and I think frankly some people are misguided in their views of the Antarctic. As we know, British energy is four times more expensive than American energy, for instance. We're still using gas.
Calum Drysdale
It forms the base of our power. And as we bring online more and more intermittent renewables, the vital necessity of having these oil and gas, and sometimes even coal, baseload power supplies is ever more clear.
Tom Ough
Well, I think it's important to make a distinction between coal, which is very dirty, and natural gas, which is less dirty. It's also important to remember that we really should be using nuclear as our baseload, but for various avoidable reasons, we're in a position where we just need a stopgap and we're buying this stopgap from other people anyway. So while I'm more excited about the mining, I think the oil and gas is potentially a pretty valuable resource as well.
And when people talk about the pristineness of the Antarctic, I think that's true. But you've got to bear in mind that although there's lots of marine life at the bottom of the ocean, there is almost nothing that can live on Antarctica itself. And my view is that if we're going to be mining and extracting resources, this is the best place in the world. It's not the worst. It’s the best.
The reason is that there's so little ecology to interfere with. Bear in mind that it's a totally inhospitable part of the world. It's dark for about six months and so you get very limited opportunity to photosynthesize. So there are hardly any plants. There are only about 800 species of Antarctic plants of which 350 are lichens. You're certainly not getting rid of all the lichens by doing a bit of mining in one part of this massive continent.
And then maybe people are wondering about animals. Well it's mites, lites, midges, fleas, tardigrades.
Calum Drysdale
A species known for their ability to survive in outer space, so probably won't be bothered by a mine being built next to them.
Tom Ough
Yeah, I think they'll muddle through. And we've got the penguins, of course, and we should look after these penguins. But these are not the penguins of yore. In the good old days, 30 million years ago, the Antarctic penguins were two metres tall. They were two metres tall and they were not even the biggest animal on the Antarctic. This is a tangent now, but I think it's worth it because there was this flightless carnivorous bird that stood three and a half metres tall that could run through the forest on the hunt. And bear in mind it would have been dark for six months per year.
Calum Drysdale
So yeah, so probably had quite a strong forehead that able to resist bashing into things as it ran.
Tom Ough
Or like infrared vision or something, we don't know. Um so this stuff would have been like charging through these forests that would eventually become like British oil. It's just totally fantastic, but those days are long gone and none of it is left.
Calum Drysdale
So Tom, what you're saying is the degradation of the penguin species means they're deserving of extinction.
Tom Ough
That is not what I'm saying. I think in a nutshell my claim is that this is the least bad place in the world for certain forms industrial activity.
So as we've explained, this part of the world could be this bonanza of resources. And it's worth recalling something that Cook wrote which is that, ‘should anyone possess the resolution and fortitude to elucidate this point by pushing yet further south than I have done, I shall not envy him the fame of his discovery but I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it.’
He could not have been more wrong and that's proven by the number of pairs of covetous eyes that are now falling on our British slice of Antarctica.
And so you can put a research station wherever you like on the Antarctic. And that means that on the peninsula, there are several other bases. And these come from places like Argentina, of course, but also Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, blah, blah, blah, all these countries, even Peru, Poland, Spain.
Calum Drysdale
Spain. Not natural cold weather people.
Tom Ough
No, no, no. With none of this fantastic history of exploration. And as we were saying, times are changing. Countries are waking up to the potential of the polar regions.
And again, I was speaking to Bob Seeley, who was formerly a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, about the British Antarctic Territory when I was writing about it for the Telegraph, and he told me ‘the weaker we look, the more we become a target. I think we are entering a period of world history whereby liberal internationalism is going to come under a lot of pressure from hard realist power.’
Calum Drysdale
And I think this is why we drew the parallel to Czechoslovakia in that countries that are willing to pull whatever levers they can, be that anti-colonialism the Argentinians have done with regards to the Falkland Islands, nations that are willing to push will reap the rewards of their efforts. And it will require us being forceful in the defence of our possessions to maintain sort of the control, but also maintain the benefits of this land.
Tom Ough
Yeah, I think it might well be a use it or lose it situation, and it will almost certainly be a situation where those who benefit are those who are most entrepreneurial and assertive about it.
00:54:25 - Future Prospects
Tom Ough
Listeners might remember that we had Samo Burja on the podcast, and he's the geopolitical analyst from Bismarck, and he said that Antarctica is one of many unique opportunities left in the world, and a country like Britain should not be playing it safe. We should be taking advantage of amazing possessions like this.
Calum Drysdale
I think this brings us on quite nicely to the threats and the countries who might be willing to push their claims or a claim at the expense of Britain. You mentioned these other countries who maintain research stations. At the moment, the territories look a bit like a pie sliced up, right, with slices cut out reaching towards the South Pole. What would an effort to solidify and support our claim look like?
Tom Ough
It's very hard to predict what will become of the Antarctic. It might just be that the US and China carve it up somehow. There's this trans-Antarctic line of mountains that could package it. I think if we’re actually serious about making the most of it then we might need to be doing a little bit more.
And in the course of this journalism I did on the BAT, for the Telegraph, I spoke to a guy called Dryden Brown, and he's an American who has 20 million dollars worth of Silicon Valley funding to build an independent libertarian city called Praxis. And he proposed that the government, the British government, work with him to develop Antarctica, and he wants to build geodesic domes, which are hemispherical structures that can house humans in harsh environments, on the British Antarctic territory.
And what's cool about that it will be piloting technology that we would need to settle on the Moon and Mars. So it's a great scientific endeavour. And because it's scientific rather than militaristic or extractive, it could in theory be within the rules of the treaty.
And I think if you start putting domes down and making a serious fist of settling it, then your claim becomes stronger. Your claim becomes stronger and you learn about the environment as well. You could start just finding out what resources there are such that you're in pole position to claim them when it becomes legal.
And, perhaps more fundamentally than that, we could be continuing this noble history of exploring Antarctica and pushing the frontier as far as we can.
Calum Drysdale
The point there is people are already planning. There are already entrepreneurial efforts in mind, and as with Columbus, who was initially turned away by the King of Portugal and then went to Spain and then went and found the new world, there are enthusiastic, motivated, and driven individuals who are going to go and take advantage of this. And the question is, are we going to be the ones backing them, or are we going to be in 50 years’ time looking back and thinking, oh gosh, what a missed opportunity?
Tom Ough
Absolutely. And if you think that China hasn't got a plan for the Antarctic when they put all these bases down on it, you're a moron. Like, of course they have a plan.
Other countries are thinking what they're going to do with the Antarctic. We should be thinking about it too. And the potential is immense.
Calum Drysdale
So Tom, as a man who has spent the last few weeks with his head in a freezer, trying to simulate the conditions or the experiences of a future British Antarctic territory colonist, what sort of things might a futuristic and patriotic British colony look like?
Tom Ough
Okay, let me paint you a picture, Calum. Close your eyes and imagine the gently nodding pumpjack of the Royal Antarctic oilfields. To their north, a busy new harbour straddled by the mighty granite figure of the Scott Colossus populated by humanoid mining robots. And finally, the King inspecting the first gold coin to emerge from the Antarctic mint, just before he visits a vast data centre that is cooled by the snow and supported against the Antarctic gales by cathedral-style flying buttresses.
Calum Drysdale
It would be quite a notable event because the gold, the gold in the royal jewellery has always come from Wales right? What a declaration of intent to take gold from Antarctica.
Tom Ough
Oh hugely and then as well as taking things to the Antarctic and bringing them home we could send some things there from here, so to make it truly British we would have the Port Lockroy Greggs, we could have like a Casper's Ice Cream in Port Lockroy as well, we could have Deliveroo dark kitchens and riders on skidoos and a statue of course of Edward Bransfield.
Calum Drysdale
Edward Bransfield with some face…
Tom Ough
The faceless statue.
Calum Drysdale
…reconstructed from his descendants as a sort of an e-fit. However, it seems to me that the FCDO is not thinking about this. As you say, China has a plan. We don't have a plan.
Tom Ough
Yeah, well, I think it's difficult for us to know what is going on inside the FCDO. It certainly seems that there's a relaxed attitude towards our continued possession of things we picked up in the 19th century and beyond. I did ask the FCDO and I’ll read you the statement, they said ‘the Antarctic Treaty which has been in place since 1959 strictly reserved the use of Antarctic territories for scientific use only. The UK remains staunchly committed to this and to the sovereignty of the British Antarctic Territory.’
And that statement is all very well but you've got to take it in context with the size of the Navy at the moment which seems no longer adequate to protect that passage between Scotland and Iceland into the Atlantic, which might be partly why Trump wants to buy Greenland. So unfortunately I don't think we're particularly well placed right now to defend our claim.
Calum Drysdale
And I think this is a particularly critical moment, right? Because we are moving now from a world where we could peacefully expect a US-backed Pax Americana and an American hegemon who would not use their power to extract, sort of, well, maybe not extract, but not extract too many concessions from its vassal powers. And we are now moving into a time when America wants to start throwing its weight around.
And the question is, are we going to wait for things to happen to us and accept that America is no longer following the rules that it set up in the middle of the 20th century, and that China is growing ever more muscular in its attitudes? Are we going to accept the world coming to us? Or are we going to take active steps to make the world one that is favourable and friendly to the British people?
Tom Ough
On that note, Aris Roussinous who is an UnHerd writer who has been talking about Anglofuturism longer than we have, wrote recently about all these other possessions that Britain has scattered across the globe. So Chagos, but also Falklands, South Georgia. Roussinos compares Britain to this bedridden aunt who is sitting on this incredible property portfolio, also including these Caribbean islands as well, and not quite knowing what to do with it.
The problem with being a vulnerable bedridden old aunt who doesn't know what to do with her property portfolio is that someone else might take it off you.
Calum Drysdale
A Chinese wolf in sheep's clothing.
Tom Ough
A Chinese wolf in sheep's clothing. We have the situation now where the Falklands government, which is somewhat autonomous from His Majesty's government, is authorising oil and gas drilling which we won't benefit from because Labour doesn't allow it.
There's another world in which we're making the most of these resources rather than giving them away to someone. I mean, there's another world where instead of simply giving away this oil and gas, we use it productively, we encourage young Brits, as Roussinos suggests, to settle the Falklands, we make holiday resorts out of the Chagos Islands…
Calum Drysdale
And allow the Chagossians to benefit as a result.
Tom Ough
Yeah, yeah. And crucially, if we make the most of Antarctica, then we are giving ourselves the tools of the prosperity that we'll need to defend ourselves from these covetous other countries and to hold on to what we've got.
Calum Drysdale
Well, and also to push for net zero, right? That, I think, is an undervalued point that at the moment we cannot power the country purely on solar and wind power. At the moment, we are still using fossil fuels. We would like to move to a world of fusion, or more nuclear. At the moment, we can't do it because we're not rich enough. At the moment, we have the two most expensive nuclear power plants. If we want to keep building nuclear power plants at this extortionate cost and extortionate markup compared to the rest of the world, the money for it is going to have to come from somewhere. This seems as good a place as any to drive us forward into a new century of growth. Powered as the boom years after Thatcher, many would claim, were driven by the discovery of North Sea oil, we too could have this kind of economic growth.
Tom Ough
We started this episode by talking about Scott and Shackleton. And I think what's really noble about them is how they were pushing the frontier, pushing into the unknown. And that's something that we don't really do as a country anymore. But if we start settling the Antarctic and prospecting it, and finding incredible resources there, and developing technology that humans might one day use on the moon and Mars, then I think that will be a fitting tribute to them, rather than just letting someone else take all this land off us.
Calum Drysdale
And on that note, Tom, I suggest we return to sunnier climes as the portholes are starting to get a bit icy. Tom, where can listeners who are interested in this find out more information?
Tom Ough
Well, we'll put a link or two in the show notes.
One final thing before we let you all go…
Calum Drysdale
For our solid salt of the earth yeoman listeners, we encourage you please to like, subscribe, and share the podcast with their friends. For our patrician listeners, on the other hand, we invite you to consider supporting us to help us produce these episodes at an even greater clip in order to bring about the next British century a little faster.
With that, we'll sign off. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.
Tom Ough
We hope to see you at the Port Lockroy Greggs. Goodbye.
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Further reading
The Antarctic oil bonanza that could save Britain – but we need to get there before Argentina
Labour should look to the relics of empire for growth
China-Russia cooperation blocks Antarctic conservation proposals
China opens Antarctic station south of Australia, New Zealand
Antarctic Monitoring Tools in Action
Economic resources — Antarctica
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