Very rare: this parallel Russian-English publication was issued in just a handful of copies by the Russian Imperial Navy. American oceanographer and naval officer, Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-73), provides the “the first ever proposal for international cooperation in polar research. Maury’s initiative also prompted the first ever international correspondence about polar cooperation, fourteen years before Carl Weyprecht launched his better known proposal” (Bulkeley).
Dated “Observatory, Washington, 10th April 1861” (just two days before the beginning of the American Civil War), and addressed to Eduard Guillaume Baron de Stoeckl (1804-1892), then the Ambassador of the Russian Empire to the United States, the letter implores Stoeckl (and thus Russia) to take part in the organization of a joint exploratory expedition to the Antarctic, to “unbar the gates of the South.”
Drawing on the results of his two-decade analysis of data concerning weather, winds and currents provided by numerous American and international naval and merchant ships, Maury believed that “the Antarctic winter is by no means as severe as that of the Arctic … No explorer has yet tried the Antarctic winter. There is, my investigations lead me to believe, no great difference between it and the Antarctic summer, and the erroneous impression that has fastened itself upon the public mind as to the extreme severity of winter about the South Pole has no doubt its root in the low summer temperatures that prevail there.” Maury based his conclusions on the presumption that the winds blowing to the Arctic Ocean are continental and consequently dry. In contrast, the winds entering the Antarctic region are maritime and consequently full of moisture, which makes the Antarctic climate like that of Ireland (mild, with similar temperatures in summer and winter) in comparison with cold and dry climate of Labrador.
The pamphlet contains a detailed description of Maury’s theory, followed by his remarks on the Antarctic discoveries of James Cook in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, see pp. 48-52.
The final part of the letter describes a future international expedition, which could achieve better results due to the invention of steam navigation and the development in Australia of “one of the most extensive shipping ports of the world” (p.55).
Indeed, he outlines the expedition: “The first step, I submit, should be to send a steamer down from Australia to search for one or more ports or places where the exploring vessels that are to follow may find shelter, and whence they might dispatch boat, or land, or ice parties according to circumstance. This reconnaissance would occupy one season. The next season, vessels suitably equipped for two or three years might be sent to take up their position, whereat the return of summer, they might be visited from Melbourne again, and arrangements be made for the next season.”
Eduard de Stoeckl forwarded Maury’s letter to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich (1827-1892), then General Admiral of the Russian Imperial Navy who had the powers of a Minister. The Grand Duke ordered the letter be published in Russian and English and circulated among prominent Russian scientists and naval officers to get their opinions on Maury’s project. Among others, the recipients included Ferdinand von Wrangel, Friedrich von Luetke, Pyotr Anjou, Gennady Nevelskoy, Paul von Krusenstern, Emil Lenz, Otto von Struve, and Leopold von Schrenck.
Of course, Maury’s project was based on erroneous assumptions about the mildness of the Antarctic winter and neither Russia, nor the British and French scientific communities adopted his plan. Nevertheless, this piece was studied by members of the Russian Geographical Society as part of the organization of magnetic and meteorological observations during the First International Polar Year (1882-1883).
Maury’s idea of international cooperation in the Antarctic exploration evidently was ahead of its time but anticipated the principles of modern-day work on the continent.
OCLC locates two microform copies at LOC and NYPL, but no physical copies.
Bulkeley, R. “‘To unbar the gates of the South’: Maury’s 1860-1861 proposals for Antarctic cooperation” in Polar Record: A Journal of Arctic and Antarctic Research, Vol. 47, No. 4, (October 2011), pp. 310-326.
